August 12 Friday – H.H. Rogers wrote to Sam, letter not extant but referred to in Aug 28 to Rogers.

August 11 Thursday – In Kaltenleutgeben, Sam wrote to the edtor of the Forum asking if it was not too late he would like to add a sentence to his piece, “About Play-Acting” which he’d mailed on Aug. 3:

“And in still another panic of fright we have this same tough Civilization saving its Honor by condemning an innocent man to multiform death & hugging & whitewashing the guilty one” [MTP; Aug 3 to Rogers].

August 10 Wednesday – Sam’s notebook:

Aug.10. Last night dreamed of a whaling cruise in a drop of water. Not by microscope, but actually. This would mean a reduction of the participants to a minuteness which would make them nearly invisible to God & he wouldn’t be interested in them any longer.

Lying thinking about this, concluded to write a dispute between a microscope & a telescope—one can pull a moral out of that [NB 40 TS 29-30].

August 7 Sunday – Sam’s notebook: “Aug. 7 ’98. I think a few monarchs have died here & there during the past year, I do not now remember. It made a great silence. Bismarck has been dead five or six days, now, but the reverberations from that mighty fall still go quaking & thundering around the planet” [NB 40 TS 28].

August 5 Friday – In Kaltenleutgeben, Austria, Sam wrote a sappy poem to Charles J. Langdon, whom he addressed as “Dear Cholley” [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Mrs. Kate S. Littlewood (Mrs. Walter Littlewood); (d.1927) in Liverpool [MTP].

Oh yes indeed, your young wards can freely have any book of mine they want—the whole set if they like.

I enclose an order.

August 4 Thursday – Sam’s notebook: “Aug. 4, ’98. Finished ‘My Platonic Sweetheart[’] a day or so ago” [NB 40 TS 27].

August 3 Wednesday – On a warm day in Kaltenleutgeben, Austria, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.

I must stop work a minute and congratulate you upon to-day’s telegraphic peace-prospects. I imagine you are feeling comfortable now.

Here the matter would be immensely discussed and written about—would have been, a week ago—but now it is cut down to a dozen lines, for now the whole reading-matter space in the papers is crowded with Bismarck’s life and death. It has been so for several days ….

August 2 Tuesday – In Kaltenleutgeben, Austria, Sam inscribed a printed drawing of himself with printed signature to Dr. Edwin Pond Parker: “Dear Parker: / Motto to chew on: Saintliness is next to Selfishness* / Truly Yours / Mark Twain / *Being the offspring of it, you see” [MTP].

Sam also sent another printed postcard with signature and drawing to an unidentified person [MTP].

William Dean Howells wrote from York Harbor, Maine to Sam.

July 29 Friday – In Kaltenleutgeben, Austria, Sam wrote to Poultney Bigelow, this year a correspondent for the London Times during the Spanish-American War. On May 23 in Tampa, Florida, Bigelow wrote an article exposing the unpreparedness of American troops for combat which ran in Harper’s Weekly. He was denounced as unpatriotic. An excerpt of Bigelow’s article:

THE CONDITION OF THE ARMY

Who Is Responsible ?

July 28 Thursday – In Kaltenleutgeben, Austria, Sam wrote a short note to Siegmund Schlesinger, advising that a MS “written in an unfamiliar hand” was “at a heavy disadvantage.” Sam recommended his MS be sent to Miss V. Kendler in Vienna to be typed. Sam offered to pay the cost [MTP]. Note: Sam collaborated on two comedy plays with Schlesinger and this was likely one. Neither play was performed and both are lost.