Vol 3 Section 0350
You may think it is fun to get such a letter as the enclosed, but it is no joke for me. I am forced to send you an additional cheque for two hundred dollars, feeling sure that you were underpaid. I wish my subscribers were not so “damned” appreciative; it is costly. … I am anxiously awaiting your next manuscript. It seems to me that you have knocked Christian Science in this country flat [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env. “Don’t lose this letter. Keep it.”
October 10 Tuesday
October 11 Wednesday – On a day when England’s ultimatum to the Boers expired and war was to begin, Sam wrote a squib, just to whom has not been determined..
London, 3.07 P.M., Wednesday, October 11, 1899. The time is up! Without a doubt the first shot in the war is being fired to-day in South Africa at this moment. Some man had to be the first to fall; he has fallen. Whose heart is broken by this murder? For, be he Boer or be he Briton, it is murder, & England committed it by the hand of Chamberlain & the Cabinet, the lackeys of Cecil Rhodes & his Forty Thieves, the South Africa Company [MTB 1095]. Note: Paine quotes this and also uses the holographic illustration of the note on p. 1097. Lest the reader be confused, as this editor was at first, the note does not have anything to do with the letter to C.F. Moberly Bell “Don’t give me away…” of July 16, 1900, part of which is also shown above the illustration.
Edward Everett Hale wrote to Sam from Roxbury, Mass., to thank him for the article in the Cosmopolitan. “Seriously, I think it will do no end of good. There are some things which can only be met by ridicule, and where ridicule does work that no amount of logic can do. / You have tackled a problem which all the rest of us have shirked, and it seems to me that you have done it wonderfully well” [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the letter “Ans Nov 1 ’99.”
October 12 Thursday – At 30 Wellington Court, London, Sam replied to James Henry Wiggin’s Sept. 30 letter. Wiggin was one of the editors who revised Mary Baker Eddy’s “bible.”
I am very glad indeed to get your letter—it shows that I have learned how to guess. At least to this extent: that a smooth Bible & rough miscellaneous literature indicate the presence of a polisher around the establishment somewhere. If the C.S.’s [Christian Scientists] should come out & say polishers are not employed, may I use your letter in silencing them? [MTP].
Henry M. Alden for Harper & Brothers wrote to Sam that he was “wholly mistaken” in his view of relations between them and Frank Bliss about the English copies of the Uniform Edition. The American copyright notice was required so that no one “could reprint from such copies imported into this country.” Alden further protested that they had done nothing to obstruct or embarrass Bliss and that “concessions …made to Mr. Bliss were entirely due to their friendship to you” [MTP].
Sam’s bill at Queen Anne Residential Mansions & hotel for £ 25.11.8 for the period Sept. 30 to Oct. 6, 1899 was paid [1899 Financial file MTP].
October 13 Friday
October 14 Saturday – At 30 Wellington Court (Albert Gate) London, Sam wrote to Poultney Bigelow.
(Don’t give that address away)
We waited and waited and yearned and yearned for you two Bigelows last night and you horribly disappointed us. See that you do better tomorrow night.
SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.