October 21 Monday – A run on the Knickerbocker Trust Co. bank in N.Y.C. caused panic elsewhere, and the bank was forced to close its doors the next day. Sam had deposits of about $51,000 at the bank. J.P. Morgan would gain the help of fellow bankers, including John D. Rockefeller, to raise funds and import $100,000,000 in gold from Europe to restore confidence. See Oct. 22. H.H. Rogers and Katharine Harrison had originally recommended the Knickerbocker Trust Co. to Sam. A business slowdown from the resulting spreading panic lasted for months.

Daniel Frohman wrote to Sam: “Mrs Frohman is giving a little dinner party next Sunday night at 8 in a private room at Martins at which she is to have Mr & Mrs. John Drew, Mr & Mrs. Francis Wilson, Henry Miller, also Elinor Glyn the English author, likewise Mme Nordica, and, we expect the Russian actress Mme Mazimova. Mrs. Frohman wants you” [MTP].

Note: Lyon wrote for Sam on the letter, “I take it as a high compliment & shall be there, but it would alter the complexion as I am a professional myself”; Alla Mazimova (born Miriam Edez Adelaida Leventon) (1879-1945), Russian Jew at one time thought to be the “World’s greatest actress.” A precocious child who played the violin at age 7. She moved to NYC in 1905 and began a Russian-language theater with Pavel Orlenev, actor and producer. Her 1906 Broadway debut brought her critical and popular success. She would later be a silent film star, then back to Broadway. In the 1940s she appeared in a few films.

Charles Ross Keen for Dickens Fellowship, Manhattan Branch wrote to ask Sam for his autograph [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on the letter, “Answd. Oct. 23”

Of the selections from Twain’s A.D.’s, DeVoto selected about half of the materials not chosen before by Paine to be included in Mark Twain in Eruption (1940); among DeVoto’s choices, was further comic commentary on a news report of Roosevelt’s bear-hunting expedition [10].