February 14 Friday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to Muriel M. Pears in Scotland.
Feb. 14. If you don’t come pretty soon, I shall begin to be afraid you are not coming this year at all. At the end of this month I am going yachting in the southern waters until the middle of April. If you come while I am gone, you must telephone the house, so that you can be met at the station & properly cared for [MTP].
Fatout lists Sam as reading stories, “Death-Disk,” and “Tale No. 2” at an unspecified public school in N.Y.C. [MT Speaking 670]. Note: this undoubtedly connected with this entry for Feb. 14 in Sam’s notebook:
“P.S. I read little Tale No. 2 (21 minutes) & the Death-Disk (about 35)— total, 56 minutes.
Read Two Little Tales to 40 teachers—day-time.
Chas. Fairchild, 39 E 31st. 4 p.m. (I think)” [NB 45 TS 4]. Note: “P.S.” likely designates Public School.
Hydesaburo Ohashi, Harvard student, wrote to Sam that he’d rec’d his letter in January and thanked him [MTP]. Note: Ohashi had sent poetry.
February 14-June 21 – Sometime during the year Sam added the following P.S. to a letter to Muriel M. Pears, his designated member for Scotland to his Juggernaut Club. Which extant letter should this go with? Of those extant to Pears (deduced by the subject matter of each) the Feb. 14 letter is the next possibility, but a non- extant letter may be the right one. In his June 21 to Pears Sam asks if she wants to see the “Constitution Laws of my Club of which you are the Member for Scotland,” clearly indicating he’d already informed her of the idea of the club. Therefore, the following P.S. is designated Feb. 14-June 21, 1902.
P.S. Did you know? I have a Club—a private Club, which is all my own. I appoint the Members myself, & they can’t help themselves, because I don’t allow them to vote on their own appointment, & I don’t allow them to resign! They are all friends whom I have never seen (save one), but who have written friendly letters to me. By the laws of my Club there can be only one member in each country, & there can be no male member but myself. Some day I may admit males, but I don’t know—they are capricious and inharmonious, their ways provoke me a good deal. It is a matter which the Club shall decide. I have made four appointments in the past three or four months: you as Member for Scotland—oh, this good while! a young citizeness of Joan of Arc’s home-region as Member for France; a Mohammedan girl as Member for Bengal; & a dear & bright young niece of mine as Member for the United States—for I do not represent a country myself but am merely Member at Large for the Human Race. You must not try to resign, for the laws of the Club do not allow that. You must console yourself by remembering that you are in the best of company; that nobody knows of your membership except myself; that no member knows another’s name, but only her country; that no taxes are levied & no meetings held—(but how dearly I should like to attend one!) One of my members is a princess of a royal house, another is the daughter of a village bookseller on the continent of Europe. For the only qualification for membership is intellect & the spirit of good will; other distinctions, hereditary or acquired, do not count. May I send you the Constitution & Laws of the Club? …
Sam disclosed that daughter Jean typed the Laws of the Club, and was too curious about its meaning, so that he had to remind her there were cheaper typists who would not pry into the “sacred mysteries of this Club” [MTP].