December 25 Monday – Christmas – Sam wrote from Chicago to Livy at 2 AM. “Joy, & peace be with you & about you, & the benediction of God rest upon you this day!” Sam was still working over his lecture. There had been a smallpox scare in Chicago with fines levied against anyone not vaccinated. Sam urged Livy to get vaccinated, at least once a year [MTL 4: 521].
December 26 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Champaign, Illinois to Livy, then gave the “Artemus Ward” lecture there in Barrett Hall. Sam was memorizing his new lecture and wanted to:
“…get out of the range of the cursed Chicago Tribune that printed my new lecture & so made it impossible for me to talk it with any spirit in Illinois” [MTL 4: 522].
December 27 Wednesday – Sam lectured in Tuscola, Illinois – “Artemus Ward.” He was still not out of “Chicago Tribune territory,” he wrote Livy from Tuscola, but he’d memorized all of the new “Roughing It in Nevada” lecture [MTL 4: 525].
December 28 Thursday – Sam lectured in Lincoln Hall, Danville, Illinois – “Roughing It.”
He wrote from Danville to Livy, concerned about her health and the baby’s. He announced, “The debt to the firm is all paid up” (the $12,500 owned to Jervis Langdon on the purchase of the Buffalo Express.) [MTL 4: 526-7].
December 29 Friday – Sam lectured in Mattoon, Illinois – Topic was probably “Artemus Ward.” The hall in Mattoon had a hall above it used by a secret order. During the lecture noise frequently came from above, disturbing Clemens. Before the close of the lecture Twain said he’d lectured in schools, churches and theaters but had never lectured in a livery stable where they kept horses overhead [“Editor’s Drawer,” Harper’s Monthly 70 (Apr. 1885): 822].
December 30 Saturday – Sam lectured in Paris, Illinois – Topic was probably “Artemus Ward.”
December 31 Sunday – In a “warm drizzling rain,” Sam went to church in Paris, Illinois, and wrote of the experience in a long letter to Livy.
“It was the West & boyhood brought back again, vividly. It was as if twenty-five years had fallen away from me like a garment & I was a lad of eleven again in my Missouri village church of that ancient time” [MTL 4: 527].