February 4 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: All day in Katonah. Jean was very sweet & I had a lovely time with the dear bruised child for last Friday she fell.
This morning I had a good hour with the King who read with delight a letter from a Scotchman who told a story of the disinterment of a Chinese corpse in Amoy. The King will use it as an autobiographic note covering the mail of the day [MTP TS 26-27]. Note: John C.G. Cumming wrote from Falkirk, Scotland on Jan. 23.
J.C. Tebbetts wrote from Pittsburg about CS, which he had studied for years and which he thought was “the idiocy of Mrs. Eddy’s teaching.” However, Tebbetts seems to defend Eddy and quotes Scripture in doing so [MTP]. Note: Sam would reply on Feb. 7. Mr. Eddy of NYC wrote a postcard to Sam after seeing yesterday’s NY Herald about Mrs. Eddy,which did him “$10 worth of good” [MTP]. Note: evidently, this Eddy unrelated to Mrs. Eddy.
John E. Fellers wrote from Chicago to Sam, pasting three short clippings about Christian Science, advising him not to publish CS. “The writer of this letter was raised in Missouri not far from your old Hannibal home. He has always felt a pardonable pride in your growing popularity. Many of your old friends are my friends too. It will be easier for us than for thousands of others, to forget the mistake you are about to make in publishing this book” [MTP]. Note: see Sam’s reply (Feb. 8-11).
Jeannette L. Gilder wrote to Lyon, wrong about the date of the Jeanne D’Arc matinee—it was the 23 , not the 16 and so she was “holding a box for Mr. Clemens for Saturday Matinee Feb. 23 ” [MTP].
Brander Matthews wrote from NYC to Sam, observing he hadn’t had a visit for some time. Could Sam “come up at half past one on Friday of next week, the 15 ? I’m asking Howells, of course, and Bronson Howard,—only eight in all” [MTP].
Roi Cooper Megrue for Elisabeth Marbury wrote to Sam, enclosing contracts between Clemens and Gabriel Timmory, French playwright, for the adaptation of four other stories, all but one in French [MTP].
Mrs. L.E. Skeels wrote from NYC to ask Sam for an agency for his CS book, confident that her sales would be “very large” [MTP].
In Sam’s A.D. he emphasized the importance of temperament in determining behavior, noting it accounted for “the plight of Bret Harte’s daughter, who reportedly had been committed to a home for the indigent and friendless in Portland, Maine” [MTE 268-92; quotations are Gribben’s 403]. Note: MTP notes: “Datelined thus; but really 5 days’ ADs”