April 25 Thursday – At 4 a.m. in Paris at 169 rue de l’Universite, Sam wrote to Poultney Bigelow:

Thank you ever so much for the honorary membership and the other charming hospitalities which you offer, and I wish to goodness I could take advantage of them; but we are in the midst of the hell of breaking up housekeeping and packing and planning for America — and at this unholy hour in the morning neither my wife nor I has had a wink of sleep: been planning and thinking, thinking and planning, ever since we went to bed. We couldn’t find a drop of whisky or brandy in the house, so we have got up — she to go to work, and I to wait for breakfast. (There will be whisky and brandy on the premises tonight.)

Clemens’ heart was broken over the “fortune…so shrunken” of Bigelow’s. “Lord, we know what that is!” Sam related that he’d lost “more than $200,000” on the typesetter and the losses from Webster & Co., which they “had innocently & stupidly invested there.”

So I have got to turn out in my lazy old age and go in the platform again. I have received a satisfactory invitation to come and lecture in India, Australia and South Africa and after consulting with (H.M.) Stanley have decided to accept, and shall cable Melbourne to that effect today. Mrs. Clemens, Clara & I will sail from the Pacific coast the middle of August. I expect to get through by next March & reach London early in April; then — if the thing looks favorable I will gabble around over Great Britain awhile; then gabble in America.

We all leave Southampton for America May 11 (Steamer New York) or at latest May 18 (steamer Paris.) We shall do our level best to make the first date, but it will keep us humping & not a moment to spare.

Cheer up, people! As long as you are not in debt you’re in luck. May the literary work prosper handsomely. If we were free to go canal-boating we would be with you — then I could write the book that is rankling in me [MTP]. Note: Clara was back in the world tour now; the family did make the May 11 departure date; the book “rankling” in Sam is not specified.