February 9 Sunday – Sam wrote from Munich to Frank Bliss of progress on the book, even though he was still tearing up some of it. He sent Frank an address in Paris where they might go at any time; they planned to return to Elmira next August; to Hartford in October [MTLE 4: 20].

Sam also wrote to Orion, enclosing a draft for $25 on his Hartford bank. Orion was going to lecture attacking the rising tide of Darwinism. Sam cautioned Orion what to tell reporters when they asked him: “I have not one single word of any sort to say about Sam or Sam’s matters.” Sam asked him to be steadfast in that because he could not “abide those newspaper references” about him and his matters. He wrote that it was one reason he had stopped writing friends & relatives so much. Sam’s frankness on the question was perhaps more pointed for Orion than it would have been for Mary Fairbanks and others, but he wanted his private letters to be private.

Orion was planning to travel so Sam knew he might be approached, even hounded. Sam then proceeded to lecture his older brother about spending, “idiotic vanities” like a church pew and the like—basically, living within his means. He also increased his monthly donation to Orion eight dollars to $50. Sam closed by emphasizing he had not “written ill-naturedly or with an unkind feeling” [MTLE 4: 22].

Sam also wrote to Howells and enclosed the letter from Orion. In his answer to Orion, Sam wrote he’d done nine pages, but Livy had “shut down on it, & said it was cruel, & made me send the money & simply wish his lectures success.” Sam often felt the need to share Orion’s ineptitude with Howells.

Observe Orion’s career—that is, a little of it:

He has belonged to as many as five different religious denominations; last March he withdrew from deaconship in a Congregational Church & the superintendency of its Sunday School, in a speech in which he said that for many months (it runs in my mind that he said 13 years,) he had been a confirmed infidel, & so felt it to be his duty to retire from the flock.

Sam also expounded on Orion’s fickle voting habits, his schemes for writing, his offense at a New York Evening Post foreman swearing at him; his grand plans for a chicken farm; his debts and prepayment of interest; his conviction that he could be a successful lawyer; his idea of lecturing as “Mark Twain’s brother”; his copying Jules Verne; and his “vain, proud fool” of a wife.

If Orion ever goes to hell, he will be likely to say, “I don’t think this place is much of an invention.” And if she [Mollie Clemens] ever goes to heaven, she will be likely to say, “I am disappointed; I did not think so many would be saved” [MTLE 4: 23-6].