Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience--4,000 critics--and on the success of this matter depends my future success in New England. But I am not distressed. Nasby is in the same boat. Tonight decides the fate of his brand-new lecture. He has just left my room--been reading his lecture to me--was greatly depressed. I have convinced him that he has little to fear. I get just about five hundred more applications to lecture than I can possibly fill--and in the West they say “Charge all you please, but come.” I shan't go West at all. I stop lecturing the 22d of January, sure. But I shall talk every night up to that time. They flood me with high-priced invitations to write for magazines and papers, and publishers besiege me to write books. Can't do any of these things. I am twenty-two thousand dollars in debt, and shall earn the money and pay it within two years--and therefore I am not spending any money except when it is necessary. I had my life insured for $10,000 yesterday (what ever became of Mr. Moffett' s life insurance?) “for the benefit of my natural heirs”--the same being my mother, for Livy wouldn't claim it, you may be sure of that. This has taken $200 out of my pocket which I was going to send to Ma. But I will send her some, soon. Tell Orion to keep a stiff upper lip--when the worst comes to the worst I will come forward. Must talk in Providence, R. I., tonight. Must leave now. I thank Mollie and Orion and the rest for your letters, but you see how I am pushed--ought to have 6 clerks. Affectionately, SAM. By the end of January, 1870 more than thirty thousand copies of the Innocents had been sold, and in a letter to his publisher the author expressed his satisfaction. ***** To Elisha Bliss, in Hartford: ELMIRA, Jan. 28 '70. FRIEND BLISS,--.... Yes, I am satisfied with the way you are running the book. You are running it in staving, tip-top, first-class style. I never wander into any corner of the country but I find that an agent has been there before me, and many of that community have read the book. And on an average about ten people a day come and hunt me up to thank me and tell me I'm a benefactor! I guess this is a part of the programme we didn't expect in the first place.