January 23 Sunday – Sam read a newspaper article in today’s Tagblatt, which inspired him to write the essay, “The New War-Scare.” [Sotheby’s sale catalog, The Maurice F. Neville Collection of Modern Literature, 13 April 2004, Lot NO7980] Note: source reads in part:

“James Pepper explains the genesis of the story [‘The New War- Scare’] in his preface to the 1981 Neville edition. “The New War-Scare was written in 1898 during Mark Twain’s sojourn in Vienna. The author found inspiration by reading a Viennese newspaper article in the Tagblatt of January 23, 1898, which contained a detailed listing of Monaco’s government expenses. Twain’s comic incorporation of this list provides the center around which the story is built.”