December 6 Wednesday – In New York Sam wrote to Thomas Bailey Aldrich after staying up half the night reading An Old Town by the Sea.

If I had written you last night when I began the book, I should have written breezily and maybe hilariously; but by the time I had finished it, at 3 in the morning, it had worked its spell & Portsmouth was become the town of my boyhood — with all which implies & compels: the bringing back of one’s youth, almost the only time of life worth living over again…[MTP].

Sam also wrote on Players Club stationery to John Elderkin declining an invitation to dine at the Lotos Club with him and Henry Irving.

I would dearly like it, but I am barred. I am the pet of Providence, and therefore subject to much caprice & more mismanagement. Thus I have railroad engagements for the whole of that afternoon & a banquet at night. If I should try to add a supper at 11 & the Mismanagement found it out, advantage would be taken of the situation in some unfair way — indigestion, as like as not [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Bram Stoker, returning tickets; Sam wrote that “a dinner engagement cuts me out” [MTP]. Note: the tickets may be for Abbey’s Theatre and the Lotos Club dinner for Henry Irving on Dec. 16, to which Sam sent a letter of regret.

Sam also wrote to Annie E. Trumbull who had invited him to see her in a play, The Masque of Culture, on Dec. 15 at Unity Hall in Hartford. The play was to be performed by the Saturday Morning Club, which the Hartford Courant called, “one of the city’s best-known social and literary organizations” [Dec. 16, 1893, p.4]. Sam answered, “If Providence lets me alone I’ll be there sure.” (But he was laid up then.)

These days I have no end of business engagements, & they fall at all sorts of unexpected hours & ruthlessly bust up all sorts of social contracts. If one of these intrudes, it is master & I must obey, but nothing else shall make me miss seeing you & the play [MTP].