February 15 Thursday – At 11:30 p.m. at the New York Players Club, Sam wrote another long letter to Livy. Near the end he outlined the day’s activities:
It has been a mighty busy day. I had myself called at 9. At 10 I was down at Mr. Rogers’s office.
Samuel Clemens, H.H. Rogers, and J.M. Shoemaker met again to plan the sale of stock in the new Illinois company, the Paige Compositor Co.
To-day we three arranged the details & arranged everything satisfactorily, & a week hence S. will have settled his home affairs for an absence, & will start on his tour.
…
At noon I was off on errands. Ordered a Prince Albert coat to wear at the Fairhaven dedication — at 26th & 6th ave; then walked down to 23d & Broadway & bought a hat; then to 17th & Broadway & bought some shirts & white cravats; then took the cable car to 40th street & got my hair cut; then to the Players to meet an engagement with one of the editors of the North American Review — lunch. Sold him one article for $500; half-promised him another for $500; also said I would send him the Shelley critique to look at, but would not abridge it — (as he had suggested.) Was back at Mr. Rogers’s office by 3.30. Finished the arrangement before referred to, with Shoemaker & was back up town by 5.25 & sent you the cablegram hoping it would get to you immediately (10.25 Paris time) — that is arrive at your bedtime. [Note: the editor Sam had corresponded with was William H. Rideing. The cablegram to Livy is not extant, but is also noted in NB 33 TS 56]
Then answered a note or two & walked out to Mr. Rogers’s house through the slush — 40 blocks — arriving in time for dinner. I was back here at the Players at 11.30 & have been writing you ever since — for I shan’t get any chance to write to-morrow, I judge, & to-morrow this letter must be mailed, to catch Saturday’s steamer. It is now 2.15 a.m. [Feb. 16] When I rang up a boy a minute ago & said, “Have me called at 8.30 this morning,” he said “There ain’t many hours between this & that, Mr. Clemens.”
As to the cable, Sam wrote prior to this segment that after conferring with Rogers “it would be safe” for him to leave on Mar. 7 on the steamer New York. After Rogers’ assistant, Miss Katharine I. Harrison ( – 1935), ordered a berth for his passage, Sam cabled Livy that he would reach Southampton on Mar. 14 and Paris on Mar. 15.
Land, but it made my pulses leap, to think I was going to see you again! I wish it were earlier, for Susy’s sake, dear Susy; for I want to get her out of Paris right away. We will talk about that when I come.
Dias gives a snapshot of Miss Harrison:
“Clemens had much praise for the indomitable Katherine [sic Katharine] I. Harrison, Rogers’ able secretary, as familiar a figure at 26 Broadway as Rogers himself. An intelligent, no-nonsense woman, given to wearing long black skirts and white shirtwaists of the day, and usually sporting a pair of pince-nez, she was known in Wall Street circles as ‘The Sphinx.’ This appellation undoubtedly derived from the fact that she was supposedly privy to the innermost secrets of Rogers’ vast commercial enterprises but was as silent and inscrutable as the Egyptian statuary with whom she was compared.
“Clemens had much respect for her abilities as a writer of clear and succinct communications. To Rogers, her services were invaluable. Aside from being entrusted with his large correspondence, she also supervised the comings and goings of visitors to Rogers’ office, selected gifts for family birthdays, and, in general, made good copy for the journalists of the day. In a man’s world, she thought and acted with male directness and what the male chauvinists of the day probably regarded as masculine expertise” [Odd Couple 51-2]. Note: She was also called “The Oracle.”
In the evening, Sam discussed Webster & Co.’s “disastrous condition” with Rogers, the first time he’d done so:
I did hate to burden his good heart and over-worked head with it, but he took hold with avidity & said it was no burden to work for his friends, but a pleasure. We discussed it from several standpoints, & found it a sufficiently difficult problem to solve; but he thinks that after he has slept upon it & thought it over he will know what to suggest.
Sam praised Rogers as “not common clay, but fine — fine & delicate.” He was never afraid of wounding him, and:
His effect upon me is the opposite of Emma Sayles’s: the sight of her brought all that was vicious in me to the surface; but the sight of him is peace. [Note: Emma Sayles may have been the female Sam accused of ruining his Christmas in a letter Dec. 27, 1893 to daughter Susy.]
Sam related how desperate things were in September when he arrived, how he “flew to Hartford” but his friends “were not moved, not strongly interested” in his financial plight.
It was from Mr. Rogers, a stranger, that I got the money [$8,000] & was by it saved. And then — while still a stranger — he set himself the task of saving my financial life without putting upon me (in his native delicacy) any sense that I was the recipient of a charity, a benevolence — & he has accomplished that task; accomplished it at cost of three months of wearing & difficult labor. He gave that time to me — time which could not be bought by any man at a hundred thousand dollars a month — no, nor for three times the money.
Sam disclosed his weight was now 155 ½ and supposed he was “becoming obese,” though he claimed to be “in great form, anyway” [MTP].