June 11 Wednesday – Sam referred to this as “that first day” in New York (by calculation from his June 14 to Livy). In that letter Sam talked of being with Joe Goodman in New York. He also wrote about the stay there:

In New York Joe & I went to a ten-cent dive where we saw a variety performance which Jean ought to have shared with us. It lasted 2 hours: there was Punch & Judy; & a very small dwarf; & some Zulus in native lack of costume (from Baxter street, I reckon); & a girl who had 25 alligators & crocodiles for pets, & they crawled all over her; & a sweet little girl of ten years who played delightfully on the harmonicon; also on a row of common bottles; on a concertina; on a violin; on a curious & rich-noted little instrument like a mussel (shell); on a cornet; & a banjo. Very wonderful. And there was a Jap juggler who did the most extraordinary things I ever saw [MTP].

Orion Clemens began a letter to Sam he finished June 12, “delighted” that the machine “works splendidly.” When Ma was asked Sam’s question: was she still regularly attending church twice a day, and prayer meetings? “She answered, ‘Does he want me to go regularly? He had better come and go with me.’” … “The doctor comes daily. Every other day he applies the battery. The last time she could not feel it in her feet….Yesterday she thought Pa had just died” [MTP].

H.A. D’Arcy wrote to ask Sam “to reconsider” his objection to using “a few of the cuts from” P&P for the “coming tour of Tommy Russell” Co. (encl. in Whitford’s June 25) [MTP]. See June 6.