A Restless Type Setter: Day By Day

April –Sam may have returned home as early as April, as there is no mention of him working in New York during this period in later letters or notes.

April 20 Sunday – Sam wrote his sister-in-law, Mollie Clemens, a conventional poem titled “To Mollie” [ET&S 1: 118].

August 19 Friday – At 8 AM Sam boarded a boat and started a journey by train and boat to New York. He did not tell his mother about the trip, which took about five days. From St. Louis to Alton, Ill by the sidewheeler steamer Cornelia, 11:00 AM, from Alton to Springfield on the partly completed Chicago and Mississippi Railroad; by Frink’s stage to Bloomington, Ind. [MTL 1: 5n2]. Dempsey notes that the train station was “just a few blocks” from the law office of Abraham Lincoln [232].

August 20 Saturday – Sam took the Illinois Central line to LaSalle, then the Chicago and Rock Island into Chicago, arriving at 7 PM [MTL 1: 5n2; Dempsey 232]. He “laid over all day Sunday” [MTL 1: 3].

August 21 Sunday – Sam took the 9 PM Michigan Central to Toledo, Ohio, then to Monroe, Michigan on the Northern Indiana and Michigan Southern railroads [Dempsey 232]. In his letter he wrote he traveled from Chicago to Monroe, Michigan “by railroad, another day” [MTL 1: 3].

August 22 Monday – 8 AM “from Monroe, across Lake Erie, in the fine Lake palace, ‘Southern Michigan,’ to Buffalo, another day. Sam would revisit Buffalo and Niagara Falls in 1869 [MTL 1: 3; Reigstad 59]. Dempsey: “He traveled to Buffalo, New York, aboard the steamer Southern Michigan” [Dempsey 232].

August 23 Tuesday – 7 AM “from Buffalo to Albany, on the “Lightning Express” railroad, another day” [MTL 1: 3; Powers, MT A Life 64]. Dempsey gives this train trip as beginning at 8 A.M. [232].

August 24 Wednesday – “…and from Albany to New York, by Hudson river steamboat [Isaac Newton], another day—an awful trip, taking five days, where it should have been only three” [MTL 1: 3]. Sam arrived in New York City at 5 AM with “two or three dollars in his pocket and a ten-dollar bill concealed in the lining of his coat” [MTB 95; MTL 1: 5n2; Powers, MT A Life 64]. (See letter of this date for a more exacting suggested itinerary.)

August 29 Monday – Sam got “a permanent situation…in a book and job office and went to work.” He was paid 23 cents per 1000 ems, the lowest rate. He worked in the fifth floor office of John A. Gray, 95-97 Cliff Street [MTL 1: 9; Powers, MT A Life 65]. His earnings were four dollars a week; he managed to save as much as fifty cents a week [MTB 96].

August 3 Sunday – Sam spent Sunday afternoon with the Taylor girls, and wrote the following Wednesday that he “brought away a big bouquet of Ete’s (Esther Taylor) d——d stinking flowers” [MTL 1: 66]

August 31 Wednesday – In New York, Sam wrote to his mother, Jane Clemens, of his new position, his rooming house, a derogatory description of “brats” in the city, and food.

My dear Mother:

August 5 Tuesday – Henry Clemens wrote to Sam from St. Louis (his letter is not extant). Sam replied
the same day as follows:

My Dear Brother:

August 7 Monday – In St. Louis, Sam boarded with the Paveys, formerly of Hannibal. Sam’s roommate was Jacob H. Burrough (1827-1883) “a journeyman chairmaker with a taste for Dickens, Thackeray, Scott, and Disraeli” [MTB 103]. (See also MTNJ 1: 37n45, & Nov. 1, 1876 letter to Jacob H. Burrough.)

In a Dec. 15, 1900 letter to Jacob’s son, Frank E. Burrough (1865-1903), Sam recalled the boarding house: 

Short Washington Vacation – Philadelphia to New York
Return to St. Louis and Muscatine – Orion Ties the Knot

St. Louis – Letters to the Muscatine Tri-Weekly Journal
Orion & Mollie Moved to Keokuk; Sam Followed – Visit back home
Oh! to be a Cub Pilot – Worked for Orion in Keokuk – Warsaw, Illinois – Back in Keokuk

First Dinner Speech – Dreams of S. America & Coca Riches – First Sweethearts
Keokuk, St. Louis and Snodgrass Letters – Cincinnati Typesetter – Macfarlane

Left  For the Amazon – New Orleans & Change of Plans – Bixby’s Influence  - Official  Cub Pilot – Learning the Big Muddy

1857 –  Sometime during his stay in Keokuk Clemens saw Henry Clay Dean (1822-1887), eccentric philosopher who inspired Twain’s 1905  “The War Prayer.” In Ch. 57 of LM, Twain described Dean:

December  6 Saturday – Sam’ second Snodgrass letter ran again in the  Keokuk Saturday Post [Schmidt].

December 16 Friday – Sam’s letter of Dec. 4 was printed in the Muscatine Journal [MTL 1: 30].

December 19 Tuesday –Orion Clemens married Mary Eleanor (Mollie) Stotts, in Keokuk, Iowa. Orion was visiting there. They left the next morning for Muscatine, but when she became homesick, Orion moved them back to Keokuk.

December 24 Saturday – In Philadelphia, Sam wrote to the Muscatine Journal, describing the weather, a recent fire, the price of turkeys at $7 [MTL 1: 34-5].

December 4 Sunday – In Philadelphia, Sam wrote a letter to Orion’s newspaper, the Muscatine Journal, describing the layout of the city, the “unaccountable feeling of awe” one feels when entering the Old State House in Chestnut Street where the Declaration of Independence was passed by Congress on July 4, 1776. He also told of a local practice of “free-and-easy” at saloons, which was a sort of karaoke laugh-fest. Sam noted the attraction of “two fat women, one weighing 764, and the other 769 pounds, to ‘astonish the natives’ ” [MTL 1: 30-1].

December 5 Monday – In Philadelphia, Sam wrote a short note to sister Pamela:

My Dear Sister:

Early months – Sam began to itch to go to South America after reading an account of coca and the money that might be made harvesting the plant and distributing it in the U.S. [Powers, Dangerous 241].  In 1910, in “The Turning Point of My Life,” Sam remembered a two-volume work on the exploration of the Amazon, that it “told an astonishing tale about coca, a vegetable product of miraculous powers…” [MTL 1: 68n7].