January 8 Monday – Sam gave the “Roughing It” lecture in Concert Hall, Salem, Ohio [MTPO].
He wrote from Salem to Livy.
“Well, slowly this lecturing penance drags toward the end. Heaven knows I shall be glad when I get far away from these country communities of wooden-heads. Whenever I want to go away from New England again, lecturing, please show these letters to me & bring me to my senses” [MTL 5: 14].
January 7 Sunday – Sam telegraphed from Wooster, Ohio to William Dean Howells to solicit Bret Harte and “the other boys” to get up a fund for William Andrew Kendall (1831?-1876), a poet who was ill in New York, to gain his passage back to California. Sam claimed he didn’t know Kendall, but Harte did, having published several of his poems while editor of the Overland.
January 6 Saturday – Sam “hired a locomotive…to keep from having to get up at 2 in the morning,” and made the trip from Columbus to Wooster, Ohio, where he lectured in Arcadome Hall – “Roughing It” [MTL 5: 11-12n3].
January 5 Friday – Sam lectured in Opera House, Columbus, Ohio – “Roughing It” [MTPO].
A receipt from John Hooker for $100 for “house rent in full” is likely for one month, since later receipts for Hooker’s Nook Farm rent were $300 per quarter. Bill paid to E. Habenstein, baker for Livy, products not legible [MTP].
January 4 Thursday – Sam arrived in Dayton, Ohio and stayed at the Beckel House, Room 169. In the evening he lectured “Roughing It” to a full house in the Music Hall. He wrote John Henry Riley about plans for the diamond book, thinking that he’d be ready to start the collaboration around the first week in March [MTL 5: 2-3].
Friend Riley—
Heaven prosper the Minister to S. A! Amen.
January 3 Wednesday – Sam lectured in Richmond, Indiana – “Roughing It.” He also wrote his mother, Jane Clemens:
Dear Mother—Enclosed find checks for three hundred dollars. Please drop Livy a line acknowledging receipt of them, & tell her to let me know right away.
January 2 Tuesday – Sam lectured in Opera House, Logansport, Indiana – “Roughing It.” Before the lecture he wrote from Logansport to James Redpath.
“Had a splendid time with a splendid audience in Indianapolis last night—a perfectly jammed house….I like the new lecture but I hate the ‘Artemus Ward’ talk & won’t talk it any more. No man ever approved that choice of subject in my hearing, I think” [MTL 5: 1].
January 1 Monday – Sam arrived in the evening to lecture in Association Hall, Indianapolis, Indiana – “Roughing It in Nevada” [Schmidt].
Sam was billed $21 by Hartford Drs. Taft & Starr for “professional services from July 1, 1871 to Jan 1 1872” [MTP].
January – Sam’s article “A Nabob’s Visit to New York” ran in American Publishing Co.’s in-house promotional monthly, American Publisher [Camfield, bibliog.]. See Roughing It, Ch. 46.
December 31 Sunday – In a “warm drizzling rain,” Sam went to church in Paris, Illinois, and wrote of the experience in a long letter to Livy.
“It was the West & boyhood brought back again, vividly. It was as if twenty-five years had fallen away from me like a garment & I was a lad of eleven again in my Missouri village church of that ancient time” [MTL 4: 527].