August 1 Tuesday – In Krankenheil-Tölz, Germany Sam wrote to Poultney Bigelow, author and one of his dinner companions in Berlin. Webster and Co. published two of Bigelow’s books in 1892: The German Emperor and His Eastern Neighbors, and Paddles and Politics Down the Danube. Sam responded to an invitation from Bigelow (not extant) but evidently they were more widely separated by geography than he’d previously thought, so he had to decline as he didn’t want to leave Livy alone overnight.

It is a great disappointment when I struck this neighboring town of Gmünd — and right on a lake, too — I made sure it was your town and lake: so I set inquiries agoing, but had no success. Finally I applied to Jackson [Sec. Am. Embassy], and his answer showed me that I was way-off. Gmünden is only about an hour’s drive from here, and I thought we could run back and forth, afternoons, in intervals between work, and have some talks and tramps and canoe-dissipation, and fresh-up for next day’s drudgery — but that dream is up the stump — whither much too many dreams go [MTP].