Day By Day Dates

November 26 Monday – The San Jose Mercury:

November 27 Tuesday – Sam gave the “Sandwich Islands” lecture at Oakland, Calif. in College Hall. Sam stayed with J. Ross Browne and family in Oakland. [MTL 1: 370n6]. (See September, mid to late entry.) The turnout was small for this lecture, only about 200 people, which Lorch attributes to “a misunderstanding about the time at which the talk was to take place, though the entire city council canceled a meeting and came to the hall as a group.” Sam had to wait for the school band to finish a long concert before speaking [47].

November 30 Friday – Sam’s 31 st birthday. He wrote at least three letters to the San Francisco Evening Bulletin, reporting on some of the stops on his interior lecture tour. The first known of these, MARK TWAIN’S INTERIOR NOTES ran with descriptions of Marysville, Grass Valley, The Eureka Mine, Nevada, and: Sacramento

December – Sam’s write up of the Hornet disaster, “Forty-three Days in an Open Boat” was printed in the prestigious Harper’s Monthly, but the piece was indexed to “Mark Swain” [MTL 1: 355n8]. Sam’s notebook labeled such songs as, “Marching through Georgia,” and “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” and “Old Dog Tray,” and “Just Before the Battle, Mother,” as the “d—dest, oldest, vilest songs” performed by the ship’s choir” [MTNJ 1: 262].

December 1 Saturday – The Santa Rosa Sonora Democrat ridiculed the editors of the Petaluma Argus and the Petaluma Journal for their unexplained criticisms of Sam’s Petaluma lecture [Lorch 338n33].

December 3 Monday – Sam called on Rev. Dr. Charles Wadsworth (1814-1882) of Calvary Presbyterian Church, but he was not at home [MTL 1: 368].

December 4 Tuesday – Sam wrote from San Francisco to Isabella A. Cotton, one of his companions on the Smyrniote sailing ship from Hawaii, about his plans to leave on the “Opposition” steamer on Dec. 15. He forgot to enclose a picture of himself, and so sent a second note [MTL 1: 371-2].
Sam also wrote his mother, Jane Lampton Clemens, and family. Sam wrote he was:

December 5 Wednesday – Governor Frederick Low, and Henry Blasdel, Governor of Nevada and others invited Sam by to repeat his first lecture before he departed California [MTL 1: 373n1]. Note:
Lorch concludes it “may never be known” if Sam arranged this invitation, “but it must be confessed that the phrasing …has the earmarks of being genuine” [48].

December 6 Thursday – Sam replied to Governor Frederick Low and others accepting their Dec. 5 invitation to repeat his lecture on the Sandwich Islands at Congress Hall on Monday, Dec. 10 [MTL 1: 372].
Sam’s letter, MARK TWAIN’S INTERIOR NOTES [II]. ran in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin. Subheadings: “To Red Dog and Back,” “A Memento of Speculation,” “An Aristocratic Turn-Out,” and “Silver Land” [Schmidt; Camfield bibliog.].

December 7 Friday – Sam’s letter, MARK TWAIN’S INTERIOR NOTES [III]. ran in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin. Sections: “San Jose,” “Silk,” and “Mark Twain Mystified” [Schmidt].
Camfield and Benson both list “Mark Twain Mystified” as running first in the Evening Bulletin [bibliog.; 165].

December 9 Sunday – Sam’s article “Mark Twain Mystified” was re-printed in the San Francisco Golden Era.
“I cannot understand the telegraphic dispatches nowadays, with their odd punctuation—I mean with so many question marks thrust in where no question is asked.” Sam complained that this tore up his mind on the “eve of a lecture” [Fatout, MT Speaks 34].
Another article, “’Mark Twain’ on the Dog Question,” was published in the Morning Call [Schmidt].

December 10 Monday – Sam gave the “Sandwich Islands” lecture at Congress Hall in San Francisco as “Mark Twain’s Farewell” [Benson 165]. Lorch say the “lecture was well attended and well received” [48].

