December 2 Tuesday – Sam and Cable arrived at Albany, New York at noon. Governor and President-elect Cleveland requested an audience. Writing to Livy the next day about the meeting:

…we had a quite jolly & pleasant brief chat with the President-elect. He remembered me easily, have seen me often in Buffalo, but I didn’t remember him, of course, & I didn’t say I did. He had to meet the electors at a banquet in the evening, & expressed great regret that that must debar him from coming to the lecture; so I said if he would take my place on the platform I would run the banquet for him; but he said that that would only be a one-sided affair, because the lecture audience would be so disappointed. Then I sat down on four electrical bells at once (as the cats used to do at the farm,) & summoned four pages whom nobody had any use for [Note: See MTA 2: 165-6 for another account].

We were all over the Capitol, which is a palace, & got acquainted with a lot of the State officers; then to the Senate chamber & saw the beginning of the solemn ceremony of the casting of the electoral vote of the State of New York for President of the U.S. [MTP].

Later, Sam and Cable gave a reading to “an enormous audience” in Music Hall, Troy, New York. From the Troy Daily Times the following day:

The unique entertainment given by Mark Twain and George W. Cable at Music Hall last evening was attended by an audience which filled nearly every seat on the floor and in the galleries. Mr. Cable has taken his place among the best American novelists and has created a unique and striking original style of story. There was much curiosity, therefore, to see the author of the Creole tales which have won such remarkable popularity with the reading public of late years. Mr. Cable is not a handsome man, but his face and head show an active intellect and a vivid imagination. His recitations, which were all taken from his strongest work, “Dr. Sevier,” were delivered in a striking and pleasing though not artistic manner. His singing of Creole songs was warmly applauded. Mark Twain, though laboring under a severe cold, managed to make himself heard by the large audience, which showed a disposition to laugh whether he spoke or was silent. There was nothing remarkably witty in his remarks, but his manner and the humorous expression of his mouth and eyes would create laughter if he should read an act of congress to an audience. Altogether, the entertainment was pleasing, not only from its novelty, but from the originality of the men who conducted it. It did not drag, and the audience as it retired at 10:45 o’clock was by no means weary of listening to the pathos and humor of Cable and the laughable remarks of Mark Twain. A literary entertainment is a success if the auditors remain in their places to the end. Few, if any, left the hall last evening till they were startled from their seats by the sudden ending of Mark Twain’s ghost story [Railton].