Clemens wrote on 10 (not 9) January, the morning after he lectured to a “large audience” for the YMCA course in Steubenville (Steubenville Gazette: “Here and There,” 12 Jan 72; “New Advertisements,” 5 Jan 72, both no page). Clemens noted in his lecture appointment book that his Steubenville hosts wanted him “to stop at Seminary like Gough” (Redpath and Fall, 12). The Steubenville Female Seminary (1829–98) occupied several buildings on an extensive landscaped site overlooking the Ohio River. It offered its students an unusually strong academic program, and was regarded as the “educational and social center of a large community. Statesmen, authors, musicians and lecturers of international fame were frequent guests” (“The Steubenville Female Seminary,” Steubenville Herald, 29 Sept 1926, no page; Weisenburger, 174).

Competition between railroads and steamboats on the Ohio was first joined in 1854; by 1857, with the advent of daily passenger trains between Cincinnati and St. Louis, the railroads had won. During the same period the Mobile and Ohio Railroad and the New Orleans, Jackson, and Great Northern Railroad were extended northward paralleling the Mississippi. Continuous rail service between Cincinnati and New Orleans was in place by 1859 and was expected to “take a large passenger business from the steamers,” according to a Cincinnati report on commerce. With the interruption caused by the war, however, “rail service improved so slowly on this route that twenty years were to pass before the position of steamboats on the Mississippi below Cairo was seriously threatened” (Hunter, 485–86). Clemens dealt oriefly with the same events in chapter 15 of Life on the Mississippi:

The Member for Paris: A Tale of the Second Empire by “Trois-Étoiles” (Boston: J. R. Osgood and Co., 1871) was not a translation; it was written by English journalist Eustace Clare Grenville Murray (1824–81), who was living in exile in Paris to avoid prosecution in an 1869 libel case (Griffiths, 430–31).

Besides Alexander Smith’s Edwin of Deira, mentioned previously (4 Jan 72 to OLCclick to open link), Clemens listed Longfellow’s Golden Legend (1851) and New-England Tragedies (1868), which he is known to have owned, respectively, in an 1862 and a first edition. His library would also include the 1870 American edition of Robert Michael Ballantyne’s Erling the Bold: A Tale of the Norse Sea-Kings (1869). The novel by Dinah Maria (Mulock) Craik, author of John Halifax, Gentleman (1856), may have been Christian’s Mistake (1865), which Clemens owned in an 1871 reprint by Harper and Brothers (Gribben, 1:43, 162, 420). Olivia had already received The Golden Legend. On 7 January she had written Clemens the following letter (CU-MARK), directing it to Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, where she expected him to lecture on 15 January (see 17 Jan 72 to Redpath, n. 3click to open link):

X

Hartford Jan 7th 1872

My Youth

You have seemed so near and dear to me, if any thing more than usually so, since last evening—Clara and I got to talking of you and I felt so rich in you and thankful for you, I could not help going to the tin box when I went to my room it is never very safe for me to go there, however I did not read any of the oldest love letters, only some that were written since we were married, when you were in New York after the baby was born—how sweet the memory connected with of all our love life is—often when I get to thinking of you I would like to have a good cry, a happy, thankful cry it would be—but at such times it is hard not to be able to put out my hand and touch you—Last night I had a vivid dream of your return, a natural dream, in my sleep I did all the things that I should have done waking if you had returned to me, put my hand in yours, stroked your hair, did every thing that should make me really conscious of your presence— Youth don’t you think it is very sweet to love as we love?

This morning Theodore, Clara and I went to church. Mr Twichell gave us a good av a very good sermon—of course I thought much of you and wanted you— When I went in I & saw that it was the communion service, my heart sank because I do feel so unfit to go to the table of communion, yet cannot bear to go away from it— Mr Twichells gave such an earnest invitation to all those who were feeling cold and far away from God and discouraged to stay and get comfort, that I could not come away— I staid and of course my prayers were for you and myself and our boy— Oh a Father and Mother do have so much to pray for, so very much that they need guidance in— I do love Joseph Twichell, he is a good man—a Godly man— I love to hear him preach and pray— I feel at home there— Clara says she was never in a strange church where she felt so much at home as she did there—

Darling if you are not going to be able to come home the 25th if any lecture has been appointed for that evening be sure and tell me—because I am so depending on that time—If Redpath has not already filled up those three evenings 25th, 26th & 27th I wish you would telegraph him not do to do it, I think we should like to look upon each other’s faces by that time— Don’t you? I wish that there was a train after you lecture that would bring you in here at one or two o’clock—you should not walk out and carry your carpet bags—

Evening—

We had a long and very pleasant call from Mr Perkins this afternoon—he told us a good deal about his moose hunting experience in Nova Scotia this winter— Mrs Perkins has gone to Boston to be gone two or three days—

I think The Golden Legend is beautiful I wonder you did not mark it still more than you have, but I am so very glad you marked it at all, I do so heartily enjoy the books that you have marked— I have not yet rec’d the one that you gave the Syracuse City Missionary, telling him to send it to me— I cannot afford to lose any thing that you have marked, so hope he will not fail to send it— Do you get my letters regularly? I suppose of course you do though, as you say nothing to the contrary— The baby is well and as sweet as can be only not as devoted to his Mother as she would like to have him—You will see a change in the little fellow— With the same old love Livy—

Olivia mentioned lawyer Charles E. Perkins and his wife, Lucy, who lived on Woodland Street, just beyond the Nook Farm neighborhood (30 L3 , 294 n. 4; (Geer 1872, 108; (Van Why, 7). For the book given to the “Syracuse City Missionary,” James P. Foster, see L4 , 507–8 n. 3.

Clemens had lectured in Paris, Illinois, on 30 December. From there he may have sent home the manuscript for any of three lectures used on his tour—“Reminiscences,” “Artemus Ward,” or even “Roughing It”—protected by the nearly seventy leaves of a “canvassing book” (salesman’s prospectus) for Roughing It, a copy of which he had received from Bliss by 27 November. No manuscript for “Reminiscences” and only one page of the “Artemus Ward” lecture are known to survive; about two dozen pages of miscellaneous notes for the “Roughing It” lecture are in the Mark Twain Papers ( L4 , 479 n. 2, 500 n. 2; SLC 1871). It is barely possible that Clemens was referring instead to manuscripts for a projected “volume of ‘Lecturing Experiences,’” one of which he sent home at this time, either from or shortly after leaving Paris (see the next letter, n. 6).