January 21 Monday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.
Yours of the 8th is received.
That is the very thing. If you will write that sort of a letter to [Bram] Stoker, I’ll be very glad, and will keep diligently aloof myself.
January 20 Sunday – The New York Times, p.3, ran a short excerpt from Sam’s N.A.R. article about Bourget:
January 19 Saturday – The Athenaeum, No. 3508 p.83-4 briefly reviewed PW: “The story in itself Is not much credit to Mark Twain’s skill as a novelist,” and few of the characters are striking, but “If the preface (with its tasteless humor) be skipped, the book well repays reading just for the really excellent picture of Roxana” [Tenney 24].
January 18 Friday – Livy wrote to Annie Trumbull, a fragment of which survives:
“…of the fact that I was greatly embarrassed by her manner and at my wit’s ends as to how to meet it. I rather liked the woman. / I want very much to know how you are this winter” [MTP].
January 17 Thursday – H.H. Rogers also wrote to Sam, letter not extant but mentioned in Feb. 8 to Rogers; disclosed a $200 check received in New York from Frank Bliss.
January 16 Wednesday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam responded to Irving Bacheller of Bachellor & Johnson Syndicate, also known as The New York Press Syndicate.
I shall be too busy for the next two or three months to undertake that most difficult & bothersome thing, a short story…. In my experience it costs less work to write a big book…than it does to write a little story.
January 15 Tuesday – H.H. Rogers wrote to Sam, letter not extant but mentioned in Jan. 29 to Rogers.
January 9 Wednesday – The New York Times, rarely complimentary to Mark Twain, ran an editorial, p.4. with no title:
January 8 Tuesday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers about being frustrated by Franklin Whitmore not sending monthly itemized accounts as requested, and not saying a word “until his exchequer has run dry.” He’d just received Whitmore’s letter through Bainbridge Colby, with an accounting covering nine months of Hartford expenses. Sam noted he’d just written Whitmore and advised him that the current royalty check from the American Publishing Co.
January 7 Monday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus, enclosing a Dec. 26 letter from Frank Hall Scott (1848-1912), president of The Century Co. The letter inquired about a Mr. F. Fauveau translating The £1,000,000 Bank-Note and Other New Stories to French. Sam responded:
All authorities of this sort in your hands, thank goodness!