He had promised Bliss some contributions for his new paper, and in June he sent three sketches. In an accompanying letter he says:
Here are three articles which you may have if you will pay $125 for
the lot. If you don't want them I'll sell them to the Galaxy, but
not for a cent less than three times the money.... If you take them
pay one-tenth of the $125 in weekly instalments to Orion till he has
received it all.
He reconsidered his resolution not to lecture again, and closed with Redpath for the coming season. He found himself in a lecture-writing fever. He wrote three of them in succession: one on Artemus Ward, another on “Reminiscences of Some Pleasant Characters I Have Met,” and a third one based on chapters from the new book. Of the “Reminiscence” lecture he wrote Redpath:
“It covers my whole acquaintance; kings, lunatics, idiots, and all.” Immediately afterward he wrote that he had prepared still another lecture, “title to be announced later.”
“During July I'll decide which one I like best,” he said. He instructed Redpath not to make engagements for him to lecture in churches. “I never made a success of a lecture in a church yet. People are afraid to laugh in a church.”
Redpath was having difficulties in arranging a circuit to suit him. Clemens had prejudices against certain towns and localities, prejudices that were likely to change overnight. In August he wrote:
DEAR RED,—I am different from other women; my mind changes oftener.
People who have no mind can easily be stead fast and firm, but when
a man is loaded down to the guards with it, as I am, every heavy sea
of foreboding or inclination, maybe of indolence, shifts the cargo.
See? Therefore, if you will notice, one week I am likely to give
rigid instructions to confine me to New England; the next week send
me to Arizona; the next week withdraw my name; the next week give
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.