December 2 Monday – The Clemens party left Napier for Palmerston North (pop.12,000). FE:

December 1 Sunday – In Napier, N.Z. at Frank Moeller’s Masonic Hotel, Sam rested his carbuncles. Shillingburg gathers from the following Dec. 1 notebook entry that Sam may have been treated by a Dr. John Brown [Shillingsburg, “Down Under” 28].

Dr. John Brown—“Somebody you are acquainted with?” “No, dog, I’m not acquainted with” [NB 34 TS 45] Note: more likely Sam recalled his late friend the Scot Dr. John Brown.

December – In New Zealand Sam entered in his notebook:

At great intervals they have much snow & very hard winters in the Middle Island; Lady Barker tells of one [Gribben 47; NB 36 TS 3]. Note: Mary Anne Barker’s (Lady Broome) Station Life in New Zealand (1870).

November 30 Saturday – Sam’s 60th Birthday.

In Napier, N.Z. on Frank Moeller’s Masonic Hotel letterhead, Sam responded to a letter (not extant) from J.B. Pond asking if he’d be interested in 50 lectures in England the next year.

No; fifty lectures in England would not be worth my while.

November 29 Friday – Sam’s second lecture in Napier was canceled due to a fourth carbuncle threatening. His doctor called on him again at the hotel “and told him about some drunkards reclaimed by the Salvation Army, and a ‘citizen’ told him that the colonists, rather than having their teeth filled, merely pulled them out and substituted false ones.” Stuck in bed, Sam read railroad timetables and Indian histories [Shillingsburg, At Home 165; “Down Under” 27-8].

November 28 Thursday – Early in the morning the Rotomahana reached Napier (pop. 9,000), a stop scheduled for two of Sam’s lectures. Sam noted a new pier, and “beautiful green bluffs” below the town, and “A handsome beach of prodigious length” [NB 34 TS 43]. They took rooms at Frank Moeller’s Masonic Hotel overlooking the sea. Sam didn’t care for three cages of canaries that decorated the long porch. He wrote in his notebook:

November 27 Wednesday – Livy’s 50th birthday. Sam’s notebook on the event:

Nov. 27. Livy’s birthday. I claimed that her birthday has either passed or is to come; that it is the 27th as the 27th exists in America, not here where we have flung out a day & closed up the vacancy [NB 34 TS 42].

November 26 Tuesday – The Clemens party sailed from Auckland at 3 p.m. on the Union Co.’s Rotomahana. Shillingsburg: “They had arrived at Auckland’s western port near Onehunga, crossed through the city and departed from the northeastern shore on their way to Gisborne and Napier on the east coast” [At Home 161]. Sam wrote:

November 25 Monday – At the Star Hotel in Auckland, Sam stayed in bed to rest up for his evening performance, his last in Auckand. He’d been plagued by more carbuncles, as he related in a letter to Dr. R.H. Bakewell, a prominent New Zealand scientist, so he was taking it easy,

November 24 Sunday – In Auckland, Livy wrote to her sister, Sue Crane:

Saturday we [lunched] at Bishopscourt, which is the bishop’s palace here…the bishop was interesting, but I found his wife still more so.