We had an immense snowstorm yesterday—snow the entire day & all night. We were 111⁄2 hours making a 7-hour trip.
To-day we are likely to be all day going 3 hours. We’ve got 3 cars & 3 engines. Alongside us, out here in the snowy plains is a Pacific RR train standing still, whose  engines cannot budge it a peg.

“He [Twain] informed Livy on the seventeenth that his companion was the 'pitifulest human louse' he had ever known” (pg 62 Cardwell)

“Twain's festering canker apparently remained unknown to Cable,..” (pg 62 Cardwell)

"Mr. Clemens did not confine himself to “Huckleberry Finn,” but drew upon others of his works likewise, especially the veracious history of his travels in Europe known as “A Tramp Abroad.” Out of the kindness of his heart he also consented to throw in as an “extra” the pathetic story of the “Jumping Frog.” He is an older man than we expected to see, and both face and frame show signs of hard work, but he knows how to husband his resources, and is probably not half so tired by an evening's reading as he would by sitting out a dinner. In listening to him read you realize more fully than ever before the power of a single word. It was said that Garrick could move an audience to tears by the utterance of one word. Mr. Clemens certainly can move them to uncontrolled laughter by a single noun or adjective. His humour could hardly find a better interpreter than he is himself, and his most devoted readers must have discovered hitherto unsuspected brilliancy in even their favourite passages. "

From Brockville to Ottawa was likely on the Canadian Central Railway, which originated from a line from Brockville to Sand Point and a junction at Carleton Place to LeBreton Flats.