January 18 Friday – Livy wrote to Annie Trumbull, a fragment of which survives:

“…of the fact that I was greatly embarrassed by her manner and at my wit’s ends as to how to meet it. I rather liked the woman. / I want very much to know how you are this winter” [MTP].

January 17 Thursday – H.H. Rogers also wrote to Sam, letter not extant but mentioned in Feb. 8 to Rogers; disclosed a $200 check received in New York from Frank Bliss.

January 16 Wednesday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam responded to Irving Bacheller of Bachellor & Johnson Syndicate, also known as The New York Press Syndicate.

I shall be too busy for the next two or three months to undertake that most difficult & bothersome thing, a short story…. In my experience it costs less work to write a big book…than it does to write a little story.

January 15 Tuesday – H.H. Rogers wrote to Sam, letter not extant but mentioned in Jan. 29 to Rogers.

January 9 Wednesday – The New York Times, rarely complimentary to Mark Twain, ran an editorial, p.4. with no title:

January 8 Tuesday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris, Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers about being frustrated by Franklin Whitmore not sending monthly itemized accounts as requested, and not saying a word “until his exchequer has run dry.” He’d just received Whitmore’s letter through Bainbridge Colby, with an accounting covering nine months of Hartford expenses. Sam noted he’d just written Whitmore and advised him that the current royalty check from the American Publishing Co.

January 7 Monday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus, enclosing a Dec. 26 letter from Frank Hall Scott (1848-1912), president of The Century Co. The letter inquired about a Mr. F. Fauveau translating The £1,000,000 Bank-Note and Other New Stories to French. Sam responded:

All authorities of this sort in your hands, thank goodness!

January 5 Saturday – French officer Alfred Dreyfus was stripped of his army rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Sam would take an active interest in the Dreyfus Affair in Vienna in 1897-8.

January 3 Thursday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus. Sam thanked Andrew Chatto for books received the day before. He singled out Walter Besant’s London.

January 2 Wednesday – At 169 rue de l’Université in Paris Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers.

Yours of Dec. 21 [not extant] has arrived, containing the circular to stockholders and I guess the Co will really quit — there doesn’t seem to be any other wise course.