June 19 Thursday – Riverdale, N.Y.: Sam’s notebook: “Dr. Rice, George Ade to dinner” [NB 45 TS19].

Livy’s diary: “Dr Rice, Mr George Ade (author of Fables in Slang) & Rodman Gilder here for luncheon” [MTP: DV161]. Note: Fables in Slang (1899) [Gribben 9].

Sam wrote to Paul Kester in Accotink, Va. (only the envelope survives) [MTP]. Note: Kester had struck an agreement with Clemens to dramatize Tom Sawyer.

Harry Leon Wilson (1867-1939), author, playwright, wrote to Sam, reminding him of a meeting some eight or nine years before. “I am asking you to accept a copy of my novel ‘The Spenders.’ The publishers [Lothrop of Boston] told me to slather them around. They want to sell a lot, I reckon. I don’t ask you to read the book….Just accept it, please, as a mark of the very warm liking of one who’s [sic] chief treasure was once ‘Tom Sawyer’, and who, as a boy, read ‘Roughing It’ over and over and over for years and years, until it was so far gone you couldn’t tell it had been ‘Stolen from the Oregon [Illinois] Public Library’” [MTP: Gribben 776-7]. Note: see Sam’s reply on June 23; also Lothrop’s note of June 14. Wilson is best known for his 1915 Ruggles of Red Gap, which was adapted into a movie, with Lucille Ball and Bob Hope, Fancy Pants (1950).