September 6 Saturday – In York Harbor, Maine Sam wrote to John Y. MacAlister, thinking Livy would be able to travel within a fortnight.
She is slowly recovering from an alarming illness which struck her Aug. 11., & which continued to be alarming, by fits & starts, until 3 or 4 days ago; then we discharged the night-doctor & retained only the day-one. She sits up ina chair now, 10 minutes at a time, twice a day.
We hope to start about the 20th, & go to Elmira, N.Y., & rest there on the hill-top several weeks; but I shall go down to New York for a couple of days in October, to be elected a Director of the Plasmon Co. It is to be organized, then, & Bergheim is coming over to help choose a Director to represent the London Co.
After a long discussion of his cure for “itching piles” (hemorrhoids) Sam talked of his writing:
As concerns a brief article for Lloyd’s [Weekly]. I’ve only one in stock, (705 words) & shan’t be writing another one this year. This one will go into Harper’s Weekly the week before my 67th birthday, which will turn up—as in previous years—Nov. 30.
The Harper’s pay me the same rate per word (20 cents) whether they’re a hundred words long or a hundred & fifty thousand, & whether the matter be preaching or funning. But outside Harper’s I have only one price for a short article, whether it be 500 words or twice as many: to-wit, $500. I’ve gone outside only once. It was to square-off an old half-promise. Now if I should sell this 705 words to Lloyd’s there would be only one price—100 guineas—they to agree to not print it earlier than Nov.20. But if you will sell it to them for that or for any other sum you please & pay your passage with it in one of those delightful Atlantic Transport ships & run over to America & see me, good. Or you can give it to them if you’ll only come. Come—come—& conspire about that specific. On the other hand, you could sail in a Canadian ship & visit Budda, then railroad it down to New York.
If Jean doesn’t go boating &c to-day I will get her to type-write that little article—then I will mail it with this [MTP]. Note: “Amended Obituaries” was the article Sam sent both to Lloyd’s Weekly and Harper’s.
Sam also wrote to Howard E. Wright of the Plasmon Co., N.Y.C.
I am glad to say that Mrs. Clemens is getting along steadily now, & is able to sit up 10 minutes at a time twice a day. We hope to be able to start to Elmira, N.Y. about Sept. 20, & possibly one or two days before.
There were days & days when she had to keep up her strength wholly on plasmon-&-water & plasmon-&-milk, but they produced belchings of gas constantly, an hour & more on a stretch. But there was no other food that she could digest at all, so she had to stick to the plasmon anyhow—& has done it straight through.
I thank you ever so much for your kind offer to come; but I couldn’t allow you for there was nothing that could be done [MTP].
Harper’s Weekly for Sept. 6 ran an anonymous article, “Huck Finn Tabooed by Denver Library,” p.1253. Tenney: “A brief note, concluding: ‘It sounds like a practical joke on the Denver library; but it is an offense against our national common-sense which ought to be quickly removed.” The same issue also contained an article by Roderic C. Penfield, “Mark Twain in His Country Home,” p. 1221, which included two photos at York Harbor, Maine and three of his surroundings there [Tenney: “A Reference Guide Third Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1979 p. 187].