To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis:

WESTMINSTER HOTEL, May 1, 1867.
DEAR FOLKS,--Don't expect me to write for a while. My hands are full of
business on account of my lecture for the 6th inst., and everything looks
shady, at least, if not dark. I have got a good agent--but now after we
have hired Cooper Institute and gone to an expense in one way or another
of $500, it comes out that I have got to play against Speaker Colfax at
Irving Hall, Ristori, and also the double troupe of Japanese jugglers,
the latter opening at the great Academy of Music--and with all this
against me I have taken the largest house in New York and cannot back
water. Let her slide! If nobody else cares I don't.

I'll send the book soon. I am awfully hurried now, but not worried.
Yrs.
SAM.


The Cooper Union lecture proved a failure, and a success. When it became
evident to Fuller that the venture was not going to pay, he sent out a
flood of complimentaries to the school-teachers of New York City and the
surrounding districts. No one seems to have declined them. Clemens
lectured to a jammed house and acquired much reputation. Lecture
proposals came from several directions, but he could not accept them now.
He wrote home that he was eighteen Alta letters behind and had refused
everything. Thos. Nast, the cartoonist, then in his first fame, propped
a joint tour, Clemens to lecture while he, Nast, would illustrate with
"lightning" sketches; but even this could not be considered now. In a