May 1 Friday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam replied to the Apr. 30 to Frances Nunnally.

The way you are arranging things, you little rascal, what sort of a glimpse of you am I going to get? Before the 6th of June we shall be living in the house I am building in the country. However, it isn’t far away—only an hour & a half. When you arrive here I will come to town & see you—& then I hope you & your mother can run out to the villa with me & give me a visit.

If you should need to change your steamship-date, let me know, & I will put it into the hands of Ashcroft & Miss Lyon & save you the bother of attending to it.

It was a great pleasure to see Miss Margaret; I hope it isn’t to be the last time. Francesca dear, is Atlanta vain of you two, or are you samples of just the ordinary average product of that place? /With love … [MTP; MTAq 149].

Isabel Lyon’s journal:  I drove to look at a Redding farm of 70 acres and a dear old house for $3500. for Zoheth and Sheba and then Lounsbury took me to Lyonesse and Eugene Adams and I had a splendid half hour planning for the arrangement for the house. We tore the plaster from the stone work around the mantles and it reveals a lovely old chimney piece of coarse stone work that I shall leave exposed. But the work of the day was at the King’s house going over and over the rooms to get the sense of them, and to correct a score of tiny mistakes.

The work seems to go forward very slowly and outside of the house is chaos. Santa’s wing is an improvement to the whole house [MTP: IVL TS 50-51].