December 15 Monday – Sam wrote two letters from Toledo, Ohio to Livy. After remarking on the “prettiest furniture” of the hotel the night before in Jackson, Mich., Sam told of his day:

“We got up at 5 & took the train. All the way, in the cars, was a mother with her first child—the proudest & silliest fool I have struck this year. She beat the new brides that one sees on the trains” [MTP].

In his second letter, Sam asked his wife not to make any appointments for him outside the home during the holiday break. Sam wanted to improve his program for second nights in the same city. Livy had made reading choices for him and he wanted to “go to work on them the minute” he got home, and “make another hunt through the books” with her [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Charles Webster, asking how the bedclothes invention happened to tear?

      How in the nation can the thing tear, when it has got a couple of coverlets in its grip, & when the elastics give, & won’t let it tear?

      You want to experiment more carefully.

 Sam expected:

“…to be at the Everett House Friday the 19th for a couple of hours. Call at 8 or 8.30 a.m.” [MTP].

Sam and Cable gave a reading in Opera House, Toledo, Ohio. During his turn off stage, George Cable wrote his wife Lucy:

      Our experience with such [apathetic] houses is that I lift them a little with my first number, then [MT] lifts them from that stage a little higher, then with my 2/d number I lift them to a third elevation & with his 2/d no. (being the 4th) he gets them into a good strong glow. I am happy to see it is working just so now, after all. If he can get an encore from them on this we shall have them to the end without any trouble.

      There! Mark gets the call back twice over. Now we’re all right. It will be encores right through to the end [Turner, MT & GWC 72-3].