On Monday morning, 25 November, Clemens left the Batavia in Boston, whence the ship proceeded to New York. He took an express train for Hartford, which narrowly escaped derailment near Enfield, Connecticut, about fifteen miles north of Hartford:

The attempt on Clemens’s train, and similar attempts on three later trains the same evening (one of which was derailed), were the work of an “insolently drunk” man who was ejected from a train for refusing to pay sufficient fare (“A Villain’s Work,” Hartford Courant, 27 Nov 72, 2; “From Europe,” Boston Evening Transcript, 25 Nov 72, 4).

C. F. Wood wrote to Clemens in 1907:

In 1875 Wood described his travels in A Yachting Cruise in the South Seas: “Early in November, 1872, I left Liverpool by the Cunard line, and crossing the American continent by the Great Pacific Railway, sailed from San Francisco for New Zealand, calling at the Sandwich Islands.” He explained that he was “induced to publish these few imperfect sketches of my last cruise by the belief that any facts relating to the manners and customs of these islanders, should not be allowed to perish” (C. F. Wood, “Preface,” 1).

In a September 1872 speech to a convention of Boston spiritualists, Victoria Woodhull, Isabella Beecher Hooker’s close ally in the women’s rights movement, accused Henry Ward Beecher (Hooker’s half-brother) of committing adultery with Elizabeth Tilton, one of his parishioners. Woodhull reiterated the charge in the 2 November issue of Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, objecting not so much to the relationship itself, but to Beecher’s hypocrisy in condemning free love from the pulpit while practicing it in private. Beecher and Tilton remained silent, refusing to deny or admit the truth of the charge. Hooker, unable to believe in her brother’s innocence, defended Woodhull. The rest of the Beecher family (except for Catharine, Beecher’s oldest sister) ostracized Hooker, and Clemens seems to have followed suit. The Beecher scandal became a cause célèbre in August 1874, when Theodore Tilton sued Beecher for alienation of affections. Beecher’s trial ended in a hung jury in July 1875, but in February 1876 a church council reviewed the case and officially exonerated him (Andrews, 35–41; Clark, 207–9, 220–21; Oliver, 117–49; Shaplen, 199, 260–62; L2 , 14; Woodhull). Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838–1927) was born in Ohio, and in her early years collaborated with her family in selling patent medicines and telling fortunes. At age fifteen she married Dr. Canning Woodhull, whom she divorced in 1864. She subsequently formed a liaison with James H. Blood (and may have legally married him), but in 1876 she divorced him as well. In January 1870 she and her sister, Tennessee Claflin, opened a profitable stock brokerage in New York with the help of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and in May of the same year the sisters founded Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, which advocated equal rights for women and a single standard of free love for both sexes. In part because of these views, Henry Ward Beecher often attacked her from the pulpit, citing her as an example of vice. In May 1872 Woodhull became the presidential nominee of the Equal Rights Party, with Frederick Douglass as her running mate (Shaplen, 133–38, 157, 269; Marberry 1967, 15, 27, 188).

Lilly Warner recovered, and gave birth to her third surviving child, Margaret (known as “Daisy”, on 23 December (Elisabeth G. Warner, 1).

The term “epizootic,” which technically meant a type of equine influenza, was used informally for human illnesses such as the common cold. Mollie was evidently treating herself with a homeopathic medication, designed to cure by exacerbating her symptoms.

Clemens’s nephew, Samuel Moffett, suffered from an unidentified problem with his eyes which prevented him from reading. The steam engine did not arrive in Fredonia until January 1873 ( L4 , 332; 22 Jan 73 to PAMclick to open link).