January 12 Wednesday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Sam wrote to Henry Loomis Nelson, editor at Harper’s Weekly (1894-1898) .

If I had two short stories, I would send one to you & the other to a periodical where there’s an old half-way promise of mine to some-day-or-other furnish a short story—a half-promise which will probably never materialize. When a sudden impulse kicks me into attempting a short story, & the attempt succeeds to my satisfaction (which is unspeakably seldom) I’m perfectly ready & willing to part with it at customary rates. But I have to have the kick. Without it I shouldn’t ever care to make the attempt. For it usually takes 2 weeks & 3 false starts to get such a thing planned out in what you recognize to be the right way, & then half or all of another week to flutter it from the pen. Then it makes 5,000 to 10,000 words, & those are what you are paid for; $100 to $150 per 1000 words. The short story is the worst paid of all forms of literature.

N.B. 1. A poor short story isn’t worth printing.

N B. 2. A good short story is a novel in the cradle.

Often when I take it out of the cradle to play with it, I take a liking to it & raise it. That is what happened with a number of my books.

N.B. 3. In the cradle it is worth a few hundred dollars—maybe a thousand. Raised, it can be worth (Huck Finn is a case in point) forty-eight thousand.

So, you see, I never go prowling after a short story; it has to come prowling after me. For I am dam wise in my generation, & very very thoughtful.

By gracious I wish you had come to Vienna. I’d give anything to see an old friendly face [MTP]. Note: Sam misdated this letter as 1897, Hotel Metropole.