June 18 Tuesday – At Quarry Farm Sam wrote to Frank Hall Scott, president of the Century Publishing Co.

I am at last able to take my attention from my pains & discomforts for a moment & do some thinking, preparatory to answering your two long-neglected letters [not extant].

I have a thought; & as a result I am convinced that the magazine articles are impracticable. Let us give up the idea.

Sam wrote that he saw Scott’s side of things, but on his side he perceived he “would not be able to meet them” (the demands of the articles). Sam felt he knew the sort of material Scott wanted and had researched that sort of matter for Australia, India and South Africa and found “the field barren for that sort of literature.” He’d been charmed by the company’s $10,000 offer, made in March, but even if the amount were doubled he couldn’t now be tempted. He explained:

To be virile & fresh, the articles would have to be written as three-fourths of the Innocents Abroad was written — intransitu. To do that, & at the same time run the lecture-business & the social business would make a botch of all three. For an old man to write a young book under exhausting pressure of other work & in trying climates — well, it could not be done.

…

In the beginning I was charmed with the unhampered, uncharted $10,000 offer which was made me last March, but if the sum were doubled it could not tempt me, now that I have done my belated thinking [MTP; MTHHR 153n1]. See Mar. 13 entry.

Note: The latter source changed “&” signs to “and”’s. It is the choice whenever two transcriptions exist, to return to the way Sam wrote his letters, that is, usually to use the & signs.

Also, about this date and before June 19, Sam wrote a note to James B. Pond:

The other two have about concluded to go straight through to Cleveland with us. [Livy & Clara.]

He wanted the electrotype lent by William Evarts Benjamin sent ahead to Australia, but didn’t care “for the others,” showing that Pond sent several pictures of Sam to be used in marketing the tour. They wouldn’t be necessary unless R.S. Smythe wanted more pictures, so he wouldn’t send them [MTP]. Note: This seems to be a fragment, lacking salutation and signature.

Sam’s thigh carbuncle dispelled a core and left “a corresponding raw cavity” in his leg; he felt it would “heal fast, now” [June 19 to Pond].

Livy wrote to Franklin G. Whitmore: “I enclose you the signed paper from the custom office. I am sorry to give you so much trouble about matters. It all comes from the fact that the dress maker did not get the articles finished when she promised to. / I was very glad that Clara could be at Hattie’s wedding; and very sorry that the rest of us could not.” She wrote of Sam being “confined to the sofa yet with his carbuncle.” She didn’t wish to rent their Hartford house save to an “intimate friend.” [MTP].