March 7 Saturday – The Royal Gazette of Hamilton, Bermuda noted the regular appearance of Sam and H.H. Rogers on Front Street. Quoted and summarized by D. Hoffman:

Rogers and Clemens often took short rides to town, and not without attracting notice. An idler on Front Street, the Royal Gazette reported, “may see almost any afternoon, weather permitting, two quiet looking, white haired old gentlemen taking the air in an open carriage, chatting cosily and absorbing with shrewd glances from under bushy eyebrows the sights and the scenes of the street.” Their reputations preceded them—perhaps with help from Upton Sinclair. The same piece said that Sinclair, a “representative of that fast growing class, the American Socialist,” was currently rusticating in Somerset. Of the two old gentlemen that appeared on Front Street, the Gazette continued, one was known as a maker of merriment, while the other was likewise in touch with the world but rather through their pockets than their sense of humor.”  Miss Wallace maintained that Rogers, too, was a charming man “with a fund of quiet humor,” but Clemens found that his association with Rogers prompted more questions than his public attentions to schoolgirls. When asked why he befriended a man of so much tainted money, he had a ready answer. “Yes,” he said, “it’s doubly tainted: t’aint yours, and t’aint mine” [105-6].