In an accompanying letter he says:
Here are three articles which you may have if you will pay $125 for the lot. If you don't want them I'll sell them to the Galaxy, but not for a cent less than three times the money.... If you take them pay one-tenth of the $125 in weekly instalments to Orion till he has received it all.
He reconsidered his resolution not to lecture again, and closed with Redpath for the coming season. He found himself in a lecture-writing fever. He wrote three of them in succession: one on Artemus Ward, another on "Reminiscences of Some Pleasant Characters I Have Met," and a third one based on chapters from the new book. Of the "Reminiscence" lecture he wrote Redpath:
"It covers my whole acquaintance; kings, lunatics, idiots, and all." Immediately afterward he wrote that he had prepared still another lecture, "title to be announced later."
"During July I'll decide which one I like best," he said. He instructed Redpath not to make engagements for him to lecture in churches. "I never made a success of a lecture in a church yet. People are afraid to laugh in a church."
Redpath was having difficulties in arranging a circuit to suit him. Clemens had prejudices against certain towns and localities, prejudices that were likely to change overnight. In August he wrote:
DEAR RED,--I am different from other women; my mind changes oftener. People who have no mind can easily be stead fast and firm, but when a man is loaded down to the guards with it, as I am, every heavy sea of foreboding or inclination, maybe of indolence, shifts the cargo. See? Therefore, if you will notice, one week I am likely to give rigid instructions to confine me to New England; the next week send me to Arizona; the next week withdraw my name; the next week give you full, untrammeled swing; and the week following modify it. You must try to keep the run of my mind, Redpath that is your business, being the agent, and it always was too many for me.... Now about the West this week, I am willing that you shall retain all the Western engagements. But what I shall want next week is still with God. Yours, MARK.
He was in Hartford when this letter was written, arranging for residence there and the removal of his belongings. He finally leased the fine Hooker house on Ford Street, in that pleasant seclusion known as Nook Farm--the literary part of Hartford, which included the residence of Charles Dudley Warner and Harriet Beecher Stowe. He arranged for possession of the premises October 1st. So the new home was settled upon; then learning that Nasby was to be in Boston, he ran over to that city for a few days of recreation after his season's labors.
Preparations for removal to Hartford were not delayed. The Buffalo property was disposed of, the furnishings were packed and shipped away. The house which as bride and groom they had entered so happily was left empty and deserted, never to be entered by them again. In the year and a half of their occupancy it had seen well-nigh all the human round, all that goes to make up the happiness and the sorrow of life.
LXXXIII
LECTURING DAYS
Life in Hartford, in the autumn of 1871, began in the letter, rather than in the spirit. The newcomers were received with a wide, neighborly welcome, but the disorder of establishment and the almost immediate departure of the head of the household on a protracted lecturing tour were disquieting things; the atmosphere of the Clemens home during those early Hartford days gave only a faint promise of its future loveliness.
As in a far later period, Mark Twain had resorted to lecturing to pay off debt. He still owed a portion of his share in the Express; also he had been obliged to obtain an advance from the lecture bureau. He dreaded, as always, the tedium of travel, the clatter of hotel life, the monotony of entertainment, while, more than most men, he loved the tender luxury of home.