January 1 Sunday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam’s notebook:

NEW-YEAR, 1899. Note from Schelsinger [not extant], asking another month’s delay. … He would like me to promise the use of my name in advance, I think, & unconditionally.

It will be a marvel if he produces a play which I can work into a shape which will satisfy me, after all his delays. I shan’t allow my name to be used in connection with it unless it shall in all ways warrant the risk [NB 40 TS 52-3].

January – Edwin Wildman’s article “Mark Twain’s Pets,” ran in St. Nicholas Magazine, p.185-8. Tenney: “Describes a visit to MT’s study at Elmira, New York, by E.M. Van Aken, to take pictures of his cats. Two photographs are here reproduced, together with one of the ‘Quarry Farm’ house, and there are engravings of the outside of MT’s octagonal study (here called the ‘Pilot House’; it is covered with vines) and of MT at work inside (‘Drawn from a photograph by E.M. Van Aken’).

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.