September 11 Thursday – In York Harbor, Maine Sam wrote to Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
Mrs. Clemens, who loves you, is dragging along very very slowly. She thinks she will be strong enough a week from now, to travel on a bed, & can go home. We others have doubts, but do not say so, for that would make argument, & argument sends up the pulse & is forbidden. Sometimes we allow her to read a letter; & to-morrow she will see yours, & it will make her glad.
Just a month ago to-day, when this calamity fell, we heard that you were in Maine—heard it through Mrs. Loring & Mrs. Dr. Charles Fox—& we hoped you & the families would run over (or down or up or across) to York Harbor; but you went & didn’t, & we are sorry.
Old Mr. Howells was here day before yesterday, on his way to a reception, for he is very gay & societous. It was raining like hell. I never saw such an indiscourageable old dude. But he is sweet & lovely the same as ever [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Frederick A. Duneka.
When do you want the Xmas story, (“Was it Heaven?—Or Hell?”) I think I am about done editing it & revising it & fussing at it, now. It will make 9 or 10 pages of the Monthly.
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I enclose herewith a brief squib—not for present use, but for along about NOVEMBER 23d or 25th in the Weekly—my birthday being Nov. 30.
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I have finished the Christian Science articles, adding 9 or 10,000 words to the 9 or 10,000 that got left out in the cold—the chapters which I wrote for the Hadleyburg volume.
Do you want these 18,000 or 20,000 words for the last two or last three December issues of the Weekly?
I shall issue them in book form about Xmas, preceding them with the chapter of 8,000 words which was magazined in October 1900; & in the same book put the Xmas story Heaven or Hell, & the birth-day squib & one or two other things, & print every title on the outside of the book [MTP]. Note: Sam’s notebook noted the letter to Duneka and its contents [NB 45 TS 26].
Sam also wrote to Charles J. Langdon.
Livy is very weak, but she improves a little per day, we think, in spite of the too-frequent small backsets she gets. She is so anxious to get up & out of this that she is requiring me to write Mr. Rogers that [she] expects to be ready to get aboard the yacht a week from now. So I am obeying, & I hope she is predicting rightly, though necessarily there’s [un]certainty about it.
It is lovely of Julie to offer Mr. Loomis’s car, & she wants me to thank Julie cordially. But is it certain that Livy can have the car, Charley? It hasn’t been formally offered, & it won’t be safe or wise for her to attempt the journey from Hoboken to Elmira in the ordinary way. If we can hire a sleeper & put it on a day-train, & be sure to have it when we reach Hoboken, that will answer, & will cover the necessities of the occasion [MTP]. Edward Eugene Loomis (1864-1937). See Nov. 29.
Sam also wrote to H.H. Rogers.
Mrs. Clemens said this morning that the number to go in the yacht would be the family, the doctor, & a maid—6 persons. Provided all are well. But if Jean should be on the sick list she will remain behind & go home with Katy & the cook by rail when in condition. That would make the number for the yacht, 5.
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Mrs. Clemens is almost counting on Wednesday Sept. 17—but! We don’t discuss anything with her—she would get excited—but we have doubts about that date. Whenever a date can be named I will at once telegraph you, as long a time in advance as possible—three or four days in advance, if possible.
Mrs. Clemens detests plasmon, yet she has to live on it, as far as keeping up her strength goes. She can take solid food, but not enough of it to nourish her.
She has had two bad turns in the last 48 hours, through experimenting with foods. One was an egg, & the other a half-teacupful of malted milk. They acted like poisons—numbed her arms & distributed pains over a large nerve-surface [MTHHR 504-5].