December 30 Friday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria Sam began a letter to William Dean Howells that he added a PS to on Jan. 3, 1899.

December 29 Thursday – Sam wrote on Dec. 30 of Livy’s financial calculations:

December 28 Wednesday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Richard Watson Gilder.

December 27 Tuesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote and cabled H.H. Rogers.

December 26 Monday – Louisa Wohl wrote to Sam; the letter not extant but referred to in Sam’s Dec. 28 to Gilder; see entry [MTP].

December 25 Sunday – Christmas – The New York Times, ran “Hearst’s Borrowed Shirt,” a story about Sam Clemens loaning George Hearst a “biled shirt” back in Virginia City days. Hearst, unable to find a shirt to wear to a wedding, borrowed one of Sam’s, something greatly frowned on in those days, but was exposed after a fight. Just why the Times ran this story on Christmas is anyone’s guess. Roughing It, p. 416 (Chapter LVII): “For those people hated aristocrats.

December 24 Saturday – Sam related this family’s evening to William Dean Howells in his Dec. 30:

December 23 Friday – H.H. Rogers wrote to Sam, letter not extant but referred to in Jan. 3, 1899 to Rogers.

December 19 Monday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Poultney Bigelow.

I was astonished at the handwriting & took it to mean extreme age until I referred to the signature; then I judged it meant rheumatism and would presently disappear, you being young, as yet, and no proper subject for permanent infirmities of that nature.

….

December 17 Saturday – Joe Twichell wrote to Sam and Livy:

Yours of the 2nd inst. about Ned Bunce came this morning, and found me on the point of mailing you the enclosed. Yes, as you say, the old fellowship is now at the dissolving stage and we are writing one another’s obituaries. How could life ever have seemed anything but the stuff that dreams are made of. Only to hope andto grief it is long.