September 5 Monday – In Bad Nauheim Sam added a PS to his Sept. 4 letter to Hall. He advised that the cholera quarantine would not stop the shipment of his Tom Sawyer MS, or so the Consul General had advised. He asked Hall to cable him “Sawyer received” c/o Drexel Harjes & Co. in Paris once the MS arrived. He added that Warner was making more than $200 a page on his current position writing the “Editor’s Study,” in Harper’s, Howells’ old post. If they wouldn’t pay him $200 a page, Sam wanted to ask them what “the difference consists of between the commercial (not literary) value of Warner’s stuff and mine?” [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Laurence Hutton, obviously answering a note (not extant).

Verily ‘tis well indeed to say Pack up & come! — but, when folk are in the throes of settling down to village-housekeeping in a foreign land & a foreign tongue, it is a thing not easy [MTP].

Note: the letter is headed, “Villa Viviani Settignano (Florence),” probably because Sam felt by the time Hutton answered the family would be on its way.