January 2 Monday – In Florence Sam wrote to Laurence Hutton, who was in Egypt, “jackassing around in that summer land & viewing the Pyramids & things.” Sam reported finishing the book (probably PW) but that revising it “nearly killed” him — “Revising books is a mistake.”

I see the Umbria is reported pawing her way gradually homeward & likely to arrive in the course of time. So Harper is all right, no doubt.

Fiske probably went along to Palermo, for such were his instincts — that is, he thought he might possibly go there.

Sam also told of a 2,000 franc bank error against his Paris account and a fatal illness of “one of the brothers Maquay” at the same time. “There is something awful about these mysterious things.” He ended that they were all about the same as when Hutton had left them, except the weather was “infinitely fairer” [MTP].

Sam also wrote “the only long letter” he had “written in 7 years” to William Walter Phelps, who was headed to Algiers. Sam encouraged him to stop on the way, then waxed philosophical about the creation of the earth:

I wish I could see the Berlin friends again. The world is not made on a good plan. If the water & the deserts had been left out, & the rest of it closer together, the journeys would be endurable. One can see that God never intended to travel, or things would not be arranged as they are now. Take the universe as a whole, & it is a very clever conception & quite competently carried out, but I don’t think much of this globe as a work of art. It would have been better to take more time to it & do it right, it seems to me, than to rush it through, helter-skelter, in 6 days, just for reputation. There is a heap more rocks than there is any use for, & instead of being set off to one side out of the way, they are piled up right up everywhere that a person has to go, & consequently expensive & disagreeable tunnels are necessary. They make bars & boundaries; they separate peoples; this makes differences of language & customs; these cause war.

Sam continued working this line against too much sand, the equator, and the wastefulness of too much ocean.

If there were a few troughs a hundred miles wide & 50 feet deep, connecting the principal seaports of the world, the rest of the water could be thrown overboard with profit to everybody. They use that kind of canals in Mars — I judge Mars was made since this world — the canals point to experience acquired elsewhere. …

However, I am not finding fault with the way the world is made — no, I have more prudence that that — I 

But I might as well save ink & stop where I am, for Mrs. Clemens will not let this letter go, anyway. We have never been able to agree about this world — a matter which has caused many warlike scenes in the family. At bottom she probably has no better opinion of the globe than I have, but she has large judgment, & will not allow the thing to be discussed in a house with no lightning rod on it [MTP].

Sam also began a letter to Franklin G. Whitmore that he added a PS to on Jan. 3. He advised about the two checks he wanted sent to Hall (see Jan. 1 entry) . Sam also wrote about being up after suffering several days in bed with a cold, and that “Mrs. Clemens is fairly well & the rest of us first rate” [MTP].