October 1 Saturday – In Kaltenleutgeben, Austria, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, thinking he’d been indiscreet in writing J. Henry Harper on Aug. 30 (see entry).

When yours of the 25th August [not extant] told me terms had been arranged and Bliss started home saying he was happy, I at once did a foolish thing—jumped to the conclusion that nothing I could now say could kick up a new complication; so I wrote Mr. Harper that I was sorry it hadn’t turned out that he could handle all my books in the trade and Bliss handle them by subscription….I wish you would stay close enough by, so that you could kick me upon occasions of this kind [this sentence was circled].

Sam had received his old Harper’s Monthly Dec. 1866 article, “Forty-three Days in an Open Boat”:

To-day I mean to get to work on an article for Harper’s about the Shipwreck of the Hornet—he has sent me the magazine I wanted for a text.

Bliss seems so desperately in earnest that I think he fully means to accomplish something with his Uniform and his de luxe.

The Hornet article will be needed to fill out the new book.

I am pretty well along with a new story, but I am not expecting to get that into that volume. It won’t be long enough for a book by itself, perhaps, yet too long to crowd into that one.

You will be home by Oct. 15—the day we set up shop in Vienna again. Receive my blessing! [MTHHR 366].

Notse: the essay, “My Debut as a Literary Person,” was used as the title piece in the 1903 My Debut as a Literary Person and Essays and Other Stories. The latter “new story” was “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg.” The article with the Hornet text would eventually be published in the Nov. 1899 Century as “My Debut as a Literary Person.” Sam noted the letter to Rogers in his notebook [NB 40 TS 46].

October 1-13 – Sam’s notebook entry contains four quatrains: “AGE—A Rubaiyat” [NB 40 TS 47].