April 6 Thursday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam added to his Apr. 2 and 5 letter to William Dean Howells.

Next Morning. I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every morning—well knowing that I shall find in it the usual depravities and baseness & hypocrisies & cruelties that make up Civilization, & cause me to put in the rest of the day pleading for damnation of the human race. I cannot seem to get my prayers answered, yet I do not despair.

(Escaped from) 5 o’clock Tea.(‘sh!) Oh, the American girl in Europe! Often she is creditable, but sometimes she is just shocking. This one, a minute ago—19, fat-face, raspy voice, pert ways, the self-complacency of God; & with it all a silly laugh (embarrassed) which kept breaking out through her chatter all along, whereas there was no call for it, for she said nothing that was funny. …

And now comes this tiresome old yellow German woman & leans out of the 6th-floor window the other side of the street, & the pigeons swarm down in a cloud & discharge their excrement on her & she feeds them

is as proud as if is she were in a sentimental German book. I can never keep my temper when she is showing off like that. She reminds me of the loathsome pigeons of St. Mark in V. I wonder why she doesn’t fall out & break her neck.

Sam also railed against news that Helen M. Gould, daughter of Jay Gould, had won awards for her large donations to charity, as he put it, “from her investments of stolen money” [MTHL 2: 691-2]. Note: See notes in source, p. 693-4.

Elizabeth Bacon Custer wrote to Sam: “May I ask the privilege of introducing to you the son of some warm friends of mine in Springfield, Massachusetts. / Mr Brewer Corcoran.” The rest of the letter is simply her expressions of regard [MTP].