Vol 3 Section 1135
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1071 |
stay till after dark. But there are compensations. The mosquitoes are not a trouble. There are very few of them, they are not noisy, and not much interested in their calling. A single unkind word will send them away, if said in English, which impresses them because they do not understand it, they come no more that night. We often see them weep when they are spoken to harshly. I have got some of the eggs to take home. If this breed can be raised in our climate they will be a great advantage. There seem to be no fleas here. This is the first time we have struck this kind of an interregnum in fifteen months. Everywhere else the supply exceeds the demand [MTP].
1893 addition – Pudd’nhead Wilson was written in a fairly short period of time, which he wrote Fred Hall that he’d finished drafting on Dec. 12, 1892. Perhaps as an afterthought or cut through subsequent revision, was the following page Sam sent to the printer, offering various symbols be inserted in facsimile at the heads of chapters. The idea was discarded before the book was published Nov. 28, 1894 [MTP]. See insert page.
January 2, 1893 addition – At the Villa Viviani, Settignano, Florence, Italy, Sam used this date on his introduction to PW, titled “A Whisper to the Readers”.[16; 1996 Oxford facsimile edition].
February 25, 1893 after addition – On Nov. 3 and Nov. 10, 1892 Sam had written President Grover Cleveland on Frank Mason’s (US Consul at Frankfurt) behalf, addressing his letters to one-year- old “Baby Ruth” Cleveland. On Feb. 25, 1893 in a letter to Mason Sam wrote, “I will inquire after that letter I sent to Mr. Cleveland,” meaning it still had not been answered. The MTP gives Cleveland’s later response as 1892 without day or month, citing Robert McElroy’s Grover Cleveland: The Man and the Statesman. (1923). This response, in Cleveland’s hand, is
judged to have been sent sometime in 1893 after Sam’s Feb. 25 to Mason:
Miss Ruth Cleveland begs to acknowledge the receipt of Mr. Twain’s letter, and to say that she took the liberty of reading it to the President, who desires her to thank Mr. Twain for his information and to say to him that Captain Mason will not be disturbed in the Frankfort Consulate. The President also desires Miss