May 7 Saturday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam telegraphed Chatto & Windus:

RETURN THE THICK LETTER POSTED YESTERDAY = TWAIN [MTP]. Note: Livy wanted the May 6 article suppressed; see May 13.

Sam also replied to Richard Watson Gilder, whose letter is not extant, but from this reply we can gather Gilder offered a rate for Sam’s work adding what Sam put in quotes, “If you want more, say so.” If I want more, “say so.” A young person would walk into that trap, imagining it a promise, whereas it has only the gilded outside aspect of one. He would hasten to “say so”—perhaps by cable. Then you would tell him to go to Heligoland, & the incident would be closed. But I am not a young person; I have had it, & cannot catch it again.

Sam then wrote about the “three or four times” he’d had the compliment of gaining the highest price ever paid from a publication and how it felt.

One was 31 years ago, when a now forgotten London magazine went down into its treasury & paid me $12.50 per mag. page for a 4-page article; the other was 22 years ago when the Atlantic paid me $18 per mag. page for a series of articles….

In those days the author hadn’t his to-day’s chance to scrape the fat off’n an editor, but in those days there wasn’t any fat on him—he hadn’t either circulation or advertisements [MTP].