December 11 Monday – In London, England Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.

I didn’t really want to write for the World, but I was loafing for a few days, & they furnished me with a text & asked for only 2,000 words & offered $500, & I thought I might as well put in an afternoon on it.

But in my case if I had sent it to Harpers they wouldn’t have wanted it enough to pay the half of that….

The cablegrams say the Harpers are straightening up & going on with their business. I wish them success—though they advertise everybody’s books but mine. I don’t see why they should select me for a victim in preference to the others. So far as I know, I have done nothing to earn or justify this treatment. They urge all books upon Christmas buyers but mine.

I am wishing you all the happiness & prosperity due at Christmas to the best man I know except one. Modesty does not allow me to name that one, & I suppose you couldn’t guess in a year [MTHHR 418-9]. Note: Harper & Bros. was being reorganized; Col. George B Harvey became president of the company and stayed in his post the rest of Sam’s life. See Nov. 17 entry.

Henry Harland’s article, “Mark Twain” ran in the London Daily Chronicle. Tenney: “(Source: Reprinted in Anderson (1971), pp. 227-31.) Primarily on IA, which typifies MT’s work: ‘The qualities and defects of The Innocents Abroad are the qualities and defects of Twain’s temperament, and they are present in varying proportions in all his books: vulgarity, naturalness, irreverence, freshness of vision, honesty, good-humor, wholesomeness.’ RI, TS, and HF are better books” [30].