June 11 Tuesday – In Elmira at Quarry Farm, Sam wrote to nephew Samuel Moffett. He’d heard from J.B. Pond that San Francisco was out for the tour:

I am thoroughly disappointed. I wanted to talk half a dozen times in San Francisco, & I expected to have a good time & stay ten days & see everybody I ever knew; but Pond says the town empties itself before the first week in August, & I must not go there earlier than October — which puts my visit off till October of next year, of course. If I could have foreseen that I was not to go to Frisco I would have started around the world the other way, of course, & saved myself one crossing of the Atlantic & one crossing of our continent. I could have saved a world of time & travel.

He added that they would be taking “one of the northern routes,” in hopes the weather would be cooler, since Livy’s “health fails under heat.” Sydney would be the first port in Australia [MTP].

Sam also wrote to James B. Pond, arguing that if he had to have a circular the main feature of it should be that he was on his way to Australia and from there around the globe on a reading and talking tour for the next year.

I like the approximated itinery first rate. It is lake, all the way from Cleveland to Duluth. I wouldn’t switch aside to Milwaukie for $200,000.

Look very sharp, Pond, & arrange the railway trips according to Mrs. Clemens’s strength — so far, you seem to be watching out for that.

Sam added that if he must have 30,000 circulars to “tackle Bliss if you want to. He’ll decline, I think.”

He also wanted the casting of “that white-linen full-length Twain,” of Pond’s, probably left over from the Cable tour. He enclosed a list of seven program-talks he would give in one-night stands, and when he talked twice he would use two different programs. Number three was “Selection not yet selected,” which he called “the most important in the list,” for he’d put a new selection in it every night and in that way “build & practice a SECOND program.” The list: “My First Theft,” “The Jumping Frog,” The ex-Slave’s Story,” “Jim Baker & the Blue-jays,” “The Historical Old Ram,” and “My Last Theft” [MTP]. Note: Fatout writes of the expanded variety of Sam’s readings:

In his notebooks are at least one hundred titles of possible readings, most of them from Huckleberry Finn, Roughing It, and The Innocents Abroad, some from A Tramp Abroad, and several from Joan of Arc. On the tour he used about forty selections. The most frequent numbers were the watermelon story, the German language, grandfather’s old ram, the stabbed man, the Nevada duel, the Mexican plug, punch-brothers-punch-with-care, the whistling stammerer, the christening story, the golden arm, encounter with an interviewer, and a poem about the Ornithorhyncus he composed on shipboard. Others, less often read, were about his first meeting with Artemus Ward, Aunty Cord, Baker’s blue jays, acting as courier, the jumping frog, King Sollermun, the incorporated company of mean men, the two raft bullies, Buck Fanshaw’s funeral, and so forth [On Lecture Circuit 242].

Sam also wrote to H.H. Rogers.

Bliss is plucking up quite a spirit. He offers a guaranty of $10,000 on a round-the-world book. It makes me hesitate. I can write the very book for a subscription trade, & do it without difficulty; but those 12 articles for the Century at $12,000 would be horribly difficult.

Sam felt a book that Frank Bliss would sell by subscription might sell 60,000 copies in six months, yielding Sam $30,000 or even $40,000. He was going to write the book regardless and then he could sell parts of it to a magazine, but he wouldn’t make a previous contract with any magazine. Sam was slowly recovering, though the forecast for being out of bed kept shifting. Now it was “a week or ten days.” He felt pressured by the time left before the tour:

I’m away behindhand, of course. I’ve got to work like a slave if I leave here for Cleveland or Duluth July 7 — and that seems to be the program.

After his signature Sam wrote that the first piece on the program was “My First Theft,” which was the “Stolen Watermelon” sketch, one of Rogers’ favorites. He asked if Rogers could send him the speech he gave at the Fairhaven Town Hall dedication on Feb. 22, 1894, a speech that contained the sketch [MTHHR 151-2].