December 8 Monday – Sam and Cable arrived in Toronto, Canada at 4:30 P.M. on the Great Western train from Niagara Falls [Roberts 19]. In Toronto, Rose Publishing Co. applied to Sam to buy the Canadian rights to publish Huck Finn [Dec. 10 to Webster, MTP]. Ozias Pond was not the tour’s manager until after New Year’s day, but came with the pair. They all stated at the Rossin House, Toronto’s first luxury hotel.
In the evening Sam and Cable gave a reading in Horticulture Gardens Pavilion, a 2,500 seat hall only six years old. The next day the Toronto papers, The Telegram, The Globe, The World, and The Mail were unanimous in pronouncing the reading a success. Tickets were 50 cents, reserved seats 25 cents extra. [Roberts 21].
As he sometimes did, George W. Cable wrote his wife Lucy while waiting for his turn on stage:
Such a time as we are having! Such roars of British applause. I never heard anything like it out of N. Orleans. . . . We are in a big glass Horticultural Hall with people so far away at the bottom of the audience that their features can hardly be discerned. . . .
When I go back upon the platform again (in a moment) I have to sing my 2 or 3 Creole songs. I always shrink from this, the only thing I do shrink from; though it’s always encored [Turner, MT & GWC 67].
Sam wrote at midnight from Toronto to Livy, listing the items he ate for his “hearty breakfast at 9 this morning.” He also ate a large lunch at 1 PM on the “hotel car.” He’d also just finished a late “supper of beefsteak &c.” Sam told of the night’s performance:
“To-night a noble hall to talk in, & an audience befitting it. Both of us had a gorgeously good time. I saw ladies swabbing their eyes freely & undisguisedly after Cable’s ‘Night Ride.’ He did it well” [MTP].
The Rochester Herald, p. 8, printed “Mark Twain Encountered,” Sam’s comments on the Cogswell Fountain in Rochester; his partnership with Cable; the architecture of his Hartford house [Budd, “Interviews” 3-4; Scharnhorst, Interviews 57-9].
Mrs. B.W. Hall wrote to Clemens wondering if he was the son of “Old Judge Clemens.” She told of her days in Florida, Mo. [MTP]. Note: Sam wrote on the env., “Get Agric Editor” and “Preserve this characteristic Southern letter”