January 25 Monday – A London Daily News employee in Vienna wrote to Sam, thanking him for his “answer which I should consider perfectly justified if I thought you were going to lecture on improvisation.” He mentioned story titles that Sam was going to read (that page lost). He also answered a concern of Sam’s: “Alas there is nobody in all Vienna who can take an English lecture down in shorthand” [MTP]. Note: Sam may have had concerns, as he used to have on the lecture circuit, about having his talk reprinted verbatim in the press.

John D. Champlin, Rossiter Johnson, and George Cary Eggleston, Committee of the Authors Club, signed a letter to Sam, which stated that his “somewhat facetious deduction from a false promise” did not sway them; they would not allow Sam’s article to be reprinted by Harpers [MTP]. Note: the Club was playing hardball about owning Sam’s piece “The Californian’s Tale,” which the Club included in The First Book of the Authors Club; Liber Scriptorum (1893). See next entry and also June 1891.

The Authors Club also wrote to Harper & Brothers that they’d rec’d their letter of Jan. 15 with two Twain letters enclosed. The Liber Scriptorum Committee failed to see Sam’s point—“The Committee has never conceded the right of any contributor to reprint his contribution,” and Sam’s assertion was “wholly gratutitous” [MTP].

The ledger books of Chatto & Windus show that between Jan. 25, 1897 and Dec. 14, 1905, four printings totalling 7,000 additional copies of Roughing It, were printed , totaling 9,000 [Welland 236].