November 21 Wednesday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, dictating the letter to daughter Clara, who added a “d” to Rogers’ name. Sam related the hard attack of the gout he’d had for a couple of weeks, which kept them at the hotel longer than they’d planned. He’d stayed in bed at the new house since. It seems that all of the Clemens girls inherited their mother’s spelling ability, something Sam teased Livy about during their courting days.

I heard from you last on the second of this month; you were then just starting for Chicago. In two or three days now the test will be over, and I am putting in these dull hours of pain and cussedness with interesting anxieties and wonderments regarding the result of it.

Sam reported that the family was charmed with the house and he would be too if he could ever see it; it was “infinitely more comfortable than the hotel,” but he feared it wouldn’t be cheaper living. He ended with a line that he found dictating “awkward and difficult,” so he sent his love [MTHHR 97].

The Brooklyn Eagle, p.6 ran a large display ad for the Youth’s Companion which listed “How to Tell a Story” by Mark Twain, as well as articles by William Dean Howells, Rudyard Kipling, J.M. Barrie and others.