did not like it,
or it did not go well. He wrote Redpath of the Artemus Ward address:

"It suits me, and I'll never deliver the nasty, nauseous 'Reminiscences'
any more."

But the Ward lecture was good for little more than a month, for on
December 8th he wrote again:

Notify all hands that from this time I shall talk nothing but
selections from my forthcoming book, 'Roughing It'. Tried it twice
last night; suits me tiptop.

And somewhat later:

Had a splendid time with a splendid audience in Indianapolis last
night; a perfectly jammed house, just as I have all the time out
here.... I don't care now to have any appointments canceled. I'll
even "fetch" those Dutch Pennsylvanians with this lecture.

Have paid up $4,000 indebtedness. You are the last on my list.
Shall begin to pay you in a few days, and then I shall be a free man
again.

Undoubtedly he reveled in the triumphs of a platform tour, though at no
time did he regard it as a pleasure excursion. During those early weeks
the proofs of his new book, chasing him from place to place, did not add
to his comfort. Still, with large, substantial rewards in hand and in
prospect, one could endure much.

In the neighborhood of Boston there were other compensations. He could
spend a good part of his days at the Lyceum headquarters, in School
Street, where there was always congenial fellowship--Nasby, Josh
Billings, and the rest of the peripatetic group that about the end of
the year collected there. Their lectures were never tried immediately
in Boston, but in the outlying towns; tried and perfected--or discarded.
When the provincial audiences were finally satisfied, then the final.
test in the Boston Music Hall was made, and if this proved successful
the rest of the season was safe. Redpath's lecturers put up at Young's
Hotel, and spent their days at the bureau, smoking and spinning yarns,
or talking shop. Early in the evening they scattered to the outlying
towns, Lowell, Lexington, Concord, New Bedford. There is no such a
condition to-day: lecturers are few, lecture bureaus obscure; there are
no great reputations made on the platform.

Neither is there any such distinct group of humorists as the one just
mentioned. Humor has become universal since then. Few writers of this
age would confess to taking their work so seriously as to be at all
times unsmiling in it; only about as many, in fact, as in that day would
confess to t