October 24 Tuesday – Sam lectured in Institute Hall, Wilmington, Delaware – “Artemus Ward. ”

In Washington, D.C. at the Arlington Hotel, Sam wrote to James Redpath:

(The only hotel in this town) {WILLARD’S—O, my!—seventh-rate hash-house.}

      Dear Red— / I have come square out, thrown “Reminiscences” overboard & taken “Artemus Ward, Humorist,” for my subject. Wrote it here on Friday & Saturday, & read it from MSS last night to enormous house. It suits me, & so I’ll never deliver the nasty, nauseous “Reminiscences” any more.

      Please make appointments for me at Reading & Easton Pa (between 5th & 10th of Feb., or sooner if it interferes with nothing,) for I am to talk for them for nothing—I threw them off, you know—telegram saying my folks were sick—(it came just in the nick of time, I may say, for I wanted to go to Washington & write a new lecture—which I’ve done it. / MARK [MTPO].

Notes: Only a single page of the MS that Sam refers to survives. The Easton and Reading lectures (See Oct. 18, 1871) were rescheduled for Nov. 23 and 24. Sam’s main bio source for Artemus Ward “seems to have been” The Genial Showman: Being Reminiscences of the Life of Artemus Ward (1870) by Edward P. Hingston, Ward’s manager. Reviews of Sam’s Ward lectures were mixed.