May 6 Saturday – From Sam’s notebook:

Visited Armory of the “Washington Artillery”. Hanging there is an equestrian portrait of “Stonewall” Jackson & Lee (by Julio.) Also an original portrait—full length—of Andrew Jackson.

Flags of the Wash. Artillery with names 60 noted engagements embroidered thereon. Also flag of the Cross and Stars—the first one made after adoption of change from Stars & Bars.

In another room were portraits of Gen. Beauregard & Gen Owens—our chaperone [MTNJ 2: 557]

May 5 Friday – Sam was quite fascinated by an ice factory he visited and described it the next day in a letter to Livy. “They make 60 tons a day in summer & 100 in winter, & sell it at a cent a pound.”

In the evening Sam received a letter from Susy and Clara and Livy [May 6 letter to Livy, MTP].

May 4 Thursday – Sam wrote that he and Bixby “joined a party of ladies and gentlemen, guests of Major Wood, and went down the river fifty-four miles, in a swift tug” [Ch 48 LM].

From Sam’s notebook:

May 3 Wednesday – Sam “lay abed till toward noon…& made Osgood go out & meet the appointments.” After Osgood returned they began a game of billiards, but Horace Bixby came by. Sam went and dined with his old mentor [May 4 to Livy, MTP]. In Ch. 48 of Life on the Mississippi, Sam wrote he encountered Bixby on the street and the two men embraced, but the May 4 account is probably the correct one.

May 2 Tuesday – Dr. John Brown of Scotland, favored friend of the Clemens family died. Sam would learn of the death before he left New Orleans, in a “damp newspaper.”

Sam wrote from New Orleans to Livy:

May 1 Monday – Sam, Cable and Harris spent the afternoon “at Cable’s red-and-olive cottage, surrounded by orange trees and a garden, on Eighth Street, on the lip of the Garden District” [Kaplan 245]. The crowd of children who’d come to Cable’s house to see their beloved Uncle Remus were shocked to find the red-haired man was white and too shy to read to an audience.

May – Sam’s notebook carries an entry to “see Dickens for a note on Cairo [Illinois]” [Gribben 187]. In LM Sam focused on the improvements in Cairo, no longer the place Dickens had described, a:

“…hotbed of disease, an ugly sepulcher, a grave uncheered by any gleam of promise.”