August 19 Friday – In Bad Ischl, Austria, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, thanking him for the news that George Barrow & Son had finally settled, the notice (not extant) of which arrived on Aug. 16 just as they were leaving on a “pleasure trip” to Bad Ischl. Sam was now fully out of debt.

we have been sweltering two days in this hot town in a hot hotel which has no lights but candles, & puts them out in every hall & corridor all over the house at 11 p.m. It is all so primitive & depressing. We have dropped back into the dark ages. There isn’t a bath room in the house.

Moreover, Mrs. Clemens has had a cinder in her eyes for two days & a half, now, & it can’t be found nor seen—has bedded itself out of sight, & she must submit to a surgical operation. She came away to get a rest from housekeeping; but I am afraid it isn’t going to pay her. However, I am not meaning to intimate that this isn’t a good pleasure trip; for really it is. It is above average; for a cinder in your eye can improve any pleasure trip. They are always mournful orgies, & any little thing helps [MTHHR 357].

Rogers wrote to Sam, letter not extant but referred to in Aug. 29 P.S. to Rogers.

Stephen C. Massett died in N.Y.C. He was best known as “Jeems Pipes of Pipesville,” and also the first to give a concert in San Francisco. Sam noted his death on Oct. 7 in a letter to James B. Pond.