Day By Day Dates

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)

May 9, 1860

May 9 Wednesday – A family story told by Annie Moffett Webster disclosed Sam’s political leaning in 1860 (Annie was 8 years old). That year a third political party of old Whigs and former Know-Nothings called the Constitutional Union Party met in Baltimore and nominated John Bell of Tennessee for president and Edward Everett of Massachusetts for vice president.

May 27, 1860

May 27 Sunday – The St. Louis Missouri Republican published “a brief, matter-of-fact river report signed by him [Sam] and Wesley Jacobs, his City of Memphis copilot”

June 27, 1860

June 27? Wednesday – Sam wrote brother Orion while on the City of Memphis (surviving fragments here):

What is a government without energy? And what is a man without energy? Nothing—nothing at all. What is the grandest thing in “Paradise Lost”—the Arch-Fiend’s terrible energy! What was the greatest feature in Napoleon’s character? His unconquerable energy! Sum all the gifts that man is endowed with, and we give our greatest share of admiration to his energy. And to-day, if I were a heathen, I would rear a statue to Energy, and fall down and worship it!

July 28, 1860

July 28 Saturday – Sam piloted the Arago (268 tons), co-pilot J.W. Hood, Captain George P. Sloan. The boat left St. Louis on this date bound for Vicksburg.

August 10, 1860

August 10 Friday – Sam witnessed the aurora borealis (“it was very beautiful, but it did not last very long”) and mentions it in his letter the following day.

August 11, 1860

August 11 Saturday – The Arago arrived in Cairo. Sam wrote from Cairo, Illinois to Susan I. (Belle) Stotts, sister of Orion’s wife, Mollie.
Dear Belle:
Confound me if I wouldn’t eat up half a dozen of you small girls if I just had the merest shadow of a chance this morning. Here I am, now, about 3 weeks out from Keokuk, and 2 from St. Louis, and yet I have not heard a word from you—and may not, possibly, for 2 or 3 more weeks, as we shall go no further up the river at present, but turn back from here and go to New Orleans.