July 2 Sunday – Emilie R. Rogers (Mrs. H.H. Rogers) wrote from New Bedford, MASS. To Sam, having rec’d his note on July 1. They had just come from Boston the day before and would return this afternoon, as Mr. Rogers had to take the stand in a lawsuit; they might have to stay all week, and were at the Hotel Lorraine if Sam stopped on his way to Norfolk, Conn. To see Clara [MTHHR 588].

Isabel Lyon’s journal: Reading Hamlin Garland’s “Tyranny of the Dark”. Mr. Clemens has just finished it. Yesterday he said it was “good done”. This afternoon a batch of folks came in and when Mr. Clemens came down he sat in a low black wicker chair and talked, you don’t have to say anything but that.

Jean went off with Miss Dwight for dinner, and at dinner Mr. Clemens talked of the spirit things, brought up by Hamlin Garland’s book, and by his own wonderful “44” story. He talked about John Hay’s characteristics and told how one day, long ago, they and David Gray, they two were 33, and he S.L.C. were 35, were talking together in the broadest of free thinking terms, and later when calamity came to Gray, he changed from his free thinking and became a staunch, narrow, scorching Presbyterian, and he wouldn’t vote for Cleveland because many, many years before, he had been guilty of a peccadillo, a social one, the sort of thing we’d all do if we had the chance. He told me about Mrs. Hay, how narrow she was, how terribly Presbyterian, and in the afternoon he said that he felt quite sure that she was instrumental in Mr. Hay’s withdrawal from publication of the Pike Co. verses, after he became Lincoln’s biographer.

Something started him into saying that things or ideas begin as principles, but end as policies. “Once Honesty was a principle, but now it is the best policy”. Or Dishonesty is the best policy —or Decency is the best policy—or Freetrade is the best policy—or Protection is the best policy—[MTP TS 72; also in part Gribben 252].

Isabel Lyon’s journal # 2: “This morning at 10:15 Mr. Clemens had a telepathic message—It was a conversation held with Mrs. Hay. Mr. & Mrs. Learned came in for Tea” [MTP TS 22].