August 14 Friday – Sam’s guestbook:

Name Address Date Remarks

John B. Stanchfield ) )    

Mrs. Stanchfield )   New York City )“ [August] 14-15 [Clara Spaulding Stanchfield]

Alice their daughter ) )

      Note: none of the above names were in the original guestbook.

Isabel Lyon’s journal: “The Stanchfields arrived by motor hours late. / Ashcroft started for Canada” [MTP: IVL TS 59].

George Hasselmeyer wrote from Kennesaw, Ga. to recollect being with Sam in St. Louis before the war. Did Sam remember Miss Compton (Dick) and Jacob Enders-Compton and the Enders Music Store? Hasselmeyer was in his 74th year. He also mentioned Judge James K. Knight of St. Louis who committed suicide. Joe Enders and Dick Compton were dead. Joe used to sing songs in German [MTP].

Margherita Pariente wrote a letter from Cairo, Egypt in French to Clemens. She expressed admiration for Twain. She owned many of his books and particularly admired IA. She enclosed a self-addressed postcard which she asks Twain to autograph and return. She promised she would treasure it as a souvenir of “the great and immortal American writer,” and wished him good health and hoped to meet him one day [MTP]. Note: translation summary courtesy of Holger Kersten.

Joe Twichell, back in Hartford after his trip to Europe,  wrote to Clemens.

Dear old Mark: / So here we are again—since last Tuesday. Our homecoming is glad and sad, both—sad because it meets us with the news of the death abroad of our long-time beloved friend Harry Hopkins President of Williams College, one of the noblest, gentlest most generous spirits life has made us acquainted with. You will remember him, I think. The first paper I took up on my arrival—a copy of Colliers Weekly—told me that Sam Moffett was gone. So you are in sorrow too, and by a bereavement that comes closer to you than ours to us, and is intrinsically more afflictive, for Harry had done a full day’s work, but Sam is “dead in his prime,” cut off in the bloom of his promise. As we speak of him the face and voice of his sweet mother came back to us. We have never forgotten her.

      Our vacation has been full of interest and pleasure throughout. I can’t stop to tell you about it now, but will say that few things coming into it are so delightfully memorable as two evenings we passed with Mr. MacAlister in London, who showed us great favor for your sake. It is scarcely necessary to remark that you were the principal theme of our converse with him [MTP].