August 26 Tuesday – In York Harbor, Maine Sam wrote to nephew Samuel E. Moffett.
No, I don’t think I shall ever give up the “Stale News” till I’m obliged to. I’ve had to drop it indefinitely, because I got at the finishment of a long tale here, & was so interested that I couldn’t get away from it. It is far from done, yet.
If you can arrange for a satisfactory place with Walker—& collect from him in full every week—why not do it? When we are ready for “Stale News,” it could happen that Walker would be the publisher.—who knows?
And you could always resign any way, if you found you couldn’t run both of the things—which I believe you could.
Livy is getting along so well that the others are nursing her the past three days—during which time, as chance offered, I have scribbled 7,500 words & earned $1500—a little tale for the Xmas Harper. I can finish it in two more days, I think.
Livy will not be herself again for a year, we think [MTP]. Note: “Was it Heaven? Or Hell?” ran in the Dec. issue of Harper’s Monthly. John Brisben Walker, owner of Cosmopolitan.
Elisabeth Brochmann wrote to Sam from someplace in Europe asking for permission to translate some of his stories [MTP].