September 6 Friday – In his A.D. of Oct. 5, Sam wrote of having Dorothy Quick this week as a guest.

…we had her delightful society during seven days and nights. She is just eleven years old, and seems to be made of watch-springs and happiness. The child was never still a moment, when she wasn’t asleep, and she lit up this place like the sun. It was a tremendous week, and an uninterruptedly joyful one for us all. After she was gone, and silence and solitude had resumed their sway, we felt as if we had been through a storm in heaven.

      Dorothy is possessed with the idea of becoming a writer of literature, and particularly of romance, and it was a precious privilege to me to egg her on, and beguile her into working her imagination. I never betrayed myself with a laugh, but the strain which I had to put upon every muscle and nerve and tendon in me, to keep from breaking out, almost made a physical wreck of me sometimes. She is swift with the pen, she is hampered by no hesitations when she is dictating, and she is even a more desperate speller than ever Susy was. We began our mornings early—as early as half-past eight and from that time until nine in the evening there were no breaks in our industries. I say our industries because I always assisted her in them until I broke down at noon; then Miss Lyon stood a watch till about three; then I resumed my watch. In order to save myself from perishing, I usually persuaded Dorothy to devote this half-afternoon watch to literature. By grace of this subterfuge, I was enabled to lie down and perform; I lay on one lounge on the back porch and she on another one at my side; then she dictated her stories glibly, and I set them down. When a story was finished I dictated it to her from my manuscript, and she wrote it down. I got around telling her why I observed this practice; I didn’t want her to know my reason, which was that I wanted the tale in her own brisk and tumultuous handwriting, adorned with her own punctuation—I mean the absence of it—and steeped in the charm of her incomparable spelling. [….] One day she dictated an Indian romance, and I set it down. The little rascal was all innocence and candor, and was seldom suspicious, but it cost me many lies to keep her so, because every now and then as the sentences fell felicitously from her lips they hit me hard, and my suppressed laughter made my body shake; and when she detected that, I could notice a vague suspicion in her voice when she would ask what was the matter with me. The answer which came nearest to satisfying her was that I was feeling a little chilly; but that also had another effect, which was not a happy one for me, for it aroused her affectionate solicitude and she would not rest until I had taken some whisky to keep me from catching cold. Before we got through with the brief Indian tale…the loving little creature had inflicted so many whiskies on my that my efficiency as an amanuensis was a little damaged and rickety; and if the tale had gone on a little longer I should have been incapable.

[Sam inserted her tale here]

      After this she reeled off this masterful tale just as she had punctuated it—without a pause anywhere, and just as if Henry’s adventures were passing before her eyes at the moment and she was simply setting them down according to facts. I was glad when “Margearet” got her young man safely out to the edge of the forest where they lived happily ever afterwards— without the formality of a marriage—for I thought for a moment that she was going to furnish the pair a family without any superfluous preliminaries and I would get another whisky-drench by consequence [MTAq 73-5].

Isabel Lyon’s journal: “I’ve made some superb photographs of the King. They are as active and as spirited as battleships. Have made some with Dorothy too” [MTP TS 100]. Note: Dorothy Quick was visiting.

Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury wrote from New Haven to secure Sam’s photo and autograph for Mrs. Frank Hyde, a Kentuckian, second wife and now widow of Frank Hyde, Hartford lawyer [MTP].

Samuel E. Moffett wrote to Miss Lyon on Collier’s letterhead; it would be some time before he could go to Washington [MTP].