February 5 Saturday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam began a letter to H.H. Rogers that he finished on Feb. 6.

Yours of Jan. 21 [not extant] was just full of charm. It will be a nobby thing if you do get that letter out of the Mount Morris. I am afraid to think about it, & almost to write about it, I am so superstitious. But if you should land those fellows! (I’ll shut up & wait.).

He related a letter rec’d from Frank Bliss several weeks before with a total of 20,000 books sold by the end of 1897; he hadn’t answered not knowing what to say, because it was about a third of what he’d supposed would sell. Sam wanted Bliss to stay away from any deluxe edition and would “have his scalp if he tries.” When he’d rec’d the Bliss letter he was “well along with” what he knew would be “a rattling good subscription book” and had the American Publishing Co. in mind for it. The letter caused him to suddenly put the MS away and he hadn’t touched it since (No single Mark Twain book after FE sold by subscription, though sets were). He related working on the “Woman in Politics” comedy with “an Austrian professional dramatist” (Siegmund Schlesinger) on a half-profit basis, a work that was “about finished.” He was doing other literary work as well:

Meantime I have translated a new and strong Austrian melancholy drama and secured the English and American rights on a half-profit basis. And between-times I have written a comedy by my self, entitled “Is He Dead?”— and I put on the finishing touches to-day and read it to Mrs. Clemens, and she thinks it is very bully. I think, myself, that for an ignorant first attempt it lacks a good deal of being bad. I am learning the trade pretty fast—I shall get the hang of it yet, I believe. I shall stick to the business right along until I either turn out something real good or find out I can’t.

Sam closed this day’s section of the letter relating his Feb. 1 platform appearance for a Viennese charity to a packed house (see entry). Livy was still not going out to mingle—and she would need to be persuaded [MTHHR 317-9]. Note: Sam would write Bliss about the disappointing sales on Feb. 11.

The Critic published a review of FE, p. 89-90. Tenney: “Praises the description, social commentary, and humor: ‘One reads as if traveling with a shrewd, kindly, sincere, and humorous man of the world who has kept only illusions enough to make life really living….With less of broad farce, this latest book has more wit, and more literary value, than any other volume of the author’s work ’” [28].