September 25 Wednesday – In Sydney, Australia the Clemens family spent the day packing for a trip to Melbourne. Sam was trying to “stave off an attack by a new carbuncle on his calf” [Shillingsburg, “Down Under” 10; At Home 52].

At 11 a.m. Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers obviously responding to a letter (not extant). Sam was happy Rogers enjoyed his reunion at the Fairhaven High School, where he read Sam’s “Californian’s Tale.” Sam wrote of a new carbuncle “half way between my left knee and ancle, right astride a big tendon.” He was in bed while Livy and the maid packed trunks.

We have had a darling time here for a week — and really I am almost in love with the platform again.

Mrs. Clemens has sent you the newspapers; so I’ve nothing to write about. Well, that isn’t so; I’ve got lots to write about, but I’ve never had a moment’s time that was honestly and positivey mine since I arrived. I don’t know what would become of me but for Mrs. Clemens and Clara; they slave away answering letters for me half the day and night and paying not only their own calls but as many of mine as can be brought within their jurisdiction. I work at my lectures all I can, trying to get them to a point that will suit me [MTHHR 188-9].

Shillingsburg writes on Livy’s roles as censor and assistant to Mark Twain during this leg of the tour:

“Mrs. Clemens not only saw to the everyday needs of her family, but she also took over as much of Twain’s work as she could. After the faux pas over Bret Harte she seems even to have ‘interrupted’ interviews before her husband said something that might offend the public whose good will they had come to cultivate. Besides scolding him about the ‘great mistake you made,’ in voicing his opinion about Harte, it was reported that when he was asked about Max O’Rell, she ‘divined what he was going to say, smothered the word by placing a delicate hand over his mouth, at the same time telling the writer to be sure not to put that in’” [At Home 51].

The Clemens family left the Australia Hotel at 4:30 p.m. with R.S. Smythe and took the evening train, the Sydney Express, which they would discover was a misnomer [Shillingsburg, “Down Under” 10]. Shillingsburg writes, “Twain later described the train as ‘American’ because it had ‘a most rational sleeping car; … clean, and fine, and new…But our baggage was weighed and extra weight charged for. That was continental. Continental and troublesome’” [At Home 53]. Note: Shillingsburg quotes from the Chatto & Windus version of FE, or, More Tramps Abroad p.91; the page numbers are not the same for these first editions.