June 5 Wednesday – Sam wrote to the Alta his impressions of New York, so different they were from those of his first visit in 1853: “I have at last, after several months’ experience, made up my mind that it is a splendid desert—a domed and steepled solitude, where the stranger is lonely in the midst of a million of his race” [MTNJ 1: 301]. Note: the letter was printed in the Alta on August 11.