May 26 Thursday – At the Villa Reale di Quarto Sam wrote to Gov. David R. Francis, St. Louis, Mo.
Dear Governor Francis: / It has been a dear wish of mine to exhibit myself at the Great Fair & get a prize, but circumstances beyond my control have interfered, & I must remain in Florence. Although I have never taken prizes anywhere else I used to take them at school in Missouri half a century ago‘ , & I ought to be able to repeat, now, if I could have a chance. I used to get the medal for good spelling every week, & I could have had the medal for good conduct if there hadn’t been so much corruption in Missouri in those days; still, I got it several times by trading medals & giving boot. I am willing to give boot now, if——however, those days are forever gone by in Missouri, & perhaps it is better so. Nothing ever stays the way it was, in this changeable world.
Although I cannot be at the Fair, I am going to be represented there, anyway, by a portrait by Professor Gelli. You will find it excellent. Good judges here say it is better than the original. They say it has all the merits of the original, & keeps still, besides. It sounds like flattery, but it is just true.
I suppose you will get a prize, because you have created the most prodigious & in all ways most wonderful Fair the planet has ever seen. Very well, you have indeed earned it; & with it the gratitude of the State & the Nation [MTP]. Note: part of this letter ran in the NY Times, June 14, 1904, p.3.
Sam’s notebook: “Villa del Pino / Mrs. McLeod” [NB 47 TS 11].
A note dated May 26, 1904 in the DV245 file, MTP by Isabel Lyon: “Dog’s head covered with oil-etc.” Isabel Lyon added a note about the Countess’s dogs rushing Clara, and when she petted them she discovered their heads were “dripping with salad-oil.”
In New York Katharine I. Harrison wrote to Sam after receiving his of May 3. She enclosed a financial statement for money paid out and received to his account, with a balance of $24,808.80 [MTHHR 567]. Note: see p.568-9 for a detailed account of monies out and in, the latter including dividends on stock held.