October 26 Thursday – In London, England, Sam wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore, who evidently had requested more money for taxes and other expenses.

Such money as is in Mr. Rogers’s hands draws interest & we don’t want to disturb it; so I am enclosing a request that Bliss let you have it. I do it without blushing, for I have been spending a hundred dollars’ worth of time to beguile the Harpers to make a concession or two in Bliss’s favor & by this morning’s mail they have done it & will so inform Mr. Rogers…

When you are going to need money, give me a couple of month’s notice—& state the approximate amount. I don’t do anything in a hurry unless forced, & of course it is not my nature to want to be hurried—it breaks my sleep & makes me blaspheme everything in heaven & earth.

What kind of an offer have you had for the house? The place is a profitless drain & a dead expense, & I could be tempted, though I can’t answer for my family.

You seem to think it odd that you don’t hear from me except through the newspapers. But I judge you know whose fault that is. Nobody keeps up a jug-handle correspondence.

We are perfectly comfortable, now. Not 20 people know we are in England, they keep it quiet. We are laying for a secluded good time, & shall succeed. I work 7 days in the week [MTP]. Note: This latter paragraph would confirm Sam did not attend the banquet for Benjamin Harrison on the previous evening, though invited. See Oct. 21.

Sometime before Oct. 27 when Pamela Moffett wrote to her son Samuel E. Moffett, Sam wrote to Mollie Clemens that they’d arrived safely in England but could not return to the U.S. until Jean was cured [MTP; referred to in Pamela’s letter].