Sam and Cable gave a reading in Rockford, Illinois. Ralph Emerson and wife wanted Sam to “camp in their house, which is the best one in town (Rockford), but” he had to leave at 11 P.M . in a freight train [Jan. 31 to Livy, MTP].

They wanted me to camp in their house, which is the best one in town (Rockford,) but I couldn’t camp anywhere, as I was to leave at 11 p.m. in a freight train. And so we did; & struck a sleeping-care train at 12.30, but did not go to bed, as we had to change cars at 2. 40 . Did it, & slept il till 6, when we reached Rock Island; then Cable & I walked up through the town & over toward  this place. ' , when a sleigh overtook & we rode.

Ozias Pond remained in Milwaukee, and his brother James was at the Everett House in New York City. James wrote Cable on this day arguing that he shouldn’t be expected to travel back, that he could send a “perfectly honest, industrious man,” but Sam would have none of it—this had been explicit in their contract—either James or his brother Ozias, no substitutes [Cardwell 52-3]. Off stage during Sam’s performance, George Cable wrote his wife Lucy: I am reminded by something Mark is saying, of what a fine instinctive art he has for the platform. He has worked & worked incessantly on these programmes until he has effected in all of them — there are 3 — a gradual growth of both interest & humor so that the audience never has to find anything less, but always more, entertaining than what precedes it. He says, “I don’t want them to get tired out laughing before we get to the end.” The result is we have always a steady crescendo ending in a double climax. My insight into his careful, untiring, incessant labors are an education ... There! It does me good to hear them call him back at the place where the encores generally begin, instead of letting him go as they did in Milwaukee last night [Turner, GWC Bio. 93-4].

Railroads:  Rockford and Beloit, Milwaukee and Chicago, Chicago and North Western, Western Union Railroad, Racine and Mississippi

Possible Routes:

The original Milwaukee and Mississippi Railroad portion of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St Paul and Pacific Railroad from Milwaukee to Milton.  Then what was the Janesville, Beloit and Rockford Railroad, which was conveyed to the Chicago, Milwaukee and St Paul Railroad in 1882.