April 21 Friday – At the Great Northern Hotel in Chicago, Sam ventured out of bed for the first time since becoming ill with a bad cold upon arriving on Apr. 13.

April 20 Thursday – Orion Clemens wrote to Sam, enclosing a letter from their sister Pamela, hoping that Sam would go to see her; “She will feel much hurt if you do not”; she hadn’t received her royalty from Whitmore. Orion had failed to secure employment with the Keokuk Gate City or the St. Louis Republic as a correspondent to the Chicago fair [MTP].

James W. Paige visited Sam in his sick bed. Sam wrote of the meeting in his Apr. 23 notebook entry.

April 19 Wednesday – Sam was abed with a bad cold — see Apr. 13 entry.

April 18 Tuesday – Still ailing in Chicago, Sam wrote to Livy, back at the Villa Viviani in Florence:

The doctor is done with me but requires Mr. Hall to keep me in bed a day longer, & maybe two. I do not mind it, for the reading & smoking is (are) pleasant — but! Yesterday the calling was like a levee. No respite, no rest. To-day we are wiser.

April 17 Monday – In Chicago Sam was abed with a bad cold — see Apr. 13 entry.

April 16 Sunday – In Chicago Sam was abed with a bad cold — see Apr. 13 entry.

In Florence, Livy wrote to him:

You did not tell me anything about sending an article or articles to the Cosmopolitan. Why did you do that? I should greatly prefer appearing in the Century or Harpers. What made you do it?…

April 15 Saturday – In Chicago Sam was abed with a bad cold — see Apr. 13 entry. With Sam laid up, exploration of the Paige typesetter manufacturing fell to Frederick J. Hall, who undoubtedly reported back to Sam that the machine was again disassembled.

At 6:30 p.m. Sam wrote to Joseph Medill, managing editor of the Chicago Tribune, on pictorial Great Northern Hotel stationery:

My Dear Mr. Medill —

April 14 Friday – At the Great Northern Hotel in Chicago, Sam wrote his Florence neighbor, Janet D. Ross, letting her know he’d asked agriculture Secretary J. Sterling Morton for some watermelon seeds, “and told him I had a key to your garden and that you kept no dog I was afraid of.” Sam enclosed Morton’s favorable response of Apr. 11, which he would have received in N.Y.

April 13 Thursday – Sam and Frederick J. Hall arrived in Chicago sometime in the early afternoon. They took adjoining rooms in the Great Northern Hotel [Apr. 14 to Underhill]. In a letter to Susan Crane, Apr. 23, he claimed to have been sick since this day. Kaplan writes that Sam spent,

April 12 Wednesday – Sam and Frederick J. Hall left New York at 10 a.m. bound for Chicago to check on developments for the Paige typesetter [Apr. 11 to Howells].

John Brisben Walker (1847-1931), since 1889 owner of Cosmopolitan, wrote to Sam with an offer: