1 Redpath’s Lyceum Magazine announced: “Mr. Clemens has consented to lecture this season for a brief series of engagements between the middle of October and the end of January only. This, he assures us, will be positively his last season on the platform” (Lyceum 1871, 20). Clemens’s tour lasted from 16 October 1871 to 27 February 1872, about the same length of time as his 1868–69 tour (nineteen weeks), but much longer than his 1869–70 tour (eleven weeks), which he had cut short in order to get married on 2 February. The 1871–72 tour was the most solidly booked, comprising some seventy-seven lectures compared with forty-three and about fifty, respectively, in 1868–69 and 1869–70 (Lecture Schedule, 1871–1872; Lecture Schedule, 1868–1870 ).

2 This offer may have come from the Associated Western Literary Societies, which had managed the midwestern portion of Clemens’s 1868–69 tour, or from O. Sackett, of Kansas City, on behalf of his Western Lyceum Bureau, which had recently represented Horace Greeley and was currently recruiting Kate Field and others for its roster. Clemens was apparently free to accept offers from regions that the Boston Lyceum Bureau did not routinely serve. But the bureau, which had opened in 1868 to handle bookings in the New England and mid-Atlantic states, was currently extending its reach. It tentatively scheduled some western, or midwestern, appearances for Clemens and by late 1871 it established a branch office in Chicago (8 Aug 71 to Redpath; L3, 481; Kate Field to Whitelaw Reid, 6 Nov 70, DLC; Eubank, 99, 114, 122–24).

3 Added at the Boston Lyceum Bureau by an unknown hand. For Nasby’s prices, see 10 June 71 to Redpath and Fall n. 2.