INHABITANTS OF SYRIA AND PALESTINE - 1858

The inhabitants of Syria and Palestine form a most interesting study.  Their dress, their manners and customs, and their language, are all primitive.  No European nation, with the exception perhaps of the Spaniards, bears the least resemblance to them. Like Spain, too, the best specimens of humanity are here found among the lower classes. The farther we go from the contaminated atmosphere of government offices, the more successful shall we be in our search after honesty, industry, and genuine patriarchal hospitality— the great, almost the only unadulterated virtue of the Arab.

Vienna, Austria: 1897-99

Despite their not having a reservation, the Clemenses’ plans for sojourning in Vienna were not unheralded. Before leaving Weggis Clemens had advised the American embassy in Vienna of his wish to have a furnished flat or house in the city, and by September 30, Bailey Hurst, the American consul general, had located a capacious furnished house, the Villa Silling, in a section called the “Cottageviertel” in suburban Döbling. Clemens had had a sudden attack of gout in his right foot that laid him up for a week, so he sent Olivia and Clara out in a fiaker the next day to inspect the villa.

October 7, 1889 Monday

October 7 Monday – In Hartford Sam wrote a long letter of proposition about the Paige typesetter to Joe Goodman. He wrote that he’d come close to writing him several times but the time wasn’t ripe then. “It is ripe, now.” After describing what the compositor would do, Sam placed an offer plainly before Goodman:

October 6, 1889 Sunday

October 6 Sunday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Sarah A. Sage (Mrs. Dean Sage) inviting for Livy and himself a visit by the Sages for Thursday, Oct. 17 and to “stay over Sunday & much longer if you can.” Livy had a “hard headache” caused by reading “five or ten minutes,” and so Sam wrote the invitation for her [MTP].

October 4, 1889 Friday

October 4 Friday – Sam jotted in his notebook that another of the anticipated apprentices for the Paige typesetter, Martin J. Slattery, on Oct. 3 and 4, “in his third hour (he had never seen the machine or its keyboard before) set 1593 ems. He sets 1500 an hour at the case” [3: 568].

October 3, 1889 Thursday

October 3 Thursday – Sam finished his slipper for Elsie Leslie, the partner of one knitted by William Gillette, out of admiration for the girl actress [Oct. 5 to Leslie].

Sam’s notebook: Oct. 3. One [Paige royalty] to Orion Clemens; the other to Mrs. P.A. Moffett [3: 569].

Charles Ethan Davis wrote another typesetting record on a postcard to Sam, this one including three apprentices, “F,” “J,” and “S”. [MTP].

October 2, 1889 Wednesday

October 2 WednesdayDaniel Frohman wrote Sam through Daniel Whitford, Sam’s attorney at Alexander & Green. He advised that a new version of Abby Sage Richardson’s dramatization of P&P “embodying some recent changes,” would be sent on to Clemens “within two weeks.” There had been repeated delays by Richardson in carrying out her contract with Sam [MTNJ 3: 524n138].

Subscribe to