March 12 Sunday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam added a P.S. to his Mar. 1 and Mar. 11 letter to John Kendrick Bangs:

Please suppress “The Great Republic’s Peanut Stand” till you hear from me again.

The brief chapter which I have kept back in [sic is] the nuts of the whole thing—without it the article is a eunich. But I must get some lacking statistics & make those testicles perfectly sound before I print; & this may take me two or three months. I want the nuts to follow immediately after the preceding chapters, with no more than a week’s interval between—otherwise they must greatly lose in value [MTP]. Note: the essay remained unpublished.

Sam also wrote to Frank Bliss, who evidently had sent some sample pages of the forthcoming Uniform Edition volumes. Bliss’ letter is not extant.

“Manifestly they are going to be beautiful books.

I hope the 2 lots of title-pages will arrive soon, for I am preparing a lecture to deliver in Budapest, & shall do no literary work in the meantime.”

Sam didn’t recall the article “What Ought He to Have Done?” and wanted to see it first. He definitely didn’t want the Sheldon Autobiography used as he’d “bought the plates and destroyed them many years ago” [MTP].

Note: Sam’s reaction to the article in the May 1885 issue of Babyhood the: “What Ought He to Have Done?”ran in the Christian Union for July 16, 1885, and may be found in Neider’s Life As I Find It as “On Training Children,” p. 209-11. His letter was also reprinted in the July 21, 1885 Courant as “Mark Twain on the Government of Children.” Susy Clemens reported that upon reading the piece, Livy was “shocked and a little displeased,” as Sam had not conferred with Livy before sending his letter to the magazine; MTP gives the date of Sam’s letter as ca. June 11, 1885; see vol I entries [MTB 818-20].

Sam also replied to Laurence Hutton’s letter (not extant) evidently suggesting an inn in Princeton, N.J.. as a temporary residence while looking for a rental house there or in New York. Hutton lived in Princeton.

I do certainly hope you have solved the difficulty for us. Princeton would suit me as well as Heaven; better, in fact, for I shouldn’t care for that society up there. And Mrs. Clemens & Jean like this idea, too. I think maybe Clara will want to be in New York where she can infest the opera & such things; & if I could have my way about it I would make some lady friend take her into her house & under her wing & settle that part of the business. I haven’t played billiards for three years; but no matter, I’ve got a private special cue in New York which will even-up the disproportions between Mr. Cleveland and me, I judge. It is the one that Harry Gilsey gave me. It is at Mr. Rogers’ & he probably thinks it is his, by this time. But I have brushed away many of his superstitions before now, & shall be able to soften the asperities of this one.

Sam mentioned some specific needs for such an inn. He also was concerned about being harried by customs officials upon their return, repeating that he expected an arrival “about the beginning of October.”

Three hours later. Meantime I have been out to a dinner—& saw a curious thing. I will tell you about it when I see you.

The family & Miss Burbank & Miss Mosher have been to the opera, & I hear them in the next room eating supper & cackling—talking scandal, I reckon.

We are presently going pleasuring down to Budapest for a week, where I have agreed to lecture for a charity. Many & many’s the time I have sworn off from the platform; I delivered a final farewell to it forever here four days ago—& already I have fell again. Nothing has saved me from being a harlot but my sex [MTP].

Note: Henry “Harry” Gilsey (1845-1908) gave Sam the cue in August, 1894; See Aug. 7, 1894 entry. Gilsey was the son of Peter Gilsey, founder of NY’s Gilsey House. Miss Emily M. Burbank (ca. 1869-1934), NY writer and lecturer, and Miss Florence Mosher, a pupil of Leschetizky. Emily would attend Mark Twain’s funeral in 1910.