April 30, 1898 Saturday

April 30 Saturday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to ask Chatto & Windus to send one each of his books P&P, JA, PW, TS, and HF for a “vast Fair (benevolent) to be held here May 17”

[MTP: Remember When Auctions, Inc. catalogs, Mar. 21-2, 1998, No. 43, Item 882].

April 29, 1898 Friday

April 29 Friday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Richard Watson Gilder who had replied (not extant) to Sam’s article, “From the ‘London Times’ of 1904.” “All right, measure it by the page & call it $140 per page.”

April 25, 1898 Monday

April 25 Monday – The Salt Lake City Tribune ran “Dan De Quille and Mark Twain. Reminiscences by an Old Associate Editor of Virginia City, Nevada” (C.A.V. Putnam) in honor of Dan De Quille, who died on Mar. 16.

Spain declared war on the United States. The US noted that the two countries had in effect been at war since Apr. 20. Tensions ran high since the mysterious explosion of the Battleship Maine on Feb. 15.

April 21, 1898 Thursday

April 21 Thursday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam replied to H.H. Rogers’ letter (not extant) of American marketplace facts for the Raster textile-designing machine.

You have furnished me facts which are intelligible—and worth a good deal more than foggy guesses gotten out of a census-report 18 years old.

April 20, 1898 Wednesday

April 20 WednesdayCharles J. Langdon and son Jervis Langdon II left Vienna after a nine-day visit with the Clemens family [Apr. 21 to Rogers].

In the evening Ludwig Kleinberg and his partner (likely Dr. Alfred Winternitz) visited the hotel and told Sam about a machine that made “blankets and other cloth out of peat—peat-fibre mixed with cotton—or with wool if you want better goods” [Apr. 21 to Rogers].

April 19, 1898 Tuesday

April 19 Tuesday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Mr. Dagobert Wlaschim, the letter not extant but referred to and quoted in the following notebook entry for this day:

Apl. 19, ’98. Concerning my portrait on post-cards I have to-day written to Mr. Dagobert Wlaschim the following—a definite promise, yet on which binds me to nothing more than the withholding of authorization— a promise easy to keep:

April 15, 1898 Friday

April 15 Friday – At the Hotel Metropole in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Arthur E. Gilbert, the pipe dealer in London, suggesting wording for his testimonial on what Gilbert wanted to call the “Mark Twain pipe.” Sam offered “It is the sweetest & cleanest of all pipes,” and then confessed under “Private” that “For weeks it was a terrible tongue-biter,” but after breaking it in he’d be in “bad shape indeed” should he lose it.

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