April 26 Thursday – Sam wrote from Wailuku, Maui, to the Kimball brothers who had been fellow passengers on the Ajax.
Messrs Kimball—
Gentlemen—Don’t you think for a moment of going up on Haleakala without giving me an opportunity of accompanying you! I have waited for & skirmished after some company for some time without avail, & now I hear that you will shortly be at Haiku. So I shall wait for you. Cannot you let me know, just as soon as you arrive, & give me a day or two (or more, even, if possible,) to get there in, with my horse? Because I am told the distance hence to Haiku is 15 miles— to prosecute which will be a matter of time, to my animal, & possibly a matter of eternity. His strong suit is grace & personal comeliness, rather than velocity.
Yours Very Truly,
Sam L. Clemens.
(Or “Mark Twain,” if you have forgotten my genuine name.)
My address is “Plantation.”Wailuku I shall send two or three notes for by different parties, for fear one might miss fire—an idea suggested by my own native sagacity [MTPO]. Note: Sam had heard they would be in Haiku, a village 15 miles from him and asked the brothers to wait for him to travel to the extinct volcano Haleakala. He described his visit in Roughing It, Ch. 76. Note: MTP subject index lists William Cargill Kimball (1841-1890) and Warren Woods Kimball (1838-1874). Frear writes:
On Maui he made Wailuku, now the county seat, his headquarters, boarded with G. Armstrong whom he had met in Virginia City, roomed with a Mr. Tallant, the plantation bookkeeper, loafed and smoked and spun yarns of an evening at a nearby carpenter shop, when not doing so at Armstrong’s, supped often and had “jolly times” with his most prized friend there, the missionary “Father” Alexander, met many others from the “homeliest” to the “oldest,” the “King of Liars,” and probably some of the relatives of his friend Charles Warren Stoddard, attended card and dancing parties and scoured the island scenically and industrially [56-7]. Note: editorial emphasis. Frear also quotes Armstrong’s interview of 32 years later: “For he hadn’t a red cent, not even decent clothes.”