Ironically, despite his failure to travel on Sunday, Cable arrived in Chicago in time for their Monday performance, the first of two additional readings in a return engagement at the Central Music Hall. The Chicago Tribune commended the “irresistible” humor of the evasion scene Sam read the first night and, after the second night, Sam crowed to Livy that he and Cable had “appeared four times before big audiences here & made a ten-strike every time. The ghost story was simply immense. I made those 1600 people jump as one individual.

Sam wrote from Chicago to Livy:Livy dear, we hit them again last night, & hit them hard. We have now appeared four times before big audiences here & made a ten-strike every time. The ghost story was simply immense. I made those 1600 people jump as one individual. It is a pity to leave Chicago. We could repeat here a week longer. We go to South Bend, Indiana, this afternoon toward 4 oclock. Charles Warren Stoddard is a Professor of English Literature 2 miles from there in a big Catholic College [MTP]. Note: Sam revealed in his Feb. 5 to Livy that the College was Notre Dame.

Sam wrote from South Bend, Indiana to Livy:Livy dear, we are grinding out the days pretty fast, now that we are at last fairly into the last month & unquestionably on the homestretch. Major Pond [James] is with us, now. He wanted to send his brother Edward, but we needed an expert, not a novice.

The road show left Fort Wayne the next morning before 6:00 a.m. and spent almost six hours traveling 115 miles to Lafayette, Indiana, where Sam and Cable appeared that evening at the Grand Opera House to mixed reviews [From Page 446 The Life of Mark Twain - The Middle Years 1871-1891]

Dennison House.

Saturday, February 7, 1885:

Sam got up at 7 AM and took a train to Indianapolis, Indiana. On the train he wrote to Livy, explaining how black coffee made him “cheerful, & easy, & confidential & conversational with the audience,” but it didn’t protect him from “disastrous lapses of memory which come of over-fatigue.” Sam was counting the days now till he would be home, “at half past 3 on a Sunday morning Feb. 22!” [MTP]

In Indianapolis, Sam wrote Livy a letter full of indignation and disgust with George W. Cable. He told of Cable interrupting an anecdote at a Saturday evening reception to tell him he was leaving (due to the Sabbath). Sam accused Cable of “insulting & insolent ways with servants” and relayed Pond’s opinion that the “servants of the Everett House all hate him,” and that he would starve himself if on his own expenses, but his “appetite is insatiable” if “somebody else is paying....” Sam said Cable wouldn’t even cross a bridge on a Sunday, though he’d wanted to hear Beecher.

Sam wrote from Columbus, Ohio to Livy (continued from above): ....After the show (& a hot supper, Pond & I did play billiards until 2 a.m., & then I scoured myself in the bath, & read & smoked till 3, then slept till half past 9, had my breakfast in bed, & now have just finished that meal & am feeling fine as a bird [MTP]. Sam also complained again about Cable keeping “his program strung out to one hour, in spite of all” he could do. Sam was especially sick of Cable’s piece, “Mary’s Night Ride,” a sentimental episode at the end of Cable’s novel, Dr.

“The audience was cool, and the Weekly News charged that Twain had humbugged and swindled the people of Oberlin” (pg 58 Cardwell)

“Fourteen years later, when Twain published “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,” citizens of Oberlin thought that their town was the prototype for Hadleyburg and that the writer was taking belated revenge for a bad press.” (pg 58 Cardwell)

See Touring with Cable and Huck for review.

Sam and Cable spent all day on February 12 traveling 140 miles to Detroit on account of the inclement weather, Cable walked onstage at Whitney s Opera House twenty minutes past the hour and, he reported to Louise, even then he “was inconvenienced by the tardy incoming of a special train from another town that brought about a hundred auditors. Strange to say I went to the work fresh & bright & from the very start did, by verdict of all, the finest evening's reading thus far in my experience.’ Sam received the more favorable notices for his performance this evening, however.

At 9 A.M . Sam wrote from Detroit, Michigan to Livy, whose last letter transmitted a hint by some Hartford charity for Cable to perform for their benefit.

