January 14 Thursday – Sam gave his “Vandals” lecture at the Burtis Opera House, in Davenport, Iowa. Afterwards he wrote again to Livy: Livy, darling, I greet you. We did have a splendid house tonight, & everything went off handsomely. Now I begin to fear that I shan’t get a chance to see your loved face between Jan. 22 & Feb. 13 as I was hoping & longing I should. Because I have just received some new appointments by telegraph—the ones I expected. Please add them to your list—carefully, & don’t make any mistake: Thus:
Marshall, Mich., {underline} Jan. 25.
Batavia, Ill., {underline} Jan. 26
Freeport, Ill., {underline} Jan. 27
Waterloo, Iowa, {underline} Jan. 28
Galena, Ill {underline} Jan. 29
Jacksonville, Ill., {underline} Feb. 1. 

Others are to come, the dispatch says. (Did I tell you I am to lecture in Norwalk, Ohio, Jan. 21, & in Cleveland, Jan. 22? Put those down too, Livy.[)] If they don’t send me the names of the Secretaries of these added societies, you will have to tell Charlie to direct your letters to my nom de plume, & then the Secretaries will get them anyhow. Will you try to remember that, dear? And now, since misfortune has overtaken me & I am not to see you for such a long, long time, won’t you please write me every day? I wish you would try, Livy. I don’t think you can, & I don’t expect it, either, for it is a great labor —but still I do wish you could, if it wouldn’t interfere with your duties or pleasures, or tire you too much. I find it next to impossible to get the opportunity to write to you every day, though I would most certainly like to do it—& being forced, as I am, to devote to it simply such time as I can snatch from sleep, my letters can’t naturally be anything more than mere hasty, chatty paragraphs, with nothing in them, as a general thing. [in margin: I wrote Charlie from Ottawa—did he get it?]
[see Jan. 3 for this portion].
I have seen your young gentlemen women-haters often—I know them intimately. They are infallibly & invariably unimportant whelps with vast self-conceit & a skull full of oysters, which they take a harmless satisfaction in regarding as brains. They are day-dreamers, & intensely romantic, though they would have the world think otherwise. Their pet vanity is to be considered “men of the world”—& they generally know about as much of the world as a horse knows about metaphysics. They are powerfully sustained in their woman-hating & kept well up to the mark by the secret chagrin of observing that no woman above mediocrity ever manifests the slightest interest in them—they come without creating a sensation, & go again without anybody seeming to know it. They are coarse, & vulgar, & mean—these people—& they know it. Neither men or women I admire them much or love them—& they know that, also. [in margin: I wish I could see you, Livy.] They thirst for applause—any poor cheap applause of their “eccentricity” is manna in the desert to them—& they suffer in noticing that the world is stupidly unconscious of them & exasperatingly indifferent to them. When sense dawns upon these creatures, how suddenly they discover that they have been pitiable fools—but they are full forty years old, then, & they sigh to feel that those years & their pleasures they might have borne, are wasted, & lost to them for all time. I do pity a woman-hater with all my heart. The spleen he suffers is beyond comprehension. Why yes, Livy, you ought to have sent me Mother Fairbanks’ letter, by all means. Send it now, won’t you, please? She’s a noble woman. It will be splendid for her to have you & me both to bother about & scold at, some day. She will make a fine row with me when she sees me coming back on the 22d with a new lot of baggage after all her trouble convincing me that I needed nothing more than a valise to travel with. I shall find my lost baggage again at Toledo, I think. The lady you wrote of was singularly unfortunate—judging at a first glance—but considering that it brought such Christianity, & such happy content in doing good, it seems only rare good fortune after all. Ten millions of years from now she will shudder to think what a frightful calamity it would have been, not to have lost her wealth. Did it never occur to you what a particularly trifling & insignificant breath of time this now long & vastly important earthly existence of ours will seem to us whenever we shall happen accidentally to have it called to our minds ten awful millions of years from now? Will not we smile, then, to remember that we used at times to shrink from doing certain duties to God & man because the world might jeer at us?—& were so apt to forget that the world & its trifling opinions would scarce rise to the dignity of a passing memory at that distant day? Brainless husbandmen that we are, we sow for time, seldom comprehending that we are to reap in Eternity. We are all idiots, much as we vaunt our wisdom. Good-bye. I kiss you good-night, darling. I do love you, Livy!
Always Yours,
Samℓ. L. C. [MTL 3: 38].
Sam also wrote his sister Pamela and listed many of the places he’d lectured:
“…am getting awfully tired of it. I spend about half as much money as I make, I think, though I have managed to save about a thousand dollars, so far—don’t think I shall save more than a thousand more” [MTL 3: 43].
Again Sam recommended Norwich, New York for a possible town for his family to move to. Sam was taking on a grueling schedule:
“I am to lecture every night till Feb 2. Shall be in Cleveland, Ohio, one day only—Jan 22” [MTL 3: 44].