Return to the Mississippi Valley: Day By Day

June, early – Orion sold his interest in the Muscatine Journal to James W. Logan [MTL 1: 58].

June–July – Forty-nine of Sam’s notebooks survive, and the first notebook was from this period. It holds random entries on important and trivial matters, interspersed with information on phrenology, French lessons, and chess lessons. There were also entries relating to family business, a theological controversy, and laundry lists. Entries were first made in St. Louis, then in Keokuk, Iowa, and later during a trip to the villages of Hannibal, Florida, and Paris, Missouri [MTNJ 1: 11].

March 1 Thursday – Sam dated a letter from St. Louis to the Muscatine Tri-Weekly Journal [MTL 1:54].

March 12 Monday – Sam’s letter of Mar. 1 ran in the Muscatine Tri-Weekly Journal as a featured article, “Special Correspondence.” Sam wrote about the killing of Benjamin Brand, Deputy Marshall, by Bob O’Blennis, a wealthy gambler and livery-stable owner.

March 14 Wednesday – Sam’s letter of Mar. 5 ran in the Muscatine Tri-Weekly Journal.

March 5 Monday – Sam dated another letter from St. Louis to the Tri-Weekly Journal [MTL 1: 54].

March 9 Friday – Sam’s letter dated Feb. 24 from St. Louis ran on page 2 of the Muscatine Tri-Weekly Journal [Branch, “Three New Letters” 4].

May 20 Tuesday – The steam ferry between Keokuk and Hamilton, Illinois struck a snag and sand up to the guards near the Illinois shore, leaving only its top deck above water. There were no fatalities. Clemens was on board and referred to “the loss of that bridge almost finished my career” in his letter of May 25 to Annie Taylor (Ann Elizabeth Taylor 1840-1916) [MTL 1: 62n1]. Note: no other reference to this event was found, and it is somewhat strange that Sam never referred or embellished the event, as he often did.

May 21 and May 25 Sunday – Sam wrote Annie Taylor a humorous letter. Sam stayed in Keokuk over a year. He enjoyed the companionship of Henry and Mollie’s circle of women friends.

[This first part written on May 21 is lost]

of the hurricane deck is still visible above the water. Here is another “Royal George” —I think I shall have to be a second Cowper, and write her requiem.

Sunday, May 25.

May 24 Saturday – Esther Taylor (“Ete”), Annie and Mary Jane’s twenty-one-year-old sister paid Sam a visit [MTL 1: 62 & n9].

May 7 Wednesday – Sam, in Keokuk, wrote a poem “To Jennie,” at the departure of Ann Virginia Ruffner [ET&S 1: 124]. (This is erroneously reported as 1853 in some sources.)

May, early – Sam wrote a poem, titled, “Lines Suggested by a Reminiscence, and Which You Will Perhaps Understand,” to Ann Virginia Ruffner (b.1838?) [ET&S 1: 120].

Mid 1855–late 1856 – Sam wrote a sketch titled, “Jul’us Caesar” that remained unpublished. Branch puts the date in this period [ET&S 1: 110].

November – Sam’s uncle John Quarles freed his slave, Uncle Daniel, age 50 [Rasmussen 106].

November 30 Thursday – Sam’s nineteenth birthday.

November 30 Friday – Sam’s twentieth birthday.

October,  early – Sam walked along the main street of Keokuk in swirling snow, and found a fifty-dollar bill. Astounded, he later recounted, “It  was a fifty-dollar bill—the only one I had ever seen, and the largest assemblage of money I had ever seen in one spot” [Powers, Dangerous 243]. He  advertised it but after five days with no claimant he felt he’d done enough:

“By and by I couldn’t stand it any longer. My  conscience had gotten all that was coming to it. I felt that I must take that  money out of danger” [MTB 111].

March 1854 - April 1857:  Sam Clemens is back in Hannibal and Keokuk.

In 1906 Clemens described this return trip: “I went back to the Mississippi Valley, sitting upright in the smoking-car two or three days and nights. When I reached St. Louis I was exhausted. I went to bed on board a steamboat that was bound for Muscatine. I fell asleep at once, with my clothes on, and didnt’ wake again for thirty-six hours” .

September 1 Friday ca. – In the first entry for Sept., 1854, Francis Jackson of Boston Massachusetts’ Anti-Slavery Society, made this entry:

“Samuel Clemens passage from Missouri Penetentiary [sic] to Boston—he having been imprisoned there two years for aiding fugitives to escape…$24.50” [Sattelmeyer 294].

September 14 Friday – Sam became an uncle for the second time with the birth of Jennie Clemens to Orion and Mollie Clemens [MTL 1: 383].

Summer, late – Sam, “obliged by financial stress to go home,” does so. In 1906 Sam recalled: “I went back to the Mississippi Valley, sitting upright in the smoking-car two or three days and nights. When I reached St. Louis I was exhausted. I went to bed on board a steamboat that was bound for Muscatine. I fell asleep at once, with my clothes on, and didn’t wake again for thirty-six hours –” [Neider 95; MTL 1: 45-6].