May 14 Sunday – The Gem City arrived in Hannibal, Mo. at 7 AM [Ch 53 LM]. Kaplan writes it was “a still Sunday morning. The town seemed deserted.” Sam later wrote Livy that “Everything was changed, but when I reached Third or Fourth street the tears burst forth, for I recognized the mud” [Kaplan 246].

Sam registered at the Park Hotel.

May 14 to 17 Wednesday – Sam spent three days in Hannibal staring his history in the face:

During my three days’ stay in the town, I woke up every morning with the impression that I was a boy—for in my dreams the faces were all young again, and looked as they had looked in the old times; but I went to bed a hundred years old, every night—for meantime I had been seeing those faces as they are now.

Of course I suffered some surprises, along at first, before I had become adjusted to the changed state of things. I met young ladies who did not seem to have changed at all; but they turned out to be the daughters of the young ladies I had in mind—sometimes their granddaughters.

I noticed the greatest changes observable were the women, not the men. I saw men whom thirty years had changed but slightly; but their wives had grown old. These were good women; it is very wearing to be good [Ch 56 LM].