June 4 Thursday – Frederick A. Duneka for Harper & Brothers wrote offering a rather humorous reply to Twain’s of the previous day:

Oh Royal Sire: / My correspondence with royal personages has been so limited and intermittent that I am a little creaky in the joints as to the proper form of genuflective address. “Dear King” has a ring far too rudely and robustly democratic, “Dear Sire” proclaims a hint of equality which royalty is swiftly sure to resent and “O King Live Forever” is a plagiarism which spells instant expulsion from the light of the royal presence.

      So I don’t know how to begin—and this I am convinced accounts for the one-sided nature of the correspondence which I have heretofore carried on alone with Kings and such.

      But without beginning—this is to thank you for your note with its strange newspaper clipping of the Chicago man who killed himself on his 70th birthday quoting your great speech (which I had the pleasure of hearing on your 70th birthday,) and quoting it as a philosophy of Death rather than of life. My own point of view is that we could better spare people who have not yet reached this serene age, and if a method could be arranged whereby your great peroration might become executioner, I should be happy, O King! to furnish a list for the royal off-with-his-head roster.

      Thank you again for the information which I am venturing to make the basis of a “literary note”.

      With bowed forehead, I am, Hoch-wohlgeboren, / Your humble subject [MTP]. Note: Hoch- wohlgeboren = high well-born.

Irene Gerken wrote from Deal Beach, NJ to Sam.

My dear Mr. Cleamens, / I received your letter and was very glad to hear from you. I am very sorry that I could not say goodby to you but I suppose the auto was not finished in time. Is it very warm in New York it must be as it is very warm here. We have had no more lovely days like the one when I was at Dorothy’s and I hope we will not for a long time…I have not had the pleasure of having Dorothy over yet as I have been to New York with Mother but hope to have her next week [MTP; not in MTAq].

Frances Nunnally wrote to Sam.

Dear Mr. Clemens,—

      Your letter came this morning and I am so glad you are going to be in New York when we sail. I was afraid you would have gone to your new house. Mother leaves Atlanta on the sixth and is going right to New York, as she has some shopping to do before we leave. Then Father is coming up and take me up on the eleventh. I shall reach New York on the afternoon of the eleventh and will be there until some time on the thirteenth, whenever the “Minnetonka” sails. We shall be at the Waldorf and I will telephone you when I get to New York. I certainly am glad I am going to have a chance to see you before I go. I wish you were going over again this summer, The picture you enclosed in your letter reminds me so much of last summer. It is awfully good, I think.

      I want this letter to get off on the afternoon mail, so I will stop. Hoping to see you in about a week, I am / With love, / Francesca  [MTAq 167-8].