June 28 Tuesday – In Kaltenleutgeben near Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus, asking how many new books had been copyrighted in England for the past year. He needed it for an article [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Brainard Warner, Jr., United States Consul in Leipsic (Leipzig).

Dear Sir: I have waited to see if I could defeat my obstructions and come to Leipsic, but have failed. I cannot venture away from my desk lest I fail to finish work in hand and soon due. It costs me a pang to lose this Fourth in solitude when the fortunate may get on their feet and shout. Ordinarily I should not care, but I must care this time, for this is not an ordinary Fourth. On the contrary, it is a memorable one—the most memorable which the flag has known in thirty-three years—and there have been but two before it which may claim to rank with it as happy epoch posts in the history of the Republic—1865 and 1776. This one marks the burial of the estrangement which has existed so long and so perniciously between England and America, a welcome condition of things, which, if wisely nursed and made permanent, can be of inestimable value to both nations and incidentally to the world.

In reverence for liberty, in humanitarian and civilizing impulses, and in other great things of the heart and the spirit the two nations are kindred as well as in blood, and friendly relations between them mean the forward march of the human race. That old animosity is buried. Let us hope it will stay buried, and also hope that for centuries to come this august funeral will still continue to be celebrated at our Fourth, and that meantime any man who tries to dig up that corpse will promptly be put in condition to take its place. Truly yours. / Mark Twain [NY Times July 24, 1898, p.15, “Fourth of July in Berlin – Mark Twain Writes a Letter on Anglo-American Unity”].

Franklin G. Whitmore wrote to Sam, having rec’d Sam’s of May 5. The $1744.20 bill from Pratt &

Whitney was “indeed a very old matter. It was for making estimates and figures for the building of the plant for the Paige Machine; it took something like three months time with one or two expert men to compute the estimate. This work you authorized, personally, as I remember…. My feeling is, brother, that the whole matter will be dropped; the

charge legally is outlawed in point of fact, and I do not believe the company will care to press it”[MTP].