January 27 Wednesday – At the Hotel Royal in Berlin Sam finished his Jan. 25 letter to Frederick J. Hall, with a lengthy PS. He enclosed a “dated check” for $2,000 and “some undated ones for $1,000 each.” He directed Hall to put these amounts with the Wall Street agent Halsey to be invested in Livy’s name, and to do likewise with any copyright or interest payments Webster & Co. might pay him. When Halsey delivered the securities they were to go into “a box in a Safety Deposit Vault,” with Hall keeping the key himself, with a list of the securities for reference. Interestingly, Sam wanted “no mention of them to go to Hartford.”

I have been nearly 2 weeks in bed, now, and am tired of it. SLC [MTP].

Note: claims by Hamersley or other Paige typesetter debts in Hartford may explain Sam’s desire to keep these amounts confidential to Hall, and to put any earnings in securities issued in Livy’s name. When the firm would go bankrupt in 1894, Livy would be the largest creditor. Hall was undoubtedly trying to dredge up any older articles that might be used singly or combined in publishing efforts. This was a time when every dollar mattered.

Sam also wrote to Chatto & Windus, thanking them for the copies requested of P&P. Sam was still in bed “with congestion of the lungs,” but was “mending.”

He directed his English publisher to “make no preparations” to issue his six Europe letters in a book form as he wanted to add to them, “next summer or fall,” and make “a book, not a pamphlet.” Sam only liked three of the five published so far, and not all of the three. “It is a poor average,” he concluded [MTP].

Sam’s notebook in Berlin: “Illuminations birth-day night (Jan. 27) were largely electrical” [NB 31 TS 26].

Charles H. Denison wrote from N.Y. to Sam — another reaction to the “Mental Telegraphy” article. Denison offered the idea that the ideas occur “at the same instant in both brains” [MTP].