Vol 3 Section 0221

nothing but these rations, because the commissary had nothing else, and they could not afford to send for other things from the town. Who is responsible? No one can tell. [Harper’s Weekly reprinted in Public Opinion Vol. 24 June 9, 1898 p. 709]. Note: the Secretary of War criticized Bigelow in a N.Y. Times article on June 2.

Sam’s reaction:

I want to congratulate you. I read your famous letter with great satisfaction, and it seemed to me that you deserved the thanks of the country for it. I never saw any of the comments on it, but there were suggestions in the atmosphere that it had stirred up protest and bitterness. I could not definitely make out where. By the latest “Weekly” I perceive that it was in the bosom of (Richard) Harding Davis; also that he has now gone and (unintentionally) covered you with glory and himself (unintentionally) with the cap and bells. It is a curious and interesting case of a man hilariously kicking his own southern exposure in public—unconsciously [MTP].

July 30 Saturday

July 31 Sunday

August – From this month through October, Sam wrote “The Great Dark,” unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime. It first ran in Letters from the Earth, 1962, Bernard DeVoto, ed. [Budd Collected 2: 1004].

Sam inscribed a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Lowden Sabbath Morn (1898) “To Livy / on her next birthday. / SL Clemens / Kaltenleutgeben, August, ‘98” [Gribben 663]. Note: Sam had requested the “new Stevenson book” from Chatto on July 26.

“At the Appetite-Cure” ran in the August issue of Cosmopolitan. It would be collected in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900) [MTB 1067; Camfield, Bibliog.].

Sometime during August Sam wrote to Mr. Miles. This letter is only referred to in the 19 Oct. 1889 issue of The Taranaki Herald, New Plymouth, NZ. The article:

It appears that a gentleman sent to Mark Twain (S.L. Clemens) a paper containing the observations made last session by Mr Kerr in connection with the chamois, in which Mark Twain was quoted as an authority. A reply has been received from Mr. Clemens, stating that the cutting has afforded him the heartiest laugh he has had this year. Incidentally, he says, it shows the danger of a man acting in a responsible public capacity being imperfectly up in the didactic literature of his times [MTP]. Note: see July 10, 1889 entry; Sam described the Chamois in ch. XXV of Tramps Abroad. His description had been read earlier that year in the Wellington Parliament in New Zealand.

Sam’s article about Jan Szczepanink, “The Austrian Edison Keeping School Again” ran in the August issue of the Century. It was later collected in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900).

August 1 Monday

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.

SLC used mourning border for most letters from Susy’s death on, then from Livy’s death on.