February 2 Tuesday – At the Hotel Royal in Berlin and still down in bed, Sam wrote to Frederick J. Hall, again about The American Claimant, which was to be issued as a one-dollar book as soon as the serialized version was completed. He directed Hall to get someone “competent & conscientious” to prepare the copy and read proofs, confessing he wouldn’t be able to do that “for some time to come.” He also directed Hall to coordinate the effort with Chatto for English publication.

Twenty-second anniversary of my wedding day; been in bed 3 weeks, now, with a mixture of influenza and congestion of the lungs, — mainly the latter, only a touch of the former [MTLTP 305].

Joe Twichell wrote to Sam of a humorous incident regarding a houseguest:

Dear Mark: Dear Boy: / Old Dr. Hamlin the missionary was lately here passing a day and a night with us — to our great pleasure; for no man I know, but you, equals him as a raconteur. In the morning, after breakfast he spied Flagg’s portrait of you which hangs in our parlor over the book-case, and looked at it long, close to, then further off; with his spectacles, then without them. Finally he turned to me and said, “Twichell, that is an excellent likeness of you. It is lifelike; and reproduces one of your characteristic expressions perfectly.” [MTP]. Note: Joe related several other local matters in this 15 half-pages letter, and passed on that Sam’s Europe letters “have been fine, every one of them,” and that the Bayreuth Festival letter was the “best thing you (or anybody) ever wrote, in my opinion” [MTP].

The Lotos Club sent Sam a printed invitation with two tickets to a lecture by E.J. Glave, one of Mr. Stanley’s Pioneer Officers, entitled, “Six Years in the Wilds of Africa” and “The Pioneer Packhorse in Central Alaska” on Feb. 6, 1892 at 9 p.m. [MTP].

T.W. McCreary for Ashtabula Disaster Fund sent Sam a printed flyer on the Dec. 29, 1876 railroad disaster, whereby the Knights of Pythias sought to raise funds for a monument [MTP].