Clemens evidently did not write on 3 January from Fort Wayne (see 14 Jan 69 to OLLclick to open link). nor on 6 January from Rockford until past midnight (letter 22). He lectured in Indianapolis on 4 January and the following day may have stopped in Chicago en route to Rockford.

Very likely Clemens wrote to Olivia on 10 January from Galesburg, the same day he wrote to Harriet Lewis, enclosing both letters in an envelope addressed to Charles J. Langdon (see 10 Jan 69 to Lewis, n. 6click to open link).

Because Clemens was in Elmira from 19 through 22 February, and did not write on either 24 or 25 February, this letter was almost certainly written on 23 February from Trenton (17 Feb 69 to Fairbanksclick to open link, 26 Feb 69 to OLLclick to open link).

Whereas Olivia renumbered Clemens’s 28 February letter to correct a miswriting, she presumably renumbered these two letters after the late arrival of his letter of 4 March.

Clemens could have written these letters during two intervals when he was absent from Elmira: 13–16 March and 19–20 March. He was in Elmira on 17, 18, and possibly 19 March, and again from about 21 March through early May (see p. 175).

The envelope published with the 9 May letter (docket number 64) may actually belong to a missing letter of 10 May (see 10 May 69 to Redpath, n. 2click to open link), which would make the 9 May letter number 63, the 10 May letter number 64, and two letters written 10–12 May numbers 65 and 66 (9 May 69 to OLL, n. 5click to open link).

It is not possible to assign these letters to specific days or places. Presumably Clemens sent some of them from Hartford. He was in New York City by 23 May, however, and may have written one or more there before his arrival in South Windsor, Connecticut, by that evening. He did not write from South Windsor until the next day.

Since no docket number is missing between 81 and 82, this undated note, if written on 29 May as its content suggests, was either not assigned a number by Olivia, or, like Clemens’s letter of 6 and 7 September, was assigned the “½” number conjectured here.

Except for his visits to Cleveland in mid-July and Buffalo in early August, Clemens spent most of the time between 23 June and 8 August with Olivia in Hartford, Elmira, and Niagara Falls (26 June 69 to JLC and PAMclick to open link; 1 Aug 69 to Bliss, n. 2click to open link; 8 Aug 69 to OLL, n. 1click to open link).

It must have been in this letter or the preceding one that Clemens enclosed the letter he received on 20 August from Pamela Moffett (see 20 and 21 Aug 69 to PAMclick to open link).

Clemens went to Elmira on Friday, 27 August, and probably returned to Buffalo on Monday, 30 August.

Olivia used Clemens’s standard method of interpolating a number by adding “½,” indicating that she received or docketed this letter after letter 116.

Clemens spent most of the time between 3 and 30 September in Buffalo, with at least one weekend trip to Elmira (from 10 to 13 September). On 30 September, he went to Elmira and remained there for almost a month, until the beginning of his lecture tour. It is therefore probable that he wrote letters 118 through 127 in Buffalo between 14 and 29 September (one of them on the night of 26 September), although he may have written the last of the sequence en route to Pittsburgh, his first lecture stop, on 28 or 29 October (8 and 9 Sept 69 to OLLclick to open link; 26 and 27 Sept 69 to Fairbanksclick to open link; 27 Sept 69 to Bliss, n. 2click to open link; 27 Oct 69 to Severanceclick to open link).

In his letter of 10 November 69 to Oliviaclick to open link, Clemens confessed to a “four days’ hiatus”—probably 2–5 November—during which he wrote no letters. It is therefore likely that he wrote letters 129–32 during the next four days. His whereabouts in the first part of November remain somewhat uncertain (see pp. 385–86).

In one of these three missing letters, Clemens evidently enclosed a photograph of Josh Billings (see 15 and 16 Nov 69 to OLL, n. 3click to open link).

Clemens probably did not write to Olivia on 30 November since he expected to see her early the next day in New York City. He spent the week of 1–7 December with her there, except for a trip to Poughkeepsie to lecture on 3 December. Therefore he probably wrote letters 152–54 after he left New York on 7 December. Of the places where he lectured or stayed between 7 and 14 December, only Mt. Vernon, New York, on 10 December, was an unlikely site for a letter since Clemens evidently saw Olivia in New York City on the day of that performance and again on 11 December (15 and 16 Dec 69 to OLL, n. 1click to open link).

Clemens wrote this letter on the morning of 18 December, misdating it 17 December. Since he had been too ill to write a complete letter on 16 December, he must have written letter 157 on 17 December.

Olivia revised the docket of this letter after she belatedly received or docketed Clemens’s letter of 18 December.

Clemens probably wrote letter 161 in Hudson, Massachusetts, where, after lecturing, he seems to have spent the night of 21 December (see 21 Dec 69 to OLL, n. 3click to open link). He probably wrote letter 162 the following night, after lecturing in Portland. Since it wasn’t until Christmas Day that he wrote Olivia of the imposition he suffered in Rockport, Massachusetts, on 23 December, he presumably did not write to her then. He definitely wrote no letter on 24 December.

In letter 163 Clemens anticipated writing Olivia another letter that day.

Clemens must have written this letter before going to Elmira, where he “spent Jan. 1, 2, 3 & 5” of 1870 (6 Jan 70 to Fairbanks, CSmH, in MTMF , 112).

After lecturing in West Troy on 11 January 1870, Clemens may have spent the night there or, conceivably, returned to his former lodgings in nearby Troy or Albany.

Clemens registered at a Syracuse hotel on 18 January before he went on to Ogdensburg for his evening lecture (“City Items,” Syracuse Standard, 19 Jan 70, 3).

Clemens lectured in Fredonia, New York, on the evening of 19 January, but it is unlikely that he wrote to Olivia then since his letter of the following day from Hornellsville contains his report of the Fredonia performance. He may, however, have written a 19 January letter from Buffalo, where he spent part of the day, probably visiting his office at the Express, before going to Fredonia.