November 10 Wednesday – Sam lectured to a full house of 2,600 in Music Hall, Boston, Mass. – Sam’s letter of Nov. 9 to his sister was no exaggeration—the Boston lecture was critical to Sam’s continued success on the lecture circuit. Boston was the literary capital of the country, and success there meant easy sledding elsewhere in New England. Sam wrote from Boston to Livy his plans to spend New Year’s Day at home.
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:
November 7 to 13 Saturday – sometime during this week Horatio G. Smith of Boston photographed Clemens with Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) and Petroleum V. Nasby (David Ross Locke) and titled the photo “American Humorists” [MTL 3: 406, 408n10]. The “V” for “Vesuvius.”
October 31 Sunday – Sam continued the Oct. 30 letter to Livy:
“I walked around town this morning with a young Mr. Dean, a cousin of Wm D. Howells, editor of the Atlantic Monthly. He kindly offered to give me a letter of introduction to Mr. Howells, but I thanked him sincerely & declined, saying I had a sort of delicacy about using letters of introduction…”
October 30 Saturday – Sam arrived in Pittsburgh in the afternoon, for his Nov. 1 lecture. He was the guest of honor at a banquet at McGinley’s Dining Saloon, on Wood Street, given by the lecture committee of the Mercantile Library Association [MTL 3: 382n2]. Lorch says it was an “oyster supper” [105].
October 29 Friday – Sam left Elmira for Pittsburgh. See locket picture of Livy dated this day by MTP.
October 28 Thursday – James Redpath wrote to Sam: “We offered the date indicated by your telegram, by telegraph: but it did not suit / There is therefore no change in the schedule given before” [MTP].
October 27 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Elmira to Emily A. Severance in Cleveland. The Severances had been cabin mates on the Quaker City. Sam had sent them a copy of Innocents and answered her thanks. Sam wrote he expected to be in Cleveland the next day on the way to Pittsburgh, but a derailment on Oct.
October 23 Saturday – Sam’s article, “The Legend of the Capitoline Venus,” was published in the Express. This is one of Sam’s earliest in the paper. The title was shortened to “The Capitoline Venus” upon reprinting in Sketches, New and Old (1875) [Wilson 177]. This story was similar to his Innocents Abroad material involving the public’s gullibility to artistic hoaxes.
October 19 Tuesday – “Mark Twain – His Greetings to the California Pioneers of 1849” was printed in the Buffalo Express [McCullough 71].