December 11 Monday – Stewart L. Woodford (chairman of the dinner committee) wrote from NYC on US attorney’s Office notepaper asking what train they might expect him, and offered to secure a hotel for him [MTP].
December 9 Saturday – Karl & Hattie J. Gerhardt wrote twice to Sam and Livy, in the first enclosing “a clearance paper from our consul here for a box (contents marked on invoice). It will go on the ‘Labrador’ … which sails from Ham on the 16th of December.” The baby bust was inside. The second one page letter was simply Merry Christmas wishes [MTP].
December 6 Wednesday – Center & Co., Private Detective Bureau, NYC wrote a postcard to Sam: “Wee [sic] have a letter of all Pawn and loan offices in City, as your watch is probably in those places. Wee will make an investigation of those places on receipt of $5.00 for expenses…send full description of watch” [MTP].
December 5 Tuesday – Filed with the US Patent Office: patent # 547,859: to James W. Paige: Machine for Setting, Distributing and Justifying Type [MTHHR 64n1].
December 2 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to his sister, Pamela Moffett, who was in California visiting her son, Samuel Moffett.
December – Harper’s Monthly Christmas Supplement, a 32-page large-folio, edited by members of the Tile Club, ran Sam’s “The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm” [MTHL 1: 406n2; Budd, “Collected” 1020].
November 30 Thursday – Sam’s 47th birthday. Sam wrote a short note from Hartford to Charles Webster: “Dear Charley—There’s no sort of hurry. Yrs. S L C The watch came” [MTBus 205].
Joe Twichell wrote to invite Sam to join him and “six or eight young apprentices and mechanics to dine and spend the evening with us Saturday” [MTP].
November 28 Tuesday – Edward W. Bok, the pesky teen who kept writing Sam, sent birthday congratulations with a reminder of his of Oct. 13 request for “a few words of opinion on my collection [autograph] to be gathered from the” newspaper clippings he’d sent [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “D—d fool”
November 27 Monday – Livy’s 37th birthday.
Hjalmar Boyesen wrote a card from NYC, asking if he’d sign his name on two copies of P&P, which he was sending in a day or two [MTP].
Mary Keily wrote another “lunatic” letter from Lancaster Insane Asylum, Penn. [MTP].
November 25 Saturday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Charles Webster. After referring angrily to and enclosing another bill from the plumber Ahern, Sam wrote about a land matter in Archer County, Texas. It seems Livy had loaned money to a woman, and the woman’s husband had let the taxes fall delinquent.