10 June 1871 • Elmira, N.Y. (Paraphrase: Gray 1871 [bib11850], UCCL 11746)
Mark Twain in the Lecture Field.—ⒶemendationMark Twain is going to make a short lecturing tour in the early part of the coming season. Subject—“An Appeal in behalf of Extending the Suffrage to Boys.” He says he thought he had retired permanently from the lecture field, but upon looking into things and finding that Woman is less persecuted, and is held in a milder bondage than boys, he thinks it incumbent upon somebody to “lift up a voice for the poor little male juvenile.”1explanatory note
Clemens probably wrote this letter just after the preceding one to Redpath and Fall. Among the Boston Lyceum Bureau’s lecturers on women’s suffrage during the 1870–71 lecture season were: Susan B. Anthony, “The Woman Question”; the Reverend James Freeman Clarke, “Why should not Women Vote?”; the Reverend Robert Laird Collier, “Woman’s Place”; the Reverend Rowland Connor, “The Subjection of Woman”; Anna E. Dickinson, “A new lecture on the Woman Question”; the Reverend Jesse H. Jones, “The Supreme Political Reform”; Mary A. Livermore, “The Reasons Why”; the Reverend W. H. H. Murray, “Woman’s Suffrage: and what would be the result of it?”; Petroleum V. Nasby, “Struggles of a Conservative with the Woman Question”; and Judge Edwin Wright, “Woman Greater than her Aspirations” ( Lyceum 1870, 2–4).
Paraphrase, David Gray, “Mark Twain in the Lecture Field,” Buffalo Courier, 12 June 71, 2.
Reprinted in the Buffalo Courier, 13 June 71, 2; L4 , 402.