September 9 Sunday – In Etretat, France Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers that he’d overdone it.

I drove the quill too hard, and I broke down — in my head. It has now been three days since I laid up. …However, there’s compensation; for in those two days [Sept. 4 and 5] I reached and passed — successfully — a point which I was solicitous about before I ever began the book: viz., the battle of Patay. Because that would naturally be the next to the last chapter of a work consisting of either two books or one. …

I shall resume work to-day; and hereafter I will not go at such an intemperate rate. My head is pretty cob-webby yet.

Sam wrote that Livy had made up her mind to take an apartment in Paris and keep house for the winter. “It will be economy, and we shall have a home.” He also hoped that he should hear soon about the typesetter beginning its test at the Chicago Herald, and wished he could be there. He also told of being so “uneasy” about PW being published that he’d cabled Bainbridge Colby, and was now satisfied to wait and see how Frank Bliss would succeed. Sam cussed the French postal system after failing to receive a typed MS of the first segment of JA from Harpers and Brothers, which had been sent express paid on Aug. 24 [MTHHR 73-4]. Note: the MS arrived on Sept. 11.