Vol 3 Section 0047

Not even sects are agreed upon morals & pieties. The Cardinal-Archbishop cast-ironly forbids priests to go to theatres, whereas in the Spanish countries they are a main support of the hellish bull-ring.

In Eng the clergy formerly rode to hounds, now they don’t. In New Eng they used to take part of their salary in rum & get together on religious business & have a time with rum & pipes—now they discourage even the laity.

The believing Moslem knows it is his duty to go to Mecca on pilgrimage, even when he is going to carry the plague to the unbelieving European & kill him—& the European allows him to do it. The human being— with not an exception in the whole earth, is a fool. And to his very marrow he is a hypocrite & a humbug [NB 41 TS 2-4].

January 8 Friday

January 9 Saturday

January 10 Sunday

January 11 Monday – Sam’s notebook:

Jan. 11, 1897. To-day Sir Julian Pauncefote & Mr. Olney signed the General Arbitration Treaty. An Epoch. It is one of the 3 or 4 great events in human history—& is perhaps the greatest of them all. It is a long step toward eventual universal Peace. And apparently it has a date to itself—I believe it was not occupied by any important event [NB 41 TS 4]. Note: Sir Julian Pauncefote (1828-1902), British Ambassador to the US (1893-1902); US Secretary of State Richard Olney (1835-1917) signed a treaty allowing for arbitration between the two countries. It was ratified by Parliament at once but was not ratified by US Congress until the McKinley Adminstration.

January 12 Tuesday – Sam’s notebook: “Cook gone—another come; 4 in 3½ months. More than we had in 18 yrs at home” [NB 41 TS 4].

January 13 Wednesday

January 14 Thursday

January 15 Friday – At 23 Tedworth Square in London Sam wrote a general letter about several matters to H.H. Rogers: He liked the contracts they’d signed. He supposed Harry Rogers (H.H. Rogers, Jr.) had turned sixteen in October (actually his birthday was Dec. 28) and that he’d tried to vote in November. Sam was still upset at Bainbridge Colby, the attorney who had replaced Daniel Whitford on Sam’s grievance against theatrical producer Daniel Frohman; Sam thought Frohman would now escape paying him by virtue of the statute of limitations. He also blamed the Mt. Morris Bank for its “free way of lending money to [Frederick] Hall” when Sam was in Europe, which he felt “made the bulk of the trouble.” On the matter of Rogers’ help to Helen Keller, Sam wrote:

I‘ll keep the Helen Keller subscription private. I don’t want you to be flooded with begging letters. The magazine came, & I am much obliged. Helen’s name will be familiar to the world five centuries from now. In her line she is the most extraordinary product of all the ages.

[Note: Sam would not speak about Rogers’ largesse until his Apr. 3, 1909 speech at the opening of the Virginia

         in Norfolk, Va.; the magazine was possibly the Jan. 1897 Century, with an article citing Keller’s case. Rogers paid for all of Keller’s expenses at Radcliffe]

Sam added he hadn’t written because he was racing to hit the halfway point on FE, and now had “crossed the ridge” and was “homeward bound.” In a PS he added he wouldn’t talk to Harpers about future books, and was curious to see if they would be able to “make sales” of his books in the trades. He still had no

SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.