May 18-23 Saturday – Sam wrote a sketch unpublished until 2009: “Happy Memories of the Dental Chair” [Who Is Mark Twain? xxiv].

May 17 Sunday – Sam’s “Holy Land Excursion. Letter from Mark Twain Number Fifty-one” dated Sept. 1867 at “Jerusalem” ran in the Alta California [McKeithan 296-301].

May 12 Tuesday – Sam wrote from San Francisco to Mary Mason Fairbanks, including a photograph he had forgotten to include in his letter of May 5.

He also wrote to Frank Fuller about his success in lecturing, his plans to go east the first of July and the news that his book would be issued from the press early in December [MTL 2: 216].

May 5 Tuesday – Sam departed Sacramento at 2 PM on the California Steam Navigation Company’s Capital, with his friend Edward A. Poole as captain. Sam arrived back in San Francisco and stayed at the Occidental Hotel again, and finished his letter of May 1 to Mary Mason Fairbanks.

May 4 Monday – Sam was in transit to San Francisco, by stage and by train. He spent the night in Sacramento [MTL 2: 215n8].

May 3 Sunday – Sam left Virginia City for the trip over the Sierra Nevada, which, due to the late spring snows and railroad repairs, was one of train plus stagecoach for a 30-hour trip to San Francisco [MTL 2: 213n3-4].

May 1 Friday – Sam returned to Virginia City, where he began a letter to Mary Mason Fairbanks:

“My Dear Mother—I cannot go a-Maying today, because it is snowing so hard—& so I have been writing some newspaper letters…”

Sam left the letter unfinished until he returned to San Francisco [MTL 2: 211]. Sam spent a couple of days “to shake hands and swap yarns with his old friends” [MTL 2: 213].

May – Sam’s hilarious article, “My Late Senatorial Secretaryship,” was printed in the Galaxy Magazine for May 1868 [Budd, “Collected” 1008].

April 30 Thursday – Sam gave his “Sandwich Islands” lecture in Carson City as a school benefit [MTL 2: 213].

April 29 Wednesday – Sam went to Carson City and gave his “Pilgrim” lecture at Carson Theater [Sanborn 394; MTPO].