May 16 Monday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Mollie Clemens.

The “boy-picture holding the printers’ stick”—I remember it well. It was a daguerrotype. I destroyed it in Pamela’s house in St Louis in the spring of 1861 [Note: Sam did not destroy all copies of the picture, which the MTP puts a Nov. 29, 1850 date on and the photographer as G.H. Jones]

The Clemens family was “in a turmoil of trunk-packing” to go to Kaltenleutgeben (on May 20), where they had rented a “furnished house at economical cost for the summer.” Sam then related that the French and Germans were in sympathy with Spain in the impending war (declared by Spain on May 25), but that it didn’t affect them because their “Austrian friends & acquaintances discuss the war…in a self-possessed and rational way…without harmful results.” Sam wrote he hadn’t discovered “the least change” in the atmosphere, which had always been friendly [MTP]. Note: this is clearly a reply to a letter from Mollie (not extant), likely written earlier in the month.

Sam also sent a postcard bearing his photo and aphorism to an unidentified person: “It is best to tell the truth when we cannot think of anything better. Truly Yours / Mark Twain / May 19/98” [MTP].