January 8 Friday – Sam traveled to Monmouth, Illinois, 170 miles southwest of Chicago. The Chicago Tribune’s review worked to place the reader in the hall on that night of January 7, 1868:
Mark Twain, the well-known humorist, lectured last evening at Library Hall, under the auspices of the Young Men’s Library Association, on the “American Vandal Abroad.” He first pitched into the guides who beset and betray American travelers in Europe, then went on to give a ludicrous history of Columbus and an Egyptian mummy, to which he was introduced at Genoa and Rome, respectively. He smoked the narghali in Turkey, inspected the wall where St. Paul was let down in the basket which was sold for firewood, went to the pyramids, where he took dinner or something else, with the resident mummy, and whistled “Auld Lang Syne” on the Rock of Gibraltar. He did not think much of the mummies, but preferred a “fresh corpse.” During the evening, as if to prove that there was something besides humor in him, he branched out into quite eloquent passages, which were applauded. The lecture was good and the attendance large.

That evening, Sam gave his “Vandals” lecture in Hardin’s Hall at Monmouth, Illinois [MTL 3: 20 n4].