When in 1921, the Book Club of California commissioned the Grabhorn Press to print “City of the Golden Gate”, a description of San Francisco in 1875, it was a tribute to author Samuel Williams’ literary renown; when he died in 1881, after 15 years as veteran literary editor and book reviewer of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin, William was probably as well-known in the city’s literary circles as his friend Mark Twain.

Thirty years earlier, when he wrote this letter at age 23, Williams had already sensed that he was destined for journalism. He was then working his way through college as typographic assistant to J.C. Kneeland, inventor of the self-inking printing press. Apart from the newspaper work which he began immediately after graduating from Williams College, he became a prolific writer, some of his magazine articles recounting his experiences in the Middle East, where his friend Lorenzo Lyons, following in the footsteps of his uncle, the first American missionary to Hawaii, would himself spend ten years as a missionary in Syria and Lebanon, then under Ottoman Turkish rule, aiding Christian survivors of Muslim massacres.

In this sarcastic letter, written two years before their graduation and foreshadowing his talents as a writer, Williams writes Lyons of his outrage that the College’s junior honors had been awarded to undeserving, shallow young men adept at “humbuggery…the great token of the present age!” The awards, Williams joked, were as “miraculous” as “pigmies digging tunnels, elephants passing through keyholes, mosquitoes drinking up the Mississippi” - “impossible and absurd things” having become common, “truth becoming ridiculous and lies sublime”. The awards ad become nothing more than a "farce...a lie and reproach", made by faculty who were supposed to be "men of common sense", but had displayed "the most uncommon sense” and “ought to be ashamed of themselves...” Williams adds a bit of advice to his friend – not to "have too many irons in the fire", to pursue too many young ladies, as “Cupid is a little rascal…the most tyrannical of despots.  I mean some day to raise a rebellion and dethrone the little winged monarch” and build on the “ruins of his kingdom a Democracy – a golden Republic…a Eutopia. “There might still be “sighs or tears or suicides”, but “then I’ll be king and reign in his stead.”