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].
January 5 Tuesday – The Indianapolis Journal reviewed Sam’s lecture:
January 4 Monday – Sam gave his “Vandals” lecture at The Metropolitan, Indianapolis, Indiana.
John Morris wrote:
January 3 Sunday – In a letter of Jan. 14 to Livy, Sam answered her question of what he did on this day. Where was I on Sunday, Jan 3? In Fort Wayne. Had my breakfast brought up, & lay in bed till 1 P.M. I did want to go to church, & the bells sounded very inviting, but it seemed a plain duty to rest all I could….Yes I lay abed till 1 P.M. & read your Akron & Cleveland letters several times—& read the Testament—& re-read Beecher’s sermon on the love of riches being the root of all evil—and read Prof.
January 2 Saturday – Sam made an error in his schedule, not appearing on Dec. 29 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This was a make up date and he gave the “American Vandal Abroad” lecture at Hamilton’s Hall in Ft. Wayne. Afterward he wrote from Ft. Wayne to Livy:
January 1 Friday – Sam spent the day with Solon & Emily Severance, old Quaker City shipmates, making social calls in Cleveland, Ohio. While he waited for the carriage, Sam wrote Joseph Twichell:
“And I have delightful Christmas letters, this morning, from her [Livy’s] mother & father—full of love and trust. I seem to be shaking off the drowsiness of centuries & looking about me half bewildered at the light just bursting above the horizon of an unfamiliar world” [MTL 3: 1-2].
Midwest Lecture Tour – Visits to Elmira & Hartford – Sam & Livy Engaged - Sam Met William Dean Howells – Innocents Abroad a Great Success - Buffalo Newspaper Purchased with Jervis Langdon’s help – Grueling Lecture Schedule
1869 – Sometime during the year Clemens took out a $10,000 life insurance policy with Continental Life Ins. Co of Hartford [MTP]. Note: see June 16, 1877.
May 11 Saturday – John Stanton (Corry O’Lanus) (1826-1871) was a reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle, and likely the reviewer of Sam’s May 10 lecture at the Brooklyn Athenaeum. Shortly thereafter, Sam inscribed (no date written) a copy of The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches: “To Cory [sic] O’Lanus, the compt’s of Mark Twain” [Sotheby’s Apr. 4, 2004 auction, Lot 18].
May 23-25 Friday – In the few days between his return from Maui and sailing for the big island of Hawaii, Sam visited the Legislature and wrote two letters about it to the Union [Frear 56].