March 18 Friday – Clemens inscribed a cabinet-size photo of himself: “To Sigmund Schlesinger with cordial greetings. Mark Twain, Mar 18” [Sotheby’s June 19, 2003 Lot 7].

At 4 p.m. Sam again met with Jan Szczepanik’s banker, Ludwig Kleinberg: “Friday I went with Mr. Kleinberg & Mr. Wood to see the ‘rasters.’” [NB 40 TS 15].

More from Sam’s notebook:

To-day (18th) Mr. William M. Wood, representing American carpet interests, arrived. He is a very charming man, but he is exactly one day too late—which seems to show that I am a more charming man than he is. We talked a couple of hours very pleasantly. He wanted me to furnish him a price at which I would sell my Option. I declined, & got away from the subject. I was afraid he would offer me half a million dollars for it. I should have been obliged to take it. But I was born with the speculative instinct & I did not want that temptation put in my way.

Curious. Wood said he knew but one man in Vienna—had met him some years ago in Constantinople— Major X, an American gentleman who has served in the Austrian cavalry 32 years. He had taken the Major along as interpreter when he had his talk with Mr. Kleinberg this morning. And now I find that Major X is to be one of the guests whom I am to meet at Dr. Otis’s to-night. It is a small world [NB 40 TS 14]. (Editorial emphasis). Note: Dr. George Otis. William M. Wood may be the same William Wood who Sam put in his address book before arriving in Vienna. WilliamDolmetsch writes:

“The physician they [Clemenses] most often saw socially as well as perhaps professionally in Vienna was the expatriate Virginian Dr. George Otis, who settled in Austria after serving as a Confederate army surgeon in the Civil War. He subsequently founded the still-active American Medical Society of Vienna” [264].