April 19 Sunday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to Dorothy Sturgis.
Easter Morning
Yes indeed, dear Miss Dorothy, I want the pictures you took; & I am hoping that Mr. Russell will not forget to send copies of those which he took of you & me, for I want good ones to frame & hand in the billiard room of the house I am building in the country—the said room’s name being “The Aquarium,” because it is to be the Aquarium’s official headquarters.
It is 11 a.m., now, & as soon as Miss Lyon gets up I will remind her to send you the pictures she took of us on the steamer, when she gets up. She arrived late last night after a journey to Gloucester, where she secured a house for my daughter, Jean. She is probably tired out.
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1 p.m. Miss Lyon is up, & I shall get up myself before long, as there is to be company at dinner.
I am very glad she caught you on the telephone & delivered my affectionate greetings to you & got yours to me in return.
With a further consignment of love, … [MTP; MTAq 142].
Isabel Lyon’s journal: A rainy Easter—but a good quiet restful day. Young Dr. Norman Ditman has won the $20,000 Gibbs prize for original investigation in sick kidneys. We read an interesting article about Dr. Koch’s investigation of the Sleeping Sickness and its cause. He says that it has been traced to the crocodiles or alligators because only the natives near rivers become infected, for that is where the tsetse fly, the cause of the disease, lives.
By and by evening came and with it the Waylands for dinner, and dear Dan Frohman and Margaret Illington [Frohman]. Santa and Will came down for a change too and we had a beautiful time. Then after dinner and after we had smoked in the drawing room and had watched the King and Margaret Illington making the most beautiful picture in the world as they sat on the floor and watched Tammany and her pile of kittens (quietly they touched them, and the King’s white head was so lovingly beautiful, as he bent over that striped batch), we went to the billiard room and the 3 men played cowboy pool and each one of them got a game and so the rubber is to be played next Sunday night, when they will all be here for dinner again at seven [MTP: IVL TS 46-47]. Note: Ditman, 31 at this time, won the prize for an essay dealing with “the cause and possible prevention of Bright’s disease” [NY Times, Apr. 19, 1908].