Vol 3 Section 0205

Insert: Villa Paulhof

Sam also sent a postcard with a printed drawing of himself to Mollie Clemens: “This post-card picture is the

latest, & I think it good, but the family don’t. / With love / Sam” [MTP].

Sam dated “A Word of Encouragement for Our Blushing Exiles” May 24, 1898. It was not published in his lifetime; first published in Europe and Elsewhere, Paine ed. (1923) [Budd Collected 2: 1003-4; 260-2]. Note: this short sketch blasted those Americans in Europe who were ashamed of America for the war with Spain, and pointed out the far greater sins and hypocrisy of Russia, France and Spain.

Is it France’s respect that we are going to lose? Is our unchivalric conduct troubling a nation which exists to-day because a brave young girl saved it when its poltroons had lost it—a nation which deserted her as one man when her day of peril came? Is our treacherous assault upon a weak people distressing a nation which contributed Bartholomew’s Day to human history? Is our ruthless spirit offending the sensibilities of the nation which gave us the Reign of Terror to read about? Is our unmanly intrusion into the private affairs of a sister nation shocking the feelings of the people who sent Maximilian to Mexico? Are our shabby and pusillanimous ways outraging the fastidious people who have sent an innocent man (Dreyfus) to a living hell, taken to their embraces the slimy guilty one, and submitted to a thousand indignities Emile Zola—the manliest man in France?

May 25 Wednesday

May 26 shortly before – At the Villa Paulhof in Kaltenleutgeben Sam wrote to Joe Twichell:

Have you read “Ole Sile’s Clem? (May “Harper.”) I feel sure that it must be the best back-settlement study that was ever printed. O, the art of it! How well Coggins knows his ground, & what a sure & reserved & delicate touch he has. I knew his people, personally & intimately, every one of them, when I was a boy. I knew them in the West, you knew them in the East—they are national. How true their back-settlement wit rings; it is so good, & it is so bad—just the genuine thing, the correct border line. No bright intelligence would say those things & no dull intelligence could. They are too nearly perfect for inventions; Coggins must have heard them uttered. There are some things which the finest genius cannot counterfeit with exactness, cannot perfectly imitate, & back-settlement wit is one of these, I think. Do you remember Captain Ned Wakeman’s letter to you? The genius never lived that could counterfeit that. It seems to me that Coggin’s sketch is flawless, with one unimportant exceptional; apparently his boy utters thanks for a kindness shown him. I know the boy well. He felt his thanks, but I doubt if he allowed any detectible sign of that to appear on the outside. Watch out for Paschal H. Coggins; he is valuable and entitled to a grateful welcome [MTP].

Note: Paschal Heston Coggins (1852-1917) also wrote books for boys under the name Sidney Marlow. He was a Philadelphian by birth and a member of the Philadelphia bar. He was well known as a contributor to Youth’s Companion, Harper’s, and Atlantic

May 26 Thursday – In the morning at the Villa Paulhof in Kaltenleutgeben, Livy wrote to Dr. Thomas S. Kirkbride.

Thank you very much for the cigarettes which I found on our salon table last evening. They look very delicious it almost makes me wish that I smoked. I hope you will come very soon and see if they are as good in these surroundings as in your room [MTP]. Note: the famous psychiatrist and pioneer in the treatment of the mentally ill, by the same name, died in 1883; this may be a son studying in Vienna. See also May 27 to Kirkbride.

Sam wrote to Theodore Weld Stanton, thanking for an invitation to a Decoration Day banquet in Paris.

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