November 21 Thursday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam began a letter to Mary B. Rogers that he finished on Nov. 29.

Well, dear, you are a brilliant little rascal, & the flashes spurt up all along your sentence-wires, interval by interval, & if I had a mile-perspective on them I should think it was a trolley, blue- sparking its way down the distances——but

You haven’t any principles & I was never able to teach you any; & so you’d rather tell what ain’t so than what is. I haven’t been mobiling at all. And besides it wasn’t a mile, it was only a quarter of a mile; & you were not paddling alongside, for a mile, nor / a quarter of a mile, nor for even 3 yards—for you couldn’t come within 3 yards of me, in dark or daytime & I not know it——& so, those two foundationless statements of yours are blown to Uranus; & besides she was not in the mobile, & I was not saying anything to her anyway except—at any rate nothing that would instruct you any, since there wasn’t a word nor an art that I hadn’t learnt of you, you small humbug, at Jamestown on Coontz’s Day. And You?—why didn’t you hail me? You would if I had been there; & you would anyway, if you had been there yourself.

And as for the Rice wedding, I was there. But you were not, or I should have seen you. I entered with St. Clair McKelway’s wife, & set down in a corner, close by a side-door—port side, as you enter. I saw everybody that entered by that orifice, & you were not among them. There, now—all your statements have fallen by the wayside, like the tares that were sown in Sodom & Gomorrah by David & Goliath & took not root because the ram’s horns of Jerichoh blew them on the wings of the morning to the uttermost parts of the Sea. Mary dear, dear sweet niece——reform! I will help you.

Didn’t I tell you not to come to town again without calling on me? Haven’t I any authority at all? Why didn’t you come & take me mobiling? But I know—it was because Coontz was around, & you could do better. I think it’s scandalous! [MTP].

Mary H. Allen wrote to Sam after reading “with interest and sympathy the chapter of your autobiography which tells of the loss of your daughter” [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on the letter, “Answd. Nov. 21, ‘07”

Educational Theater for Children wrote to Sam, sending “heartfelt affection…gratitude in appreciation of the great service he has rendered to the movement” [MTP].

Ferris Greenslet for Houghton Mifflin, & Co., Boston wrote to Sam that he was sending copies of Clemens’ three letters to Aldrich, since Mrs. Aldrich didn’t want to let go of the originals [MTP].

David Starr Jordan wrote on Murray Hill Hotel, NYC, notepaper to regret he had not arrived in time to see the P&P play [MTP].

Emma N. Warfield (Mrs. Edwin Warfield) wrote regrets that Sam could not be with them in Maryland for the 26th [MTP]. Note: Edwin was Governor of Maryland.