Sam’s notebook:

Belli Arti—It is not possible that anybody could take more  solid comfort in martydom that St. Sebastian did….The Old Master’s horses  always rear after the fashion of the kangaroo….500 Last Suppers—they all have  new table cloths with the fold wrinkles sharply defined.

The fig leaf & private members of statues are handled so  much that they are black & polished while the rest of the figure is white  & unpolished. Which sex does this handling?

Left for Florence. Good by, Dittura Agostino! [MTNJ 2: 223-5].

In Venice,  the Clemens family had increasingly been pressed by visitors who discovered  Mark Twain was in the city. After three weeks of this, they left Venice for Florence,  a ten hour train ride [Rodney 114].  They stayed at the Hotel de New York [MTNJ 2: 229].