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Group A
These notes, on two sheets of Hotel Metropole stationery in black ink, were probably written just after Mark Twain's arrival in Vienna in 1897.1 The notes on p. A-2 eventually found expression in “Three Thousand Years Among the Microbes” ( WWD , pp. 433–553).
1
Human Race,
Destroy Moral Sense; or
“ the Race?
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Brings Terry & Fields in out of the storm
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But before that, explains who he is.
Takes 1000 books out of pocket;
microscope to examine microbes which he gets out of his pocket.
Makes instant trips to China, heaven
&c
Consultation with Crazy Fields & Oliver & Dr. Terry the great surgeon who hung his daughter in the cave. They make an (with Injun Joe, average intellectual forms of human insanity
Harem, 800 women
S. Is Sandwich Islands copulation common
Xn one wife
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C. F. Always comparing himself with God.
People discussed: An Atheist now Catholic Why? Catholic now Atheist. Why?
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Crazy Fields lost wife, then child; because wife nursed sm. pox patient who had no friend;
Tom Nash's mother took in a deserted child; it gave scarlet-fever death to 3 of her children & deafness to 2.
But don't look at merely the unhappy—consider the happy. Answer: Happiness is merely a preparation (a trap); their turn is coming; absolutely none escape.
The King? The young queen with her P Albert? Her turn will come. None escape.
CRAZY
VANITY
No support like it. Flattery—to think you are doing or suffering under the immediate notice of God & as a compliment to him & a glory—well, it will enable a man to be comfortable with the pains & rottennesses of 50 vile diseases upon him.
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The first thing to do is to feed this vanity—show, by microbes he is God's especial pet
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He is to find the diseases & tortures & microbes, & old Ferg will explain their function in rushing the glory of God