November 24 Friday – Sam gave a reading in Providence, R. I., and then returned home to Hartford. The reading was similar to his Nov. 13 performance in Brooklyn. Sam and Livy entertained Charles and Susan Warner for dinner. Joe and Harmony Twichell dropped by [Schmidt; MTLE 1: 144].
November 22 Wednesday – Sam gave a reading at the Academy of Music in Chelsea, Mass., similar to his Nov. 13 performance in Brooklyn [Schmidt]. Note: MTHL 1: 166n5 lists this lecture as Nov. 23. Also notes with Oct. 19 to Tip Saunders MTPO.
November 21 Tuesday – Sam gave a reading at the Music Hall in Boston, similar to his Nov. 13 performance in Brooklyn [Schmidt: See Boston Daily Globe, “The Mark Twain Combination,” November 20, 1876, p.5; Boston Daily Globe, “On the Platform,” November 22, 1876, p.8].
While in Boston, Sam stayed with Howells, who recalled the visits in My Mark Twain:
November 18 Saturday – Bill paid to A.K. Talcott for a Nov. 14 purchase, $4.80 [MTP].
November 16 Thursday – Moncure Conway wrote from England, responding to Sam’s Nov. 2 alarm of the Belford piracy of Tom Sawyer. Conway wrote:
“I immediately held a council of war with Chatto, and…I send you the result of our cogitations….We considered it best to telegraph Belford yesterday with these words:—‘Tom Sawyer is English copyright. Chatto’” [MTPO Notes with Nov. 2, 1876 to Conway].
November 15 Wednesday – Andrew Chatto wrote from England, likely enclosed in Conway’s of the following day. “The telegram to Belford Bros. that Tom Sawyer is English copyright must strengthen Mark Twain’s hands….But I imagine the serious injury to Twain is their flooding the American market with copies—against this no one can stand so well as Mark Twain himself” [MTP].
November 14 Tuesday – Sam gave a reading at the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, for the Star Course of Lectures under Thomas B. Pugh. This reading was similar to his Nov. 13 performance in Brooklyn [MTPO: See advertisements in Philadelphia Public Ledger, Nov. 13 & 14, p1].
November 13 Monday – Sam read “The McWilliamses and the Membranous Croup,” “My Late Senatorial Secretaryship,” and “Encounter With an Interviewer” at the Academy of Music in Brooklyn, New York. Also on the program were Emma Thursby, a well-known operatic soprano, and a group of singers called the Young Apollo Glee Club [Brooklyn Eagle, Nov. 9 & 11, 1876 p1].
November 9 Thursday – Rutherford B. Hayes won the election and Sam sent Howells a telegram of that old hymn: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow praise him all creatures here below…” etc. [MTLE 1: 143].
November 8 Wednesday – Election day – Sam telegraphed Howells that he’d “love to steal a while away from every cumbering care and while returns come in today lift up my voice & swear” [MTLE 1: 142]. Note: Sam parodied the first verse of a popular hymn by Phoebe Hinsdale Brown (1783-1861), one included in Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Collection of Hymns: “I love to steal, awhile, away / From every cumbering c