1 Thomas Thompson Eckert (1825–1910) supervised the organization of the Union military telegraph system during the Civil War, rising to the rank of brigadier-general. Appointed assistant secretary of war in July 1866, he resigned in February 1867 to become general superintendent of the eastern division of Western Union.

2 The purpose of Clemens’s canceled trip to Boston is not known (see also 3 Mar 72 to Redpath).

3 Clemens was scheduled to deliver his last lecture of the season, at Amherst College, the next day. Fall’s instructions (presumably telegraphed to Clemens) show that it would take him five hours to reach his destination, even though it was only about forty miles north of Hartford. The Amherst Student reported, “We do not know whether the audience had expected too much of the funny Mark Twain from reading his funny book, or whether two hours of nonsense is more than people care for at once, or not, but true it is that they had heard enough of him when he was done” (5 [9 Mar 72]: 38). The Amherst Record concurred, calling the lecture “a first-class failure,” despite “some good hits . . . nearly all of it we had already read, and it seemed rather stale to us” (“Mark Twain’s Lecture,” 28 Feb 72, 4). In a separate report, the Record noted:

Clemens’s experience with “spirit mediums” may have been as recent as the last three or four weeks (see pp. 41–43).