November 9 Tuesday – Sam lectured in Harrington’s Opera House, Providence, Rhode Island. Sam spoke to 1,800 there and later wrote: “Gave good satisfaction.” He wrote from Boston to his sister Pamela:

. . . Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience—4,000 critics—and on the success of this matter depends my future success in New England. But I am not distressed. Nasby is in the same boat. Tonight decides the fate of his brand-new lecture. He has just left my room—been reading his lecture to me—was greatly depressed. I have convinced him that he has little to fear.

I get just about five hundred more applications to lecture than I can possibly fill—and in the West they say “Charge all you please, but come.” I shan’t go West at all. I stop lecturing the 22 of January, sure. But I shall talk every night up to that time. They flood me with high-priced invitations to write for magazines and papers, and publishers besiege me to write books. Can’t do any of these things [MTL 3: 387].

Henry George (1839-1897), at this time editor of the Oakland Calif. Transcript, wrote to Clemens:

“Dear Sir: / I send you a copy of the Transcript, and will hereafter send it to the Express. Can you send us an exchange, as I wish to publish your matter first-hand if possible” [MTPO].

“The Paraguay Puzzle,” an unsigned article attributed to Sam, ran in the Buffalo Express [McCullough 84].