In the summer of 1906, while they were living in New Hampshire, MT's biographer Albert Bigelow Paine took a series of photos of his subject sitting in a rocking chair smoking a cigar. When MT saw them, he said that they were "good," and taught a valuable "moral lesson." In an autobiographical dictation dated 31 August 1906, he asserted his intention to send "half a dozen sets of [7 of the pictures] to friends of mine who need reforming." Onto the numbered photos he wrote captions claiming to narrate what they illustrate about the workings of his mind and the progress of reform, and added a cover letter explaining their "scientific precision," which he signed this way:
