January 21 Saturday – At the Villa Viviani in Florence, Sam wrote to eighteeen-year-old daughter Clara in Berlin. She had written (not extant) about dining with 40 officers and no other females; he was chagrined.

Clara dear, your letter brought strong delight in your pleasure, but at the same time a deep sense of regret. From the outspoken frankness with which you tell about excluding yourself with forty officers, one is compelled to believe that you did not know any better — if that is much of a palliation. The average intelligent American girl who had never crossed the ocean would know better than to do that in America. It would be an offense against propriety there — then what name shall it be called by when done in Berlin? — I mean, of course, by an American girl, for what European girl would dream of doing it?….Did it occur to you that there was but one course for you to pursue — leave that room the moment you found yourself the only representative of your sex in it?

Sam continued to lecture Clara about proprieties, asking her about other balls and operas and concerts she might go to, and especially to watch herself at Miss Marian Phelps’s ball.

We love you, and are proud of your talents, and we want you to be a lady, — a lady above reproach — a lady always, modest and never loud, never hoydenish — a lady recognizable as such at a glance, everywhere, indoors and out. If you have any friends who are short of this pattern you cannot afford their society — for one’s intimacies either refine or corrupt — this is commonplace. …be conspicuous for not being conspicuous; let no canon of perfect breeding suffer by you [MTP].