July 18 Friday – In York Harbor, Sam wrote to an unidentified person. The Camperdown Chronicle of Victoria, Australia, p.5, carried this article, which contains Sam’s reply to a gentleman who had discovered a library in Venice, Italy containing thousands of books yet only one in English, LM.
York Harbor, July 18.—Dear Sir.—I thank you very much. That book is even more flatteringly isolated than was one a stranger wrote me about, years ago, from the Far West. He said: ‘In a 400-mile horseback ride through the cattle domain I found but a solitary two books among the cowboys—“The Innocents Abroad” and the Bible.’ And he added, ‘The Bible was in good condition.’—Very truly yours, Mark Twain.
Frank Bliss wrote to Sam from the Grand Union Hotel in N.Y.C. reporting he’d written the Harpers asking for a satisfactory date for him to publish the “Double- barrelled Detective Story”. He was also trying to resolve the Underwood-Newbegin problem and would stay in town to do so [MTP].