December 11 Tuesday – The Alta California reported that the Dec. 10 audience paid:
…rapt attention to his gorgeous imagery, in describing scenes at the Sandwich Islands, or convulsed with laughter at the humorous sallies interspersed through lecture, he seemed to come reluctantly to the promised “good-bye,” and then his whole manner changed—the words were evidently the language of the heart, and the convictions of his judgment [Fatout, MT Speaking 16; Lorch 48].

December 12 Wednesday – Sam received a telegraph from a fan: “Go to Nudd, Lord & Co., Front street, collect amount of money equal to what highwaymen took from you. (signed) A.D.N.” [MTL 1: 374n1]. The signator was Asa D. Nudd, principal of the firm.

December 14 Friday – Alta California printed Sam’s impromptu farewell address of Dec. 10, “So Long” [Camfield bibliog.]. Lorch and Sanborn report the verbatim article as Dec. 15 [49; 309].
S. Purmoil wrote from Honolulu to “Affluent Mark…/ I write you in sorrow and tribulation. Since you left here, everything has gone wrong.” He proceeded to write of many shortcomings and anecdotes. Printed in the Daily Hawaiian Herald [MTP].

December 15 Saturday – The San Francisco Morning Call reported that Sam collected $100 from Nudd, Lord & Co [MTL 1: 374n1]. Sam’s article, “Depart, Ye Accursed!” was published in the New York Weekly Review [MTL 1: 330n5]. It was reprinted in the Californian, Jan.19, 1867 as “Mark Twain on Chambermaids” [Camfield bibliog.].

December 16 Sunday – From Sam’s letter to the Alta of Dec. 18: 

December 18 Tuesday – From Sam’s notebook:
“The young runaway couple, after co-habiting a night or two, were married last night by the Capt’s peremptory order, in presence of 5 witnesses” [MTNJ 1: 249].

December 19 Wednesday – From Sam’s letter to the Alta printed January 18, 1867:
SEQUEL TO THE ELOPEMENT / NOON, 19 th

December 20 Thursday – From Sam’s notebook:
"At noon, 5 days out from San Francisco, abreast high stretch of land at foot of Magdalena Bay, Capt came & said, ‘Come out here…I want to show you something’ –took the marine glass— (2 whaling ships with a catch)” [MTNJ 1: 250].
The Brooklyn Eagle ran a short note on page 4 about Sam’s “Lecture among Highwaymen,” and ended with “Mark failed to see the point” of the practical joke. [The Eagle is available online].

December 21 Friday – From Sam’s notebook:
“Crossed tropic of Capricorn—Cape St Lucas—now abreast Gulf of California….Geniuses are people who dash off weird, wild, incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility, & then go & get booming drunk & sleep in the gutter…people who have genius do not pay their board, as a general thing” [MTNJ 1: 250].

December 22 Saturday – From Sam’s notebook:
“Passengers have been singing several days—now the men have come down to leap-frog, boyish gymnastics & tricks of equilibrium—& sitting on a bottle with legs extended & X d , & threading a good sized needle” [MTNJ 1: 251-2].

December 23 Sunday – From Sam’s notebook:
Morning service on Prom deck by Fackler—organ & choir. I had rather travel with that old portly, hearty, jolly, boisterous, good-natured old sailor, Capt. Ned Wakeman than with any other man I ever came across. He never drinks, & never plays cards; he never swears, except in the privacy of his own quarters, with a friend or so, & then his feats of fancy blasphemy are calculated to fill the hearer with awe & the liveliest admiration [MTNJ 1: 253].

December 24 Monday – From Sam’s notebook:
Christmas Eve—9 P.M. Me & the Capt & Kingman out forward. Capt. Said—Don’t like the looks of that point with the mist outside of it—hold her a point free. Quartermaster (touching his hat)—“The child is dead sir (been sick 2 days.—) What are yr orders” [MTNJ 1: 257].
The death of a child onboard made for a solemn Christmas Eve.

December 25 Tuesday – Christmas – From Sam’s Mar. 15 Alta letter [Schmidt]: