February 9 Monday – “Isreal Putnam” (likely a pseudonym) wrote to Sam, referring to his new pen name.
Mark Twain: I received so good a compliment for you this morning that I am bound to communicate it to you. John Nugent inquired of me who Mark Twain was, and added that he had not seen so amusing a thing in newspaper literature in a long while as your letter in the Enterprise this morning. I gave him an account of you “so far as I knew.” I suppose you know that Nugent was John Phoenix’s most intimate friend. While we were talking about you, Mr. Nugent showed me an unpublished letter of the great humorist who is now in heaven. I didn’t suppose it was necessary for me to write this to you but I thought I would, because praise from Nugent is “praise from Sir Hubert Stanley,” as it were. (Oh! the last three words are original with me, you know.) But considering the critique of the Union on you the other day, I thought I would administer to you a strengthening plaster, if you felt like weakening, you know. / Yours, hoping you will not weaken, / “Isreal Putnam” [MTP]. Notes: likely a reaction to Sam’s Feb. 8 to the Enterprise. Charles A.V. Putnam was a colleague on the paper, and this may be from him. The Enterprise was not published on Mondays, so the reference may refer to Feb. 8 letter, in which Twain wrote of the “Unreliable,” Clement T. Rice of the Union making an ass of himself at a wedding (so it’s possible Rice sent this letter). John Nugent (1821-1880), former owner-editor of the S.F. Herald; John Phoenix was the pen name of George Derby (1823-1861); the Stanley phrase came from a play by Thomas Morton (1764-1838) and was commonly used during the late 1800s. Twain used the phrase himself in his May 3, 1907 note to Whitelaw Reid, upon replying to Reid’s cable announcing Twain’s honorary doctor of letters degree. See entry Vol IV.

February, early – Sam stayed in Carson City for about a week, according to his Feb. 16 letter to his mother, and sister [MTL 1: 244].