March 16 Saturday – Sam, Isabel Lyon, and the “pretty young girl” Paddy Madden left on the Bermudian. The trip would be a five-day getaway for Sam, who was suffering from gout, but all but one day would be on board the ship. Also on the outward voyage Charles W. Eliot (1834-1926), president of Harvard, and Thomas D. Peck, woolen manufacturer from Pittsfield, Mass., were on board. Sam and Peck conducted a lottery on the ship to benefit the Cottage Hospital in Bermuda, the only civilian one there [D. Hoffman 78-9].

Note: Peck’s wife, Mary Allen Hulbert Peck, was a socialite who often wintered in the islands; she would have a dalliance with the future president, Woodrow Wilson in Bermuda. Wilson arrived in Bermuda on Jan. 14, a week after Sam’s last trip, and was introduced to Mrs. Peck on Feb. 5. Mary would sue for divorce in 1911, claiming desertion; the couple had been separated since 1907 [NY Times, Dec. 9, 1911, p.1]. The Times of Mar. 17, p.9 “Ocean Travelers” mistakenly reported this as a six weeks’ stay in Bermuda for Mark Twain; and lists other passengers as: Joseph W. Bullard, Mr. and Mrs. Warren Curtis, Dr. and Mrs. Charles W. Eliot, Mr. and Mrs. F.J. Frey, Lawrence Haight, J. Donaldson Nichols, A.R. Outerbridge, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Ransom, Mr. and Mrs. Martin H. Smith, Dr. and Mrs. Frederick A. Slack, and Frank T. Wadsworth.

Isabel Lyon’s journal: On Mar 16th we sailed for Bermuda. The King, Paddy Madden & I, with a good big & interesting looking ships company. President Elliot [sic] of Harvard. It didn’t mean anything to me for within an hour the exhausted headache I had wakened with had boiled into something unprecedented & I was alarmed—Dr. Herring gave me a drug to dilate the arteries. It did it—or did something—& the bad condition increased steadily. However, I begged him for an emetic; he finally consented to give it—but it couldn’t work—& lay in my system harboring impossible conditions [MTP TS 40-41].

Elizabeth G. Jordan sent Sam an engraved, postcard sized invitation for Saturday, Mar. 16 at 9 p.m. when Miss Katherine Everts would read “My Lady’s Ring” by Alice Brown [MTP].

Albert B. Paine wrote from Carson City, Nev. to Sam and Lyon that he was “having very good success in finding old friends and landmarks & material for reconstructing the past” [MTP].

Adair Wilson attorney in Durango, Colo. wrote to Sam, having had his memory jogged by Sam’s Autobiography in the NAR. “…recalled the never-forgotten ride which you and I took at a very unseemly hour in the morning down ‘Six Mile Canon’, expecting to witness the duel between Joe Goodman and Tom Fitch.” Wilson had been caught in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and his nerves had been shot from it since [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on the letter: “ was a man who justified Horace Greeley’s remark Go West, young man, Go West. He was a reporter & then studied law with a shyster lawyer & then practiced & finally became a judge. Ran for Gov. too—Ruggles was another. Ruggles was long & lean & popeyed & in 1853 was setting type in St. Louis—& he went West to grow up with the Country.”