September 12 Thursday – In Saranac Lake, N.Y. Sam wrote to Frederick A. Duneka of Harper’s that his address would be in care of H.H. Rogers until Oct. 1, then Riverdale on the Hudson [MTP].

Sam also wrote to James B. Pond.

Yes, by all means, come & take 1 o’clock luncheon with us. Do not be afraid to drive in—we are not as black as we are painted.

Thank you both, ever so much, for your good invitation, but I’m a workingman, & vacations & visiting are not for such.

My, but the President has had a marvelous escape! It couldn’t result so much in five centuries [MTP].

Note: William McKinley was thought to be recovering, but would be dead in two days.

Sam also wrote to H.H. Rogers.

How can you be so unfeeling? You know very well it wasn’t “by request”—I only hinted at it. But I’m glad to get the song, anyway. I am singing it every day, and it gives a new aspect to the woods, which are gladder and more inflamed than ever an autumn here saw before.

…I have been trying to think up something for you to put in your idle time on, and I’ve got it.:

I have made you and 26 B’way my mail-matter address for the present. There’ll be nothing to do but re-direct the stuff, which is fun.

We leave here for Elmira Sept. 18 or 19; remain there a week; then a few days at the Grosvenor in 5th ave; then go to housekeeping at Riverdale, above Spuyten Dyvel [sic] Oct. 1.

Can you remember all that?

To-day I am busy, but to-morrow I will think up some more things for you to do. Depend on me. I am your friend [MTHHR 471]. Note: in his Sept. 6 continuation of the Aug. 29 letter, Sam asked if Rogers knew the words to The Old Oaken Bucket. Spuyten Dyvil is the name of a part of Riverdale.

Sam wrote to Joe Twichell, about Vice-President Roosevelt, and the dying William McKinley

Say—Joe—

“I tell you,” said Conductor Cross,  “The Vice-President looked a different man than when he went to Buffalo. I never saw a man so marked by care and anxiety as he was when he hurried to the President’s bedside; but when he got on the train last night at Buffalo he was as gay as a lark. He told us that the President was getting on finely, and he seemed as happy over it as a boy with a new toy.”

Going westward: smiles in his heart & the belly –ache in his face; returning eastward: belly-ache in his heart & smiles in his face.

How human-racy it is. And we all do it; there aren’t any exceptions. / Ys Ever [MTP]. Note: the source of the paragraph quoted is unknown, but seems to be something from a newspaper article. McKinley would die two days later.