August 10 Monday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to George B. Harvey.

To-day I have written as follows

To Clara Clemens in Europe:

1. “By the original understanding with Paine I was to edit the Biography, with power to approve & disapprove with finality. But I have turned that editing over to Col. Harvey, & he has accepted the job.

2. “He is to limit letters of mine, & excerpts from letters of mine (when paragraphed apart from Paine’s text) to an aggregate of 10,000 words for the whole Biography.”

And I added this, which I hope you will approve, & make it an annex to the editing-powers which you have assumed:

3. “But Paine may sprinkle single & double sentences & brief remarks here & there & yonder IN his text with considerable freedom. (This would help your & Miss Lyon’s volumes of “Letters,” not hurt them.)

“Paine is proposing several volumes: two or three complete letters (& preferably short ones) in each volume is all I would be willing to allow.”

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Now dear Colonel, if you are agreed, will you please send me a copy of this letter with your O. K. upon it, to be put in the Safe Deposit box? / Yours ever [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Dorothy Quick c/o Mrs. D.W. Dow, North Epping, N.H.

Dorothy dear I have been to New York. It was a week ago. I was gone two days, in that sweltering weather, & it brought on a bilious attack. We have no such weather here. I shan’t make any more summer trips.

I am sorry about the rabbits, but you can get some more. You still have your bird, so you are not out of luck altogether. I have only Tammany & her kittens, & Miss Lyon & Mr. Ashcroft. But they are all good company. Yesterday we played hearts several hours—at least, 3 of us did. I got 116; Miss Lyon got 185, & Mr. Ashcroft 208. Ashcroft plays the orchestrelle for me a great deal; & he has improved so much that if I am out in the loggia & don’t see him I think it is Miss Lyon. And he plays good billiards now. Not as good as Col. Harvey or Mr. Paine, but better than formerly. Col. Harvey has been here, & David Munro of the North American Review, & we had very good times; Miss Ida Tarbell & Miss Jennette [sic] Gilder drove over & lunched with them. Also we have had the Whitmores, & in a day or two John B. Stanchfield & his wife & daughter are coming, & after they go the Freemans are to come for a few days. But Ashcroft is going away tomorrow & I am sorry. I have seen Louise but little; she has been away on several visits; & I have had only a glimpse or two of Frances. Miss Lyon goes to New York to-day, to send up my daughter’s furniture & piano—then the house will be complete & nothing more to do.

I miss you Dorothy dear, I wish you were here. Please give my kindest regards to your mother & my love to yourself. / SLC / Curator of the Acquarium [MTP; MTAq 198]. Note: Ida M. Tarbell and Jeannette Gilder were Redding neighbors; Louise and Frances Paine were daughters of Albert Bigelow Paine.

Dr. Robert Hurtin Halsey visited Sam in Redding but did not stay the night [new guestbook; IVL below].

Isabel Lyon’s journal: “To New York. Saw Robinson, brought Dr. Halsey home with me” [MTP: IVL TS 59].

Katharine Boland Clemens (Mrs. James Ross Clemens) wrote from S. Dartmouth, Mass. To ask if Sam was coming up their way soon, since they were only “about ten miles” from Mr. Rogers’ Fairhaven. She described Salters Point where they were staying, and motoring to Newport. James Ross Clemens would leave St. Louis and travel by auto, taking ten days to arrive there. Just where was Sam’s country home? They’d been thinking of moving from St. Louis but hated to give up Jim’s practice—could Sam suggest a place “that holds prospects”? She felt he would succeed any place [MTP].

Charles Soby, Cigars, Hartford, wrote to advise Sam they were sending samples of tobacco for him to try and advise them [MTP]. Note: IVL: “The mixture is better than the Havana, & Mr. Clemens believes that the Broad leaf will be best / but none of it was good”