April 17 Monday – Sam left Hartford with 37-year-old Hartford schoolteacher Roswell Phelps, hired stenographer. Phelps was to take down Sam’s impressions of the trip, and also letters of Sam’s ongoing business matters [Kaplan 244]. The men were bound for St. Louis and the Mississippi River, where Sam’s decade-old dream (since at least Jan. 1866) to revisit the river in preparation for another book would be realized [Powers, MT A Life 455-6]. The first stop was New York, where they met up with James R. Osgood. Kaplan writes that Sam “made a careful inventory, including certificate numbers, of the $110,000 in securities he kept in a box at the Mount Morris Bank” [244].

Sam also typed a short letter to Charles Webster. Sam directed Webster to Livy should he run out of money while Sam was traveling up the Mississippi.

I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO TELL YOU HOW TO REACH ME WITH LETTERS OR TELEGRAMS, AND BESIDES I DO NOT MUCH WANT TO BE REACHED BY BUSINESS ANYWAY WHILE I AM GONE. RUN THINGS ACCORDING TO YOUR BEST JUDGEMENT AND I THINK YOU WON’T MAKE ANY MISTAKES OF CONSEQUENCE [MTP].

At the invitation of journalist William Mackay Laffan, Sam and Osgood attended a banquet at the Union League Club [MTNJ 2: 432, 459n89]. They spent the night in New York, probably at the Gilsey House.