October 4 Tuesday – Sam wrote a note to Livy on Lotos Club stationery, so was undoubtedly in New York on business (an Oct. 6 check to the Glenham Hotel confirms). He wrote of seeing a Mr. Choate, who had lost a son and now this “infinitely heavier & awfuler disaster.”

Livy darling, the last time I saw Mr. Choate, we rode from Washington to New York together…. I may come home to-morrow — don’t know. But I love you, just the same, just the same [MTP].

Note: This was likely Joseph Hodges Choate (1832-1917) American lawyer and diplomat. Choate became a gifted and popular after-dinner speaker.

A notebook entry about this time lists Ein Tropfen Gift, a German play by Oscar Blumenthal at New Yorks’ Thalia Theatre, which ran from Oct 3 to Oct. 15, 1887. Sam may have attended the play during this short stay in New York [MTNJ 3: 333n97].

Another notebook entry, this date:

If, in 1891 I find myself not rich enough to carry out my scheme of buying Christopher Columbus’s bones & burying them under the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, I will give the idea to somebody who is rich enough [MTNJ 3: 334]. (See Aug. 31, 1886 entry.)

Lee Turner of Morristown, N.J. wrote from Damascus, Syria to Sam. They’d heard at the pyramids of Sam’s “marvelous record in climbing the pyramids when you were there in 1868” though there was some dispute among the Arabs” about the course he took [MTP]. Note: Sam was the stuff of legend.