March 4 Wednesday – Commanded by Patrick Yore and piloted by Horace Bixby, the Colonel Crossman (415 tons) left New Orleans with Sam aboard bound for St. Louis [Branch, “Bixby” 2]. Sam was 21, Horace 31 and considered one of the great steamboat pilots of his time [Rasmussen 34]. Bixby had started as a lowly mud clerk (unpaid) at age eighteen. He had a temper but cooled off fast. “When I say I’ll learn a man the river, I mean it. And you can depend on it. I’ll learn him or kill him” [Rasmussen 35].

February 28 Saturday – The Paul Jones reached New Orleans [Branch, “Bixby” 2]. In his Autobiography:

February 23 Monday – The Paul Jones reached Memphis [Branch, “Bixby” 3].

February 19 Thursday – The Paul Jones left Louisville [Branch, “Bixby” 3].

February 17 Tuesday – The Paul Jones was “heavily loaded with ordnance for the Baton Rouge arsenal” [Branch, “Bixby” 3]. As the boat neared Louisville it ran onto rocks near Dick Smith’s wharf and stuck for more than 24 hours.

August 5 Tuesday – Henry Clemens wrote to Sam from St. Louis (his letter is not extant). Sam replied
the same day as follows:

My Dear Brother:

August 3 Sunday – Sam spent Sunday afternoon with the Taylor girls, and wrote the following Wednesday that he “brought away a big bouquet of Ete’s (Esther Taylor) d——d stinking flowers” [MTL 1: 66]

October,  early – Sam walked along the main street of Keokuk in swirling snow, and found a fifty-dollar bill. Astounded, he later recounted, “It  was a fifty-dollar bill—the only one I had ever seen, and the largest assemblage of money I had ever seen in one spot” [Powers, Dangerous 243]. He  advertised it but after five days with no claimant he felt he’d done enough:

“By and by I couldn’t stand it any longer. My  conscience had gotten all that was coming to it. I felt that I must take that  money out of danger” [MTB 111].

June 25 Wednesday – Sam inscribed: “Samuel L. Clemens / 1856. / June 25 th , 1856” on a copy of J.L. Comstock’s Elements of Geology (1851).

June 10 Tuesday – In Keokuk, Sam wrote his mother, Jane Clemens, and sister Pamela in St.
Louis. Jane was now living with her daughter. See insert, courtesy of MTP: Vassar College Library.

My Dear Mother & Sister: