August 4 Tuesday – Sam’s notebook: “Deposited $1,000 in Lincoln for Guaranty Trust. Sent by messenger from Grosvenor” [NB 46 TS 22].
Richard Watson Gilder wrote to Sam.
I took your daughter [Clara] to Four Brooks Farm, Tyringham, Friday night. I told her on the way up that her agent had cancelled all her other New England engagements. When she got to Tyringham Mrs. Gilder took the matter in hand and, assuming a ferocious air, forbade the young lady to go wandering around into strange New England places when she ought to be taking care of herself quietly at Four Brooks Farm. She thought it was not safe for a person who had been going through all she has, mentally and physically, lately to be let loose in that manner. I think she was right. I told Clara there were moments when young people should allow older people to take their consciences in their hands and act for them. She said she realized the necessity of this and seemed to be happy in Mrs. Gilder’s implacable decision, which I hope will be endorsed by both parents [MTP].
Samuel Merwin (1874-1936), novelist, wrote to Sam: “I like to think that ‘Tom Sawyer’ and ‘Huckleberry Finn’ will be looked upon, fifty or a hundred years from now, as the picture of buoyant, dramatic, human American life….They won’t be looked on then as the work of a ‘humorist’ any more than we think of Shakespeare as a humorist now” [MTLP 743]. Note: Sam replied Aug. 16.