March 20 Monday – In Florence Sam wrote to Richard Watson Gilder of the Century, asking if he knew the head of the Agricultural Dept. in Washington. Would he write and ask for a hand full of seed-corn, two or three of the best kinds and send them to Livy? They were for Janet D. Ross, their Florence neighbor [MTP].

Sam also wrote the same request to Franklin G. Whitmore, except he named his caretaker, John O’Neil as the supplier of seed-corn. Sam said he’d see Whitmore “in a few days.”

He then wrote a note to the neighbor, Janet D. Ross.

I shall go over & pay my dinner-call the moment I get back from America. This seems unprompt; but I have a trained conscience, & I quiet it by telling it I am on my road to pay it now, merely going by the way of New York and Chicago for the sake of variety, & because it is much more creditable to go 8,000 miles to pay a dinner-call than it is to go a mere matter of 600 yards. Auf wiedersehen [MTP].