December 29 Wednesday – In Vienna, Austria Sam replied to H.H. Rogers’ Dec. 17 (not extant).

“Yours of the 17th arrived this morning & is immensely gratifying in various ways. Lord, we are glad to see those debts diminishing! For the first time in my life I am getting more pleasure out of paying money out than pulling it in.”

Sam suggested that the Mt. Morris Bank should be paid a thousand or two a year until ten thousand was paid and then no more. He would then demand to know “what went with the false notes of $9,000.” He would like to see Harpers do better with his old books and advertise them more, but supposed they knew their “own business pretty well.”

I am very very glad that you like the book, & that others do. The notice in the Sun delighted me all over. I think John Wagner must have written it.

I guess the World article will help Bliss, rather than hurt the business. I was getting a little tired of being traded on as the only real living, unrivaled, genuwyne marketable pauper.

We seem to have a lot of money in your hands. Very glad of it, too. Pay it to our creditors. But save the gas stock.

This is a most cussed expensive town. When I get out of debt I will burn it & build a cheaper one.

Sam then claimed to have written some 30,000 words on a new book, not specified. Here pages are lost

[MTHHR 310-11].

Henry C. Robinson wrote to Sam, filling him in on all the “boys” of the now “gray- haired, limping crowd the Monday Night Club is!” They had met twice recently, with Charley Clark “as funny as a frog about Mexico” and General William B. Franklin (1823-1903) offering “some Ante-Bellum-Mexicanum reminiscences.” They played billiards with the Republican Club . Twichell had grown “a little deaf”; “Parker preaches better than ever”; “Brer Whitmore is as a busy as a pop corn in a corn popper”; Ned Bunce “had kind of a bad attack, but has got about well again” [MTP]. Note: editorial emphasis.