May 30 Thursday – At Quarry Farm Sam wrote to Henry M. Alden of Harper & Brothers:

I am laid up with the gout in one leg and a pretty malignant boil on the other, but I have reduced Book III [JA] to a couple of magazine installments. As I estimate it, the first one will make 7½ Harper pages, and the other one eleven or twelve. I have merely suppressed 12 chapters of the great trial, and inserted a brief explanatory translator’s note in their stead. I put in the whole Abjuration and Martyrdom in detail. The page or two of “Conclusion” can be left out, if you like. You can save some space in that way, and I think it might be well to do it. But you will know. (Will forward you the ms. by hand if I can.) I will pack all the ms. together, but make two packages in one, so that you can see which is the one to go in the magazine. Please preserve the ms. and set up the book from it — for I have carefully corrected it [MTP: Am. Art Assoc. catalogs Nov. 18, 1925 Item 151].

Sam also wrote a few sentences to Frank Bliss, who evidently asked when he might expect another book, perhaps from the world tour travels. Sam thought he’d be too busy on the tour to gather more than enough information for a few magazine articles.

It is a long way off; I may write a book, but at present I am not expecting to do it [MTP]. Note: Sam had already entertained the idea of a book from the tour travels, which would become Following the Equator.

Sam also wrote a short paragraph to Robert Underwood Johnson of The Century.

I am in bed, & must stay there two or three weeks yet — gout in my starboard ancle, a boil as big as a turkey’s egg on my port thigh…Can’t write, these days [MTP].

Sam also wrote responding to Franklin G. Whitmore’s concerns on his behalf (letter not extant). It wasn’t necessary for Sam to write John Day about Whitmore acting as Sam’s agent and collecting the rent on the Farmington Ave. house and other matters relating to it. Day knew Whitmore was Sam’s agent, he wrote. Also, Sam didn’t want to be burdened with lecture applications — send those to J.B. Pond, Everett House in N.Y. He enclosed a note of some sort he wanted shown to William Wander, the piano vendor, and directed Whitmore to “take prompt & decisive measures if he doesn’t pay” (see Apr. 7, 1895 entry). Sam related his gout and “vast boil” problems and confessed he was “in the devil’s own humor,” for he had a lot of work to do and little time to do it in. He also wanted a petition signed for him opposing a “double-tract” of a nearby street to the Farmington house, because if it went through, “we shall want to start in early & hunt up a purchaser for our house” [MTP].