May 25 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Virginia City to Orion and Mollie. Orion had been appointed president of the Ormsby County sanitary committee, and Sam wrote, “I am mighty sick of that fund…” Sam expressed a desire for the whole controversy to go away [MTL 1: 298].
Charles P. Pope (1832-1899), actor & theatrical manager, wrote to Sam, sending a trout he caught in Lake Tahoe. The letter itself is not extant but Walter Leman wrote of it in Memories of an Old Actor (1866): “That splendid trout was boxed up and sent to Mark Twain, for the delectation of the newspaper fellows of the Enterprise, with a letter from Charley Pope, and I fully believe that he told them he caught it; if he did I forgive him…” [MTP].