February 3 Monday – Sam’s article “Gossip at the National Capitol” dated Feb. 1 ran in the New York Herald [Camfield, bibliog.]. Note: Budd attributes this and two other Herald articles on Feb. 8 and Feb. 15, 1868 to Sam in “Did Mark Twain Write Impersonally for the New York Herald?” Duke University’s Library Notes, Nov. 1973 No. 43. In a personal conversation in July, 2007, Robert Hirst of the MTP observed that the evidence wasn’t strong for these unsigned articles being Sam’s; Budd acknowledges that they don’t sound much like him, but puts it to Sam’s attempt to be innocuous.