No letters are known to survive between 18 and 24 December 1871. Clemens’s two “Roughing It” lectures in Chicago—on 18 December at the Michigan Avenue Baptist Church and on 19 December at the Union Park Congregational Church—were very successful. Reporters, some of whom Clemens had met at Dr. Jackson’s, praised the lecture while refraining—at least initially—from synopsizing it. “As he repeats the lecture to-night, on the West side,” explained the Chicago Times, “and we have been requested to restrain our desire to tell some of the good things he said, so that they will be enjoyed the more by those who have had the good fortune to secure seats, we do not give any detailed report of his lecture” (“Amusements,” 19 Dec 71, 3). The Chicago Evening Post of 19 December extensively praised Clemens’s appearance and manner, however, in a review that the Boston Lyceum Bureau extracted for its January 1872 “Lyceum Circular” (see Boston Lyceum Bureau Advertising Circularclick to open link). Briefer reviews on 19 December in the Chicago Mail, and Tribune, and on 20 December in the Times were equally positive. Following Clemens’s second lecture, the Tribune published a long, two-part synopsis that was widely reprinted (“‘Mark Twain,’” 20 Dec 71, 4, 24 Dec 71, no page). And the Chicago Republican published a text of the Artemus Ward lecture as “What Mark Lectured About Last Night” (20 Dec 71, 2), a mistake gleefully noticed by the Evening Post (“Brevities,” 20 Dec 71, 4).

After his Chicago triumphs, Clemens lectured in the nearby Illinois towns of Sandwich, Aurora, and Princeton, on 20, 21, and 22 December. No reports of the first two lectures have been found, but a review of his Princeton performance reveals that, because of the Chicago Tribune synopsis, he had returned to the Artemus Ward lecture, which the local paper found unsatisfactory (“Mark Twain’s Lecture,” Princeton Bureau County Republican, 28 Dec 71, 4; Wallace, 48). Clemens had no lecture engagements from Saturday, 23 December, through Christmas Monday, 25 December; he returned to Chicago to revise the “Roughing It” lecture yet again.