September 11 Tuesday – Sometime during the day Sam gave a reading (unknown) at the Elmira Reformatory [Fatout, MT Speaking 658; MTNJ 3: 418n44]. Note: the first Notebook entry shows the Reformatory reading was planned for Sept. 12.

In the evening Sam gave a Browning reading in a “private house to 130 people, the ladies in the majority.” On the next day (Sept. 12) he wrote a lengthy entry in his notebook about readings, ladies vs. gentlemen and the Reformatory reading:

Have made speeches several times at banquets where half were ladies. / Have read & lectured a good many times at matines, where of course ladies were largely in the majority.

In all such cases, failure may be counted upon. In fact, hardly anything can prevent it but a carefully organized claque. Not a half-hearted claque, but a brave one — a claque which will not allow itself to be discouraged.

For several reasons. To begin with, ladies are cowards about expressing their feelings before folk; men become cowards in the presence of ladies. Here then, is what you are to expect: Your first piece goes well — the men forget themselves & applaud. Consequently you go at your second piece with good heart & do it well. This time the applause has an undecided flavor about it: the men have not reasoned that it was the ladies who failed to support them when they applauded before, they have merely noticed that the support was lacking. After that, they are afraid, & a dead silence follows the third reading. You are as exactly equipped now for the fourth piece as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over you. If you are wise, you will now tear your audience all to pieces with a roaring anecdote; then say you are smitten with a killing headache & dismiss them; for no man can read or talk against unresponsiveness. If you try to go on, you will earn unresponsiveness, for you will do your work so poorly as to make unresponsiveness your only just reward.

And so one should make the following his rule, & never depart from it: If ladies are to be present, and a brave, instructed, & well organized claque of a dozen men, all right; if ladies are to be present, & no organized claque, decline with thanks.

The Elmira Reformatory contains 850 convicts, who are there for all manner of crimes. People go there & lecture, read, or make speeches, & come away surprised & delighted. They can’t understand it. They have astonished themselves by the excellence of their own performance. They cannot remember to have ever done so well before. Afterward, they always say that for a splendid audience give them a houseful of convicts, it’s the best audience in the world. They puzzle & puzzle over it & are not able to get away from the apparently established fact that an audience of convicts is the most intelligent & appreciative in the world. Which is all a mistake. The whole secret lies in the absence of ladies. Any 850 men would be just as inspiring, where no dampening female person was in sight, with her heart full of emotion & her determined repression choking it down & keeping the signs of it from showing on the outside. There is more inspiration in an audience of male corpses than in a packed multitude of the livest & brightest women that ever walked [420-22].

E.W. Johnson, “a stranger to you” wrote asking if Sam would “condescend to write me a short drama of a political character — something complimentary to the Republican party and at the expense of the Democrat party?” Sam wrote on the envelope, “Splendid” [MTP].

Webster & Co. wrote to Sam (N.Y. Tribune clipping enclosed about the preface of Sheridan’s memoirs). Growing excitement about the election was claimed by agents as an obstacle to sales [MTP].