November  1 Saturday – Sam’s first Snodgrass letter dated Oct. 18from  St. Louis titled, CORRESPONDENCE  ran in the Keokuk Saturday Post.

Gee Whillikens! Mister Editors, if you  could a been there jest then, you’d a thought that either old Gabriel had  blowed his horn, or else there was houses to rent in that locality. I reckon  there was nigh onto forty thousand people setting in that theatre—and sich an  other fannin, and blowin, and scrapon, and gigglin, I hain’t seen since I  arrived in the United States. Gals! Bless your soul, there was gals there of  every age and sex, from three months up to a hundred years, and every cherubim  of ‘em had a fan and an opery glass and a-tongue—probably two or three of the  latter weepon, from the racket they made. No use to try to estimate the oceans  of men and mustaches—the place looked like a shoe brush shop [MT Encyclopedia, Abshire 694; Camfield, bibliog.].