December 22 Monday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
I know of the bereavement which has befallen your house, & I wish there was some way whereby a friend could assuage a friend’s pain when a sorrow smites him, so that I might help you now; but there is none, & I can only offer my sympathy, freely & from the heart.
I wish I could send good news from Mrs. Clemens’s sick-room, but there has been none to send, for four months & more. It is nervous prostration, with heart trouble, & I think no week has gone by without an alarm. The patient rallies again, then we breathe again—until the next. It is a ghastly life that we are leading, & there is but one good feature about it: that we do not despair, neither does she. It is a curious imprisonment for her: it is four months since she has had any news from outside her door, & two since I have seen her face [MTP]. Note: Aldrich’s son Charles was taken to the Adirondacks for treatment of his tuberculosis; he was not expected to live long but made it to 1904.
Sam’s notebook: “Miss Burbank, 73d Dinner—to meet an English anti-imperialist & a Harvard professor— (Brooks) / & Hobson of England./ See next page” [NB 45 TS 35]. Note: Sam mistook date of the dinner for this night; see Dec. 23 NB entry.
A.V.S. Anthony of Harper’s wrote to Sam. “Your article in the last Harper’s Weekly is the funniest thing I have seen about the man. It is so delicately appreciative, and is so overflowing with the kindest, friendly affection…” [MTP]. Sam wrote on the env. “from Anthony about my good-bye to Tom Reed”.