January 16 Friday – Sam wrote from Chicago to Susy Clemens, thanking her for a letter and asking her to write “two or three times a week in Mamma’s place…What I’m after is to save her” [MTP].
Sam also wrote to Orion, thanking him for a “perfect 24 hours there, with the sort of social activity which produces rest instead of fatigue” [MTP].
January 17 Saturday – Sam and Cable gave two more performances at the Central Music Hall in Chicago. Before the matinee performance, Sam wrote Livy:
January 18 Sunday – Sam finished the letter to Livy, writing in the morning and after breakfast adding to it at noon, when he wrote about the Chicago readings:
January 19 Monday – Sam wrote from Chicago to Charles Webster, adding to the list of things he wanted progress reports on, including the weekly total of money received from Pond [MTP].
January 20 Tuesday – Sam and Cable gave a reading at the Opera House in Janesville, Wisconsin. Cable wrote home:
January 21 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Madison, Wisc. to Livy. He reported that it had been seven days since the thermometer had risen above zero; it was ten below at the time of his letter, but he was in his “bag, in bed, & unspeakably snug & comfortable.
January 22 Thursday – Sam and Cable gave a reading in LaCrosse, Wisconsin.
Sam wrote from St. Paul, Minn. to Charles Erskine Scott Wood, his old West Point friend, who evidently had asked Sam why he never poked fun at Jews.
January 23 Friday – Sam wrote from St. Paul to Livy, who’d asked if Pond ever failed to mail his letters. Sam didn’t think so and told the story of Orion taking one of his letters to the post box and when he got there forgetting why he’d gone, returning with the letter still in his pocket. Sam also related walking nine blocks to see the “ghost,” a “mysterious something on a school-house window pane,” which various people saw as various objects or persons.
January 24 Saturday – Sam and Cable gave two readings at the The Grand Opera House, Minneapolis, Minnesota, a matinee and an evening performance. According to the Minneapolis Tribune, the matinee reading was “fairly attended” and there was a “full house” in the evening [Railton].
Jane Clemens wrote to Sam & Livy:
January 25 Sunday – Sam wrote from Minneapolis to Charles Webster, again about business matters—the bed clamp, Osgood’s statement, books sold, American Publishing Co., and money Webster needed, probably for continued production of Huck Finn. Sam ended with,
I ought to have staid at home & written another book. It pays better than the platform [MTP].
January 26 Monday – Sam wrote from Minneapolis to Charles Webster, more of the same—directing him again about putting funds in his name, and sending unbound copies of HF to magazines [MTP].
In the evening Sam and Cable gave a reading at the Philharmonic Hall, Winona, Minnesota. Cable wrote that they had to “rise at 5 tomorrow morning to take cars. O how home-sick I am” [Turner, MT & GWC 91].
January 27 Tuesday – This from Sam’s Jan. 31 letter to Livy, about visiting Governor Lucius Fairchild and family in Madison, Wisc.:
January 28 Wednesday – Sam telegraphed from Milwaukee, Wisc. to Charles Webster to draw $5,000 from the “No 2 account” [MTP].
Sam and Cable gave a reading at the Academy of Music in Milwaukee, in front of what the Milwaukee Sentinel called “a small but delighted audience” [Railton].
January 29 Thursday – Sam and Cable gave a second reading at the Academy of Music, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Sentinel reported on Jan. 30: “The audience was much larger than on the previous night and appeared to heartily enjoy the readings” [Railton].
During the performance off stage, George Cable wrote to his wife, Lucy, of the struggle:
January 30 Friday – Sam and Cable gave a reading in Rockford, Illinois. Ralph Emerson and wife wanted Sam to “camp in their house, which is the best one in town (Rockford), but” he had to leave at 11 P.M. in a freight train [Jan. 31 to Livy, MTP]. Ozias Pond remained in Milwaukee, and his brother James was at the Everett House in New York City.
January 31 Saturday – From Davenport, Iowa, Sam wrote of his recent travels to Livy:
“…struck a sleeping-car train at 12.30 [A.M.], but did not go to bed, as we had to change cars at 2.40. Did it, slept till 6, when we reached Rock Island; then Cable & I walked up through the town & over toward this place, when a sleigh overtook & we rode” [MTP].
February 1 Sunday – Sam wrote from Chicago, Illinois to Livy, giving her the future reading dates and reviewing the past few days.
February – A chapter from Huck Finn, “Royalty on the Mississippi, As Chronicled by Huckleberry Finn” ran in the Feb. issue of the Century Magazine, p.544-67 [Camfield, bibliog.]. The same magazine also ran the third of three small (approx. 3” x 4”) display ads, announcing MARK TWAIN’S NEW WORK, with Kemble’s picture of Huck Finn doffing straw hat, “sold only by subscription, agents wanted, Chas. Webster” etc. [MTP, 1884-5 financial files].
February 2 Monday – Sam wrote from Chicago, Ill. to Livy, that he loved her dearly fifteen years ago but loved her “more dearly now.” He reflected how they were,
“…well off; but poor [then], compared to what we are now, with the children…those dear rascals” [MTP].
February 3 Tuesday – Sam and Cable gave a second reading at the Central Music Hall, Chicago, Illinois. From the Chicago Tribune, Feb. 3:
February 4 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Chicago to Livy:
February 5 Thursday – Sam wrote from South Bend, Indiana to Livy:
Livy dear, we are grinding out the days pretty fast, now that we are at last fairly into the last month & unquestionably on the homestretch. Major Pond [James] is with us, now. He wanted to send his brother Edward, but we needed an expert, not a novice.
He also told of the Jan. 31 argument with Cable over traveling on Sunday (see Jan. 31 entry).
February 6 Friday – In the afternoon, Sam wrote from Layfayette, Indiana to Livy:
February 7 Saturday – Sam got up at 7 AM and took a train to Indianapolis, Indiana. On the train he wrote to Livy, explaining how black coffee made him “cheerful, & easy, & confidential & conversational with the audience,” but it didn’t protect him from “disastrous lapses of memory which come of over-fatigue.” Sam was counting the days now till he would be home, “at half past 3 on a Sunday morning Feb. 22!” [MTP].
February 8 Sunday – Sam wrote from Indianapolis to Livy. He blamed Cable for his own supposed shortcomings:
It is Cable’s fault that I have done inferior reading all this time. He has hogged so much of the platform-time that I have always felt obliged to hurry along at lightning speed in order to keep the performance within bounds; but now I take my own time, & give 25 minutes to pieces which formerly occupied but 15.