May 15 Friday – At 21 Fifth Ave, N.Y. Sam wrote to daughter Jean in Greenwich, Conn.
It is a sour wet day, Jean dear, & at noon I am still in bed, but not idle. I am trying to arrange in my head some perplexing statistics to use in a speech I am to make in the afternoon 5 days hence, & am also trying to think of something to say at a banquet that night, & at another banquet 5 days afterward. These are busy times. I sat on the platform 3 hours & a half, yesterday, at the City College ceremonies, after prowling in gowned procession for an hour previously. There were about 200 degree-men in gowns, but they were black ones; I was glad to have a red one on, because it made me conspicuous. We left home at 10 in the morning & got back at 3. At 4 I walked out to 57th street & made a call, then came back in the ’bus—for it was raining. At 9. 30 p. m. I went to the City College banquet at the Waldorf, & got back at midnight. I made a vicious half-political half-theological speech, but sugared it over with a gentle-spirited tale at the end.
I am expecting you to-day, but you haven’t come yet. With lots of love, you dear Jean, Father.
P. S. I find you are not coming to-day, dear heart, & I am disappointed [MTP].
In N.Y.C. Ralph W. Ashcroft wrote for Sam to Sanford, Bell, & Lahm, 61 Fourth Ave., NYC, confirming an order for a new pool table to be set up at the new Redding residence:
Gentlemen: / I hereby accept, for Mr. S. L. Clemens, your offer of the 14th inst., of one 5 x 10 pool table, quartered oak, “Baltimore” design, top of rails veneered with rosewood, new billiard rubber cushions fitted, new Simonis #2 cloth, oak cue rack to match table, one dozen selected hardwood butt cues with ivory tips, one mackintosh cover, one billiard brush, two bridges, one set of counters on wire, packed and delivered on board cars, for $130. net cash. This price to include labor of setting table up at Mr. Clemens’ residence in Redding, Conn. The pockets to be made same size as those on the table in Mr. Clemens’ city residence.
Please arrange with Miss Lyon, Mr. Clemens’ secretary, as to the date for setting up the table at Redding.
Thanking you, I am,
Yours, very truly,
I enclose card of introduction to Miss Lyon [MTP]. See Insert ad:
Sam also wrote to Dorothy Sturgis.
P. S.
Yours of day-before-yesterday arrived this morning. It stopped over at Hartford for refreshments.
The newest photographs (& the best, we think) arrived from the photographer’s yesterday evening, & Miss Lyon will mail one to you. The upper part of the figure, if judgmatically scissored out, will go into the 4 inch circle very well, if a part of the right arm be chopped off.–
Land! I forgot all about the dancing lessons. I must attend to that. Don’t you mind about the “bother,” & we shan’t. All we need to know is about your trains, & we’ll receive you & re-ship you, & take good care of you between. And there won’t be any bother about it. Dorothy comes from New Jersey every now & then & stays two or three days (she is coming tomorrow), & we don’t discover that there is any bother about it. Just you give us your trains, & leave the rest to us.
You remember the Waylands? They are just lovely. They come here to dinner every Sunday night. The Freemans, too when they are in town. / With lots of love … [MTP; MTAq 156]. Note: Zoheth S. Freeman was Sam’s banker; Grace Hill Freeman (Mrs. Zoheth S. Freeman); Mr. & Mrs. John Elton Wayland.
Caroline Coddington wrote yet another crank letter to Sam; see prior [MTP].
Frank N. Doubleday for Doubleday, Page & Co. wrote to Sam. “As I telephoned Miss Lyon, I saw Mr. Rogers, and he agreed to come to our luncheon at one o’clock on Wednesday, May 20th, at the Aldine…. Mr.Rogers, I think, will come if he is in town, but I am almost afraid that he will run away so that he will not have to come, and I hope you will corral him for the good of the cause” [MTP].
Alice Minnie Herts for the Children’s Educational Theatre wrote to advise Sam of two performances on May 21 and May 24, and to ask if he would send any names he thought might like to be invited [MTP].
Elizabeth Jordan wrote from NYC to invite Sam to “dine with me at Delmonico’s Sunday evening, June seventh at 8 p.m. to meet Mr. & Mrs. Charles Rann Kennedy” [MTP]. Note: editorial emphasis.