August 9 Thursday – In New York at H.H. Rogers’ office, Sam wrote to Livy an hour before a scheduled meeting with the lawyers and the assignee in the Webster & Co. bankruptcy case.

My, how it drags, drags, drags, & won’t resolve itself! Mr. R. says that if the creditors & the assignee can’t come to an agreement this time we must talk to them in plain terms. I am heartily willing, & ready. We have tried our level best to meet all hands half way & more than half way; & now we are tired.

Sam had been “grinding away at those old Cooper articles” (“Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses”) as he was “far satisfied with them.” He’d cut them down to a single article, about five magazine pages instead of thirteen and felt it was ready for publication. He’d also “worked up the refuse matter” he’d “dug out from Puddnhead, & put it together in a way which greatly pleased the Century & they very much want it.” The Century Co. offered $1,500 and he was considering and would answer them the next day. His best news was about sailing:

Mr. Rogers thinks I can sail Wednesday, Aug. 22, & I am counting the minutes! I think he thinks I am lonely in New York; makes me go down to Manhattan Beach every night. He is as good as a mother to me.

Sam would actually sail a week earlier, on Aug. 15. He added more about Cheiro, the clairvoyant:

I want to test Cheiro on some one who is a stranger to him. Mr. Rogers is going to try him. I like to hear the cuss talk. He is gone away for a few days; then we will visit him. He says an abnormally long forefinger indicates ability to command. Consider the variety of hands! I notice them in the cars, & they do differ extraordinarily. Mr. Rogers’s forefinger & middle finger are exactly the same length, & his little finger is very short. If I had hands like some in Cheiro’s collection I wouldn’t take them out of my pockets they are so manifestly brutal [MTP]. See Aug. 8 to Susy.

Sam also declined an invitation to lecture from an unidentified man. In any case he’d have to talk to James B. Pond first, “for that is an old understanding” [MTP].