July, mid – Sam visited Hannibal and traveled to the villages of Paris and Florida to provide care and dispose of family property. In Florida he visited his uncle John Quarles, who had sold the old Quarles Farm. He then continued down river to St. Louis, where he tried to become a Mississippi River cub pilot. Orion had supplied Sam with a letter of introduction to their wealthy cousin, James Clemens, Jr. Sam hoped that James might help him secure an apprenticeship as a cub. Sam had no luck. He returned to Keokuk, where he was in his brother’s employ, which meant little, if any, salary, although officially he was offered five dollars per week plus board [MTL 1: 59; MTB 104].

In 1906, Sam remembered Dick Higham, a coworker at his Orion’s office in Keokuk:

Dick, a good-natured, simple-minded, winning lad of seventeen, was an apprentice in my brother’s small printing office in Keokuk, Iowa. He had an old musket and he used to parade up and down with it in the office, and he said he would rather be a soldier than anything else. The rest of us laughed at him and said he was nothing but a disguised girl, and that if he were confronted by the enemy he would drop his gun and run.

But we were not good prophets [MTA 2: 251]. Note: Higham died a hero in Ed Marsh’s company during the war, shot in the forehead at Ft. Donelson.