December 2 Friday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote condolences to Mrs. Edward M. Bunce upon hearing of the death of her husband, “Ned” on Nov. 19.

It falls like a thunder-stroke, dear Mrs. Bunce, & is the heaviest I have known in my life, & the costliest loss, except our Susy’s death. It associates itself naturally with that bereavement because in some particulars Ned was nearer & dearer to the children than was any other person not of the blood. …

November 30 Wednesday – Sam’s 63rd Birthday.

November 29 Tuesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to unidentified men.

The enclosed have reached me from America.

It seems to me that your own condensed statement is sufficient, but if it needs enlargement there is an over-abundance of material in the American sketch—which is so minutely & so faithfully exact that I judge it was furnished by the Austrian police [MTP].

November 27 Sunday – Livy’s 53rd birthday.

November 25 Friday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote right after this day, reporting on the festivities at the US Consul Charlemagne Tower’s home to Bettina Wirth.

November 24 Thursday – Thanksgiving – Charlemagne Tower, US ambassador in Vienna, gave a reception at his residence on Alleegasse for all Americans. Sam and Clara were in attendance. Dr. and Mrs. Hiester Bucher (Vara Kalbach Bucher) met Sam and Clara, as recorded in Mrs. Bucher’s diary and published in Mary Leah Christmas’ A Honeymoon in Vienna, 1898-1899:

November 21 Monday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam cabled Harper & Brothers: “ROGERS HAS

HADLEYBURG. CLEMENS” [NB 40 TS 51]. Note: MTHHR 380n2 reveals that Henry M. Alden did not understand

the message, unaware of what “Hadleyburg” was. It quotes a letter of this date by Alden to H.H. Rogers: “We do not know exactly what this means, but we shall be glad to consider anything of his that you may have.”

November 19 Saturday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote one sentence on a postcard to Chatto & Windus, perhaps relating to his “quatrains” sent on Nov. 13: “I agree to the unwisdom of it—in fact, in any form or at any figure” [MTP].

November 18 Friday – Estimated to be this day or just before, Andrew Chatto answered Sam’s Nov. 13 “scheme” about a special, limited, expensive edition of “Omar’s Old Age,” which was to be referred to in correspondence as “ABC”:

As a scathing satire on the crazy literary taste of today I consider the ABC a work of great genius—But in all my experience I have never known a case in which the writer of works of like inspiration did not at some time in after life regret the printing of them.

November 17 Thursday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Frank Bliss.

I put in 5 days on 50 pages of Introduction, & then put it in the fire. A thousand dollars’ worth of work for nothing. An author cannot successfully write about his own books nor a mother about her own children—nothing but a poorly-concealed parade of silly vanities results. No one can do the job creditably but an outsider. No one can do it best for me but Howells or Brander Matthews.