February 16 Monday – Sam wrote to Henry Elias Howland, former Supreme Court Justice, president of the University Club, popular and witty speaker, declining an unspecified invitation due to his wife’s health. [MTP; Bauman Rare Books, Jan. 23, 2009 online].
Sam sent his butler to the Oppenheimer Institute to take the cure for his problems with alcohol. He would return inebriated a week later with the bill for the Institute’s services [Nov. 1905 to Oppenheimer Inst.]
Note: the UC Berkeley 1973 edition of Christian Science, p. 567, n. 302 gives: “perhaps his butler Claude”. See Feb. 23 entry.
Sam’s notebook: “Reitz, Secretary of State, S.A. Republic / 4 p.m. (?)” [NB 46 TS 11]. Note: Francis William Reitz (1844-1934), at this time State Secretary of the South African Republic. Lawyer, politician, statesman and poet, he had also been the fifth President of the Orange Free State (1889-1895). He was a popular leading Afrikaner during the Second Boer War, and went into voluntary exile after the war. He would be the first President of the Senate of the Union of South Africa (1910-1921).