March 16 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to his sister, Pamela Moffett.
To-day we bought Mr. Chamberlain’s [Franklin Chamberlin (1821-1896) Hartford attorney] greenhouse & 100 feet of land adjoining our east line (to stop Mr. C. from building a dwelling house there); we have also set architect & builder to work to tear down our kitchen & build a bigger one; & at the same time the decorators will decorate the walls & ceilings of our whole lower floor.
March 15 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Ulysses S. Grant, to thank him for his influence in saving the Chinese Educational Mission in Hartford, a work close to the heart of Joe Twichell, and underway since 1872.
March 12 Saturday – R.P. Kenyon & Co., New York, billed $4 to Sam for “1 silk hat for coachman del to McLear” (Patrick McAleer); paid Mar. 18 [MTP].
March 11 Friday – Frank M. Wilson & Co. “Tailors and Gent’s Furnishers,” Bridgeport, Conn. billed Sam $96.00 for “2 Eng silk lined Sack suits” [MTP].
NORTHWARD:
6 May - departed New Orleans,LA aboard City of Baton Rouge
WE left for St. Louis in the 'City of Baton Rouge,' on a delightfully hot day, but with the main purpose of my visit but lamely accomplished. I had hoped to hunt up and talk with a hundred steamboatmen, but got so pleasantly involved in the social life of the town that I got nothing more than mere five-minute talks with a couple of dozen of the craft.
BATON ROUGE was clothed in flowers, like a bride—no, much more so; like a greenhouse. For we were in the absolute South now—no modifications, no compromises, no half-way measures. The magnolia-trees in the Capitol grounds were lovely and fragrant, with their dense rich foliage and huge snow-ball blossoms. The scent of the flower is very sweet, but you want distance on it, because it is so powerful. They are not good bedroom blossoms—they might suffocate one in his sleep.
We passed Port Hudson, scene of two of the most terrific episodes of the war—the night-battle there between Farragut's fleet and the Confederate land batteries, April 14th, 1863; and the memorable land battle, two months later, which lasted eight hours—eight hours of exceptionally fierce and stubborn fighting—and ended, finally, in the repulse of the Union forces with great slaughter. [LOTM p414-5]
Natchez, like her near and far river neighbors, has railways now, and is adding to them—pushing them hither and thither into all rich outlying regions that are naturally tributary to her. And like Vicksburg and New Orleans, she has her ice-factory: she makes thirty tons of ice a day. In Vicksburg and Natchez, in my time, ice was jewelry; none but the rich could wear it. But anybody and everybody can have it now. I visited one of the ice-factories in New Orleans, to see what the polar regions might look like when lugged into the edge of the tropics.
Helena we visited, and also a town I had not heard of before, it being of recent birth—Arkansas City. It was born of a railway; the Little Rock, Mississippi River and Texas Railroad touches the river there. We asked a passenger who belonged there what sort of a place it was. 'Well,' said he, after considering, and with the air of one who wishes to take time and be accurate, 'It's a hell of a place.' A description which was photographic for exactness.
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