December 14 Wednesday – Sam finished revising Pudd’nhead Wilson [Dec. 15 to Clara]. Also:

Dec. 20/92. Finished ‘Pudd’nhead Wilson’ last Wednesday, 14th. [MTLTP 328-9; NB 32 TS 51].

December, first half – Sometime after moving into the Villa Viviani, the family encountered many old friends traveling in Europe. Among them was Robert Underwood Johnson. Sam also met William James (1842-1910) in Florence. James had been in the city since fall (writing on Mar. 17, 1893 to his brother Henry that he’d been there for six months). William James wrote to his colleague Josiah Royce on Dec. 18 of his first impressions of Sam:

Mark Twain is here for the winter in a villa outside the town, hard at work writing something or other. I have seen him a couple of times — a fine soft-fibered little fellow with the perversest twang and drawl, but very human and good. I should think one might grow very fond of him, and wish he’d come and live in Cambridge [Letters of William James, Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press p.333].

Powers writes, “Sam met the philosopher William James, and managed to keep quiet on the relative merits of his brother’s novels and John Bunyan’s heaven” [MT A Life 543]. Note: Powers does not reveal his sources for the content of their conversations.

By mid-December, Sam had completed “A Cure for the Blues,” to be included in The £1,000,000 Bank-Note., Etc. (1893), had finished “Those Extraordinary Twins,” and was soon to rewrite the first two-thirds of the story, making Pudd’nhead Wilson the main character (and thus changing the title), and had also written “Adam’s Diary,” about 3,800 words [BAMT 3]. See Mar. 13 to Hall.