March 4 Tuesday – Sam house hunted with a real estate agent. He later wrote, “I went alone, one day, and examined 12 country seats from garret to cellar, and it ended my usefulness, and my strength. I struck” [Mar. 3 to Whitmore; Mar. 12 to Bigelow].

Sam’s notebook repeats one of the items from Mar. 2: “Polk Miller / Carnegie Hall”; then adds: “Box from Mrs. John S. Wise 154 W. 76th Box A 8.15 p.m.” [NB 45 TS 4]. Note: a box seat, Carnegie Hall. See insert, NY Times, Mar. 4, 1902, p.6.

Polk Miller (1844-1913) was a pharmacist and musician from Virginia, who played the banjo and headed the “Old South Quartette,” a minstrel-like depiction of the life of Negroes before the Civil War. Miller was white and the four members of the quartet were black; they toured the country between 1900 and 1912. Earlier, Miller made remedies for his favorite dog Sergeant, and began selling them, which was the beginning of Sergeant’s Pet Care Products, Inc. The Old South Quartette was not mentioned in the Carnegie ad for this date, so they must have been a lead-in act.

Livy’s diary: “March 4th Six Callers: unusual for Riverdale” [MTP: DV161].