January 5 Wednesday – H.H. Rogers wrote to Sam; letter not extant but referred to in Sam’s Jan. 20 reply.

Sam, and perhaps the family as well, saw the premiere of Theodor Herzl’s play Das neue Ghetto (The New Ghetto) at the Carltheater, a mid-nineteenth century theater. Here Sam may have met Sigmund Freud for the first time. Dolmetsch writes:

They might actually have met some four weeks earlier at the Carltheater ….Herzl, a neighbor and friend of Freud and an acquaintance of Mark Twain, “papered the house” for his opening, sending both of them tickets. Both attended. Twain, in fact, considered and may even have started an abortive translation of Herzl’s play for Broadway, so it is not inconceivable they were introduced to each other in this small theater on such a convivial occasion…hence Freud’s reference to Twain as “our old friend” in his letter…[270]. Note: Sam had met Herzl, the “Father of Zionism” (1860-1904) in 1894 when Herzl was covering the Dreyfus trial for the Neue Freie Presse—see 1894 year entry, vol. II.