March 18 Wednesday – In Riverdale, N.Y. Sam wrote to Laurence Hutton, now in Hot Springs, Ariz.
Mr. Rogers has lent me your letter of the 8th, & I am going to try to reach you with a line. You will be gone from Hot Springs, but maybe the P.O. will know your new address. By gracious I am very sorry you & Mrs. Hutton have gone so far to fare so ill, very very sorry. But let it rejoice you to know that we who have remained have not fared better—at least not all the time. …
We are prisoners in this beautiful jail. I work all the time & seldom go out of the house or to town; Jean works a deal, & goes to town now & then. Clara slaves at her music, stands the afternoon watch with her mother—lying down & resting, mainly, for the madam is not allowed to talk much—& she goes to town with frequency: to music lessons, opera, theatre, & dinners with friends. We are all in bed at 8.30 every evening. I read & smoke till midnight, & get up at 8.30, & go down to breakfast with the trained nurse; the children breakfast in bed, & I have a daily glimpse of them at 7:30 p.m. Nobody comes—we can’t deal with visitors. I should like nothing in the world so much as this solitude, if I could only have the madam’s society. However, it couldn’t be strictly called a solitude, then.
I see Howells at wide intervals; the Rogerses every week or two, but I hardly ever have a sight of the other friends. I struck a lot of them at a luncheon to Sidney Lee at Sloane’s lately, & shall see some of them at a Delmonico luncheon to-morrow which George Riggs is giving to Colonel Foster, & another accumulation of them at Carnegie’s on the 28th. I go to private things only, & decline all public ones, of whatever kind.
There, now—you see you & the Missus are not the only people that are forsaken of God & have forgotten the look of the human race.
You can depend on the madam’s love & the children’s without my putting it in here; but I put my own in [MTP]. Note: see Mar. 19 to Hutton for the Foster luncheon.
Sam also wrote to Mrs. Elizabeth B. Fee: “I thank you very much for your letter, and am glad to have it, for I find that the instance of mental telepathy telegraphy of which you write is one of great interest. / I knew your father and mother well, and am glad to hear their names mentioned again” [MTP]. Note: Mrs. Fee’s parents are unidentified.
Lawrence J. Anhalt wrote to Sam. “Relative to the interview which you so kindly said you would grant me, I beg leave to say that I shall be pleased to give you, for an interview not to take over an hour, $50.00 in a certified check,” which was most of what Anhalt would make on it. He supplied a list of 13 questions for Sam to choose from, & he would bring a stenographer [MTP].
Edward Day wrote from Springfield, Mass. complimenting Sam on his Christian Science article in the NAR [MTP].