April 26 Wednesday – The Gold Dust arrived at Vicksburg, Miss., where Sam, Osgood and Phelps boarded the Charles Morgan [MTNJ 2: 436]. A notebook entry for the date at 11 AM may be the time of the Morgan’s departure [462]. Before boarding, the party took a ride to the National Cemetery, where Sam jotted the motto over the gateway:

Here rest in peace 16,600 who died for their country in the years 1861 to 1865.

Sam added the corresponding motto at Arlington, lines from Theodore O’Hara’s “The Bivouac of the Dead” [572].

The Vicksburg Daily Herald (possibly from the Memphis Ledger) printed “Mark Twain Tries to Pull Wool Over the Marines, but Doesn’t.” This reported Sam’s use of pseudonym “C.L. Samuels” on his trip up the Mississippi; included stories about Sam, Captain Bart Bowen, and the pranks played on Captain Isaiah Sellers [Tenney 10].