April 21 Friday – The Gold Dust finally got underway at 2 AM and at 6 AM paused at Menard, Ill. to let off passengers near St. Genevieve. Sam enjoyed the scenery, passing Chester, Ill., Grand Tower, Ill., and Cape Girareau, Mo., stopping at Cairo, Ill., some 200 miles from St. Louis. It was night when the Gold Dust made Cairo [Ch.
April 21 Friday – The Gold Dust finally got underway at 2 AM and at 6 AM paused at Menard, Ill. to let off passengers near St. Genevieve. Sam enjoyed the scenery, passing Chester, Ill., Grand Tower, Ill., and Cape Girareau, Mo., stopping at Cairo, Ill., some 200 miles from St. Louis. It was night when the Gold Dust made Cairo [Ch.
Ste. Genevieve (French: Sainte-Geneviève [sɛ̃t ʒən.vjɛv]) is a city in Ste. Genevieve Township and is the county seat of Ste.
MY idea was, to tarry a while in every town between St. Louis and New Orleans. To do this, it would be necessary to go from place to place by the short packet lines. It was an easy plan to make, and would have been an easy one to follow, twenty years ago—but not now. There are wide intervals between boats, these days.
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I find that among my notes. It makes no difference which direction you take, the fact remains the same.
April 20 Thursday – From Ch. 22, LM:
Next Morning we drove around town in the rain. The city seemed but little changed. It was greatly changed, but it did not seem so; because in St. Louis, as in London and Pittsburgh, you can’t persuade a thing to look new; the coal-smoke turns it into an antiquity the moment you take your hand off it. The place had just about doubled its size since I was a resident of it, and was now become a city of four hundred thousand inhabitants.
April 19 Wednesday – “This morning struck into the region of full goatees—sometimes accompanied by a mustache, but only occasionally” [Ch. 22, LM].
Noon: Sam changed trains in Indianapolis.
Afternoon: “—At the railway-stations the loafers carry both hands in their breeches pockets; it was observable, heretofore, that one hand was sometimes out-of-doors—here, never. This is an important fact for geography.”
April 18 Tuesday – At 8 AM, Sam, Osgood, and Phelps left New York on the Pennsylvania Railroad. They would travel through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, then St. Louis. Sam noted in the evening:
“Speaking of dress. Grace and picturesqueness drop gradually out of it as one travels away from New York” [Ch. 22, LM].
April 17 Monday – Sam left Hartford with 37-year-old Hartford schoolteacher Roswell Phelps, hired stenographer. Phelps was to take down Sam’s impressions of the trip, and also letters of Sam’s ongoing business matters [Kaplan 244]. The men were bound for St. Louis and the Mississippi River, where Sam’s decade-old dream (since at least Jan.
April – Sam’s notebook has an entry “Gillette ask Chas W Butler about Mrs. Bruner’s play—‘A Mad World’.” Butler was an actor [Gribben 107]. Sam also jotted notes about Mike Fink [229]. Also in his notebook: “War Diary of Gen. Geo. H. Gordon,” referring to A War Diary of Events in the War of the Great Rebellion (1882) [268]. Another entry reads, “Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason—Max Muller’s translation. Macmillan, N.Y.” [363].