Vol 3 Section 0274

Joe, You & Harmony are too good-natured; you could just as well have sent the baby by mail; it was not worth the trouble you took, from the way you describe it St. Peter will never be able to raise it anyway, with all the other things he has to do [MTP].

Sam added an anecdote about an actress having her jewels burned up in a hotel fire, but saying it was:“a wearisome old gratis advertisement…very time there’s a hotel fire, all the actresses for miles around gather up their paste jewelry & flock to the place”—then being told to shut up because the actress’s son was standing next to him. Sam also sent Joe a list of 15 questions to answer about CS. And wrote::

“The girls are out, & I am notified to adjourn to the drawing room & help Livy entertain company at 5 o’clock tea. This function costs her 2 hours of labor daily. It would soon break me down if I had to do it. Livy has rheumatism, now, & is in poor shape for this kind of work…” [MTP]

February 5 Sunday

February 6 Monday

February 7 Tuesday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus.

A friend of mine—Count Conrad de Buisserat [or Buisseret] of the Belgian Legation here—wants to translate into French & publish in Paris some of my books. I told him that there would probably be nothing in the way of it, but to make sure, I would write & ask you if the French privilege had been parted with. He has some reputation in Belgium as a writer of French. He is a fine man [MTP]. Note: Count de Buisseret married Caroline Story, the daughter of Major General John P. Story, and headed the Belgium legation to Washington D.C. in 1909. Chatto replied on Feb. 13.

February 8 Wednesday – George N. Stone, Chicago attorney, wrote to Sam, (at Players Club):

Upon reaching home last evening, I found awaiting me, a pleasant reminder of you and our short acquaintance. It is needless for me to say that the souvenir will be kept and treasured not only as a reminder of our pleasant relationship, but also of a triumphal ending of one of the longest physical and mental sieges that a business man or lawyer ever encountered. [Note: Sam wrote here: “True for him!”]. On the bottom of the letter Sam wrote in pencil: “One of our Board of Directors,” and in ink:

“Poor devil, all by himself he had to beguile, persuade, beseech, threaten, abuse & bully Paige day & night all those exhausting weeks, to get Mr. Rogers’s terrific requirements out of him & hold him to his agreements”

[MTP].

February 9 Thursday

February 10 Friday – President William McKinley signed the peace treaty with Spain, with the U.S. paying Spain twenty million dollars for specific Spanish holdings in the Philippines. Many saw the payment as a purchase of the Philippines. The treaty turned Sam off about this being a just war and led to his staunch anti-imperialism. The treaty had been ratified by Congress on Jan. 9.

February 11 Saturday – At the Hotel Krantz in Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to an unidentified man, that his “engagements already overburden me, & to add to them would not be wise” [MTP].

The Utica N.Y. Saturday Globe ran an article identifying the original of Colonel Sellers in The Gilded Age as James W. Wardner [Tenney 30: The Twainian Jan-Feb, 1957 p.4].

February 12 Sunday

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