July 9 Sunday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.
If the news is correct, things have turned the other way in Kansas, by direction of Providence,& I wish to congratulate upon this evidence of your continued popularity in that quarter. I wish I had your secret. It isn’t righteousness, for I’ve tried that myself, & there’s nothing in it.
It is warm weather at last, & it weakens me. I lose no day, but my output grows smaller daily. It has dwindled from high-water mark—32 pages a fortnight ago, one day—to 12 day before yesterday, 10 yesterday, & 8 to-day.
Clara & Jean are having delightful times in Norfolk, & I’ve told Jean to take her time & not hurry [MTHHR 588-9]. Note: Kansas had passed laws to restrict Standard Oil operations there, including construction of a state-owned refinery. On July 8, 1905 the state supreme court struck down the idea as unconstitutional [n1]. Among other things, Sam was working on the unfinished “3,000 Years Among the Microbes.”
Isabel Lyon’s journal: Heavy, weary brain. Mr. Clemens worked all the morning but he didn’t read the ms. for he went down to Mr. Pearmain’s house and they induced him to stay to supper with them. The young Robert Pearmain came home with him, lighting his way up the steep little trail with a lantern, and Mr. Clemens came in limp from the climb. I read ms., reread “The Mysterious Stranger.” It is delightful. And this morning I sat in the beautiful heat reading to its finish that enchanting book, “Painted Shadows.” It is exquisite. The Saint so truly said of Le Gallienne as he lay in his bed in New York and I carried my new “Painted Shadows” in to him—“an able cuss who writes deliciously” [MTP TS 76]. Note: Painted Shadows (1904), by Richard Le Gallienne (1866-1947) [MTP TS 77; Gribben 405].
July 9 ca. – In Dublin, N.H. Isabel V. Lyon responded for Sam to Frank J. Firth’s July 6 letter.
M . Clemens directs me to say that no further identification is necessary now that he remembers you—& that your letter head seemed respectable enough but he didn’t know but you had borrowed it from somebody else, prepared them first & then got afraid—and now he sends them with great pleasure [MTP]. Note: MTP puts this “on or after July 6,” this estimate allows time for the letter to arrive in N.H. from Philadelphia.