Day by Day entries are from Mark Twain, Day By Day, four volumes of books compiled by David Fears and made available on-line by the Center for Mark Twain Studies.  The entries presented here are from conversions of the PDFs provided by the Center for Mark Twain Studies and are subject to the vagaries of that process.    The PDFs, themselves, have problems with formatting and some difficulties with indexing for searching.  These are the inevitable problems resulting from converting a printed book into PDFs.  Consequently, what is provided here are copies of copies.  

I have made attempts at providing a time-line for Twain's Geography and have been dissatisfied with the results.  Fears' work provides a comprehensive solution to that problem.  Each entry from the books is titled with the full date of the entry, solving a major problem I have with the On-line site - what year is the entry for.  The entries are certainly not perfect reproductions from Fears' books, however.  Converting PDFs to text frequently results in characters, and sometimes entire sections of text,  relocating.  In the later case I have tried to amend the problem where it occurs but more often than not the relocated characters are simply omitted.  Also, I cannot vouch for the paragraph structure.  Correcting these problems would require access to the printed copies of Fears' books.  Alas, but this is beyond my reach.

This page allows the reader to search for entries based on a range of dates.  The entries are also accessible from each of the primary sections (Epochs, Episodes and Chapters) of Twain's Geography.  

Entry Date (field_entry_date)

1859

Submitted by scott on

Pilot’s License – Sgt. Fathom & Captain Isaiah Sellers
Running Aground and Heroism – Working the River

March 9, 1859

Submitted by scott on

March 9 and 11 Friday – In New Orleans, Sam began a long letter to sister Pamela Moffett, that he finished on Mar. 11. He wrote of the Mardi Gras, and Maria Piccolomini, an Italian “princess” singer
Here, in part:
. . . . [first part not extant]

April 9, 1859

Submitted by scott on

April 9 Saturday – Sam was granted a license as a full steamboat pilot from the Department of Commerce in St. Louis. Until May 1861, Sam had the “best job in the world.” Note: Until copies of Sam’s pilot license surfaced in the late 1930s, it was thought by Paine, DeVoto and others (from Sam’s autobiographical estimates of eighteen months from his apprenticeship under Bixby,) that the date was Sept. 9, 1858. Sam may have recollected being allowed to pilot crafts without passengers prior to the issuance of his license, which would have been lawful at that time [The Twainian, Nov. 1939].

May 4, 1859

Submitted by scott on

May 4 Wednesday – Now a full pilot, Sam left St. Louis on the Alfred T. Lacey, copiloted by Bart Bowen (brother of Sam and Will Bowen), under Captain John P. Rodney, for New Orleans. “A pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and entirely independent human being that lived in the earth” [LM; MTL 1: 14].