October 8 Tuesday – In Tuxedo Park, N.Y. Sam wrote to daughter Jean in Katonah, N.Y.
Jean dear, I hear that Dr. [Frederick] Peterson is exceedingly well pleased with your year’s progress, & certainly I am. It is a wonderful advance. How fortunate it was that fortune put you into his hands. He expects this improvement to go right along.
I am taking walks, now. For exercise. I make them through the woods—half an hour each way. I took one about 12 days ago & another one day before yesterday. This is just the time for walking; for the forests are beginning to blush, the air is bracing & fine, & the sunshine is dazzling. I begin to feel the benefit of the exercise already; I sleep better than I did before, & my appetite is improved. Also I have gained 4 pounds, my step has gained in springiness, & my breast-measure has added 3 inches; I can jump nearly 3 feet further than I could before, & my hair is not as long as it was. My cough is entirely gone, & I can stand on my head without effort. Formerly I had to be very careful about my diet, but I can eat anything, now—when people are looking I eat rocks. Everybody is astonished, I am the surprise of the whole region. And, so, of course, everybody has gone to exercising. (With bad results, for they overdo it.) / Heaps of love & kisses, dearest Jean, / Father [MTP].
Sam also wrote to H.H. Rogers.
I’m coming up next Friday per New Bedford boat or Kanawha—or maybe Saturday or Sunday per Kanawha. I can’t tell which till I found out dates & terms. Will you telegraph me when you get this?
Oh, well, there’s different kinds of postcards, they’re not all alike the one you sent, thanks be!
Mary wrote that one, I recognized her hand through the disguise, without any trouble. Another thing: you told her to return my scurrilous literature, along with your indignation. Very well, she sent the indignation, but kept the literature for her scrap-book. I knew she would admire it. I will ask you to giver her my love, & thereto my thanks for her appreciation of that literature. And it is good, you know. Mighty good.
Do you know, wonderful are the ways of Providence. I mean, in suggesting the path of His own. For the enclosed postcard came yesterday, to soothe the sorrows to be caused by the one that comes from you to-day, & to soothe some that arrived day before yesterday—which was like this:
Some ladies called, & told an anecdote, all upside down & wrong—oh, altogether incorrect—& said it was drifting around Tuxedo & being believed—thus:
That a lady called me on the telephone & said:
“Will you come & dine with us to-night?”
“Oh, I am unspeakably sorry, but I have an imperative engagement.”
“It’s too bad. Can you come tomorrow night?”
“I do wish I could, but I have to be in New York.”
“Well, then, make it Thursday.”
After a reflective pause:
“Oh hell, I’ll come to-night!”
It is all wrong, I give you my word. It didn’t happen in Tuxedo at all: it was New York. And more than a year ago, at that. And it wasn’t a lady, it was a man. A man whom I detest. / Yrs Ever [MTHHR 641-2]. Note: the “scurrilous literature” (Mary Rogers’ phrase) was Sam’s spoof “Howels” note to the Times of Oct. 4.
Isabel Lyon’s journal: The King has what he calls a “body cold”, he says “the whole edifice is dull and heavy.” He came down for luncheon a somewhat unusual thing for him, and ate quite heartily of eggs with a truffle sauce, and creamed chicken with bits of carrot and peppers in it, but he wouldn’t eat fruit—sliced; he wouldn’t eat it “untamed” even, as he didn’t need it [MTP TS 113].
Jessie B. Conklin wrote for the Huntington, L.I. Colonial Society. to invite Sam to lecture [MTP].
N.D. Phillips of the Tuxedo Park Fire Dept. wrote to send Sam five tickets for their 7 Annual Ball, date not specified [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on the letter, “Answd. Oct. 8th”