January 21 Sunday – In New York on Players Club stationery, Sam wrote to Mary Mapes Dodge, declining an invitation, and sorry he’d missed her son, James (Jamie) on a recent visit, but his room was “in scandalous disorder” and he wasn’t yet up.

I’m to be in Boston Thursday & Friday — & likewise Saturday, I am afraid. It is just as exasperatingly too bad as it can be — in fact the whole too-badness of it can’t be done justice to without ripping & cussing, & it is Sunday & I dasn’t [MTP].

Sam also wrote to William Henry Venable, responding to his letter (not extant). Yes, Sam liked the poem Venable mentioned, and the others as well. He took the opportunity — “almost the first spare moment I have had in oh, so long! — to thank you for sending me the book.” Note: this book of poetry may have been, The Last Flight (1894). Not in Gribben.