Clemens sent this telegram while en route from Warsaw, New York, where he lectured on 7 December, to Fredonia, where he performed on 8 December.

Redpath and Fall issued a “Lyceum Circular,” dated 1 January 1872, which announced the “Roughing It” lecture. Among the reviews it reprinted was an enthusiastic notice of the debut performance from the Warsaw Western New Yorker (see Boston Lyceum Bureau Advertising Circularclick to open link). Although Clemens had earlier deemed it unwise to lecture in Buffalo (28 June 70 to Redpath), he still managed to have the new lecture favorably noticed in the Buffalo press. His friend David Gray attended the Warsaw lecture (Warsaw was only thirty miles from Buffalo), no doubt at Clemens’s invitation, and printed a complimentary review in his paper, the Buffalo Courier (Gray 1871). Redpath and Fall excerpted it in their “Lyceum Circular.”