March – Harper’s Monthly published Mark Twain’s “Stirring Times in Austria” in their Mar. 1898 issue. Dolmetsch writes of the reaction in Vienna to the article, which:

…did not escape notice in Vienna newspapers., adding more fuel to the anti-Semites’ fire. Even his friends on the Neue Freie Presse, lengthily reviewing “Stirring Times” in two separate articles and generally sympathetic to his views, were surprised at his “brutally frank” report of the stormy scenes he had witnessed in the Reichsrat in November 1897 and at his being so “shaken” by the events. They were, moreover, offended by his quoting a Viennese friend’s remark, whether true or not, that “there is not a single Austrian who has made a name for himself that would be known around the entire globe.” Mark Twain’s “friend,” the anti-Semitic press observed, “was another Jewish lie…” [174]. Note: “Stirring Times” was collected in The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900).

Also in Harper’s by Joel Benton: “Reminiscences of Eminent Lecturers,” p. 603-14. Tenney: “Contains a rather conventional description of MT’s manner on the lecture platform” [29].

Katy Leary, Clemens family servant for nearly 18 years, was cabled home in early March. Sam noted this on Mar. 28 in his notebook, but did not give the reason. Her father, Fenton Leary (1828-1898) died on Mar. 29, 1898, and her mother, Margaret Connelly Leary (1829-1899) died a year later, on Apr. 28, 1899, so family illness is likely the reason for Katy’s return to the US. She rejoined the Clemens family sometime later in the year [NB 40 TS 18; “Fenton Leary Family in the United States,” Elmira College]. Thanks to Mark Woodhouse of Elmira College.