July 22 Wednesday – The Clemenses were on the SS Norman, en route to Southampton, England. Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, reflecting on his lecturing, the voyage, and the days ahead.

I think we have been out about a week from Cape Town — speed, an average of 410 miles a day. Very fine ship.

You have been having a tough job of it with the Blisses, et al. I don’t see how even your trained and wonderful patience has held out. . I am ashamed of being the cause of putting so much work on you; but I am grateful to you for doing it, anyway. We are looking forward with a heap of interest to the Memorandum of Agreement. We shall find it when we reach England no doubt. I do most heartily hope it will settle my publication matters once and for all. [Note: The Memorandum was the expected final agreement between Harper & Brothers, the American Publishing Co.and Mrs. Clemens for the Uniform Edition, Sam’s older books and the future FE].

Sam felt it better to have the sets of his Uniform Edition sold by subscription and the singles by Harper, but he admitted his favoring subscription “may be merely superstition.” The main thing was to sell books again. He was fed up with the platform, of which he said “there isn’t any slavery that is so exacting and so infernal.” He expressed hope that he had done it for the last time, “that bread-and-butter stress will never crowd me onto it again.” Sam had expressed his dislike for lecturing many times, and even swore off many times, “yet when on the stage, he almost always succeeded in electrifying himself to the point of pleasure,” Clara Clemens wrote [MFMT 139]. For now there was no mention of lecturing in England or America, so by this time he may have changed his plans. He loved the voyage and wished they “were a thousand days from port” [MTHHR 227-8].