April 23 Sunday – Sam and party toured Memphis in the morning.

“A thriving place is the Good Samaritan City of the Mississippi: has a great wholesale jobbing trade; foundries, machine shops, and manufactories of wagons, carriages, and cotton-seed oil; and is shortly to have cotton-mills and elevators” [Ch 29 LM].

From Sam’s notebook:

“Passed the wreck of the ‘Golden City’ below Memphis. Caught fire early in the morning Mch. 30/82. The negro crew jumped ashore and deserted her. They ran her into shore but she got out of line. Great many lives lost—people asleep. She drifted down inside of President Island and sunk” [2: 570].

The boat discharged freight at Helena, Ark. on this sunny Sunday and Sam’s party had “two full hours’ liberty ashore.” Sam expounded about the town in Ch. 30, LM. From Sam’s notebook:

Reached Helena Ark. About 5:30 P.M. Went out for a stroll about the town. All had been under water. The plank walks loosened and irregular. Had to step careful or a loose board would fly up and hit Johnson on the nose…. Saw a garden which a man had planted with oyster cans. Couldn’t raise anything else, so tried to raise oysters [2: 536-7].

Hattie J. Gerhardt wrote to Sam and Livy, pleased with their letter calling Karl by his first name—would they call her by one of her two names, Hattie or Josephine? The weather, and other details of their lives in Paris [MTP].