March 27 Wednesday – In New York at the Rogers home, a few minutes before leaving to board the S.S. Paris, Sam wrote a paragraph to Franklin G. Whitmore after receiving Whitmore’s letter, not extant, date uncertain.

In five minutes I start for the ship; your letter has this moment come & contents noted & welcomed. At first I thought I would drop a note to Mr. Day & tell him to pay the rent to you; but next it occurred to me that I am warned every day to venture no orders concerning Mrs. Clemens’s properties & affairs [MTP].

Note: H.H. Rogers’ attorneys handling Sam’s bankruptcy would have done the warning; since all properties had been assigned to Livy, including real and literary, fraud might have been claimed should Sam be seen to direct those properties.

H.H. Rogers, his daughter Cara Duff, and Miss Hammond accompanied Sam to the dock, where he boarded the S.S. Paris for his return to France [Apr. 3, 2nd to Rogers]. Miss Hammond’s relationship is not given, perhaps a friend of Mrs. Duff’s. Also on board were Mrs. Clarence Rice and her children, and Andrew Carnegie.

The Chicago Daily Inter Ocean, Mar. 28, 1895, p.4, datelined Mar. 27 ran “American Liner Follows in Two Hours and a Half / Prominent Passengers on Board, Including Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie” The correspondent quoted Sam on the S.S. Paris racing across the Atlantic.

“I did not know we are going to have a race until a moment ago, but that knowledge will add interest to the trip for me. I am going back to Europe in order to bring my family back, and I think we will have a speedy trip.”