October 4 Monday – At 5 p.m. at the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Sam wrote again to Eduard Pötzl.

Thank you ever so much for the books & the Feuilleton, & for the offer to show me the city: I accept the whole, gratefully. I shall be very glad to have you along when I get arrested on the bridge, because you will be able to explain the case to the police (and divide the punishment.)

Sam added that the gout was gone and he would get out of bed within the hour. He would be finished with breakfast by eleven the following morning and dressed & glad to see Pötzl if he could come then. “I am tired of the house; I want to get out on that bridge” [MTP]. Note: the bridge reference was to Pötzl’s article in the Oct. 3 issue of Neues Wiener Tagblatt.

Note: a Feuilleton (a diminutive of French: feuillet, meaning the leaf of a book) was a supplement, usually to a newspaper. It is doubtful that the appointment was made, for on Oct. 8 to Rogers, Sam commented he’d “seen nothing of Vienna except what is visible from the hotel windows.”

Clara’s recollection further illuminates Sam’s reference to the bridge, and to his making good on Pötzl’s imaginary incident:

Mr. Pötzl was also an excellent guide and led Father all over the city. One of their favorite pastimes was to stand on one of the bridges spanning the Danube and watch the boats of many sizes steam up and down the rippling waters, which were of a decided brown shade and not a dazzling blue, as reports would have one believe [MFMT 191].

The Hartford Courant, p.1, announced, somewhat in advance of the November issue date for FE, denoting a subscription campaign had begun. This would be the last of Twain’s works sold by subscription; later works published by Harper’s would lack the wealth of illustrations demanded by subscription books and be sold exclusively in the trade.

SOMETHING ABOUT “FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.”

To be Sold by Subscription—The Sandwich Islands—A story of Boer Hospitality

Mark Twain’s new book, “Following the Equator,” is published by the American [Publishing] Company of this city and is sold by subscription. It is beautifully illustrated by noted American artists, including A.B. Frost, Dan Beard, Peter Newell, B. West Clinedinst, and others.