June 14 Friday – From Sam’s notebook:
“Shipped a sea through the open dead-light that damaged cigars, books, &c—comes of being careless when room is on weather side of the ship….Mrs. C.C. Duncan’s 46 birth-day festival in the after-cabin” [Ibid.]
Emily Severance recorded most of what Sam said at the festivities:

June 13 Thursday – From Sam’s notebook:
—On board Steamer Quaker City at sea, 12 M—lat.40, long 62—560 miles from New York, ¼ of the way to the Azores—just 3 days out—in last 24 hours made 205 miles. Will make more in next 24, because the wind is fair & we are under sail & steam both, & are burning 30 tons of coal a day & fast lightening up the ship [MTNJ 1: 335].

June 11 Tuesday – Captain Charles Duncan recorded the noon hailing of the Emerald Isle, which, according to the NY Times, left Liverpool on May 12 [MTNJ 1: 333n76]. Note: after several days at sea without seeing a soul, this would have been cause for interest among the passengers.

June 10 Monday – The Quaker City finally put out to sea at 12:30 PM. A lot of the passengers were seasick. “We all like to see people seasick when we are not, ourselves” [IA, Ch 3].

For the most part, Sam thought the passengers were staid stuffed shirts. “I was on excellent terms with eight or nine of the excursionists,” Sam wrote later in Innocents Abroad, “(they are my staunch friends yet) and was even on speaking terms with the rest of the sixty-five.”

June 9 Sunday – From Sam’s notebook:
Sunday Morning—June 9—Still lying at anchor in N.Y. harbor—rained all night & all morning like the devil—some sea on—lady had to leave church in the cabin—sea-sick. Rev. Mr. Bullard preached from II Cor. 7 & 8th verses about something.
Everybody ranged up & down sides of upper after cabin—Capt Duncan’s little son played the organ—Tableau–in the midst of sermon Capt. Duncan rushed madly out with one of those d—d dogs but didn’t throw him overboard [MTNJ 1: 331-32].

June 8 Saturday – Quaker City left New York at 2 PM for excursion to the Holy Land, the first organized pleasure party ever assembled for a transatlantic voyage. The ship carried only 65 passengers, way short of the 110 limit. Few were from Plymouth Church. Due to rough seas the ship got only as far as Gravesend Bay, off Brooklyn. The captain elected to drop anchor and wait out the storm for two days.

June 7 Friday – Sam wrote from New York to “my oldest friend,” Will Bowen in Hannibal.

“We leave tomorrow at 3:00 P.M. Everything is ready but my trunks. I will pack them first thing in the morning. We have got a crowd of tiptop people, & shall have a jolly, sociable, homelike trip of it for the next five or six months” [MTL 2: 54].

On this same day Sam wrote to his mother and family in St. Louis. This letter contains evidence that Sam visited Dan Slote’s house before leaving New York. Sam teased his mother:

June 6 Thursday – The get-together at the Moses Beach house in Brooklyn (Beach was neighbor to Henry Ward Beecher there) came off as planned (See Sam’s June 1 letter to his mother). The New York Sun reported that 70 guests, passengers awaiting departure on the Quaker City, enjoyed an “excellent repast,” and that “Mark Twain …enlivened the company with ebul[l]itions of wit” [MTL 2: 51n2].
In Mark Twain to Mrs. Fairbanks, p. xi, Wecter writes:

June 5 Wednesday – Sam wrote to the Alta his impressions of New York, so different they were from those of his first visit in 1853: “I have at last, after several months’ experience, made up my mind that it is a splendid desert—a domed and steepled solitude, where the stranger is lonely in the midst of a million of his race” [MTNJ 1: 301]. Note: the letter was printed in the Alta on August 11.

June 3 or 4 Tuesday – Sam agreed to write letters during the trip for the New York Tribune and the New York Herald, at the rates of $40 to $50 dollars per column of type. He eventually published six letters in the Tribune and four in the Herald [MTL 2: 55n3]. Note: Sam may have hated the duty of writing his correspondent letters, but he didn’t shirk from loading his plate with more duty. This was due to an overabundance of affection for money, preferably not in greenbacks.