January 10 Tuesday – A PS excerpt from “Diplomatic Pay and Clothes,” in the March Forum ran in the N.Y. Times, and was published on Mar. 26, 1899, p.23, under “Current Literature.”

Mark Twain Wants $75,000.

From Mark Twain, in the Forum.

VIENNA. Jan. 10.—I see by this morning’s telegraphic news that I am not to be the new ambassador here, after all. This—well, I hardly know what to say. I—well, of course I do not care anything about it; but it is at least a surprise. I have for many months been using my influence at Washington to get this diplomatic see expanded to an Ambassadorship, with the idea, of course, th——But never mind. Let it go. It is of no consequence. I say it calmly; for I am calm. But at the same time——However, the subject has no interest for me, and never had. I never really intended to take the place, any way—I made up my mind to it months and months ago, nearly a year. But now, while I am calm, I would like to say this—that, so long as I shall continue to possess an American’s proper pride in the honor and dignity of his country, I will not take any Ambassadorship in the gift of the flat at a salary short of $75,000 a year. If I shall be charged with wanting to live beyond my country’s means, I cannot help it. A country which cannot afford Ambassador’s wages should be ashamed to have Ambassadors.

Think of a Seventeen-thousand-five-hundred-dollar Ambassador! Particularly for America. Why, it is the most ludicrous spectacle, the most inconsistent and incongruous spectacle, contrivable by even the most diseased imagination. It is a billionaire in a paper collar, a king in a breech-clout, an archangel in a tin halo. And, for pure sham and hypocrisy, the salary is just the match of the Ambassador’s official clothes [Note: Addison Harris of Indianapolis was appointed Charlemagne Tower’s replacement as the new American Ambassador to Austria].