August 29 Friday – In York Harbor, Maine Sam finished his Aug. 28 to H.H. Rogers, only certain that Livy would not be able to travel within the next week.
Aug. 29, 1 p.m. / But the doctors are not so confident about that schemes: too much rattle & clash, & wear & tear of land-travel, & too long a stretch, too much tension. They say if she could sail to Hoboken & be carried into a stateroom on a daylight train it would cut the railroading down to 6 or 7 hours & deliver her in Elmira in much better condition. (I perceive that this is more yachting than you’ve been called upon to consider—but that is all right, I would provide the cigars myself.)
This evening I am to get some of the time-&-distance details of the all-rail journey, & the rest of them tomorrow afternoon.
Aug. 29 again—20 minutes later.
Your generous letter [not extant] of yesterday has just arrived—only 2 minutes after I had committed myself for the cigars; which is just some people’s luck, you see. I showed Mrs. Clemens your telegram & it broke her all up. It will happen again when I show her your letter. I think the telegram is the only piece of writing she has been allowed to see during this sickness. She wanted to keep it, so I left it with her. She is improving—very slowly, but actually, I think, the past day or two.
To-day she has sat up 10 minutes in a chair.
We shan’t be able to move her until she can sit up one or two hours in a day. We can’t tell when that will be, because she has had so many backsets that every prophecy we make scores a failure. But it will be days yet; then I will let you know as soon as we can safely guess a date.
I suppose this letter will not reach you before Sunday. I will put a hurry-stamp on it, so that the post-office will deliver it on the Sabbath.
With the kindest regards of us all to you all [MTHHR 501-2].
Sam also wrote to Katharine I. Harrison.
The check for $2,230.48 has just arrived. Many thanks.
Mrs. Clemens sat up 10 minutes in a chair to-day.
I’m writing Mr. Rogers, who goes to Fairhaven to-night [MTP].
Sam also wrote a rather sarcastic reply to an unidentified man about paying homage to Theodore Roosevelt.
Ordinarily I might be able to accept your kind invitation, & I would gladly go any distance to testify the homage I feel for our courageous & high-minded & right-headed President, but my wife’s health is too precarious these latter months to permit of my making engagements that require absence from home. [signature]
If you had not registered your letter it would have reached me 7 days ago. There is nothing absolutely grotesque & idiotic about our Postal System, I believe, except its drunken notions about the handling of registered letters. In America one should never register a letter—that is, anchor it [MTP].
Sam’s notebook “Promises: / 1. To limit my contracts to 5 years. / 2. To advertise much. / Let these go; but why stick to the prohibition: Bliss to sell no Harper book at less than so-much? For I want to issue a full set of Tauchnitz at $20 or $25” [NB 45 TS 24].