March 8 Wednesday – Sam had agreed to give a reading and speech in German at a benefit for a charity hospital in the Festsaal of the Kaufmännische, where he had given his Concordia speech on Oct. 31, 1897. He shared the platform with Auguste Wilbrandt-Baudius) .

Sam’s notebook: March 8, ’99, Vienna. Read, this afternoon, with the poet Wilbrandt’s wife, for one of the Countess Wydenbruck-Esterhazy’s charities. (Lucerne Girl & Interviewer—had to leave out the Mexican Plug for lack of time.) Of course Frau W. was wholly ignorant of the length of her pieces. I told her she must restrict herself to 30 minutes, so that I could have 40, (and 5 for a German speech); she came loaded with an hour’s ammunition & confessed that she was only guessing at its bulk. She occupied the stage just an hour, & then I came before a perishing audience that had the death-rattle in its throat. I only saved their lives by cutting the M. Plug out of my program. Frau W. had privately added a long (written) speech glorifying me. I will never accept of help, musical or otherwise, on the platform again. Last year the music privately doubled its program. George W. Cable always stole 2/3 of the platform-time when we were out together—& with his platform-talent he was able to fatigue a corpse.

I have half-promised to go to Budapest & do a charity-reading. I bet I will run that show alone [NB 40 TS 54-55].

Note: See also Dolmetsch 118. Katona writes: “Hungarian sources, led by A HET (no. 13, 1899), accused the author of accepting the invitation to lecture in the Hungarian capital only because he was in desperate need of money. However, there is no evidence that he received any fee in Budapest, and English sources deny it”

Clearly, besides the above NB entry, Sam was no longer lecturing for fees by this time, and did so only for charity, if at all. Dolmetsch writes that Mór Jokai (1825-1904), “Hungary’s premier writer in that era…may have had something to do with the American humorist’s invitation to Budapest” [54].