June 28 Tuesday – Sam arrived in Chicago and wrote his brother Orion Clemens three hours after his arrival.

I reached New York last Wednesday & spent Friday & Saturday in Hartford on business, & then slipped out here on another matter of business. I hope to get away undiscovered, but I have been recognized in the hotel office — am not sure. I have been in town three hours & am ready to leave for Hartford & New York again & sail for Germany this day week [July 5]. My passage is taken in the Lahn. I wanted to telegraph you to meet me here, but was afraid the dispatch might give me away. Chicago was expunged from my itinerary as soon as I arrived from the other side, but I had to put it in again suddenly & without time to write you. [Note: Sam was sleuthing to discover just what Paige was up to, which added urgency to his remaining undiscovered; On Aug. 13 he wrote to Augustin Daly that he’d spent the 28th in Chicago “under a fictitious name, & left the 29th”].

Sam also sent good news that his “tribe” was all “pretty well,” and that the doctors had said “positively” that Livy did not have heart disease, but only needed rest from “weakness of the heart-muscles,” which he thought was worth the travel to learn.

I shall have a world of night-&-day railroading to do in the next few days, but I am strong & well & entirely equal to it [MTP].

Paine writes of Sam’s quick trip to the Windy City:

“Clemens, who had been negotiating again with the Mallorys for the disposal of his machine royalties, thought it proper to find out just what was going on. He remained in America less than two weeks, during which he made a flying trip to Chicago and found that Paige’s company really had a factory started, and proposed to manufacture fifty machines. It was not easy to find out the exact status of this new company, but Clemens at least was hopeful enough of its prospects to call off the negotiations with the Mallorys which had promised considerable cash in hand. He had been able to accomplish nothing material in the publishing situation, but his heart-to-heart talk with Hall for some reason had seemed comforting. The business had been expanding; they would now ‘concentrate’” [MTB 946]. Note: according to his July 1 to Mallory, Sam did not meet with Paige during this Chicago stop.