April 13 Thursday – Sam and Frederick J. Hall arrived in Chicago sometime in the early afternoon. They took adjoining rooms in the Great Northern Hotel [Apr. 14 to Underhill]. In a letter to Susan Crane, Apr. 23, he claimed to have been sick since this day. Kaplan writes that Sam spent,

“Eleven days sick in bed with a bad cold at the Great Northern Hotel, smoking against his doctor’s orders, reading Mrs. Gaskell’s Cranford, and receiving a stream of visitors, including Eugene Field. Orion came up from Keokuk to see Sam and the machine, and to look for work. Paige, overflowing with confidence and good will, came to apologize for all past bitterness and misunderstanding and promised Clemens half the money forthcoming from the Chicago backers” [318-9]. See Apr. 18. (Editorial emphasis.)

Sam’s illness prevented him from visiting World’s Columbian Exposition during this April Chicago stay. He needed an eleven-day recovery given doctor’s orders to stay in bed. Further, in his article “Traveling With a Reformer,” which first ran in the Dec. 1893 Cosmopolitan, he wrote, “I was ill in bed eleven days in Chicago and got no glimpse of the Fair, for I was obliged to return east as soon as I was able to travel.” His letters from the last part of the stay document his inability to do much more than walk around the room until Apr. 21 and 22. Sam left Chicago with Hall on Apr. 24. On his next visit to Chicago, Sam did see the “White City” in the Exposition on Dec. 23, 1893. See entry.

April 13 Thursday ca. (date unclear) – Charles Calvin Ziegler wrote from St. Louis to Sam, responding to his Feb. 12 letter, enclosing a copy of an article concerning burglaries there. The photocopy of the typed letter is so blurred as to be mostly indecipherable, but it’s likely Sam had inquired about the thefts after reading Orion’s accounts of them [MTP].