August 20 Friday – Sophie Degen billed Sam $37.50 for July and Aug. daily milk? deliveries. Bill marked paid [MTP].

August 19 Thursday – Sam wrote a letter from Elmira for baby Jean Clemens to Olivia Lewis Langdon for grandma’s birthday. He attached a lock of the baby’s hair.

August 18 Wednesday – Rose Terry Cooke (1827-1892), poet and prose writer, whose stories Sam admired, wrote from Winsted, Conn.

August 17 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Moncure Conway that the new baby was “3 weeks old, & neither she nor her mother is able to sit up yet.”  Sam wasn’t certain of the date the family would return to Hartford but it would be “several weeks before” Conway sailed, and they could coordinate dates for the Conways to visit [MTLE 5: 145].

August 16 Monday – John M. Hay wrote from Wash. D.C. “Here is the Meisterstück. It got into such appreciative hands among the Campfire Club that it was read into rags…it is returned with thanks and laud [1601?]. I would I might see you one day. But I have no hopes until after 4th March week, when I quit the livery of office. / I congratulate you on your new baby” [MTP].

August 15 Sunday – Mollie & Orion Clemens wrote to Sam and Livy. Mollie wrote about attending Judge Joseph Montgomery Casey’s silver wedding anniversary. Orion didn’t go due to the expense. Orion wrote on the letter a paragraph about writing the 454th page of his auto MS. [MTP].

August 14 and 15 Sunday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Dr. John Brown. The butler, Sam’s “black George” had taken a card from Dr. Stearns, who was on his way to Scotland, and forgotten to tell Sam.

August 12 Thursday – Moncure Conway wrote from Easton, Pa. to Sam. “Love and greeting to you and your dear lady!” he asked where Sam was as they would be in Newport and Boston next week, then sail for Liverpool Nov. 27 [MTP].

August 11 Wednesday – John Milton Hay wrote from Wash. D.C. “I sent you my speech the other day. / Please let me know where you are at this moment. I have something to send you which ought to go into your own lily-white hands. Yours…” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Col. John Hay, author of the ‘Pike County Ballads.” See Gribben p. 303 listing this work as 1871.

August 9 Monday – Sam wrote to the editors of the River Record about articles they’d referred to which he intended to publish in book form after visiting the Mississippi again. These would become Life on the Mississippi. Sam realized that since he’d left the river, new boats had come and gone. “Yours is a very good paper,” he wrote, “but it makes a person baldheaded to read it” [MTLE 5: 140].