Summer Jaunt to Ischyl, Hallstatt & Heat – Elegy to Susy
Rogers Won’t Bite on Inventions, Makes Stock Gains – Clemenses Wealthy Again
A Torrent of Magazine Articles – Assassination! –“Burn the Rhymes”– Plans for Home
1898 – Sam recorded he was paid $9,938.72 this year by the American Publishing Co. and noted “Equator” by the entry. He estimated the Co. cleared $2,000 [NB 46 TS 17].
In an unknown place Sam wrote to Frank E. Bliss of being a “sick-nurse” to Livy, who was “dangerously ill” [MTP].
In Vienna, Austria Sam wrote to an unidentified man he addressed as “Dear Fellow-Conspirator,” probably one of his literary or lecture agents. Half of the letter is in German.
“I have secured the best agent in the world, & am ready for business. He will take care of the business of England, & I am writing to ask him to take care of it in America & the British colonies also…” [MTP: Parke-Bernet Galleries catalogs Oct. 8, 1963, Item 56].
Henry S. Pancoast briefly discussed Mark Twain in An Introduction to American Literature (N.Y. Holt Co.) Tenney: “…criticizing the ‘cynical levity’ of IA; concedes in a footnote: ‘It is but just to remind the student that Mark Twain has done some excellent work of a quite different character. He is here alluded to simply as a humorist” [29].
Robert H. Fletcher, ed. The Annals of the Bohemian Club, etc. (San Francisco). On p. 52 notes that Mark Twain became an honorary member Oct. 17, 1873, as did Bret Harte, “about the same time” [Tenney: “A Reference Guide Fifth Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1981 p. 164].
John Henton Carter’s (“Commodore Rollingpin”) The Man at the Wheel, St. Louis, included an account of conversation with an unnamed pilot who said Sam Clemens was too dreamy to be a good pilot, but he was writing funny things even in his piloting days. Facing p.15, a cartoon sketch of MT in pilot-house, seen from behind” [Tenney: “A Reference Guide Second Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1978 p. 170].
Kate Sanborn’s My Favorite Lectures of Long Ago, for Friends who Remember contained “Our Early Newspaper Wits.” Tenney: “on MT, pp. 247-249. A superficial analysis of MT’s humor begins with ‘solemn misstatement and specific exaggeration,’ briefly comments on MT’s portrayal of German newspapers in TA, and ends by citing the praise of Brander Matthews” [“A Reference Guide Third Annual Supplement,” American Literary Realism, Autumn 1979 p. 185].