December 16 Tuesday – Sam and Cable gave a reading in Whitney’s Grand Opera House, Detroit, Michigan. The Detroit Post featured the Toledo visit, observing that Sam’s gait:
…resembled the motion of a tall boy on short stilts, [with] one of the oddest looking faces ever worn by man…his neck swan-like and white, but much thicker than a swan’s [Cardwell 29].
December 15 Monday – Sam wrote two letters from Toledo, Ohio to Livy. After remarking on the “prettiest furniture” of the hotel the night before in Jackson, Mich., Sam told of his day:
“We got up at 5 & took the train. All the way, in the cars, was a mother with her first child—the proudest & silliest fool I have struck this year. She beat the new brides that one sees on the trains” [MTP].
December 14 Sunday – Sam and Cable gave a reading in Muskegon, Mich. on Dec. 14. Previously reported as Dec. 4. See SLC to Andrew Chatto on Dec. 14, also from Muskegon. Mark Twain Journal misreported the date.
December 13 Saturday – Two copies of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were deposited in the Copyright Office, Library of Congress, though the official publication did not take place until Feb. 18, 1885 [Hirst, “A Note on the Text” Oxford edition, 1996].
December 12 Friday – Sam took a train from Buffalo at 12:30 A.M. and arrived at Ann Arbor, Mich. at 10 A.M. Sam wrote from Ann Arbor to Livy:
December 11 Thursday – Sam “rushed to David Gray’s…with Cable, arrived at noon” and had to wait for his steak to be re-cooked, and so drank two cups of strong coffee that did not agree with him [Dec. 12 to Livy, MTP].
Sam and Cable gave a second reading in Concert Hall, Buffalo, New York.
The Buffalo Times:
December 10 Wednesday – The Dawson Brothers in Canada and Chatto & Windus in London published Adventures of Huckleberry Finn [Powers, MT A Life 489; Roberts 22].
December 9 Tuesday – Sam and Cable were driven around Toronto to see the sights, which included the University of Toronto. They visited the studio of painter Andrew Dickson Patterson (1854-1930) famous a year later for his portrait of Canada’s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald (1815-1891).
Sam wrote from Toronto, Canada to Livy:
December 8 Monday – Sam and Cable arrived in Toronto, Canada at 4:30 P.M. on the Great Western train from Niagara Falls [Roberts 19]. In Toronto, Rose Publishing Co. applied to Sam to buy the Canadian rights to publish Huck Finn [Dec. 10 to Webster, MTP]. Ozias Pond was not the tour’s manager until after New Year’s day, but came with the pair.
December 7 Sunday – Sam wrote two more letters from Rochester to Livy. In the first note, Sam admitted being homesick on a “sour, bleak, windy day…with trifling flurries of snow.” He’d stayed in bed all day reading and smoking. Except for the weather the houses would have been overflowing.
The second note in the afternoon was a P.S. describing a “violent & absurd” performance of his “first sample of the Salvation Army” [MTP].