May 5 Tuesday – Sam departed Sacramento at 2 PM on the California Steam Navigation Company’s Capital, with his friend Edward A. Poole as captain. Sam arrived back in San Francisco and stayed at the Occidental Hotel again, and finished his letter of May 1 to Mary Mason Fairbanks.

The Alta has given me permission to use the printed letters. It is all right, now. I could not go with Mr. Burlingame, though I wanted to do it badly. I told him I would join him in Europe before his mission was finished. I must try & send my photograph with this. It is better looking than I am, & so I ordered two hundred. I mean to order a thousand more. I will send you five hundred to put in your album.

Sam had letters waiting for him in San Francisco from Mrs. Fairbanks, Charles Langdon, Julius Moulton, Isabella Beecher Hooker and “a dozen letters from other people” [MTL 2: 211-13]. Whether the agreement with the Alta had been finalized prior to Sam’s lecture tour or upon completion is not known.

Sam wrote from San Francisco to Elisha Bliss advising that he’d received permission to use his Holy Land letters. “I am steadily at work, & shall start east with the completed manuscript about the middle of June” [MTL 2: 215-6]. Note: Sam would not finish the Innocents Abroad manuscript and leave until July 6.