February 26 Tuesday – With Clara and Paine gone, the house was rather empty and Isabel Lyon was unable to find social contacts for him. Isabel Lyon’s journal:

This is too dreadful, this loneliness for the King. The evil month of March is coming galloping along, when he is usually tried beyond some kind of endurance; if it isn’t physical, it is social, & I’m afraid for him. I telephone in every direction to get hold of people to come in for billiards, but no one is to be reached. Mr. Dooley is south, Col. Harvey is busy, or skittish, Dr. Rice is busy, the Coes are in Florida, the Benjamins in Lake Placid, the Broughtons en route for some southern place, & the rest of the world can’t play. When I go to his room to tell him that these people are all otherwise employed, he says “It doesn’t matter—” but it does matter; it matters very much indeed; and AB’s going away to California just now is either devil’s work or angel’s [MTP TS 31-32]. Note: Hill and other sources quote this but change the “&” signs to “and”s.

Cornelius Vanderbilt for the Fulton Monument wrote to Sam quoting the resolution to be presented to the legislature for a piece of land near Columbia University on the East River [MTP]. Note: After Feb. 26 Sam replied and declined to be appointed a member of the Legislative Committee [MTP].

Arthur Benjamin wrote from Spokane, Wash. to Sam, enclosing a clipping of criticism from a Seattle paper, and praising the works of Mark Twain [MTP]. Note: “Thank him & say that the criticisms do not distress me because I never read them—& so haven’t read the clipping”. Likely about CS.

Frederick A. Duneka wrote to Sam, enclosing the original copy of “An Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven”, “in compliance with your request” [MTP].

In Sam’s A.D. he again quoted another Sun article about about the Berlin shipwreck [Gribben 505].