the height of his first great vogue as a public entertainer, he had
no love for platform life. Undoubtedly he rejoiced in the brief
periods when he was actually before his audience and could play upon
it with his master touch, but the dreary intermissions of travel and
broken sleep were too heavy a price to pay.

*****

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis

ELMIRA, June 4. (1868)

DEAR FOLKS,--Livy sends you her love and loving good wishes, and I send
you mine. The last 3 chapters of the book came tonight--we shall read it
in the morning and then thank goodness, we are done.

In twelve months (or rather I believe it is fourteen,) I have earned
just eighty dollars by my pen--two little magazine squibs and one
newspaper letter--altogether the idlest, laziest 14 months I ever spent
in my life. And in that time my absolute and necessary expenses have
been scorchingly heavy--for I have now less than three thousand six
hundred dollars in bank out of the eight or nine thousand I have made
during those months, lecturing. My expenses were something frightful
during the winter. I feel ashamed of my idleness, and yet I have had
really no inclination to do anything but court Livy. I haven't any other
inclination yet. I have determined not to work as hard traveling,
any more, as I did last winter, and so I have resolved not to lecture
outside of the 6 New England States next winter. My Western course would
easily amount to $10,000, but I would rather make 2 or 3 thousand in New
England than submit again to so much wearing travel. (I have promised
to talk ten nights for a thousand dollars in the State of New York,
provided the places are close together.) But after all if I get located
in a newspaper in a way to suit me, in the meantime, I don't want to
lecture at all next winter, and probably shan't. I most cordially hate
the lecture field. And after all, I shudder to think that I may never
get out of it.

In all conversations with Gough, and Anna Dickinson, Nasby, Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips and the other old stagers, I could not
observe that they ever expected or hoped to get out of the business. I
don't want to get wedded to it as they are. Livy thinks we can live on
a very moderate sum and that we'll not need to lecture. I know very
well that she can live on a small allowance, but I am not so sure about
myself. I can't scare her by re