November 2 Monday – Gribben gives us a nugget from Sam’s A.D. for the day regarding George Bernard Shaw: “Mark Twain was aghast that Shaw’s biographer ‘wildly imagined a lot of resemblances’ between Shaw’s philosophy and Twain’s ‘What is Man?’ (2 November 1908 AD, MTP)” [638].
November 1 Sunday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Margaret Blackmer.
You sweet Margaret, I have been trying to get Ashcroft shot & I went to Police Commissioner General Bingham about it, but he was full of objections & lame excuses & said it would make too much talk. I have known Bingham ever since he was our military attache at the German Court 18 years ago, & yet the very first time I ask a little favor of him he hunts up excuses.
November 1908 [not defined by Fears as November]
October 31 Saturday – In Redding, Conn. Sam finished his Oct. 24, 26, 27, 28, 29 to Frances Nunnally.
[written in the side margin of page 1:] Oct. 31. I haven’t finished this letter yet, but Ashcroft wants to play billiards; so I will start it along & finish it another time. With very much love. SLC
[caption on an enclosed photograph] Affectionate greetings from this triangle, or trilogy, or whatever its right name is.
October 30 Friday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to Margery H. Clinton.
Dear Miss Margery: / Good, you’re coming! Well, I am glad. Even dern glad, as Pontius Pilate used to say. I think it was Pontius; at any rate it was the one that wrote Paradise Lost & was eventually burned by the Church for falling down the mountain & breaking the tables of stone. I never cared for him, although an ancestor. He ought to have known he was in no condition to carry things down a mountain & everybody looking at him. / With love & thanks … [MTP].
October 29 Thursday – In Redding, Conn. Sam added to his Oct. 24, 26, 27, 28 to Frances Nunnally.
October 28 Wednesday – In Redding, Conn. Sam added to his Oct. 24, 26, 27 to Frances Nunnally.
“28th. It was a very very pleasant interruption—It was the mail, & brought the pink ribbons. Thank you, dear, ever so much. They will make a charming decoration for the enlarged picture” [MTP].
Sam also wrote to William Wymark Jacobs. Paine introduces this letter:
October 27 Tuesday – In Redding, Conn. Sam added one word to his Oct. 24 to Frances Nunnally, “Interrupted.” [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Dorothy Sturgis.
October 26 Monday – In Redding, Conn. Sam added a line to his Oct. 24, 26 to Frances Nunnally: “Monday, 26th. Now if you are—however, I am interrupted” [MTP].
Sam also wrote to William Dean Howells.
Oh, I say! Where are you hiding, & why are you hiding? You promised to come here & you didn’t keep your word. (This sounds like astonishment—but don’t be misled by that.)
October 25 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: We all had tea with Mother this afternoon, and after we got back the King read the copyright problem he has been working on. He was lying in wait for Benar and me, and Benar flew upstairs with his white legs, not waiting for me to say that the King was waiting in the library. These impulsive creatures are so much the best in the world, and the best example of it is the King, the beautiful King [MTP: IVL TS 72].