Pilgrims and Vandals: Day By Day

January 24 Sunday – Sam wrote from Cleveland to Livy. He was relieved that Livy still had “faith in me.” Livy’s parents had expressed doubts about Sam, that he was a wanderer by nature. Sam answered the accusation:
“Does a man, five years a galley-slave, get in a habit of it & yearn to be a galley-slave always?…And being pushed from pillar to post & compelled so long to roam, against my will, is it reasonable to think that I am really fond if it & wedded to it? I think not” [MTL 3: 75].

January 25 Saturday – Sam returned to New York and stayed at the Slote house, where he wrote his old Hannibal friend, Will Bowen. “I have just come down from Hartford, Conn., where I have made a tip-top contract for a 600-page book, & I feel perfectly jolly.” Sam told Will about his newspaper deal with the Herald, and sent best wishes for Will’s brother Bart, scalded in a steamboat accident [MTL 2

January 25 Monday – Sam lecture his “Vandals” in Academy of Music, Marshall, Michigan [MTPO].

January 26 Sunday – Sam’s “Holy Land Excursion. Letter from Mark Twain Number Thirty-six” dated Sept. 1867 at “Tiberias” ran in the Alta California [McKeithan 229-36].

January 26 Tuesday – Sam gave his “Vandals” lecture in Batavia, Illinois. Sam spent the night in Batavia and wrote another long love letter to Livy [MTL 3: 76].

January 27 Monday – Sam wrote from New York to Elisha Bliss, American Publishing Co., agreeing to terms. That evening Sam attended a dinner of “newspaper Editors & literary scalliwags, at the Westminster Hotel” [MTL 2: 169-70].

January 27 Wednesday – Sam left early in the morning for Freeport, Illinois, where Sam gave his “Vandals” lecture in Fry’s Hall.

January 28 Tuesday – Sam’s article, MARK TWAIN IN WASHINGTON, dated Dec. 17, 1867, ran in the San Francisco California Alta. Subtitles: More Mysteries; How a Mystery was Solved; Singular; Personal; Harris [Schmidt].

January 28 Thursday – Sam gave his “Vandals” lecture at Russell Hall, Waterloo, Iowa [MTPO].

January 29 Friday – Sam gave his “Vandals” lecture at the Bench Street Methodist Church in Galena, Illinois. Afterwards, Sam wrote from Galena to Livy:

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 30 Thursday – Sam returned to Washington, D.C. (See Mar. 3 entry), where he wrote to Mary Mason Fairbanks.

“I confess, humbly, that I deserve all you have said, & promise that I will rigidly eschew slang & vulgarity in future, even in foolish dinner speeches, when on my guard” [MTL 2: 170].

January 31 Friday – Sam wrote from Washington, D.C. to Emma Beach saying he had:

“not been out of the house since I came home, & have not left the writing table, except to sleep, & take my meals. I have written seven long newspaper letters & a short magazine article in less than two days.”

January 4 Monday – Sam gave his “Vandals” lecture at The Metropolitan, Indianapolis, Indiana. 

John Morris wrote:

January 5 Sunday – Sam went to Plymouth Church in Brooklyn and was a guest at Henry Ward Beecher’s home. At dinner there he met Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Catherine Beecher (1800-1878). Sam’s “old Quaker City favorite, Emma Beach,” was also there.

January 5 Tuesday – The Indianapolis Journal reviewed Sam’s lecture:

January 6 Wednesday – Sam gave his “Vandals” lecture at Brown’s Hall in Rockford, Illinois to about a thousand people [Schmidt].

January 6–7 Tuesday – Sam returned by train to Washington, D.C.

January 7 Tuesday – Sam’s MARK TWAIN’S LETTERS FROM WASHINGTON, NUMBER II, dated Dec.16 1867 was printed in the Enterprise. Sections: “John Ross Browne’s Report,” “Personal,” “’Coast’ Matters,” and “The Holidays” [MTP].

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 8 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Washington to his mother, and sister Pamela. Sam told of his trip to New York, the “blowout” at Dan Slote’s house and the dinner he had at Henry Ward Beecher’s home. He also wrote that he found just found out the night before that he was to give two lectures on Jan.

January 8 Friday – Sam traveled to Monmouth, Illinois, 170 miles southwest of Chicago. The Chicago Tribune’s review worked to place the reader in the hall on that night of January 7, 1868:

January 9 Thursday – Sam wrote from Washington, D.C. to Stephen J. Field (1816-1899), Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, recommending Harvey Beckwith for a government agent post to uncover illicit un-taxed whiskey. Sam had known Beckwith from his Nevada days, when Harvey was the superintendent of the Mexican silver mine at Virginia City [MTL 2: 150].

January 9 Saturday – The Rockford Register printed a review of Sam’s lecture there:
We never saw an audience so determined to laugh “out loud” …we confess to having laughed ourselves until our sides fairly ached…We congratulate those who were present, and we feel deep sympathy for those who remained away and missed a grand opportunity of hearing a speaker who, as a humorist and wit, stands unrivaled on the American stage [MTL 3: 8-9n1].

July 10 Friday – Sam joined in an on-board theatrical production called “Country School Exhibition.” Sam read an original composition, “The Cow,” and sang with the chorus, “Old John Brown had One Little Injun” [Sanborn 398-9]. Gribben suggests Sam organized the show and reported the event in the Alta California on Sept. 6 [510].