May 2 Thursday – In Paris, the Clemenses may have attended a play in the evening, the “Mr Mapes’s play” referred to in his May 1 to Miss Goodridge. Several other letters in this period do not reveal the answer. Mr. Mapes may have been related to Mary Mapes Dodge.

At the Hotel Brighton, Sam also wrote to Poultney Bigelow, who evidently upon learning of the failure of Webster & Co., had sent a check for a thousand dollars. Sam couldn’t keep it:

My! I wish I could! But I must not think of it. I am in the midst of another siege of gout with a clear necessity in front of me traveling on a handbarrow to the station when we leave for Southampton on the 10th.

I never saw a man so full of generous impulses as you are. I wish you owned the mint; then everybody would get the benefit of it. I do not know how to thank you enough.

Sam expressed hope they might feed each other in April or May of next year (1896) in London, and wished Bigelow to “Live long and prosper!” [MTP]. Note: Does that phrase seems familiar? See also Aug. 14 and 15, 1895 to Samuel Moffett, which mentions Bigelow’s generosity and that of Douglas Taylor.