January 15 Friday – Sam gave his “Vandals” lecture in Metropolitan Hall, Iowa City, Iowa. Livy wrote Mary Mason Fairbanks, inviting her to Elmira for a reunion of the Quaker City passengers [MTL 3: 42].

January 14 Thursday – Sam gave his “Vandals” lecture at the Burtis Opera House, in Davenport, Iowa. Afterwards he wrote again to Livy: Livy, darling, I greet you. We did have a splendid house tonight, & everything went off handsomely. Now I begin to fear that I shan’t get a chance to see your loved face between Jan. 22 & Feb. 13 as I was hoping & longing I should. Because I have just received some new appointments by telegraph—the ones I expected. Please add them to your list—carefully, & don’t make any mistake: Thus:
Marshall, Mich., {underline} Jan. 25.

January 13 Wednesday – Sam gave his “Vandals” lecture in the Methodist Episcopal Church in Ottawa, Illinois. The reviews were mixed but Sam began a letter to Livy that called it a “botch.”
My Dearest Livy—

January 12 Tuesday – The Peoria National Democrat gave Sam a good review. Sam wrote from El Paso, Illinois to Livy.
“I talked in Peoria, last night, to a large audience, & one whose intellectual faces surprised me as well as pleased me, for I certainly had expected no such experience in Peoria.”
Sam wrote that he had to stay in Peoria half a day and was on his way to Decatur.

January 11 Monday – Sam gave his “Vandals” lecture to about 1,200 in Rouse’s Opera House, Peoria, Illinois. Jervis Langdon celebrated his 60 th birthday.

January 10 Sunday – Sam wrote from Galesburg to Harriet Lewis, Livy’s cousin who was Sam and Livy’s ally, early on in 1868 pretending to be the object of Sam’s affections to hide their affair from the Langdons. Sam’s tongue in cheek letter about breaking Harriet’s heart was sublime and hilarious:

January 9 Saturday – The Rockford Register printed a review of Sam’s lecture there:
We never saw an audience so determined to laugh “out loud” …we confess to having laughed ourselves until our sides fairly ached…We congratulate those who were present, and we feel deep sympathy for those who remained away and missed a grand opportunity of hearing a speaker who, as a humorist and wit, stands unrivaled on the American stage [MTL 3: 8-9n1].

January 8 Friday – Sam traveled to Monmouth, Illinois, 170 miles southwest of Chicago. The Chicago Tribune’s review worked to place the reader in the hall on that night of January 7, 1868:

January 7 Thursday – After the Rockford lecture and past midnight, Sam wrote from Rockford to Mary Mason Fairbanks, and to Livy. (Over half of Sam’s nearly daily love letters to Livy have been lost.) That evening Sam again gave his “Vandals” lecture at Library Hall, Chicago, Illinois [MTL 3: 8-9].

January 6 Wednesday – Sam gave his “Vandals” lecture at Brown’s Hall in Rockford, Illinois to about a thousand people [Schmidt].