October 6 Monday – In York Harbor, Maine Sam wrote to Frederick A. Duneka.
“Oh, come, now, it is irreligious, the way you accept articles & postpone the payment. When you come to keep four doctors & two trained nurses all summer, with a war-price specialist from Boston now & then as an additional strain on your bank balance you will reform & follow custom” [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore.
If you could get Mr. Roberts to pay what the land cost ($32,000) I should be quite willing to let him have the house, stable & green house for nothing, & I believe Mrs. Clemens would, too. I am almost sure of it. I should not be able to ask her just now, as I never see her & do not sleep in the house, & no matter of an interesting sort is ever uttered to her, but we believe that a fortnight from now we can talk business to her.
When we sell, it will be to Mr. Roberts, sure, & at his own price. I wish that Western man had given us time to let a broker examine into his bonds see what security was back of them [MTP]. Note: Sam had been staying at the neighbor Sewall’s. The “Western man” was Sidney A. Witherbee of Chicago. On May 19 Sam wrote Whitmore about Conn. State Senator Henry Roberts’ mother possibly buying the house.
Sam’s notebook: “Again banished from the house night before last. By the new nurse, Margaret Garrety. She allows no one in the sick-room, Day & night, but herself. If we had had her in the beginning Livy would be well now. I began plasmoning day before yesterday—only breakfast & plasmon daily. Good results at once” [NB 45 TS 29-30]. Note: see Sam’s additional remarks on Garrety inserted here and dated Oct. 31.
Henry Wise, Superintendent of Bacnotan Public Schools, the Philippines, wrote again to Sam, asking pardon about his first letter, which he felt must have been a “stunner,” and the second “an insult added to injury,” and asked again for a copy of RI [MTP]. Note: Wise was the recipient of the crossed letter. Wise initially wrote Sam on June 21, but received Sam’s reply—a note about the Hannibal cave, instead.