September 18 Monday – In Sanna, Sweden Sam wrote to Mai Rogers Coe, now in London at the Carlton Hotel.

It was a great pleasure to get your note [not extant] this morning & know that you were again within reaching distance of us. Also that you have found Harry & have got him under control. I hope you are not intending to sail before we reach London—which will be the afternoon or evening of Sept. 30. …

I have not heard from your father for some little time, & it makes me uneasy about him. It is too likely that he is off yachting somewhere with Rice, & picking up Rice’s loose principles & indolent ways [MTP]. Note: Dr. Clarence C. Rice’s “morals” were a standing joke between Clemens and Rogers.

Sam also wrote to Laurence Hutton after seeing the news article of Sept. 5 which reported Twain would be living in Princeton, N.J.. upon his return.

The enclosed comes to-day from America. I wish it could be made true. Months ago I did write Mr. Bare inquire about quarters, but we couldn’t make a definite arrangement because we couldn’t tell for sure when we should be able to sail for home. Since we came here early in July to get Jean doctored up we have found out that she will have to continue the treatment in London, & possibly keep it up all winter before her cure is perfect. She has made astonishing progress in these 2½ months.

Sam wrote it was a shame they’d missed seeing them and the Twichells in London, and told also of missing Harry Rogers and Mai Rogers Coe, who had just returned to London again, but he feared they were on the way home.

Harry was in his first pants when I saw him last, & since then he has been a Columbia College boy. Why, hang it, we haven’t seen a home-face for generations! I suppose Mr. Rogers is old & fat & wearing a wig, now, & dying his moustache, but I hope not. Go & see him, & tell me privately of the ravages of time & piety [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Mr. Lee:

I have written a Boyhood-Dream Sketch, but as it can come in as well at the end of your series as earlier—best there, on one account, maybe—I will not send it just yet, but wait & get it type-written in London the first week in October. There’s about 1300 or 1500 words of prose nonsense, & 20 quatrains of Omar poetry—took me two weeks to build them. What are your highest poetry rates—where it costs a man’s bowels to grind out satisfactorily. In case the article shall suit you, how much do you bid? [MTP]. Note: perhaps this may be Sir Sidney Lee (1859-1926), English critic and biographer, though no matching publication was found. Interesting that the Omar quatrains, at least 20 of them, were included. See Nov. 13, 1898 entry.