June 16 Friday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam replied to the June 15 from Frederick A. Duneka.
I think your briefest & compactest reply to the Congo Reform Assn. will be something like this —“Harper and Brothers have no property in ‘King Leopold’s Soliloquy.’ M . Clemens asked us to give it back to him because he wished to give it to you, and we did so. However, to be strict to the letter it is necessary for us to go through with the formality of granting you the right to use the article in a magazine, publish it as a pamphlet & sell it at a price, and this we do with all good will. By this you will understand that we relinquish our right to ever use it in print in any way without your free & unembarassed consent.”
They are evidently afraid of future trouble, Duneka, but if my suggestion as above is satisfactory to you, no doubt it will be to them. If it isn’t please amend it. I hope they will get it out soon and force it to a wide circulation. I shall feel sweeter inside after I have spewed out my opinion of Leopold.
I am deep in a new book which I enjoy more than I have enjoyed any other for twenty years and I hope it will take me the entire summer to write it; in which case it will be a giant for size judging by the stack of manuscript I have ground out on it since I arrived here. / Sincerely Yours [MTP]. Note: Harpers had rejected King Leopold’s Soliloquy, but agreed to release rights to it for the American Congo Reform Assoc. See Apr. 11, 1905 to Morel.
Isabel Lyon’s journal: Quite sure—medicine helps.
Today Dr. Stowele and Mrs. Dr. Stowele [sic Stowell] called but Mr. Clemens didn’t see them, and then Mr. Thayer came and they had a long chat, Mr. Clemens and he, on the porch. I am slowly reading the “Innocents Abroad,” and it is so delightful [MTP TS 66].
H.H. Rogers wrote to Sam with a number of miscellaneous thoughts and happenings. He couldn’t understand why Sam had not answered his May 26 letter. He was going to Fairhaven this night “for a few days”; he didn’t feel the time was right to sell Amalgamated stock and so was putting it off; Urban H. Broughton was recovering from an operation; Clarence C. Rice “comes around and sees us occasionally”; he hoped to hear from Sam soon [MTHHR 586].
Ralph W. Ashcroft wrote on Koy-Lo Co. letterhead to Sam. “If you have any stock in any telephone company, sell it—quick! The German Baptist Conference in Indianapolis has formally denounced the telephone as an invention of the devil” [MTP].
Louis S. Beckwith wrote on The Sessions Clock Co., letterhead, Forestville, Conn. to ask Sam for a copy of the epitaph he’d placed on Livy’s headstone, as his wife had died a few weeks earlier and he wanted to use the sentiment [MTP].