August 22 Monday – In Elmira Sam responded to Howells’ Aug. 21 letter. Webster & Co.’s “hands are abundantly full,” he wrote, but offered to forward Howells’ and Drexel’s letters to Webster (who declined to handle Yewell’s etching).
Paine points out that Sam re-read Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution during this summer at Quarry Farm [MTB 848]. Sam marveled at how this read found him changed:
How stunning are the changes which age makes in a man while he sleeps. When I finished Carlyle’s French Revolution in 1871, I was a Girondin; every time I have read it since, I have read it differently — being influenced & changed, little by little, by life & environment (& Taine, & St. Simon): & now I lay the book down once more, & recognize that I am a Sansculotte! — And not a pale, characterless Sansculotte, but a Marat. Carlyle teaches no such gospel: so the change is in me — in my vision of the evidences.
Sam then accused people of pretending that the Bible meant the same to them during their lifetime, something they wouldn’t claim for other books. He compared this to a man going back to look at the house of his childhood, something he did in 1882 and would do again.
…it has always shrunk: there is no instance of such house being (bigger than) as big as the picture in memory & imagination call for. Shrunk how? Why, to its correct dimensions; the house hasn’t altered; this is the first time it has been in focus.
Sam then referred to likewise bringing an author into the proper “focus,” something he acknowledged Howells had done with Tolstoi, and he’d done with Browning. After his signature he wrote that he’d just received Yewell’s etching and agreed it was “all that Mr. Drexel says about it” [MTHL 2: 595-6].
Sam also wrote to William L. Ransom, declining some invitation from “the Committee” [MTP].
Not all was work and business in Sam’s life, even during this hectic year. There was always billiards, and what other greater joy than to swap billiard tables with a good friend? Sam wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore:
Dear Brer Whitmo’ —
Yes, I would like very well to exchange billiard tables for a spell, if it will not too much inconvenience you. It is a kind offer & I greatly appreciate it. So, I would like Hewins to re-cover yours & set it up for me, & move my table to your house [MTP]. Note: Matt H. Hewins, Billiards Saloon owner.
Frederick J. Hall for Webster & Co. Wrote to Sam about purchasing extracts needed from Houghton & Mifflin for the Library of Humor book. Webster was still unable to come into the office [MTP].
Franklin G. Whitmore wrote to Sam all about Paige issues after having “a long talk with both Mr. Paige & Mr. Davis. I will try to answer the questions as entertained in your last letter dated the 18th inst.: Your two checks & [illegible word] rec’d.” Sam wrote on the envelope that the outside estimate of all costs save Paige’s $3,000 salary was $19,000 [MTP].