May 13 Tuesday – In Hartford Sam wrote to his sister, Pamela Moffett:

Indeed my character never gives me any concern. I never sit up with it when it seems to be sick, never bother about it in any way. I have always approved & admired it, I still approve & admire it, I strenuously desire & do steadfastly believe that my relatives & friends approve & admire it, I know God approves & admires it — & there’s the end: What the rest of the public think of it is not matter of life-&-death interest to me. This is why I have allowed House to have the whole newspaper field to himself unreplied to. Let that dog bark till his teeth drop out — it will do him no good, it will not make him famous, (which is what he is after); a year hence nobody will be able to remember what cur it was that barked, nor who it was he barked at.

At the end Sam announced: “…we sail for the Pyrennees either June 7 or July 5, I reckon” [MTP].

Also, Franklin G. Whitmore answered for Sam to Fox & Whitmore Co., saying there were no plans to redecorate the ceilings this summer [MTP].

Kate Field wrote from N.Y. to Sam enclosing a copy of Kate Field’s Washington for May 14, 1890 which featured an article on copyright, “A Nation of Pirates.” She asked if he would “read enclosed and send me a word of denunciation for a column of authors that is to be in my next number?” [MTP].