August 22 Friday – Sam also wrote to H.H. Rogers.
“The air bed is on its way from Boston & will arrive tomorrow. And the same is good news.
“Mrs. Clemens is doing so well that at last she was able to partially quit plasmon this morning & take to solid food. She slept well last night & is sleeping a good deal to-day” [MTHHR 499].
Sam also wrote to Charles Bancroft Dillingham, that the HF play MS had arrived but before he could review it Livy had been stricken. So he would wait until Erlanger had changed the play according to Dillingham’s needs and then look at it again. Would he inform Lee Arthur, who had written the play? Livy was improving but slowly [MTP].
Sam also wrote to James R. Clemens and Katharine B. Clemens. “To-day, for the first time since Livy was taken sick, I am released for a while from my sickroom watch, & am overhauling my big mail-bag. She is getting along so well, now, that after to-day we shall keep only one doctor instead of two. With love from us all—” [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Frederick A. Duneka.
I find your note has been here 7 days. It has been 10 since I’ve looked at my mail, because of Mrs. Clemens’s serious illness. I am tugging at it to-day for the first time. I mean, the bulk of it.
I will see what I can do, as soon as she is well enough for me to look about me; but at present I haven’t a short story on hand that I am satisfied with [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Arthur S. Kany in response to a biography Kany wrote while in high school in Xenia, Ohio and sent to Sam.
“It is a good biography, & is righteously true in all its details, particularly the compliments. I was always working to earn those, while other people, less wise, turned their principal attention to doing good, & got side-tracked. Compliments are not for that ignorant breed” [MTP]. Note: see MTJ (Spring 1987, p. 31). Kany became a reporter for the Dayton Ohio Journal-Herald.
Sam also wrote a postcard about Livy to Samuel E. Moffett: “Much better. Doing very well” [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Rev. Dr. T.C. Tupper, Chaplain United States Prison, Atlanta, in reply to a request (not extant) for help in gathering a library for the inmates.
Dear Sir: I have ordered the Harpers to send you their six-volume set of my books & this I do with great pleasure. I would gladly send the other set—the complete one—if I could afford the expense, but it would cost me $55—& there is no cheap edition. The newspapers are trying to make me out a rich man, but the continued discrepancy between my income & my outgo convinces me that they are not succeeding. / Sincerely yours, / S. L. Clemens [MTP; Atlanta Constitution, September 2, 1902, p.7]. Note: &’s restored.
The New York American and Journal sent a telegram to Sam. “Do you approve of American and Journal’s plan to settle coal strike by committee of mediation” [MTP].
Sue L. Horner in Kingfisher, Okla. wrote “Lines” —a sort of prose poem—to Sam after reading of his last visit to his boyhood home [MTP].