November 11 Sunday – Down with the “grippe” at the Brighton Hotel in Paris, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, wondering if he was in Chicago checking on the typesetter at the Herald. Clemens expected to move to the rental house the next day (delayed until Nov. 16).

I haven’t smoked for three days; that is because of the bronchial cough; but I am to re-begin to-morrow morning, and I will see what can be accomplished between that and night.

Sam noted the overwhelming Republican victory of Nov. 6 for Governor of New York and Mayor of New York City, and also referred to Robert Augustus Cheesebrough’s victory for Congress from New York. Cheesebrough (1837-1938) was a poet and inventor who patented Vaseline in 1870, lived to be 101, and claimed to have eaten a spoonful of the stuff every day. No doubt he slid into his coffin.

I reckon even Cheeseborough’s [sic] poetry failed to kill him, for it appears that anything and everything that was Republican was safe for a ride into camp on the avalanche. To my mind, Republican government is mighty bad government, but there seems to be plenty of evidence that democratic government is worse.

Sam also wrote he’d received the Chicago Herald newspapers, and saw that “the machine is doing neat work.” He thanked Rogers “in advance for the Riley poems,” probably James Whitcomb Riley’s Poems Here at Home (1893), which evidently were on the way.