December 23 Tuesday – Sam’s notebook: “Miss Burbank, 73d. (Clara will give me the address.) Dinner—7.30. / [Horiz. Line separator] / I ate that dinner to-night. By mistake I went down to eat it last night. Stayed all night at Mr. Rogers’s; meantime Jean was hit (with a chill, Clara was completing her watch in her mother’s room & there was no one able to force Jean to go to bed. [)] / As a result, she is pretty ill to-day. Fever & high temperature” [NB 45 TS 35].
Sam spent the night at H.H. Rogers’ home in N.Y.C. Meanwhile, Jean Clemens’ high fever developed into pneumonia [MTHHR 513n1]. Note: see Dec. 25 to Rogers.
In N.Y.C. William Dean Howells wrote a short note to Sam.
I am to give a lunch to Harry Harland on the 8th of January at Moretti’s spaghettery, 151 West 34th street. Will you come?—at one o’clock. Don’t lose this, and then pretend you were not asked. That Christian Science paper of yours was nearly as good as mine on Norris, which I suppose you have not had the decency to read. Yours ever… [MTHL 2: 755]. Note: “Frank Norris” and “Christian Science” ran in the same issue of the North American Review. Henry Harland (1861-1905), author of the best-selling The Cardinal’s Snuff-Box (1900), was one of Howells’ younger friends who enjoyed the food at Moretti’s. Early in his career, Harland pretended to be Russian-born, and wrote sensational novels under the pseudonym Sidney Luska. In 1890 he moved to London and was editor of The Yellow Book.