May 24 Tuesday – At the Villa Paulhof in Kaltenleutgeben near Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to an unidentified man, thanking him for his kind offer to send him some of his books—he would “now & then take advantage.” Sam had forgotten the address of the artist the man had inquired about (not extant) but Ludwig Kleinberg owned the picture and had given Sam permission for it to be reduced and used on postcards. He sent Kleinberg’s address [MTP].
Sam also sent another letter to an unidentified man:
“Yes, the sentence referred to was written either 9 years ago or 20 years, I do not know which. The main body of the article was written in 1878; additions were made to it later—up to 1890, when it was published.”
Sam then added a PS that his “gospel” involved ideas that came into his mind in sharp detail were always “shot from some one else’s head,” and he doubted he had ever had a truly new idea or known any man who had one.
“I am not jesting,” he wrote [MTP]. Note: “Mental Telegraphy” was published in Harper’s Dec. 1891.
Insert: Villa Paulhof
Sam also sent a postcard with a printed drawing of himself to Mollie Clemens: “This post-card picture is the
latest, & I think it good, but the family don’t. / With love / Sam” [MTP].
Sam dated “A Word of Encouragement for Our Blushing Exiles” May 24, 1898. It was not published in his lifetime; first published in Europe and Elsewhere, Paine ed. (1923) [Budd Collected 2: 1003-4; 260-2]. Note: this short sketch blasted those Americans in Europe who were ashamed of America for the war with Spain, and pointed out the far greater sins and hypocrisy of Russia, France and Spain.
Is it France’s respect that we are going to lose? Is our unchivalric conduct troubling a nation which exists to-day because a brave young girl saved it when its poltroons had lost it—a nation which deserted her as one man when her day of peril came? Is our treacherous assault upon a weak people distressing a nation which contributed Bartholomew’s Day to human history? Is our ruthless spirit offending the sensibilities of the nation which gave us the Reign of Terror to read about? Is our unmanly intrusion into the private affairs of a sister nation shocking the feelings of the people who sent Maximilian to Mexico? Are our shabby and pusillanimous ways outraging the fastidious people who have sent an innocent man (Dreyfus) to a living hell, taken to their embraces the slimy guilty one, and submitted to a thousand indignities Emile Zola—the manliest man in France?