June 13 Sunday – At 23 Tedworth Square in London, Sam began a note to John Y. MacAlister that he finished on June 14.

I am afraid to venture to the Savage; there could be too many people there for a recluse. I think it will be better to wait till we can have a quiet & reposeful smoke together. I would have been to see you and inquire personally after your health before this, but I took a contract to do some work, & it has kept me thoroughly busy ever since—that & my American publisher together. He is here, & absorbs all my spare moments with business talks & plans, & yet is of no use to me in my revising, which goes steadily, tediously & endlessly on  [MTP].

Note: despite Sam’s claims of being “finished” with FE, the latest being declarations on June 3 to Fuller (on top of May 18 to Rogers and Livy), he was still revising here. On June 16, however, he gave half the MS that had been typed to Frank Bliss, and would send the other half when typed.

The New York Herald, section 4, p.1, ran “Mark Twain Smiling through His Tears,” another article about him not dying—at least, not faster than anyone else [MTCI 318-20].

The Brooklyn Eagle, p.6, asked, “Isn’t it a little sad that Mark Twain’s birthplace was pulled down in Missouri the other day without a word of protest from anyone?” See June 9 Courant article.