They stayed the night in Toledo and visited with Petroleum V. Nasby (David Ross Locke), a man Cable describes as "an easy talker, a coarse man of the harder world, successful and unsatisfied".

O dear! He went with us to our hotel & stayed until his cigar was only half an inch long. Then he said good-night. I'm glad he's gone. He's a bad dream. He laughed at us for confessing fatigue. Said he knew nothing about any loss of power on the platform from that cause.

December 16 Tuesday – Sam and Cable gave a reading in Whitney’s Grand Opera House, Detroit, Michigan. The Detroit Post featured the Toledo visit, observing that Sam’s gait:

…resembled the motion of a tall boy on short stilts, [with] one of the oddest looking faces ever worn by man…his neck swan-like and white, but much thicker than a swan’s [Cardwell 29].