Sam took a train to Cincinnati, Ohio for the day, then to Paris, Kentucky for the show.
Under the management of Ozias Pond, brother of James B. Pond:
"The Twain-Cable entertainment at the Court House on New Year's night was not in the nature of lectures, but consisted chiefly of recitations. Interspersed with these were anecdotes, Creole songs, incidents of travel, and personal experiences under circumstances of embarrassment, the most perplexing, ludicrous, and convulsively amusing. Humor, at once genuine and refined, is a rare gift. It is better than physic. It dispels gloom, sheds sunshine into the care-worn heart, and like a touch of kindness, "makes the whole world kin."
"The house was handsomely filled, and we never saw a more highly amused, or better pleased audience."
"Mark Twain in appearance is a sort of living and moving anecdote. In manner, quaint, easy and unctious; his voice, deep bass and drawling, like an old fashioned country preacher, wearing a benevolent, but solemn countenance, he creates the impression that he would make sinners howl if he got after them in evangelistic style."
"Cable is somewhat younger in appearance; is spruce and polished, a fine reader and delineator of character, and a good actor with splendid voice in song. He would be classed by Zack Chandler as one of "them litterary fellers."
"Each, is accomplished in his part, and to be appreciated must be seen."
"We commend to the stammering fraternity a complete cure, as illustrated by Mark Twain."
The (Paris) Kentuckian 1885: January 3 coutesey Touring with Cable and Huck
George Cable wrote to his wife, Lucy,
We have just finished a delightful evening on the platform before a hearty, quick-witted audience that laughed to tears and groans at Mark's fun & took my more delicate points before I could fairly reach them. I have a little bunch of flowers given me by a young lady of the Clay family. Many persons crowded round us after the entertainment. All this was particularly pleasing to me inasmuch as this is a Southern town & the two feelings which I always have to encounter in Southern towns were present & evident here. A ball was given in opposition [Turner, MT & GWC 78].
Sam wrote to Livy: Livy darling, we have had a most pleasant evening here—in a region familiar to Ma when she was a girl, some seventy or eighty years ago. Wherever we strike a Southern audience they laugh themselves all to pieces. They catch a point before you can get it out—& then, if you are not a muggings, you don’t get it out; you leave it unsaid. It is a great delight to talk to such folks.
Sam related a conversation he heard on the smoking-car, writing in dialect about a farmer turned educator [MTP].
Railroads: Ohio and Mississippi, Cincinnati, Eaton and Richmond, Louisville and Nashville