February 4 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Chicago to Livy:

Livy dear, we hit them again last night, & hit them hard. We have now appeared four times before big audiences here & made a ten-strike every time. The ghost story was simply immense. I made those 1600 people jump as one individual. It is a pity to leave Chicago. We could repeat here a week longer. We go to South Bend, Indiana, this afternoon toward 4 oclock. Charles Warren Stoddard is a Professor of English Literature 2 miles from there in a big Catholic College [MTP]. Note: Sam revealed in his Feb. 5 to Livy that the College was Notre Dame.

Sam also remembered that this was their engagement day, sixteen years before. He enclosed the telegram that Cable had sent to Ozias Pond for the two of them the day before.

Fatout says Sam had a “brief reunion” with Stoddard, and the two “Probably talked about those pleasant London days of almost twelve years before” [Circuit 225].

In the evening Sam and Cable gave a reading at the Opera House, South Bend, Indiana. The South Bend Daily Tribune reported the next day:

Mark Twain, the great humorist and George Washington Cable, the popular novelist, were greeted by a large and enthusiastic audience at the opera house last night, and a better pleased people never sat through a two hours’ entertainment of any sort, in the uncomfortable seats of the old hall.

Charles Webster wrote having rec’d his of the 1st: various business matters, incl. Grant book [MTP].