January 12 Tuesday – The Clemenses left Ilsenburg for Berlin [NB 31 TS 21]. At the Hotel Royal, Sam wrote to an unidentified man who’d asked for a picture of Sam, and wondered what the name of his new book would be. If the man wanted an electrotype of an engraving of Sam, he might write Webster & Co. for one made from the LAL; if a photograph, the company could get one from Sarony, as Sam had none with him. The American Claimant would be published both in the US and in England, slightly before. Sam informed the man that the story would appear serially in The Idler in London [MTP]. Note: the man probably was local, based on Sam’s answers.

Sam also responded to Frederic W.H. Myers in Cambridge, England. Myers’ letter is not extant. Sam described a type of sleep that happens as absent-mindedness —

…sleep’s as good a name for it as another. I have several times been asleep at a steamboat’s wheel, for a few moments at a time without suspecting it — discovered it by the distance traveled.

We shall be in Europe two or three years, I suppose, & in the course of time we shall reach England — when I shall remember what you have been so kind as to suggest [MTP]. Note. Sam described Myers’ letter as being “delayed by a roundabout trip, with the Atlantic in it as an incident,” suggesting Myers addressed his letter to the U.S.