November 7 to 13 Saturday – sometime during this week Horatio G. Smith of Boston photographed Clemens with Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) and Petroleum V. Nasby (David Ross Locke) and titled the photo “American Humorists” [MTL 3: 406, 408n10]. The “V” for “Vesuvius.”

Sometime during this second week of November in Sam’s lecture-hub of Boston, Sam, Billings, and Nasby attended a lecture by R. J. De Cordova, a newcomer humorist to the lecture circuit. No one told the young man that the last cars left at 9 P.M., and to his horror, at five minutes before the hour, much of the audience rose en masse and headed for the doors. Sam wrote, “I think De Cordova did not appear again in public” [MTA 1: 151-3]. Note: Sam was wrong on this last count—a check of the New York Times for this period reveals that De Cordova spoke before and after this week in New York, at Steinway Hall and at the Cooper Institute [Oct. 25, 1869 p5; Nov. 25, 1869 p8]. Sam thought De Cordova might have had another name, which was possibly “RJ of Cordova,” the “R.J.” standing for some Spanish given name too long to print here.