December  6 Saturday – Sam’ second Snodgrass letter ran again in the  Keokuk Saturday Post [Schmidt].

Left  For the Amazon – New Orleans & Change of Plans – Bixby’s Influence

Official  Cub Pilot – Learning the Big Muddy

1857 –  Sometime during his stay in Keokuk Clemens saw Henry Clay Dean (1822-1887), eccentric philosopher who inspired Twain’s 1905  “The War Prayer.” In Ch. 57 of LM, Twain described Dean:

January – On Dec. 29, 1905 Sam  answered a question from an unidentified person:

“Yes I did lay aside the ‘stick’ to resume  it no more forever; but January 1857 was the time it happened, & Keokuk,  Iowa the place” [MTP]. Note: the “stick” was the typesetter’s line of  type. Sam soon after began his steam boat career.
 

January 23 Friday – In Keokuk, Henry Clemens wrote to Sam.

Your letters seem to be very strongly afflicted  with a lying-in-the-pocket propensity; for no sooner had I read your last, but  one, than it was consigned to one of the pockets of my overcoat, from whose  “vasty depths” I have but this moment fished it up, to answer it.

February  16 Monday – Sam boarded the packet Paul Jones (353 tons), on its way from Pittsburgh, for passage to New  Orleans, commanded by  Hiram K. Hazlett and piloted by Horace E. Bixby (1826-1912), and Jerry Mason [Branch,  “Bixby” 2]. Branch presents evidence for this date over Apr. 15.