October 6 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: This afternoon when the Masons were here for tea and the subject of Geography came up, the King said that he had no sense of it himself, and that when they were living in the Villa Viviani, Oscar Wilde’s little wife went out to call and to ask the best way to get back to England, the King said he gave her instructions which if she had followed would have landed her in China. Chat seemed to drivel along until the King said to Mrs. Mason who is a Christian Scientist and who has been planning a debate with the King —“Well, Mrs. Mason, when are we going to have our quarrel?” I think that Mrs. Mason felt she had launched herself into a very big subject with a very competent opponent, for she asked him what his objection to C.S. as a religion is. He told her that he had no more objection to that than to any other religion invented by man, or a God invented by man that could lay any claim for the respect of thinking people. But people don’t think anyway. They only feel. Then Mrs. Mason tried to bring in the stock phrases of “affirmation” or “negation” as part of C.S. but that didn’t trouble the King any either, and when she finally made the great C.S.’s statement winding up “God is good”—then the King really talked and asked her to prove that God is good. He pointed out how God isn’t good in a single instance and those two Masons sat amazed and enchanted and horrified. He said things the like of which they had never imagined a person could say. Such an attitude of mind was a revelation that could only be wrought by a magician greater that God. I have been wondering if it made any impression upon those people; but most likely not. They went away admiring him and thinking of him more than ever, and I told the King that there wasn’t another human being in the world who could say such things and remain entirely beloved, and the King said, yes, he had said those dreadful things about her God, and right in her God’s presence too. Then we went back to Hearts [MTP TS 111-112].

Dorothy Butes wrote to Sam.

Dear Mr Clemens. / I was so glad to get your lovely long letter, and the snapshot of yourself. I think the Kodak is splendid of you. I keep it on my writing-desk, and look at you lots of times during the day. Somehow, it reminds me of the day you told me that funny story of the solitary aseophegus (I couldn’t find it in the dictionary, so I hope you won’t mind the spelling!) hovering in the azure sky”! That was one of the best things I ever heard. My Kodak is being repared just now, but as soon as it comes home I will send you a snapshot of myself.

We are going to Paris a week from to-day. I am looking forward to it very much indeed. We shall be there for four or five weeks. I am going to take French lessons every day while we are there, and play “Diabolo”! London is becoming quite wild over it, now, and Paris has “been gone” on it for some time! [MTP]. Note: Dorothy told also of school impressions, visits in England, of having her teeth straightened, and wrote praising CS.

Eugenia Schumann wrote from Sanna, Sweden to Sam remembering the pleasure of his stay in Sanna, and sending sympathies about Livy’s passing; Kellgren would be 70 on Nov. 24, and he had not been fully acknowledged by science for his contributions [MTP].