November 10 Wednesday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam began a letter to H.H. Rogers that he finished Nov. 11

I throw up the sponge. I pull down the flag. Let us begin on those debts. I cannot bear the weight any longer. It totally unfits me for work. I have lost three entire months, now. In that time I have begun twenty magazine articles & books—& flung every one of them aside in turn. The debts interfered every time, & took the spirit out of the work. And yet I have worked like a bond slave, & wasted no time & spared no effort. A man can’t possibly write the kind of stuff that is required of me unless he have an unharrassed mind. My stuff is worth more in the market to-day than it ever was before—& yet in 3 months I have not succeeded in turning out fifty acceptable pages.

Sam directed Rogers to pay the Webster creditors $ 10,000 on a pro rata basis on Dec. 1, and the same amount on Jan. 1, 1898, then finish paying them in full on Feb. 1, 1898. He expressed this was Livy’s wish as well. Leaving out the Mount Morris Bank and the disputed amount to the Grant family, Sam figured the $30,000 would pay all the other creditors in full. He maintained the bank’s claim was false.

When they were ready to “knock off half,” he’d be ready “to compromise on that basis” [MTHHR 303-4].

The ledger books of Chatto & Windus show that 5,000 additional copies of More Tramps Abroad, (FE) were printed (totaling 10,000 to date), though the official English publication date would not be until

Nov. 25 [Welland 238]. See Aug. 12, Nov. 25, Dec. 22, Mar. 8, 1898, Oct. 11, 1900, and Aug. 7, 1907 for other print run amounts, totaling 30,000.