you full, untrammeled swing; and the week following modify it.  You must try to keep the run of my mind, Redpath that is your business, being the agent, and it always was too many for me....  Now about the West this week, I am willing that you shall retain all the Western engagements.  But what I shall want next week is still with God. 
                     Yours, mark.

He was in Hartford when this letter was written, arranging for residence there and the removal of his belongings.  He finally leased the fine Hooker house on Ford Street, in that pleasant seclusion known as Nook Farm—­the literary part of Hartford, which included the residence of Charles Dudley Warner and Harriet Beecher Stowe.  He arranged for possession of the premises October 1st.  So the new home was settled upon; then learning that Nasby was to be in Boston, he ran over to that city for a few days of recreation after his season’s labors.

Preparations for removal to Hartford were not delayed.  The Buffalo property was disposed of, the furnishings were packed and shipped away.  The house which as bride and groom they had entered so happily was left empty and deserted, never to be entered by them again.  In the year and a half of their occupancy it had seen well-nigh all the human round, all that goes to make up the happiness and the sorrow of life.

LXXXIII

LECTURING DAYS

Life in Hartford, in the autumn of 1871, began in the letter, rather than in the spirit.  The newcomers were received with a wide, neighborly welcome, but the disorder of establishment and the almost immediate departure of the head of the household on a protracted lecturing tour were disquieting things; the atmosphere of the Clemens home during those early Hartford days gave only a faint promise of its future loveliness.

As in a far later period, Mark Twain had resorted to lecturing to pay off debt.  He still owed a portion of his share in the Express; also he had been obliged to obtain an advance from the lecture bureau.  He dreaded, as always, the tedium of travel, the clatter of hotel life, the monotony of entertainment, while, more than most men, he loved the tender luxury of home.  It was only that he could not afford to lose the profit offered on the platform.

His season opened at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, October 16th, and his schedule carried him hither and thither, to and fro, over distances that lie between Boston and Chicago.  There were opportunities to run into Hartford now and then, when he was not too far away, and in November he lectured there on Artemus Ward.

He changed his entertainment at least twice that season.  He began with the “Reminiscences,” the lecture which he said would treat of all those whom he had met, “idiots, lunatics, and kings,” but he did not like it, or it did not go well.  He wrote Redpath of the Artemus Ward address: