July 2, 1878 Tuesday

July 2 Tuesday – From Sam’s notebook:

“Heard Prof. Fisher at University, on Leibnitz—plenty names & dates, from birth 1646 to death, 1717” [MTNJ 2: 105]. Note: Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, German mathematician and philosopher, who wrote so widely in journals and articles in several languages that no one has dared to publish a complete works.

July 1, 1878 Monday

July 1 Monday  Sam wrote from the Schloss Hotel in Heidelberg to his mother, Jane Clemens, and sister, Pamela Moffett, after receiving their letter with news of Samuel Moffett’s departure for Europe. Sam wrote of cheap prices for rent, a suit of clothes and language instruction.

June 28, 1878 Friday

June 28 Friday  Sam wrote from Heidelberg to William Seaver, one of the old New York journalism bunch Sam met in 1872.

Dear Old Seaver: / There be humorists in Germany. With infinite difficulty I have translated the following from a Mannheim paper:

June 27, 1878 Thursday 

June 27 Thursday  Sam had received Howells’ June 2 reply to his May 4 Frankfort letter, in which Howells wrote: “Tell me about Capt. Wakeman in Heaven, and all your other enterprises”  [MTHL 1: 233]. Howells’ letter included news about Hay, Osgood, Waring, and Aldrich, briefly mentioning those traveling overseas.

June 26, 1878 Wednesday 

June 26 Wednesday – Livy was “startled” to discover passages in Sam’s notebook where Captain Wakeman would visit “various heavens.” Duckett writes:

“this may have been the earliest appearance of a protagonist cast down from his high estate which Bernard De Voto traced as it developed from a dream sequence and reappeared obsessively….in the determinism of ‘What is Man?’ privately published in 1904” [179].

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