July 20 Thursday – Sam’s notebook:
5 p.m. 20th. Jean fell in a spasm striking her head on the slop jar. A bad convulsion; she lay as if dead—face purple & no light in the eyes. I ran & brought Harry; his father soon followed. They are working at her now. She is better [NB 40 TS 58].
Percy Spalding wrote to Sam, advising the rooms viewed by Livy at the Queen Anne Mansions had been taken, and enclosing a note from the manager there. He began with two books he was sending: “In reply to your letter I am sending you two of Clark Russell’s sea stories, ‘Wide Wide Sea’ & ‘Convict Ship,’ both of which I think you will like” [MTP; Gribben 596]. Note: William Clark Russell (1844-1911). Alone on a Wide Wide Sea: A Novel. 3 vols. (1892); The Convict Ship 3 vols. (1895); both by Chatto & Windus.
Dr. Henry Walker wrote from Oklahoma City replying to Sam’s thanks of June 24.
Dear Friend—Surely the word is not now far fetched—I have your letter and adjectives do not come up to the occasion. I did not bid for it, hardly expected it, yet, to be honest, hoped for it, after the truth concerning Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling was sent to you out of Oklahoma. My children and their children will read it after the things which I prophesied shall come to pass… [MTP]. Note: Walker had argued that Mark Twain was the greatest writer of the day; see the June 24 letter in a NY Times article of Sept. 9.
The Buffalo Express ran an interview of Mark Twain by Curtis Brown, titled “Mark Twain Talks,” p.1.
It would be reprinted in the Elmira Gazette and Free Press on Aug. 2 [MTCI 340-45].