1 Since 1858, under the pseudonym “Fat Contributor,” Alphonso Miner Griswold (1834–91) had been publishing humorous sketches while serving on the editorial staffs of the Buffalo Republic and Times, the Detroit Advertiser, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, and the Cincinnati Times, of which he was now city editor. (Clemens here agrees to add the Times, to the Express’s exchanges.) Well known as a lecturer in the Midwest, Griswold was engaged to make his New England debut, in James Redpath’s Boston Lyceum Course, on 24 November 1869 (“‘The Fat Contributor,’” Boston Advertiser, 23 Nov 69, 1). His lecture that evening in Boston’s Music Hall, on “Indian Antiquities—humorously considered,” suffered by comparison with the performance Clemens himself gave there on 10 November. The Boston Advertiser called Griswold “a rather colorless copy of Mark Twain, or rather like a little of Mark Twain and a little water mixed together” (“Mr. A. Miner Griswold on ‘Injun Meal,’” 25 Nov 69, 1).