May 29 Friday – Sam was the guest of Col. George Brinton Harvey in Deal, N.J. [June 2 to Allen].

Sam wrote to Carlotta Welles.

Friday night.

Dear Charley, I am vexed to the last limit, & disappointed, & so sorry. If my secretary hadn’t chanced to be out, it would not have happened, for she sees all strangers that come, whereas I see none of them. The butler took you for a stranger, & followed the law of the house, but if you had told him you were a friend he would have found me, for I was in my room. In fact he did find me, but I was asleep, & so he foolishly & criminally did not wake me. I hope you will not come as a stranger next time, & I also hope that there will be a next time.

Frances Nunnally is at school near Baltimore, & I shall see her here June 12th. She sails, Europe-bound, on the 13th. She & her mother visited me in Tuxedo Park last September, but it was only a glimpse, for they were flying homeward from Europe.

Mr. Ashcroft is well. He dined with us Wednesday, & spent the night. The burden of city life is heavy upon me, but we go to the country for the summer June 15th. We have been delayed a month by an unfinished house.

I hope you will come again, & not as a stranger, Charley. / Affectionately, … [MTP; MTAq 163-4].

Note: Cooley adds after the letter: “At the bottom of the letter Carolotta Welles (Briggs) later wrote this note: ‘This was my last letter from Mr. Clemens. I called at 21 Fifth Avenue around the first of June ’08 just before going to Bryn Mawr where my sister was graduating. He sent this letter to Bryn Mawr. I have not got the envelope as someone begged to have it’ ” [MTAq 164].