July 17 Wednesday – A travel day on the World Tour. The Clemens party took the luxurious Great Lakes steamer, North Land (sometimes seen as Northland) through the Upper Michigan peninsula to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Sam called it “an ideal summer trip” [NB 35 TS 11].
J.B. Pond’s diary:
Wednesday, July 17th, S.S. Northland.
Our party left Cleveland for Mackinac at seven o’clock. “Mark” is feeling very poorly. He is carrying on a big fight against his bodily disability. All that has been said of this fine ocean ship on the Great Lakes is not exaggerated. Across Lake Erie to Detroit River, Lake St. Clair, and the St. Clair River is a most charming trip. “Mark” and Mrs. Clemens are very cheerful to-day. The passengers have discovered who they are, and consequently our party is the centre of attraction. Wherever “Mark” sits or stands on the deck of the steamer, in the smoking room, dining room, or cabin, he is the magnet, and people strain their necks to see him and to catch every word he utters.
On this lake trip occurred an incident of which I have already written. It was the second day out on Lake Huron, and “Mark” was on deck in the morning for the first time. Many people made excuses for speaking to him. One man had stopped off in Cleveland on purpose to hear him. Another, from Washington Territory, who had lived forty years in the West, owned a copy of “Roughing It,” which he and his wife knew by heart. One very gentle, elderly lady wished to thank him for the nice things he has written and said of cats. But the one that interested “Mark” the most was a young man who asked him if he had ever seen or used a shaving stone, handing him one. It was a small, peculiar, fine-grained sandstone, the shape of a miniature grindstone, and about the size of an ordinary watch. He explained that all you had to do was to rub your face with it and the rough beard would disappear, leaving a clean, shaven face.
“Mark” took it, rubbed it on his unshaven cheek, and expressed great wonder at the result. He put it in his vest pocket very unceremoniously, remarking at the same time: “The Madam (he generally speaks of Mrs. Clemens as ‘The Madam’) will have no cause to complain of my never being ready in time for church because it takes so long to shave. I will put this into my vest pocket on Sunday. Then, when I get to church, I’ll pull the thing out and enjoy a quiet shave in my pew during the long prayer” [Eccentricities of Genius 201-2].
Scharnhorst, [154] cites Denny [27] who cites the July 18, 1895 p.5 Detroit Journal article about Sam’s stop on July 17 (not a lecture stop) in Detroit, and his opinion of the steamer North Land:
There was one striking figure in the crowd of a score or more persons who stood on the forward deck of the big steamer North Land as she drifted up to the dock at the foot of First st., yesterday at 4 p.m. It was that of a man past the middle age of life, with bushy gray hair that fell well down upon his coat collar, a moustache of the same color, that was inclined to bristle, and a clear, ruddy complexion. …This man was Mark Twain, the humorist, christened Samuel L. Clemens, and father of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. …
Mr. Clemens was full of praise for the North Land, and said there wasn’t much about the vessel to remind him of the days when he used to pilot a steamboat on the Mississippi river. “It is the best I have ever seen,” he said, “in the way of passenger boats. The Fall River steamers are more elaborately decorated, but are more like ocean steamers than the North Land, and not so pleasant and comfortable.”