January 31 Tuesday – The Canadian poet laureate, Louis Honoré Fréchette of Quebec, was a big fan of Sam’s and met him during the Montreal dinner. Fréchette was also William Dean Howells’ brother-in-law, husband of Anne Howells. Fréchette soon came to the U.S.; Sam spoke at a dinner in his honor at the Hotel Windsor, in Holyoke, Mass. His subject: “On After-Dinner Speaking”:

Your little talk, which sounded so fine and warbly and nice when you were delivering it in the mellow light of the laps and in an enchanted atmosphere of applause and all-pervading good fellowship, looks miserably pale and vapid and lifeless in the cold print of a damp newspaper next morning, with obituaries and cast iron politics all around it and the hard gray light of day shining upon it and mocking at it. You do not recognize the corpse. You wonder if this is really that gay and handsome creature of the evening before. You look him over and find he certainly is those very remains. Then you want to bury him. You wish you could bury him privately [Fatout, MTSpeaking 166-8].

Howells wrote Sam that his letter about dropping the Whitelaw Reid biography:

“…was an immense relief….I never believed that he was a man capable of persecuting you, or systematically nagging you” [MTHL 1: 390-1].

According to Sam’s Feb. 3 letter to John Young, Edward House became “quite sick” this day, which was the day he was to leave this second visit, planned for one day [MTP].

W. & J. Sloane of Carpet Warehouse, NYC, sent thanks for remittance of $1,375 [MTP].

Worden & Co. (twice) wrote advising purchase of 100 shs of W.U. @ 79 ¾; Also, they sent a statement of account with Jan. 31 balance of $1,968.41 [MTP].