Having been anxious the previous day about his Boston reception, Clemens here expressed his relief in much the same way he had after his first Boston lecture on 10 November 1869. The Boston Evening Transcript reported that the Artemus Ward talk was “listened to with pleasure by a very large audience” and elicited “much merriment” (“Mark Twain’s Lecture on Artemus Ward,” 2 Nov 71, 4). The Boston Advertiser published a synopsis (a practice that had irritated Clemens in 1869), nevertheless expressing disapproval of the performance (“Mark Twain in the Lyceum Course,” Boston Advertiser, 2 Nov 71, 1; L3 , 391–92, 394–95 n. 3).

Auburndale, Massachusetts, about ten miles west of Boston, was not on Clemens’s present or past lecture itineraries, but these unidentified acquaintances may have attended his 1869 Boston lecture, or one of his other lectures in the vicinity during November and December of that year ( L3 , 484–85).

Clemens had known Ralph Olmstead Keeler (1840–73) since the 1860s, when they were contributors to the San Francisco Golden Era. Keeler had led a varied and vagrant life since the age of ten—as a performer with a minstrel troupe, an indigent student in Germany, a teacher of languages in San Francisco, and as a journalist, lecturer, and writer. He was an eastern correspondent for the San Francisco Alta California in 1868, then published an unsuccessful novel, Gloverson and His Silent Partners, in 1869 and his autobiographical Vagabond Adventures in 1870. While working as a special correspondent to the New York Tribune he was murdered at sea off the coast of Cuba in December 1873. Keeler had many good friends among the Boston literati, including Thomas Bailey Aldrich and William Dean Howells. He had only just returned from an extensive tour along the Mississippi River, which in part formed the basis of a series of articles he published in Aldrich’s Every Saturday from 20 May through 9 December 1871. In 1898 Clemens recalled that Keeler had been a lecture tour companion, presumably during the first week or two of November 1871:

The 2 November lunch may have been the memorable occasion attended by Clemens, Keeler, Aldrich, Howells, publisher James T. Fields, and Bret Harte, later described by Howells in three separate accounts. In a letter of 7 May 1902 to Aldrich, Howells recalled:

According to Howells, the lunch was Clemens’s introduction to the Boston circle, which had already warmly accepted Harte. Harte’s “fleering” comment was acknowledged by a “glance from under Clemens’s feathery eyebrows which betrayed his enjoyment of the fun” (Howells 1910, 6–7; see also Howells 1903, 156). If the 2 November lunch was indeed the gathering at Louis P. Ober’s restaurant on Winter Place, then it may have been the first public evidence of a reconciliation between Clemens and Harte (see 26 Nov 70 to Webbclick to open link and 7 June–28 Sept 71 to Harteclick to open link; Walker, 138–42; Howells 1874; Howells 1900, 275–79; SLC 1898, 1; Boston Directory 1871, 528, 835).

Olivia received Clemens’s itinerary in installments, to insure that she remained current as to his whereabouts. His own itinerary book could be most conveniently updated when he was in Boston (9 Oct 71 to Redpath, n. 1click to open link; 20 Nov 71 to Howlandclick to open link).

Clemens did not remember to send the rent payment. See 28 Dec 71 to OLC, n. 3click to open link.