September 26 Tuesday – In New York on Webster & Co. letterhead, Sam wrote to daughter Clara.
Benny dear, this is Hulda’s wedding-day. I’ll send a congratulatory cablegram.
Dearheart, I don’t expect to be able to sail before the middle or end of November. I’m in a business fog which every now & then promises to clear, but shuts down next day as thick as ever. So I have come to the conclusion that my release from New York is ‘way off, yet.
I’ll not go to Chicago until the fog disappears. Shan’t go to Elmira or Hartford till the fog disappears.
… Stay at the Farm just as long as you please. Make yourself happy….
George [Griffin] has just come in — now I’ll walk up to the Century office & take him along for company & load myself up with his gossip.
After his signature Sam wrote that he’d not received a letter from Livy for three days and it worried him; “Susy never writes. I wish she would” [MTP].
Later in the day Sam wrote to Livy. He hadn’t sent any news because there wasn’t any — Webster & Co.’s expenses were “not very heavy now,” and the concern was “standing dead still.” Likewise with the typesetter concern in Chicago, which could not raise the money to finish the machine. Everything with both investments was on hold. Sam then related an interesting and funny time with their Negro man-servant, George Griffin:
George called to-day when I was just starting up to the Century office. I took him along & introduced him to the editors of Century & St. Nicholas — which seemed to puzzle them a good deal. I showed him a number of engravings (artists proofs) for “Tom Sawyer Abroad” & asked for his opinion of them — & that puzzled those editors again. Then when the art-director asked me to cross Union Square & take a drink, & I invited George to come along & help, that was another surprise. I knew George would decline, at the bar, which of course he did. I asked him indifferently if he had won any money yesterday, & he said “No, sir, not any yesterday, but I won a hundred last night on the prize fight.” Then I let him go, & went back to the Century & told them all about George — which made them sorry they hadn’t seen more of him.
During the past 3 stringent months George has made more money than he ever made in his life before — lending money to the waiters at the Union League at a hundred per cent a month. Has also lent money to members privately — gentlemen who were wealthy till the panic struck them & now have to borrow of George on their watches & diamonds to pay their Club dues & escape expulsion.
Sam told how Griffin would loan money to waiters at no interest when it came to caring for sick children, and how the Griffins put aside any tips for their four-month-old child’s education. George told him he really had to go to Elmira to see Clara; that he could get a day or two off from his Union League job.
He is about as remarkable a character as I know; I must put him in my next book.
He acknowledged Livy’s Sept. 14 letter (not extant) and reminded “there’s Susy & Jean” who might also write so she wouldn’t have to do so as often [MTP]. Note: the Coney Island prizefight in question was on Dec. 24, the main event between George Dixon and “Solly” Smith, with Dixon the winner. Prizefighting was illegal at that time in New York; Smith was arrested after the beating [N.Y. Times Sept. 26, 1893 p.2 “Dixon Whips ‘Solly’ Smith”].