October 19 Thursday – Sam wrote from Wilkes-Barre, Penn. to Elisha Bliss. The typesetters had lost part of Ch. 18 of Roughing It, which described crossing the alkali desert. Sam could not focus to rewrite it and suggested perhaps they might have to omit the whole chapter [MTL 4: 477].

Sam left Pennsylvania and arrived in Washington that evening, staying at the Arlington Hotel, where he wrote the “Artemus Ward, Humorist” lecture, and threw the other lecture “overboard.” Sam wanted to lecture for Reading and Easton, Penn. for nothing, due to his cancellations [MTL 4: 478].