March 24 Thursday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, detailing the visit of Ludwig Kleinberg of the previous night. Sam closed with:

You & Mrs. Rogers need not hurry. If you reach here by the 1st of May it wil do. The country will be lovely, then.

March 25 Friday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote a short note to Frank Bliss suggesting he begin the Uniform Edition with IA, and then Harper” [MTP].

On Mar. 18 in his meeting with William M. Wood about the raster machine, Sam offered to make an appointment for the two of them for Mar. 25 at Jan Szcepanik’s laboratory [Dolmetsch 201]. Note: it is assumed they kept the appointment.

March 28 Monday – Sam’s notebook covers this day and a midnight reading at a home for English Governesses:

Monday, March 28, ’98. A splendid spring day. Charley Langdon and Jervis have reached London, & will come here about mid-April. They will tell us about Katy Leary, who was cabled for, two or three weeks ago, left us, after nearly 18 years’ service in our family. Prof. Dr. Winternitz called & examined Livy & Clara, to see if the Kaltenleutgeben baths will suit the complexion of their ailments.

March 29 Tuesday – The performances at Miss Virginia Bailie’s Home for English Governesses ran past midnight into the wee hours.

March 30 Wednesday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Frank Bliss, thanking him for the FE with special binding that had arrived for Princess Pauline Metternich. He also said that his niece, Annie Moffett “has those old pictures of me” and offered her address in Fredonia, N.Y. [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Dr. Rudolf Lindau:

March 31 Thursday – The following from “From the ‘London Times’ of 1904” may or may not have happened; Burnam posits that this “flashback, the scene of which is Vienna, the time March 31, 1898, or some eight months before the tale appeared in print.” He then quotes from the story:

April – Overland Monthly p.378-80 ran an anonymous review, Following the Equator in Zigzag: Tenney: “A review, using abundant quotation to illustrate an estimate of Following the Equator as ‘a happy and interesting jumble…a traveler’s miscellany’” [27]. Note: this and many other reviews will be found in Budd’s 1999 Mark Twain: The Contemporary Reviews.

April 1 Friday – An unidentified person wrote in Polish to “The Great American Humorist”; only the envelope survives [MTP].

Fatout lists an unidentified dinner where Sam gave four speeches [MT Speaking 665]. Note: Fatout gives no particulars and none were found.

April 2 Saturday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Richard Watson Gilder of the Century Co., who had recently questioned American Publishing Co. giving McClure’s a segment of FE (without Sam’s knowledge) while refusing it to the Century.

April 3 Sunday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote an afterthought to his Apr. 2 to Richard Watson Gilder: “P.S. / This should be the heading: / From the London Times of 1904. / The MS was mailed / before I thought of / the change. / S L C” [MTP].

April 7 Thursday – The front page of the Apr. 8 Illustrirtes Wiener Extrablatt displayed a drawing engulfing nearly the entire page of firemen rescuing a suicidal countess at the Hotel Metropole. Mark Twain is pictured gawking out one window [Dolmetsch 52].

April 8 Friday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to an invitation (not extant) from Walter Besant. Sam would like to make the event (likely The Society of Authors, of which Besant was the founder), but he would have to write Mr. Thring that his “spring- movements” were “not prophecyable.” (Also active in the Society was G. Herbert Thring (1859-1941). It wasn’t likely he’d be in London in May or June, since Clara’s musical education would interfere.

April 10 Sunday – Sam inscribed a copy of FE to James H. Scott: Mr. James H. Scott / with the

compliments & respects of / The Author. / Good friends, good books & a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / Vienna, Apl. 10, 1898 [MTP].

April 11 Monday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Eupemia A. Suverkrop, an editor of American Machinist (New York; published continuously since 1877).

April 12 Tuesday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote two letters to George Barrow—however at the top is written: “(Disapproved by Mrs. C. & not sent).” Sam reacted to Barrow expecting interest on Sam’s debt to him, and referred him to H.H. Rogers [MTP]. For the full text of these unsent letters to Barrow, see MTHHR 341n1. Also see next to Rogers.

Sam also wrote to H.H. Rogers

April 15 Friday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Arthur E. Gilbert, the pipe dealer in London, suggesting wording for his testimonial on what Gilbert wanted to call the “Mark Twain pipe.” Sam offered “It is the sweetest & cleanest of all pipes,” and then confessed under “Private” that “For weeks it was a terrible tongue-biter,” but after breaking it in he’d be in “bad shape indeed” should he lose it.

April 16 Saturday – Literary Digest “ran a brief anonymous item noting the unanimous praise by the British press for MT’s paying off the last of the Webster and Company debts” [Tenney 28]

April 19 Tuesday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Mr. Dagobert Wlaschim, the letter not extant but referred to and quoted in the following notebook entry for this day:

Apl. 19, ’98. Concerning my portrait on post-cards I have to-day written to Mr. Dagobert Wlaschim the following—a definite promise, yet on which binds me to nothing more than the withholding of authorization— a promise easy to keep:

April 20 Wednesday – Charles J. Langdon and son Jervis Langdon II left Vienna after a nine-day visit with the Clemens family [Apr. 21 to Rogers].

In the evening Ludwig Kleinberg and his partner (likely Dr. Alfred Winternitz) visited the hotel and told Sam about a machine that made “blankets and other cloth out of peat—peat-fibre mixed with cotton—or with wool if you want better goods” [Apr. 21 to Rogers].

April 21 Thursday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to H.H. Rogers’ letter (not extant) of American marketplace facts for the Raster textile-designing machine.

You have furnished me facts which are intelligible—and worth a good deal more than foggy guesses gotten out of a census-report 18 years old.

April 22 Friday – The ledger books of Chatto & Windus show that between Apr. 22, 1898 and June 6, 1906, six printings totaling 11,000 additional copies of HF were printed , totaling 43,500 [Welland 236].

April 25 Monday – The Salt Lake City Tribune ran “Dan De Quille and Mark Twain. Reminiscences by an Old Associate Editor of Virginia City, Nevada” (C.A.V. Putnam) in honor of Dan De Quille, who died on Mar. 16.

Spain declared war on the United States. The US noted that the two countries had in effect been at war since Apr. 20. Tensions ran high since the mysterious explosion of the Battleship Maine on Feb. 15.

April 26 Tuesday – A final batch of letters of thanks from paid creditors of the C.L. Webster & Co. were forwarded by Katharine I. Harrison to Sam [MTHHR 323 and n1]. See also Feb. 25 from Harrison.

April 29 Friday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Richard Watson Gilder who had replied (not extant) to Sam’s article, “From the ‘London Times’ of 1904.” “All right, measure it by the page & call it $140 per page.”

April 30 Saturday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to ask Chatto & Windus to send one each of his books P&P, JA, PW, TS, and HF for a “vast Fair (benevolent) to be held here May 17”

[MTP: Remember When Auctions, Inc. catalogs, Mar. 21-2, 1998, No. 43, Item 882].