June 19 Wednesday – At Quarry Farm Sam wrote to John Horne of Glasgow, Scotland.

I find it thoroughly entertaining. Moreover, I thank you very much for the pleasant attention of giving me the front seat.

I once made a valuable collection of autographs myself — without knowing I was doing it.

He then related the 1884 April Fool’s joke made by George W. Cable (see Mar. 31, 1884 Vol. I). “It will be long before I part with those autographs” [MTP]. Note: Horne also wrote Sam on June 29, nearly begging for James Russell Lowell’s autograph.

Sam also wrote to James B. Pond, thinking Pond’s suggestion “a good idea” that Livy and daughter Clara follow after Sam and Pond, then meet on the boat at Cleveland. Sam didn’t “seem to like the white-linen” full-length picture of himself that he’d asked for, and Livy didn’t like it either, so he wouldn’t take a cast of it to R.S. Smythe (see June 11 to Pond). Sam’s carbuncle “sloughed out a big hunk of decayed protoplasm like a Baltimore oyster yesterday,” so he felt it would heal fast [MTP].

Sam also wrote to H.H. Rogers, enclosing a copy of Sam’s June 18 to Frank Hall Scott of the Century.

Will you please keep this copy for me — otherwise I shall say, some day, that I never wrote & don’t remember anything about it. My memory is pretty useless.

Having “never written with chains on” Sam felt he “never could” write the articles Scott wanted. Sam added at the end that he and Livy “are fully expecting to have a Sunday at Fairhaven” [MTHHR 153].