May 22 Friday – Close to midnight in Johannesburg, S. Africa, Sam wrote to daughter Clara:

Dear Ash-Cat:

I got your rattling good letter yesterday, you must relieve Mamma often of the task of writing me.

Consound it! it was such a cussed mistake that I left you two behind. I wish to goodness I had brought you here. Mrs. Robert Chapin [Adele] knows you & took a powerful liking to you — met you at Sybil Sanderson’s. Mrs. John Hays Hammond knows you & Susy too — met you at Sanderson’s. They tried to meet Mamma in Paris but failed. …I was to dine quietly at Mrs. Hammond’s at 7 this evening. She sent the carriage & I was there at 6, which gave her time to tell me the moving & thrilling story of what this town went through in the days of Jameson’s raid. Then the other guests arrived — Mr. & Mrs. Chapin & Mr. & Mrs. (forget the name). We sat down to dinner at 7 & staid at the table 4 hours & had a shouting good time, & then the Chapins brought me home & I have just arrived. The Chapins & Mrs. Hammond & I leave for Pretoria to-morrow morning at 10.40, & Mrs. Chapin will be here at 9.30 to pack my baggage for me & she & her husband will drive me to the station. We all expect to have leave to visit the prisoners.

Sam added at the end that he’d “been around a good deal among the mines,” and that he was to have been received at the station “in grand style with torches by Americans,” but one of the prisoners of the Jameson raid, Fred Gray, committed suicide and the celebration was canceled [MTP].

H.H. Rogers wrote to Sam:

Since writing you on April 29th, I have been out of town nearly three weeks with Mr. Archbold. We were making our annual pilgrimage through the oil regions of the South and West. …

I had about given up accomplishing anything with Bliss and Harper Bros. but Bliss was here yesterday, after an interview with Harper Bros. He had a memorandum from Harper Bros. which I think he ought to be willing, at least, to accept. Of course, it is all conditional on its being agreeable to you.

Rogers then explained all the ins and outs of possible agreements between the two companies on the Uniform Edition issues. He enclosed a copy of a letter addressed to him by Harper & Bros. No developments had taken place in the Webster & Co., with William H. Payne and George Barrow “acting the ‘dog in the manger’” and so he felt it best to wait them out. Rogers was having some trouble with Harry, who he felt was too full of himself:

Harry’s yacht is being fitted out and he is about the biggest nuisance there is in the vicinity of 57th Street. He puts on too many airs, and it will require the services of a man to take him down. I wish when you come home you would avoid making any appointments until you have engaged with me to give him a blamed good thrashing. He has grown so big that he can tire me out because my wind is poor, and I shall want somebody to ease me up when we have the battle. I would send for the “Harlem Coffee Cooler” [Negro boxer] but I understand he is under a permanent engagement in London. / With warmest regards….[MTHHR 213-14].