January 1 Thursday – George Cable wrote to his wife, Lucy, perhaps in wee hours of the morning, of the performance a few hours before in Paris, Kentucky:

We have just finished a delightful evening on the platform before a hearty, quick-witted audience that laughed to tears and groans at Mark’s fun & took my more delicate points before I could fairly reach them.

I have a little bunch of flowers given me by a young lady of the Clay family. Many persons crowded round us after the entertainment. All this was particularly pleasing to me inasmuch as this is a Southern town & the two feelings which I always have to encounter in Southern towns were present & evident here. A ball was given in opposition [Turner, MT & GWC 78].

Sam took a train north to Cincinnati, Ohio for the day. He returned to Paris, Kentucky and wrote to Livy.

Livy darling, we have had a most pleasant evening here—in a region familiar to Ma when she was a girl, some seventy or eighty years ago. Wherever we strike a Southern audience they laugh themselves all to pieces. They catch a point bfore you can get it out—& then, if you are not a muggings, you don’t get it out; you leave it unsaid. It is a great delight to talk to such folks.

Sam related a conversation he heard on the smoking-car, writing in dialect about a farmer turned educator [MTP].

Sam also inscribed a copy of some book (probably Huck Finn) to Ozias W. Pond, brother of James B. Pond: “Happy New Year’s / to Ozias Pond / from / The Author (inventor) of this Book / (S. L. Clemens) / Cincinnati O. Jan 1/85” [MTP].

Karl Gerhardt wrote from Hartford: “Barnard refused to sign the contract, so Mr Webster had Alexander & Green cable Waller, to cable his willingness to sign….Let me know when you want my presence for the Prince and Pauper entertainment” [MTP]. Note: Henry Barnard.