November 15 Monday – At the Metropole Hotel, Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to an unidentified clergyman, who had evidently written with examples of what Sam called “mental telegraphy,”; and also questioned the forgotten use of a detail, a mole, in TS,D. The clergyman also mentioned James Payn (1830-1898; English novelist, from 1883 editor of the Cornhill Magazine), and offered cases where suggestion had been made by “unsentient things.” Sam replied:

These mysteries continue to charm me; they never lose their interest for me. I had entirely forgotten that detail of the mole on the left leg until you mentioned it; it startled me to know that it was still in the book. It is a case of thinking you’ve wound your watch, because you intended to. Toward the end of the book I elected to use another thing whereby Tom should be able to identify that fellow—& then I forgot to knock out the mole…

Sam related meeting a gentleman on a train trip from Montreal, putting it at fifteen years before (which might have been either Dec. 1881 or May 1883). The man remarked he was an intimate friend of Payn’s and so they talked about him, since Sam had never met anyone who knew of Payn from personal experience. In that three or four hour train trip, in the smoker car, it became clear there was another man who was also an intimate of Payne. He felt that both of them being there wasn’t a “coincidence” [MTP]. Note: Sam spelled “Payne” for “Payn.” See MTNJ 3: 17n30; also Gribben 536.