July 8 Sunday – Sam’s notebook: “Ogilvie—the hospital ? in S.A. Explain why a dog carrying 10,000 fleas will break down if you add 5. / We have secured real estate in S.A. worth a portion of what it has cost” [NB 43 TS 21].
At Dollis Hill House in London, England Sam replied to Elizabeth (Ann Chase) Akers Allen (1832-1911), American author, journalist, poet of Tuckahoe, N.Y. She wrote under the name of Elizabeth Akers; her letter to Sam is not extant, nor is the particular story in question referred to.
“The story is not necessarily a negro story, but a world-story. It probably exists in varying forms in India other ancient lands. Whence our negroes got it I do not know, nor from what land it made its way to Maine. Among our negroes there is more than one form of it” [MTP].
Sam also replied to Andrew Carnegie about the maxim of putting all one’s eggs in one basket and watching that basket; Sam had written Carnegie (through his three-year-old daughter, Margaret Carnegie, May 28). Carnegie’s reply to that letter, basically a solicitation to invest in Plasmon, is not extant, but evidently he invoked the maxim in declining, to which Sam responded:
It is a perfectly sound maxim, & I’ve followed it ever since you gave it [to] me. Mind, it needn’t bar you from removing your eggs from their present basket & putting them all in Plasmon. Don’t neglect to do this.
By & by I’ll hope to shelter in the shadows of Shibo Castle. Meantime we have taken a house & sheep-farm for 3 or 4 months within a 3-minute drive of the solid brick-&-mortar edge of London… [MTP].
At 1 a.m. after returning from the Savage Club dinner, Sam also wrote to Richard W. Gilder.
If you only want to say you “expect” a contribution from me, say it & welcome! But it must not bind me, understand, old man. Promises burden me heavily & I avoid making them, although I generally break them. …[See July 4 for paragraph here]
Your note was written on the 5th, posted on the 6th (your sailing-day,) & reached me here at 1 o’clock this morning when I arrived back from conducting the season-closing services of the Savage Club. I’m answering as soon as possible [MTP: Willard Wilson, Mark Twain Returns to Hawaii, 1969].