Reviewed in The New York Times, November 19, 1884, Daily Tribune for the show on the 18th; the Times and the Sun for the 19th. See Touring with Cable and Huck
It was on this night that Sam, recalled in his 1906 autobiography, overheard a conversation that would greatly affect his life:
"I had been lecturing in Chickering Hall and was walking homeward. It was a rainy night and but few people were about. In the midst of a black gulf between lamps, two dim figures stepped out of a doorway and moved along in front of me. I heard one of them say, “Do you know General Grant has actually determined to write his memoirs and publish them? He has said so today, in so many words.” That was all I heard—just those words—and I thought it great good luck that I was permitted to overhear them [Kaplan 261]."
Stacy, George, Publisher. Everett House New York. [New York, N.Y.: George Stacy] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2017645391/>.
... the evening of November 18, Sam opened his part of the program with what at first glance appeared to be a valedictory speech:
It is eight or nine years since I bade goodby forever to the lecture platform in this very hall. Since that time some things sad and some things joyous have happened to us all, to the country and to all the nations of the earth. I will not stop now to enumerate them. They say lecturers and burglars never reform. I don’t know how it is with burglars—it is now so long since I had intimate relations with these people—but it is quite true of lecturers, They never reform. Lecturers and readers say they are going to leave the lecture platform never to return. They mean it, they mean it. But there comes in time an overpowering temptation to come on the platform and give truth and morality one more lift. You can’t resist. I got permanently through eight or nine years ago. I may quit again.
After a moment, he added, “Well, there's no telling. I'll make no more promises,
Livy stayed with Sam at the Everett House. [She] ...returned to Hartford the next day, though she was sufficiently concerned about Sam's incipient scorn for Cable's shirtsleeve religiosity after they had been on the road for only two weeks that she cautioned him not “to get awry with Mr Cable; he is good and your friend” and to “be careful how you refer to Mr. Cable in public—even in fun. This may be an entirely unnecessary warning—still I must say it.”
[From page 425 -6 The Life of Mark Twain - The Middle Years 1871-1891]