April 4 Saturday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote a note to Livy.
Livy darling, here is Rev. Dr. Funk furnishing some spiritualism of a most unaccountable & interesting character. This is the kind of episode that puzzles a body entirely. It isn’t telepathy & it isn’t clairvoyance; those can explain many if not most of the spiritualistic wonders, but they are out of court this time. This is an altogether startling & marvelous case. I doubt if Mr. Rogers will sail to-morrow; the danger-signals are up, from Florida Keys to New York, & a Western storm coming from the Mississippi Valley. I am going to town after breakfast (10 o’clock train), but shall call & pay my respects before I start. Good-morning, good-evening, sleep well, dearest sweetheart [MTP]. Note: Isaac Kaufmann Funk, Lutheran minister and co-founder of Funk & Wagnalls. See July 16, 1902.
Sam also wrote to Frederick W. Peabody.
That is a precious utterance of Mother, & I have placed it in my thesaurus of reserves for future use. Your name is at the top of the list, & you would have received the first copy of the book, but with all my striving I failed to quite finish it; so, it has to go over, & be an autumn book.
…
I am most cussedly sorry I made marginal notes in your Church Manual, & I apologize; it was my careless memory that was in fault; I had forgotten it was a borrowed book until you convicted me with my own post-card. The little Manual was my text for about 40,000 words—rather a useful document! [MTP]. Note: Peabody had loaned Sam Christian Science materials, including the “precious utterance” by Mary Baker Eddy and her manual for the church, which he used more than any other source for his book on Christian Science.
Sam also wrote to Joe Twichell.
Livy does really make a little progress these past 3 or 4 days, progress which is visible to even the untrained eye. The physicians are doing good work with her, but my notion is, that no act of healing is the best for all ills. I should distribute the ailments around: surgery cases to the surgeon; lupus to the actinic-ray specialist; nervous prostration to the Christian Scientist; most ills to the allopath & the homeopath; & (in my own particular case) rheumatism, gout & bronchial attacks to the osteopathist.
Mr. Rogers was to sail southward this morning—& here is this weather! I am sorry. I think it’s a question if he gets away to-morrow [MTP].
Sam’s notebook: “Co-respondent. / Mene, mene, tekel e pluribus unum—put none but Americans on guard to-night. What Tyndal said in ’74. (That is the whole speech)” [NB 46 TS 14].
Note: the phrase means “the writing is on the wall” and “out of one, many”; John Tyndall (1820-1893), Irish physicist. In 1874 he gave a keynote speech at the British Assoc. for the Advancement of Science, favoring evolutionary theories. He concluded by asserting that religious sentiment should not be permitted to “intrude on the region of knowledge, over which it holds no command.” The speech was carried by newspapers around the world and the issue of whether science had superior authority over religion became a hot topic. See also Gribben p.720 for one of Tyndall’s books in Sam’s library.
George Herbert Clark, Mercer University, Macon, Ga., a “long time reader” of Mark Twain, wrote to compliment Sam on the Christian Science articles in the North American Review [MTP].