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.

After traveling all night to Davenport, Iowa, [from Rockford] the pair “made a great triumph” at the local opera house the next evening, Sam felt “old & seedy & wretched” before the show, but instead of bathing he “drank a big cup of black coffee & went on the stage as fine as a fiddle.” [Page 444 The Life of Mark Twain - The Middle Years 1871-1891]

Sam and Cable gave a reading in Rockford, Illinois. Ralph Emerson and wife wanted Sam to “camp in their house, which is the best one in town (Rockford), but” he had to leave at 11 P.M . in a freight train [Jan. 31 to Livy, MTP].

See Touring with Cable and Huck for review.

They left [Winona] the morning of January 27 at 5:00 a.m. for a return engagement in Madison [Page 443 The Life of Mark Twain - The Middle Years 1871-1891]

Winona Daily Republican; Jan 27, 1885

Innocents Abroad.

Mark Twain and Geo. W. Cable

... they transferred their luggage seventeen miles to the West Hotel in Minneapolis and performed at the Grand Opera House [Page 443 The Life of Mark Twain - The Middle Years 1871-1891]

See Touring with Cable and Huck for review.