February 22 Saturday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam replied to Hélène Elisabeth Picard’s Feb. 5, and told her of his Juggernaut Club and her election for the “Member for France.”

Dear Miss Hélène:

If you will let me call you so, considering that my head is white & that I have grown-up daughters. Your beautiful letter has given me such deep pleasure! I will make bold claim to you for a friend & lock you up with the rest of my riches; for I am a miser who counts his spoil every day & hoards it secretly & adds to it when he can, & is grateful to see it grow.

Some of that gold comes, like yourself, in a sealed package, & I can’t see it & may never have that happiness; but I know its value without that, & by what sum it increases my wealth.

I have a Club, a private Club, which is all my own.

Sam then described the Club, repeating much of the information he’d sent Muriel Pears, including the bit about daughter Jean being the typist, and asked if he could send her the “Constitution & Laws.” He then answered a question she had asked:

My favorite? It is “Joan of Arc.” My next is “Huckleberry Finn,” but the family’s next is “The Prince & the Pauper.” (Yes, you are right—I am a moralist in disguise; it gets me into heaps of trouble when I go thrashing around in political questions.)

. . . .

I wish you every good fortune & happiness & I thank you so much for your letter [MTP].

Sam inscribed a copy of A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom by Andrew D. White (1901), which he’d requested from Frederick A. Duneka on Feb. 16 [MTP]. Note: see Gribben p.760, which reveals Sam’s marginalia in the book.

Sam inscribed a copy of A Real Queen’s Fairy Tales. By Carmen Sylva (pseud. for Elizabeth, Queen of Rumania (1843-1916): “S.L. Clemens, Riverdale-on-Hudson, Feb. 22, 1902” [Gribben 218].