September 28 Monday – President Grant attended a performance of the Gilded Age play at the Park Theatre in New York. Grant laughed and applauded with the crowd throughout the play, and personally congratulated Raymond back stage [MTL 6: 248]. The play ran 115 nights in New York and netted Sam $10,000 in its first quarter, and around $70,000 during his lifetime [Powers, MT A Life 360]. Walker claims the play ran 119 performances [186].

To William C. Brownell, City Editor of the New York World, Sam confided:

“…it isn’t a good play. It’s a bad play, a damned bad play. I couldn’t write a good play. But it has a good character, and that character is the best I can do” [Walker, Phillip 186].