August 9 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Charles Webster.

August 8 Tuesday – Sam was writing chapters for Life on the Mississippi when “New York papers” brought news of an explosion, Aug. 7, from Hickman, Ky. The steamer Gold Dust had blown her boilers, scalding 47 with 17 persons missing. Lem Gray was later found dead, and buried Aug. 23. This was the same packet Sam and Osgood took on the Mississippi in April [Ch 37 LM].

August 7 Monday – Hubbard & Farmer bankers & brokers wrote to Sam, Large printed page of stock prices enclosed. They’d rec’d an order from him this day to sell a stock at over 46 (see JB & W sale Aug. 4), which they interpreted as 46 or better [MTP].

Mollie Kane sent Sam a postcard from Union, Mo. full of shaky handwriting, spelling and grammar errors, asking for an autograph and claiming that her “Grandma used to know your uncle” [MTP].

August 5 Saturday – Orion Clemens finished his Aug. 4 letter [MTP].

August 5–9 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Lt. Charles E. S. Wood, who wrote Aug. 3 asking if Sam would like a proof wood engraved portrait by Timothy Cole.

August 4 Friday – Sam paid Estes & Lauriat of Boston $110 for 26 volumes of Agnes & Elizabeth Strickland’s Lives of the Queens of England from the Norman Conquest, and other works by the two, including a six-volume work by Mary Anne Everett Green, Lives of the Princesses of England. The bill paid was dated July 28 [Gribben 674].

August 3 Thursday – Charles E.S. Wood wrote: “The White Elephant is now all he ought to be and I’m proud of him. After final disposals here is the residue of 1601. The old sheets I destroyed” [MTP].

August 2 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to John L. RoBards:

Dear John— / What promise? I hardly ever make one—and never make one that is any trouble to keep. Tell me about this one (for I have forgotten it utterly) & if it isn’t any trouble to keep it, I’ll keep it, as sure as you live—otherwise, I’ll add it, without a twinge of conscience, to the million of the same kind that went before it [MTP].

August 1 Tuesday – Sam also wrote to Charles Webster, who had conveyed the news of illness there.

“It is dismal news. We had the impression that Annie & the children [at this date they had two: Alice, age six; William, nearly four] were to leave for some country place the moment the summer (June) should begin. It seems a very severe attack, but I hope you & Annie are in better hopes & spirits by this time” [MTP].

August – Sometime during the month, Orion wrote Sam with accusations that Charles Webster had defrauded people with the Watch Co.

July 31 Monday – In Elmira Sam replied to the July 22 from Capt. Edmund Gray (b. 1834) a resident of Gray’s Point, Scott County, Missouri, and Cape Girardeau, and steamboat pilot on the Mississippi for many years.

Hang it, no! I haven’t received Dad’s photograph. Maybe it was sent to Osgood, Boston, instead of to me, at Hartford. Was it?—if so, it’s all right & I shall get it.