October 13 Thursday – At the Villa Viviani in Florence, Sam wrote to Henry M. Alden of Harper’s.
I am going to send you an article entitled “A Curious Book” if I can finish it to my satisfaction; & if you like it & don’t like my price, won’t you make one yourself, so that I can see how far my arguments fail of being sound?
Sam added a PS and a PPS, then another PS about how Alden might accept, by coordinating with Fred Hall or directly; then Sam thought he might send “The £1,000,000 Bank Note” story — then reconsidered that it wasn’t “fair to shove both of them” at him, that he’d “distribute the burden and send the minor one to the Century” [MTP].
Sam also wrote a short note to Chatto & Windus asking them to send him the bibliography at the end of the Joan of Arc article in the Encyclopedia Britannica [MTP].
Lastly, Sam wrote a letter to Frederick J. Hall with a list of works for a new book, which was to become The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other Stories. He noted these stories totaled 70,000 words, the same total as in HF. He advised that he’d sent the 8,000 article “A Curious Book” to Harper’s and “The £1,000,000 Bank Note” to the Century. His list:
1. Preface — (if I concluded to write one.)
2. “A Curious Book” is the article I am sending to Harper.
3. “The Enemy Conquered” is the curious book unabridged — as you will see.
4. The Californian’s Tale.
5. Meistershcaft [Sam bracketed #4 and #5 and wrote “herewith enclosed”
6. About Ships — that’s the Ship article you’ve already got. I don’t care to publish it in any magazine or newspaper.
7. Playing Courier — (enclosed[)]
8. German Chicago —
9. £1,000,000 Bank Note. Well, I will send this to Harper, too. If they don’t want it, we’ll put it in the book without previous publication.
Sam’s PS re-wrote the list and deleted the preface [MTLTP 322-3]. Note: Sam expressed no qualms about recycling some pieces. Further, this is most of the material that would appear in £1,000,000 Bank Note — six of the nine pieces. Messent notes that his listing of “Meisterschaft,” which had just appeared in Merry Tales “indicates that perhaps Twain had not yet seen Merry Tales and was unaware of its final selection of material” [Short Works, 116].