A large audience turned out despite intense cold. (pg 48 Cardwell)

See the Review from The Evanston (Illinois) Index 1885: January 24, courtesy Touring with Cable and Huck

Railroads:  Chicago and Milwaukee, Chicago and North Western

Sam compensated for the failure the next two days in Chicago, where he and Cable registered at the Grand Pacific Hotel downtown and appeared two nights and an afternoon before large audiences at the Central Music Hall at the corner of State and Randolph Streets. Sam devised yet another ploy to restrict Cable's stage time: to require him to begin his evening reading at exactly 8:00 p.m. rather than wait ten minutes after the hour for the entire audience to be seated. As a result, Sam bragged to Livy, he “talks 15 minutes to an assembling house . . .

Cable rose at four in the morning to catch a train, reaching Burlington, Iowa at a quarter to seven. Sam stayed behind in Keokuk to spend more time with his mother, Jane Clemens [Turner, MT & GWC 88]. The Keokuk Gate City ran an article discussing Sam’s lectures and his greetings to his mother [Tenney 14].

Delayed by a storm Cable held the audience for more than an hour and one half. Twain finally arrived but cut himself short and didn't talk well. (pg 46 Cardwell)

Delayed by a snowstorm, and “Long past midnight,” Sam wrote from Keokuk, Iowa to Livy. He’d had “no time to turn around, for 2 or 3 days” and so was behind in his letters. He wrote poignantly of his mother and of Hannibal, and an old friend since childhood, Tom Nash. Nash had been deaf and dumb for 40 years and handed Sam a letter which he read and sent to Livy to keep.A beautiful evening with ma—& she is her old beautiful self; a nature of pure gold—one of the purest & finest & highest this land has produced.

"In Hannibal on Tuesday, the thirteenth, Twain and Cable stayed with friends, Pond "made out," though badly, at the Park Hotel. A flood of reminiscences was set off among the residents by Sam Clemens' return to his old home, and a sizable crowd attended the reading, though not as large, Ozias noted cynically, as in other places. Clemens was, of course, in great demand among old friends." From Cardwell page 44

Cable and Ozias stood waiting with bated breath in the Southern Hotel on Monday morning, January 12, while Mark, enraged by the necessity for rising in time to catch a train at 9:40, attacked a refractory window shutter. Ozias noted in his diary that Mark won the bout. (pg 41-42 Cardwell)

Clemens and Cable stayed with Sam's relatives by marriage, the widow of Erasmus Mason Moffett and her daughters. (pg 42 Cardwell)

Packed house.

Train accident on the bridge over the Mississippi River. The engine and baggage car jumped the track. The three entertainers walked across the bridge, took a car to the Southern Hotel, and that night were welcomed by a large audience (pg 37 Cardwell)

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch January 9, 1885, Pg2

Sam wrote en route from Indianapolis to Springfield, Ill. to Livy: We were up at 7, this morning, with a 9-hour journey before us & no parlor car. But we are getting along all right. The train stops every half a mile. It is now 1 p.m., & this car has been filled & emptied with farmer-people some 300 times. They are a constant interest to me—their clothes, their manners, attitudes, aspect, expression—when they have any.

Sam wrote to Livy on the train from Louisville, Ky. to Indianapolis, Ind, relating the dinner of the last evening at the Pendennis Club. Sam remarked on the differences of a Southern audience: In truth, Baltimore, Washington & Louisville prove that none but a Southern audience can bring out the very best that is in a man on the platform. There is an atmosphere of affection for you, pervading the house, that you seldom feel, at least in a strong inspiring way, in a northern audience.

Sam rose at 6 AM and took a train to Louisville, Kentucky (Cardwell says 8:15 AM train [34] ). They stayed at the Galt House At 4:30 they went to a reception at the Louisville Press Club, and a stop at the Pendennis Club [Cardwell 34]. In the evening, Sam and Cable gave a reading at Leiderkranz Hall. En route, Cable wrote to his wife Lucy about distractions in the audience during performances: