December 4 Wednesday – In Wanganui, Sam wrote of a crazed intruder, who burst into his rooms and warned that the Jesuits were going to poison him in his food, or kill him on the stage that night.

This lunatic has no delicacy. But he was not uninteresting. He told me a lot of things. He said he had “saved so many lecturers in twenty years, that they put him in the asylum.” I think he has less refinement than any lunatic I have met [FE Ch XXXV 320-1].

The Clemens family visited a Maori native village. In the evening Sam gave his No. 2 program for “At Home” in Wanganui’s Odd Fellows’ Hall. The Wanganui Chronicle ran a review on Dec. 5.