August 13 Friday – Sam’s notebook:

“The Jubilee Singers sang at the Lowen last night—diviner, even, than in their early days, 26 years ago. They came up to the house this morning & sang to us. They are as fine people s I am acquainted with in any country” [NB 42 TS 24-5].

In Weggis, Switzerland Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers, advising that Katharine Harrison’s July 30 had arrived with the news that Bliss had paid the $10,000.

Good. Maybe now he [Bliss] will like to save himself the trouble of publishing the de luxe if he can get as much out of it as he was expected to get without that trouble—by turning it over to us for $1800. That was all he expected to make. He ciphered it out in my study, & I’ve still got his figures, somewhere.

I am writing a novel, & am getting along very well with it [the unfinished “Hellfire Hotchkiss”.]

Sam praised Weggis, “half an hour from Lucerne” as the “loveliest in the world.”  We have a small house on the hillside all to ourselves, & our meals are served in it from the inn below the lake shore. Six francs a day per head, house & food included. The scenery is beyond comparison beautiful. We have a rowboat & some bicycles, & good roads, & no visitors. Nobody knows we are here. And Sunday in heaven is noisy compared to this quietness [MTHHR 299]. Note: Source, note 1: Sam began Hellfire Hotchkiss on Aug. 4. See entry.