No letters written between 11 and 18 October have been found. On Monday, 11 October, the Clemenses went to Bridgeport, Connecticut, for a one-night stay at Waldemere, the Barnums’ estate, evidently leaving their children in Hartford. Although they had originally planned to go on 9 October, Barnum wrote to them suggesting a postponement until after 19 October because his “Hippodrome closes its season on that day at Cleveland Ohio. . . . I shall be running to New York and my mind so absorbed with monkeys & elephants that there will be no fun where I am till my animals are placed in winter quarters” (2 Oct 75, CU-MARK; “Personal,” New York Evening Post, 14 Oct 75, 2). On 7 October Clemens telegraphed to propose the Monday visit, which was necessarily short because of Barnum’s commitment to lecture in Boston on Tuesday evening, 12 October (Barnum to SLC, 7 Oct 75 and 8 Oct 75, CU-MARK). After their visit Barnum answered a thank-you note from Clemens which has not been found (CU-MARK), using a docket stamp instead of letterhead:
The Barnums had evidently met Susy Clemens during a recent call on the Clemenses in Hartford. Barnum was lecturing for the Redpath Lyceum Bureau. The newspapers declared his appearance in Boston on 12 October a success, and he enclosed in his 21 October letter a portion of an advertising circular prepared by the bureau. On it he marked an extract “From the Boston Globe, Oct. 13,” of which he was evidently very proud (the last two sentences were not in the Globe’s 13 October review [“The Great Showman,” 5]):
There was a large audience in Music Hall, last evening, when the great showman, Phineas T. Barnum, delivered for the first time in this city, his new lecture, “The World and How to Live in It.” It would be utterly impossible to give a detailed report of Mr. Barnum’s most entertaining talk. The great showman spoke without notes, illustrating his ideas in regard to this “fleeting show,” with many a capitally told story. As a lecturer, Mr. Barnum made an excellent impression. The old-fashioned truths which were spoken were illustrated very happily, and presented altogether in a very attractive way. He proved himself a capital story teller and no mean mimic. It is safe to say that as a humorist he could soon make a reputation as a lecturer second only to Mark Twain.
A review in the Boston Evening Transcript also praised Barnum’s lecture, and noted that he had described people “with a chronic disposition to look on the mournful side of things” by relating
an anecdote told to him by Mark Twain, about an aunt of the latter, who, Mark said, would borrow trouble for days, weeks, months, a year ahead; who would borrow it from the grave, and who one day even “jumped the grave.” Mark found the old lady one day in an attitude of extreme dejection. “Why, aunty,” said he, “what is the trouble now? I am sure you are borrowing trouble about something.” “Ah,” said she, “I was thinking about heaven, and that perhaps after all it ain’t as nice a place as we think it is.” (“Lecture by P. T. Barnum,” 13 Oct 75, 2)
On Tuesday, 12 October, the Clemenses proceeded to New York, where they checked into the “elegant” St. James Hotel, on Broadway at Twenty-sixth Street. They returned to Hartford on Saturday, 16 October. On Monday, Clemens sent Barnum a copy of Sketches, New and Old, bound in half-morocco (Appletons’ Dictionary, 112; “Prominent Arrivals,” New York Tribune, 13 Oct 75, 10; APC 1876).