September 22 Thursday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Elisha Bliss about the burlesque map of “Fortifications of Paris,” he’d published in the Express. Sam suggested they use the map in posters for Innocents [MTL 4: 198].
September 21? Wednesday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Elisha Bliss that he’d written to Elisha’s son, Frank, and that Sam had finished the 7 or 8 chapter of Roughing It this day [MTL 4: 196].
September 19 Monday – John T. Metcalf wrote from Lansing, Iowa.
My Dear Sir: / I want to read your admirable book (“The Innocents Abroad”) but us poor d——s of country newspaper men can’t afford to buy one. We don’t know your publishers. Can’t we notice or advertise, and thus come into possession of something good for the mind, of a standard heaps of newspaper men want to reach, but you hold so successfully at your service? [MTPO]. Note: Sam sent this on to Bliss.
September 17 Saturday – Sam’s article “To the Reader,” with a humorous map of Paris, France Fortifications, was printed in the Buffalo Express [McCullough 227]. Budd shows this as “Map of Paris” reprinted with “additional prefatory material” in the Nov. 1870 Galaxy [“Collected” 1012]. See map under Oct. 10 entry.
September 15 Thursday – Sam and Livy wrote from Buffalo to Frank Bliss & Frances T. French, congratulating them on marriage, and regretting that illness in the house prevented them from attending the wedding [MTL 4: 194].
September 9 Friday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Orion.
“Do exactly as you please with the [Tennessee] land….I have no time to turn around. A young lady visitor (schoolmate of Livy’s) is dying in the house of typhoid fever.”
Alice Spaulding came to help Livy nurse Emma Nye. The three had been schoolmates [MTL 4: 193].
September 8?–29 Thursday – Sam telegraphed his mother in Fredonia. A family pest, Mrs. Melicent S. Holliday (b.1800?), had turned up at Sam’s in Buffalo and, due to Emma Nye’s illness, Sam gave her $50 and sent her on to Fredonia [MTL 4: 193].
September 7 Wednesday – Sam replied from Buffalo to the Sept. 6 of Ella Wolcott, a friend of the Langdons, declining verse from a friend of hers in Europe. He also wrote that Emma Nye had a “consuming fever—of a typhoid type.” In fact, it was typhoid [MTL 4: 191].
September 5 Monday – In Buffalo, Sam wrote a short note to Francis P. Church of the Galaxy:
“Friend Church— / Received yr. Check for $334, full payment for July & Sept. Sent the MS.S. for Oct. yesterday, to you. Yrs ever” [MTP, drop-in letters].
Ella Wolcott (b.1828) wrote to seek publishing help for a young man, Frank Huntington, who was traveling and studying in Germany [MTP].
September 4 Sunday – Sam wrote from Buffalo to Elisha Bliss.
“During the past week have written first four chapters…[of Roughing It]. We shall sell 90,000 copies the first 12 months” [MTL 4: 190]. Note: Sam liked it. It did sell well, some 75,000 copies the first year.