The family spent the day in Turin, shopping and enjoying the  sights [MTLE  3: 101].
 

The Clemens family left Chambéry for Turin by the fast express train, which Sam noted “makes  4 miles an hour—the other trains make only 3 1/4 . By 11 we were out of sight  of Chambery.” Three hours from Turin, the train barely won a race with a  team of oxen, Sam wrote [MTNJ  2:185]. It took  eight more hours to arrive in Turin, at about 7 PM. They took rooms in the Hotel  d’Europe, which Sam noted  had “wonderful rooms” [186].  They went to supper and drank Barolo wine.

September 15 Sunday Sam’s notebook:

 Sam was awakened at 3 AM  by a braying jackass in front of the hotel. The party left Geneva for  Italy, stopping at Chambéry, France for a break. More from his notebook:

– John Marshall had been drafted for a border war with Iowa over a disputed boundary, but the matter was settled by this time [Wecter 56].

Sam’s fourth birthday.

The Clemens family moved to Hannibal: John, Jane, Orion, Pamela, Benjamin, Sammy (nearly age four), the baby Henry, and a slave girl Jennie. Paine, in Boy’s Life of Mark Twain says the family lived first at Pavey’s Hotel(later Planter’s Hotel). The Paveys later moved to St. Louis. Wecter gives the time of the move as “about mid-November” [56].

The first home for the Clemens was the Virginia House, a rickety two-story hotel close to the river at the northwest corner of Main and Hill Streets [Varble 129].

 John Marshall sold another large parcel, 326 acres near the Ralls County line, for $2000 to Ira Stout [Wecter 52].

John Marshall Clemens sold properties around Florida for $3,000 to speculator Ira Stout. At the same time, John purchased a quarter of a city block in Hannibal on the Mississippi, about forty miles east of Florida, for what Wecter calls “the thumping price of $7000 paid in full” [Wecter 51-2; Powers, MT A Life 21]. Note: “Hannibal” was also a family name with no connection to the town. It may be argued that John paid too much for the quarter block in Hannibal.

Nine-year-old sister Margaret died of “bilious fever” (typhoidor malaria). It was the first of many family deaths Sam would suffer. Wecter gives this date as Aug. 19 [51].