April 14 Tuesday – Sam spoke at Platt’s Hall, San Francisco to 1,600, a full house. His lecture was titled “Pilgrim Life,” from his Holy Land material and his “The Frozen Truth” lecture.

We saw no energy in the capitals of Europe like the tremendous energy of New York, and we saw no place where intelligence and enterprise were so widely diffused as they are here in our country. We saw nowhere any architectural achievement that was so beautiful to the eye as the national capitol of America…We saw no people anywhere so self-denying, and patriotic and prompt in collecting their salaries as our won members of Congress [Fatout, MT Speaking 23-4].

The receipts for the lecture were over $1,600 in gold and silver and the reviews were good [MTL 2: 210n2 claims “mixed reviews”], but Sam thought the lecture was “miserably poor” [Sanborn 392]. Sam wrote notes to several newspaper men, including Samuel Williams (1824?-1881) of the Evening Bulletin, asking them not to print “any of my good sayings in the morning papers,” since he intended to “repeat my troubles to-morrow night” [MTL 2: 209]. Sam believed that newspaper synopses of his lectures caused folks to stay home.