December 29 Saturday – From Sam’s letter to the Alta printed Mar. 15, 1867:
SAN JUAN AND CHOLERA

December 27 Thursday – Sam wrote of a raffle for a dead wife’s jewelry (Mar. 15 Alta):

December 25 Tuesday – Christmas – From Sam’s Mar. 15 Alta letter [Schmidt]:

December 24 Monday – From Sam’s notebook:
Christmas Eve—9 P.M. Me & the Capt & Kingman out forward. Capt. Said—Don’t like the looks of that point with the mist outside of it—hold her a point free. Quartermaster (touching his hat)—“The child is dead sir (been sick 2 days.—) What are yr orders” [MTNJ 1: 257].
The death of a child onboard made for a solemn Christmas Eve.

December 23 Sunday – From Sam’s notebook:
Morning service on Prom deck by Fackler—organ & choir. I had rather travel with that old portly, hearty, jolly, boisterous, good-natured old sailor, Capt. Ned Wakeman than with any other man I ever came across. He never drinks, & never plays cards; he never swears, except in the privacy of his own quarters, with a friend or so, & then his feats of fancy blasphemy are calculated to fill the hearer with awe & the liveliest admiration [MTNJ 1: 253].

December 22 Saturday – From Sam’s notebook:
“Passengers have been singing several days—now the men have come down to leap-frog, boyish gymnastics & tricks of equilibrium—& sitting on a bottle with legs extended & X d , & threading a good sized needle” [MTNJ 1: 251-2].

December 21 Friday – From Sam’s notebook:
“Crossed tropic of Capricorn—Cape St Lucas—now abreast Gulf of California….Geniuses are people who dash off weird, wild, incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility, & then go & get booming drunk & sleep in the gutter…people who have genius do not pay their board, as a general thing” [MTNJ 1: 250].

December 20 Thursday – From Sam’s notebook:
"At noon, 5 days out from San Francisco, abreast high stretch of land at foot of Magdalena Bay, Capt came & said, ‘Come out here…I want to show you something’ –took the marine glass— (2 whaling ships with a catch)” [MTNJ 1: 250].
The Brooklyn Eagle ran a short note on page 4 about Sam’s “Lecture among Highwaymen,” and ended with “Mark failed to see the point” of the practical joke. [The Eagle is available online].

December 19 Wednesday – From Sam’s letter to the Alta printed January 18, 1867:
SEQUEL TO THE ELOPEMENT / NOON, 19 th

December 18 Tuesday – From Sam’s notebook:
“The young runaway couple, after co-habiting a night or two, were married last night by the Capt’s peremptory order, in presence of 5 witnesses” [MTNJ 1: 249].