May 29 Sunday – In Cadenabbia, Italy Sam wrote to (Daniel) Willard Fiske, wealthy Cornell professor who was traveling around Italy collecting manuscripts (see Apr. 1892 listing). As Paine writes, it was through Fiske that the were directed to the Villa Viviani, which they rented for the next winter. The Villa was on a hill east of Florence, near Settignano [MTB 945].

Sam wrote of the arrangements with Fiske through a Mr. T. Childs. He asked Fiske, probably still in Rome, if he would sign the contract for him.

Orsi talked as if he would be around in an hour or so with a detailed contract for our mutual consideration, & as if the little paper I signed was a thing of no particular consequence — which was indeed the case (as I understood the translation.) But it is no matter: the villa is the main thing, though we did want to be relieved of the heavy labor & bother of hunting up furniture for it.

Mrs Clemens thinks you may be abroad in the far North when we come; therefore she wants to get the address of that cockney-speaking coachman — also the address of some other reliable livery stable, for use in case we can’t hire him. …

We have a pang every time we think of the work (& not agreeable work, either) which we have been piling onto your shoulders, & we do hope you will put every bit you can of it onto Mr. Childs’s [MTP]. Note: Leopoldo Orsi.

Sam also wrote to an unidentified man thanking him for his compliments and stating that his sympathies were with the man for wishing to preserve his native language in American homes. Sam relished the idea of American freedoms and made this observation:

There are countries where it is a punishable crime for the alien subject to use the speech that was born to him, but in America we do not care what tongue a man talks; for we know that the sentiment back of the words will be American, everytime — & deep & strong, too. Mark Twain [MTP].

Josephine Gillespie wrote from Detroit “to beg for” Sam’s autograph [MTP].