January 19 Sunday – Sam and Elisha Bliss exchanged telegrams, either this day or the next, regarding the possible publication of IA. Neither dispatch is extant but both are referred to in Bliss’ Jan. 20 letter.

Powers cites an unpublished letter from Sam to his mother dated Jan. 20 that Sam called on Ulysses S. Grant’s Washington home, and planned with a fellow journalist to get Grant’s father “into a private room at Willard’s & start his tongue with a whiskey punch.” If true, then the entry “Jan. 17–19” should be only “Jan.19.” Sam was looking for an interview for another Alta letter, but Grant was not at home [Powers, MT A Life 226].

Sam’s “Holy Land Excursion. Letter from Mark Twain Number Thirty-five” dated Sept. 1867 at “Capernaum” ran in the Alta California [McKeithan 225-9].