November 3 Friday – In New York Sam wrote to Orion and Mollie Clemens that he’d “mapped out a long novel to-day, & will bury myself in it to-morrow….” Note: The story was “Tom Sawyer Detective,” which LLMT p.277 calls “an ingenious but uninspired yarn not published until August and September 1896 in Harper’s Magazine.” Sam also wrote about daughter Clara’s trip.

Clara & I had only four days in Hartford. She is now 80 hours at sea on her way to Germany in the “Allee.” She has escort and company to Berlin, & from there will find escort & company to Paris, where her mother & the rest are. She could have gone by Havre vastly quicker, but hates the French line. I don’t know how she can bear to think of that tremendous journey from Berlin to Paris, but she says she doesn’t mind it. Well she is young; youth minds nothing [MTP].