November 26 Tuesday – Nelle R. Eberhart, Oscar Eberhart, Charles Wakefield Codman, and Blanche K. Knowlton wrote from Homestead Pa. to Editors of Harper’s. “We have just finished reading ‘Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.’ / Give us more on the same plan. We have been reading advanced thought for fifteen years and rarely find much that is congenial in the magazines” [MTP].
John H. Johnston wrote to Sam.
The last time I wrote you I sent you the Clemens Family crest or Coat of Arms, for which you thanked me—but now its another matter I bore you with.
A multi-millionaire friend met me on a 4th Ave. car one day awhile ago, and beckoning me from the end to the middle of the car alongside of him he exclaimed “Mr. Johnston why don’t you lop off your side whiskers, it will make you ten years younger—look at me, I’m a boy compared to you” “All right” I said, “I lop right away”—and I did—Reaching my office after my visit to the barber, a friend exclaimed “Why what’s happened to you? You look like Mark Twain!” This was several weeks ago, and since then I have been taken for you 28 times—I began to number them after No. 5, and there’s no guesswork about it—I of course tell my friends that I could write just as good stories as you do if I had a mind to, but so far nothing has panned out in that line. I have no white suit to wear, nor have I tried to fix up to make a Mark— but the way I am stared at wherever I go would make a modester man either blush, and start his beard again—Say: would you mind letting your beard grow and give your new portrait to the world, and so relieve me? ….
Seriously: My wife and family to whom I read aloud the new history of the Universe last
night—all think that you have done a great service to Humanity in writing this, and I hope a lot of addle pated preachers will pitch into you and or make a million more readers of it. The idea that our planetary system is only a wart compared to the whole Universe is enough to make any orthodox lunkhead stop a minute and thing and wonder if our forbears were not all Theological Damphools—The pith of the whole Bible I find in the first 4 verses of the 10th Chapter of 1 Corinthians…[MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote for Sam at the top of the letter: “Gosh—L’all mighty— you can tell him that that’s the first gun, & I enjoy it for I expect the other guns will be less enjoyable & less penetrating”
Hamilton Wright Mabie for The Outlook wrote to Sam, sending a copy of the last week’s edition containing an article on “The Great American Humorist” [MTP].
Samuel E. Moffett wrote to Sam, verifying entries sent from his research that were novels. He added that it was a great time at the P&P play and that his wife Anita “found it one of the events of her year” [MTP]. Note: Sam had enlisted his nephew some time back to research all the copyrights bestowed for a few years.