May 26 Thursday – Sam wrote his last “Assistant’s Column” inserting a paragraph about the Crystal Palace in New York City. He wrote that the fifteen to twenty thousand persons who were “continually congregated” there engaged in “drunkenness and debauching…carried on to their fullest extent.” Sam was thinking about leaving Hannibal by this time, and New York may have already been his desired destination, but he spoke only of St. Louis to his mother [Wecter 262; MTL 1:2].