Sam was introduced to tobogganing by 74 young ladies from Helmuth Female College, “2 1⁄2 miles” out from town. It was twelve below zero. You sit in the midst of a row of girls on a long broad board with its front curled up, & away you go, like lightning....the sport was so prodigiously exciting & entertaining that it was well for us it was cut short by telephonic message that the train was being held for us; otherwise we should have tired ourselves to death...Tobagganing is very violent fun...[Feb.

At 9 A.M . Sam wrote from Detroit, Michigan to Livy, whose last letter transmitted a hint by some Hartford charity for Cable to perform for their benefit.

Sam and Cable spent all day on February 12 traveling 140 miles to Detroit on account of the inclement weather, Cable walked onstage at Whitney s Opera House twenty minutes past the hour and, he reported to Louise, even then he “was inconvenienced by the tardy incoming of a special train from another town that brought about a hundred auditors. Strange to say I went to the work fresh & bright & from the very start did, by verdict of all, the finest evening's reading thus far in my experience.’ Sam received the more favorable notices for his performance this evening, however.

“The audience was cool, and the Weekly News charged that Twain had humbugged and swindled the people of Oberlin” (pg 58 Cardwell)

“Fourteen years later, when Twain published “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,” citizens of Oberlin thought that their town was the prototype for Hadleyburg and that the writer was taking belated revenge for a bad press.” (pg 58 Cardwell)

See Touring with Cable and Huck for review.

Sam wrote from Columbus, Ohio to Livy (continued from above): ....After the show (& a hot supper, Pond & I did play billiards until 2 a.m., & then I scoured myself in the bath, & read & smoked till 3, then slept till half past 9, had my breakfast in bed, & now have just finished that meal & am feeling fine as a bird [MTP]. Sam also complained again about Cable keeping “his program strung out to one hour, in spite of all” he could do. Sam was especially sick of Cable’s piece, “Mary’s Night Ride,” a sentimental episode at the end of Cable’s novel, Dr.

In Indianapolis, Sam wrote Livy a letter full of indignation and disgust with George W. Cable. He told of Cable interrupting an anecdote at a Saturday evening reception to tell him he was leaving (due to the Sabbath). Sam accused Cable of “insulting & insolent ways with servants” and relayed Pond’s opinion that the “servants of the Everett House all hate him,” and that he would starve himself if on his own expenses, but his “appetite is insatiable” if “somebody else is paying....” Sam said Cable wouldn’t even cross a bridge on a Sunday, though he’d wanted to hear Beecher.

Dennison House.

Saturday, February 7, 1885:

Sam got up at 7 AM and took a train to Indianapolis, Indiana. On the train he wrote to Livy, explaining how black coffee made him “cheerful, & easy, & confidential & conversational with the audience,” but it didn’t protect him from “disastrous lapses of memory which come of over-fatigue.” Sam was counting the days now till he would be home, “at half past 3 on a Sunday morning Feb. 22!” [MTP]

Sam wrote from South Bend, Indiana to Livy:Livy dear, we are grinding out the days pretty fast, now that we are at last fairly into the last month & unquestionably on the homestretch. Major Pond [James] is with us, now. He wanted to send his brother Edward, but we needed an expert, not a novice.

Sam wrote from Chicago to Livy:Livy dear, we hit them again last night, & hit them hard. We have now appeared four times before big audiences here & made a ten-strike every time. The ghost story was simply immense. I made those 1600 people jump as one individual. It is a pity to leave Chicago. We could repeat here a week longer. We go to South Bend, Indiana, this afternoon toward 4 oclock. Charles Warren Stoddard is a Professor of English Literature 2 miles from there in a big Catholic College [MTP]. Note: Sam revealed in his Feb. 5 to Livy that the College was Notre Dame.

Ironically, despite his failure to travel on Sunday, Cable arrived in Chicago in time for their Monday performance, the first of two additional readings in a return engagement at the Central Music Hall. The Chicago Tribune commended the “irresistible” humor of the evasion scene Sam read the first night and, after the second night, Sam crowed to Livy that he and Cable had “appeared four times before big audiences here & made a ten-strike every time. The ghost story was simply immense. I made those 1600 people jump as one individual.