No letters written between 27 January and 3 February 1872 have been found. On Sunday afternoon, 28 January, Clemens may well have attended a performance of the Jubilee Singers, touring on behalf of Fisk University in Nashville. They “sang a half a dozen times at the Asylum Hill church Sunday school concert in the afternoon. The notice was very brief but the large house was nearly filled, and their singing created a sensation rarely equalled” (“The Jubilee Singers,” Hartford Courant, 29 Jan 72, 2; see 10 Mar 73 to Hood and Routledge and Sonsclick to open link). Clemens’s first lecture after his three or four days at home was on 29 January in Scranton, Pennsylvania. His by-now well-worn gambit of introducing himself was the most successful part of the lecture, according to the reviewer in the Scranton Republican, who added, “The audience enjoyed the evening’s entertainment, and if his concluding remarks had been as funny as his opening, they would have been sorry that the lecturer closed in less than an hour” (“Mark Twain’s Lecture,” 1 Feb 72, 6). On 30 January Clemens lectured in Jersey City, New Jersey, to an overflowing house, once again introducing himself:
Mark immediately stepped to the front of the platform and announced that the next monthly meeting of the Young Men’s Christian Association would take place on February 8th, and then it was supposed that instead of being the lecturer of the evening, he was the member of the association upon whom devolved the duty of introducing that gentleman. His next announcement quickly dissipated that idea however, and he said that the next lecture of the course would be no lecture at all, but a grand vocal and instrumental concert, on Feb. 15th. He then continued, “I will now introduce the lecturer of the evening, a gentleman whose great learning, historical accuracy, devotion to science, and veneration for the truth are only equalled by his high moral character and majestic presence.” He then disclaimed any discourtesy in thus introducing himself, and added that he had an insurmountable antipathy to being introduced in the regulation style. He was satisfied that it must be very uncomfortable for the lecturer to be standing around the platform while some other man was performing the operation; he always preferred to do the introduction himself, and then he was sure to get in the facts. A gentleman out west undertook the task of introducing him on one occasion, and knowing that he disliked having compliments showered upon him, he did the introduction in this style; “I don’t know anything about this man except two things, one is, he has never been in the penitentiary, and the other is, I don’t know the reason why.” (Jersey City American Standard, 31 Jan 72, 1)
The Jersey City Evening Journal judged that “Mark is no orator”:
He don’t pretend to be, but he is an amusing talker with a droll drawl, a nasal twang, and an indescribably odd fashion of “standing around” and moving his hands and his features as if he didn’t know what to do with them. He is a mixture of Artemus Ward, Baron Munchausen and—Mark Twain, with Mark preponderating. He made people laugh, and that was what he came for, but we would rather read his fun than have it from him by word of mouth. (“Twain Talk,” 31 Jan 72, 1)
After the lecture, Clemens undoubtedly took the ferry back to New York, checking into the St. Nicholas for the night (“Prominent Arrivals,” New York Tribune, 31 Jan 72, 8; “Morning Arrivals,” New York Evening Express, 31 Jan 72, 3). The next day he recrossed the river to lecture in Paterson, New Jersey. The Paterson Press found him to be “about all that could have been reasonably expected,” and summarized some features of the lecture:
He gave a beautiful and eloquent description of Lake Tahoe, . . . set like a crystal mirror in a frame of pine and snow clad mountains, and where the only game was mountain-sheep that could never be shot, and—seven up; not that he approved of card playing, which in fact he thought decidedly immoral—unless you could make a little something at it! The “Dead Sea” of the Pacific was also fully described, its striking peculiarity being very strong lye (the Dead Sea’s or the story’s). The “specialty” of the “Mexican Plug,” the alkali and sage-bush desert, the peculiarities of the climate, the singular mode of dealing out “justice,” the enormity of duelling and Mark’s own aversion to and cure for the same, etc., etc., were all dwelt on and described in the same tone as the scenes depicted in the “Innocents Abroad,” with that inimitable mixture of fact and fancy, seriousness and fun, absurd pathos and sentiment, that have established “Twain” as one of the most successful of humorists. (“City and Vicinity,” 1 Feb 72, 3)
If Clemens followed the suggestion of his lecture appointment book, he stayed the night at Paterson’s Franklin House hotel (Redpath and Fall, 13–14; Boyd, 181). The next day, 1 February, he lectured to a “jammed” house in Troy, New York, and kept the audience “convulsed with laughter.” After drawling out his customary self-introduction, he referred to the subject of his lecture (which had not been named in advance notices):
I don’t know, ladies and gentlemen, what lecture I am advertised to deliver to-night—I have not enquired. I have delivered several lectures this Winter—and can deliver them all to you this evening if you wish it, but if I had my choice I should deliver the one entitled “Roughing It.” (“‘Roughing It’ by Mark Twain,” Troy Press, 2 Feb 72, 3)
Clemens was doubtless back in Hartford in time to celebrate his second wedding anniversary on 2 February. And he was probably able to see the first copies of Roughing It: 304 copies were received from the bindery on 30 and 31 January (APC, 74).