August 5 Tuesday – In N.Y.C. H.H. Rogers gave his advice about Sidney A. Witherbee’s proposal to purchase Sam’s Hartford house:
I have read Mr. Whitmore’s letter, also Mr. Witherbee’s. In the first place, it would seem quite natural to inquire as to the Kansas City, Mexico & Orient Railroad. In view of the fact that Poor’s Manual makes no reference to the railroad, it is reasonably fair to assume that it is not of any great prominence. I certainly would never undertake to enter into the arrangement for myself. In the first place, if you put a ten thousand dollar mortgage on your property, that is a nuisance. In the second place, if you put up the deed of your property subject to that mortgage against forty thousand dollars in bonds of a Railway that has no existence in the investment world, you might as well put your deed up against so much brown paper. Then you surrender your property and the party moves in. The improvements that Mr. Whitmore refers to, might prove in the end to be injurious.
If Mr. Witherbee can sell those bonds within three years, and will guarantee to do so at par, it would be pretty good financial business for him to sell them now at 90, and pay you the cash.
I may be too conservative in this matter, but I have always felt that it is a good deal safer to deal with the devil I know than it is to have business with the devil I don’t know.
I judge from Mr. Whitmore’s letter that he has told Mr. Witherbee that some cash must be paid down, and Witherbee suggests that you raise it by mortgage. Don’t let me influence you too much, but do be careful. It is much easier to keep out of trouble than it is to get out. You and I know that of old [MTHHR 494-5].
Note: Sam forwarded this letter to Whitmore on Aug. 6.
The 250th Anniversary of the incorporation of York, Maine was held on the Meeting-House Green of York Village, at 2 p.m. The Citizen’s Welcome was delivered by John C. Stewart, followed by orations by James Phinney Baxter, President of the Maine Historical Society. Then a band led singing of The Star Spangled Banner. Short addresses were then given. Sam was the second speaker after Thomas Nelson Page; he was followed by President of Dartmouth William Jewett Tucker (1839-1926), Francis L. Stetson of N.Y., Thomas B. Reed, and Gen. Joshua L. Chamberlain, Ex-Gov. of Maine. William Dean Howells was one of the guests.
A pamphlet, Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Town of York, Maine, York Public Library, pp. 119-20, summarizes his speech:
Mr. Clemens began in a markedly characteristic vein to say that he had come to York to instruct it in its ancient history, to rectify the morals of its inhabitants and to otherwise do valuable things in the way of didactics. He found himself prevented from doing so by the example of another, and noted with surprise that Thomas B. Reed should mistake a desk for a pulpit, especially as the speaker was the one who, in time gone by, had amazed the nations of the world, the human race, and, added Mr. Clemens, “even myself!”
He said in a letter signed “One of the Victims” had just been handed him from the audience and contained several compliments, things which he never overlooked; and would the writer please rise? The letter stated that there had never been any but the best weather until he had come to York, and seemed to place the blame entirely on him, demanding that he either apologize or go away. The first, he might do, but the alternative would meet with a flat refusal. In thirty-seven days he had had no fault to find with the weather as he had stayed strictly at home, and the rain seemed to come only when it thought it could catch one out. For thirty-four of the thirty-seven days he had worked and that was something he never before had been able to do. The climate, he thought, prevented moral deterioration, for he had worked four Sundays without breaking the Sabbath.
The author then said he was a little deaf, but not so much so as to miss the many compliments which had preceded, and not so blind as not to see that they all referred to him. When Ex-Gov. Chamberlain referred to “the intellectually brilliant,” the speaker had noticed that he had looked straight at him. To some this would be embarrassing, but where deserved it was not so at all.
… One of the most serious questions with which he had to contend in York was matches. If he wished to smoke it was next to impossible to get a light. He could buy only a sort of match with a picture of the inventor on each box and labeled “Safety.” He felt free to say that they are so safe one cannot light them. Even Satan, the inventor and a distant relative of his, can’t use them for he has no appliances to make them go, and is utilizing them to build cold storage vaults for such choice morsels as Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander VI; and, added the speaker, “he has a wistful eye on some other notables not yet started, and here present.”
Another serious question for Mr. Clemens was the confusion of post offices in this town—York Cliffs, York Beach, York Harbor, York Village, York Corner, and so on. In fact, one cannot throw a brickbat across a thirty-seven acre lot without danger of disabling a postmaster; they are as thick as aldermen in the days of the old city charter.
If he stayed here he expected to attend York’s tri-centennial in fifty years, for already he had grown younger by many years than he was on his arrival.
An open air concert by the Marine Band on the Village Green was enjoyed from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., followed by an “illuminated boat parade” on Lake Gorges from 8 to 9 p.m. with fireworks thereafter. Livy enjoyed the festivities but they may have overtaxed her, leading to the Aug. 12 crisis.