February 5 Monday – In New York at Rogers’ office, Sam wrote to daughter Clara at the Hotel Brighton in Paris, France:

Dear Benny — I was intending to answer your letter [not extant] to-day, but I am away downtown, & will simply whirl together a sentence or two for good-fellowship. I have bought the photographs of Coquelin & Jane Hading [See Feb. 2] & will ask them to sign them. I shall meet Coquelin to-morrow night, & if Hading is not present I will send her picture to her by somebody.

I am to breakfast with Madame Nordica in a few days, & meantime I hope I get a good picture of her to sign. She was of the breakfast company yesterday [Feb. 4], but the picture of herself which she signed & gave me for you does not do her majestic beauty justice.

I am too busy to attend to the photo-collecting right, because I have to live up to the name which Jamie [James] Dodge has given me — the “belle of New York” — & it just keeps me rushing.

After relating the previous day’s hectic social schedule, he added that he didn’t get tired but slept “as sound as a dead person,” always waking up “fresh & strong — usually at exactly 9.” He also told of a recent breakfast where seven nationalities were represented with all seven languages “going at the same time.” Next to him was a “charming gentleman” who “talked glibly” in all seven languages — Sam wanted to “kill him, for very envy” [MTP]. Note: some secondary sources mistakenly attribute the “belle” title to others; this letter pins it to Dodge.

In his before-Feb. 13 letter to Bram Stoker about his desire to purchase stock in the new typesetting co., Sam wrote, “Work resumed on the machines [typesetter] last Monday, & ten of them will be pushed to completion with all dispatch, without wasting energy on the other forty unfinished ones” [MTP].

Sam’s notebook: “Feb. 5. Drew $150 from the deposit at Players” [NB 33 TS 54].

William Carey of Century Magazine wrote and sent a copy of IA for Sam to sign for a lady friend of Carey’s. Sam wrote at the top of the letter, “Ain’t this a neat & fluent note? It is Carey of the “Century” with a copy of Innocents Abroad” [MTP].