Sam was introduced to tobogganing by 74 young ladies from Helmuth Female College, “2 1⁄2 miles” out from town. It was twelve below zero. You sit in the midst of a row of girls on a long broad board with its front curled up, & away you go, like lightning....the sport was so prodigiously exciting & entertaining that it was well for us it was cut short by telephonic message that the train was being held for us; otherwise we should have tired ourselves to death...Tobagganing is very violent fun...[Feb.

After another Sunday layover, they “came within an ace of missing’ their engagement in Brockville, Canada, spending “11½ hours making a 7-hour trip" there for an appearance Monday evening. [From page 448 The Life of Mark Twain - The Middle Years 1871-1891]

We had an immense snowstorm yesterday—snow the entire day & all night. We were 111⁄2 hours making a 7-hour trip.
To-day we are likely to be all day going 3 hours. We’ve got 3 cars & 3 engines. Alongside us, out here in the snowy plains is a Pacific RR train standing still, whose  engines cannot budge it a peg.

“He [Twain] informed Livy on the seventeenth that his companion was the 'pitifulest human louse' he had ever known” (pg 62 Cardwell)

They were welcomed upon their arrival in Montreal on February 18 with a reception hosted by the Athenaeum Club at the Windsor Hotel that lasted until 6:00 p.m. and, Cable reported, “was the most elaborate affair I have ever had part it. I don't think I could have shaken less than two hundred and fifty hands.” He and Sam read that evening and the next before capacity audiences at the Queen’s Hall, and the Gazette reviewed their performance the first night, noting that “only one Mark Twain in the world...

En route from Montreal to New York City Sam wrote to Livy. He’d sent a toboggan for the children but cautioned, “They better not try to use it till I come.” He wrote just as the train left the Lake Champlain area. 

Upon arriving in New York, Sam and Cable breakfasted with Ozias Pond and his wife, Nella. He inscribed a copy of the newly published Huck Finn for Ozias, whose health had improved [Cardwell 64]. Sam then immediately made his way to the home of General Grant, hopeful that Grant’s memoirs would be given to Webster & Co. [Perry 137]. Grant confirmed that he, his son, and George W. Childs had been negotiating with Webster, since Sam’s last call (see Nov. 20, 1884 entry). “I mean you shall have the book—I have made up my mind about that,” Grant said [138].

Sam and Cable gave a reading at the Opera House in New Haven, Conn. [New Haven Evening Register for Feb. 18, 21 and 23].

Tuesday, February 24, 1885:     

Wednesday, February 25, 1885:     

Sam saw Nat Goodwin, actor and vaudevillian, on the train going to Philadelphia. Goodwin told Sam he was “very anxious to play” the Sellers as Scientist [Feb. 27 to Howells]. In the evening Sam and Cable gave a reading to an audience of about 3,000 at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, Penn. Clemens included: “A Dazzling Achievement,” “Tragic Tale of the Fishwife,” “Incorporated Company of Mean Men,” and “The Bluejay’s Mistake” [MTPO].

Fatout, citing Pond’s finance records says the $918 take reflected a crowd of one thousand [Circuit 218].

Sam wrote from Philadelphia to William Dean Howells:To-night in Baltimore, to-morrow afternoon & night in Washington, & my four-months platform campaign is ended at last. It has been a curious experience. It has taught me that Cable’s gifts of mind are greater & highter than I had suspected. But— That “But” is pointing toward his religion. You will never know, never divine, guess, imagine, how loath-some a thing the Christian religion can be made until you come to know & study Cable daily & hourly.

Sam and Cable read at the Congregational Church, Washington, D.C.

Note: Fatout gives figures from Pond’s cashbook, listing $789 as the take from this reading [Circuit 218]. Thus ended the “Twins of Genius” tour: total gross receipts, $46,201, from which Cable’s salary and expenses took more than $20,000. Cable earned $6,750, Sam approximately $15,000, and Pond’s commissions “a modest $2500 to $3000” [228].

See Touring with Cable and Huck for review.