Clemens had returned to “Artemus Ward, Humorist” on Saturday, 9 December, in Erie. The Erie Observer called his performance a “decided failure” and a “pitiful attempt to ape the style of Artemus Ward, in which he only succeeded in reaching the standard of a negro minstrel” (“Mark Twain,” 14 Dec 71, 3).

For the success, see 8 Dec 71 to Redpath and Fall, n. 2click to open link. The failure came on 8 December in Fredonia, New York, where Clemens’s mother and sister lived. The Fredonia Censor characterized the “Roughing It” lecture as “a hash of anecdotes, jokes and descriptions” that made a “rather thin diet for an evening’s entertainment,” and concluded that Clemens “does injustice both to himself and the societies employing him” (“Mark Twain’s lecture . . . ,” 13 Dec 71, 3). Probably in Fredonia Clemens received a package of Roughing It matter from Elisha Bliss—“all the parts of the book we have printed so far. We have set up to page 300” (Bliss to SLC, 6 Dec 71, CU-MARK; RI 1993 , 871).

Clemens had intended to stop in Cleveland, to see the Fairbankses, on his way from Erie to Toledo, Ohio.