April 27 Saturday – Sam was in the Fort Monroe, Va. area after seeing the Jamestown Exposition, having a “foggy & gashly time!” In his May 2 to Clara he wrote that after the first day:

The others deserted, & fled home by rail; but Broughton & I stuck it out—being resolved that we would never trust ourselves to the hated rail. We lay at anchor day after day smothered in white fog, & read, talked, smoked, yawned, gaped, & cussed.(This was at Old Point Comfort). Once we went ashore & spent a couple of hours with the officers in Fortress Monroe; & once we went ashore to do some shopping, & in the hotel I saw the most beautiful girl you can imagine; but I was so stupefied by the fog that I couldn’t think of anything to say to her, so I didn’t speak to her at all. I am still regretting it [Note: the NY Times article of May 4 gave Monday (Apr. 29) as the day Rogers and son left on the train].

Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Mrs. Rosenfieldt’s letter. Today’s Southern paper tells that a big excursion boat ran close to Kanahwa [sic] knowing the King was on board, and nearly swamping her” [MTP TS 54]. Note: she likely is referring to Mrs. Sidney Rosenfeld, letter not extant. See May 1 entry.

T.H. Tregellas wrote from Victoria, Australia to Sam. He’d been disappointed when he saw Mark Twain in Bendigo but had kept reading all his works. Recently, an article of Twain’s “Golden Boyhood” which ran in the Melbourne Argus, caused him to break down. His wife urged him to write [MTP].

E.B. Goodall wrote in a nearly illegible hand from Portsmouth, N.H. to comment on Sam’s CS [MTP].

Florence Duncan Jones wrote from NY wanting to know if Sam was in the City so she could send him some literary work of a nature he’d be interested in [MTP].