May 25 Thursday – Isabel Lyon’s journal: The microbe has fixed it—we won’t ever die, but live forever and ever as disintegrated oxygen and hydrogen and gases and acids and things. It’s quite dreadful and very fascinating. The mystery and workings of that brain. I’m reading away back in his first book and just loving that “Innocents Abroad”, with its choice way of looking at places and things and people and events centuries old. Today the music was very beautiful. Like a sweet spirit [MTP TS 60].

May 24 Wednesday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam replied to Robert L. Fulton’s May 12 invitation.

May 23 Tuesday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to Brander Matthews. “You have my deepest sympathy. These are black days. There are now but 13 days between me & the anniversary of anniversaries” [MTP]. Note: Matthews’ loss was not determined.

Isabel Lyon’s journal:

May 22 Monday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:

We’re up in the hills now. All of us but Santissima. A little note this morning from Miss Gordon says that she [Clara Clemens] is improving wonderfully after her operation. Fighting a headache, I am too dull to write what was in my mind.

May 21 Sunday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:

Mr. Clemens spends too much time over his work. Hours & hours & hours he sits writing with a wonderful light in his eyes. The flush of a girl in his cheeks and oh the lustre of his hair. It is too terribly perishably beautiful. It is no wonder that his tread is light as a spirit’s, for the great power of his brain seems to draw him up and to give him his delicacy of step [MTP TS 59].

May 20 Saturday – In Dublin, N.H. Sam wrote to daughter Clara, still in N.Y.C. recovering from an appendectomy.

dear, to get a letter from you was a happy surprise; I was not expecting so dear & rich a benefaction.

May 19 Friday – In Dublin, N.H. Isabel V. Lyon replied for Sam to the May 2 from Lady Margaret Jenkins in England.

Dear Madam: / M . Clemens directs me to write for him explaining that he is not feeling well enough to do so himself, owing to the results of his great anxiety caused by the recent critical illness of his eldest daughter.

M . Clemens is not going to England this year; but he wishes me to thank you very much for your kind letter, and to convey to you his sincere regards [MTP].

May 18 Thursday – Sam left Boston early in the morning and traveled 64 miles to Dublin, N.H., where Katy Leary, Patrick McAleer, daughter Jean and Isabel Lyon were waiting to spend the summer with him [May 17 to Aldriches].

Isabel Lyon’s journal:

Today Mr. Clemens arrived.

Today the sun burst through the clouds just after the telegram came saying that he would arrive in Harrisville at 11:35.

May 17 Wednesday – With Clara Clemens out of danger from her appendectomy, Sam left N.Y.C. and traveled to Boston, Mass., where he took rooms at the Hotel Touraine. There he wrote on hotel stationery to Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Lilian W. Aldrich.

I came from New York, arriving in time to dine with you, but I couldn’t raise you on the telephone, so I am turning in, disappointed. You are out dissipating, I suppose.