Mark Twain rolled into Lansing on December 14, 1871 for a stop on his popular lecture series. He used his Lansing stop to unveil his next book “Roughing It”. The book, sort of another humorous travel guide, this time taking in the Western United States, was the second major work after his very successful “Innocents Abroad”.

Twain had been giving a presentation called “Artemis Ward”, but he decided at the last minute to replace his presentation possibly motivated by the practice of newspapers sending stenographers to take a mostly verbatim record of his speech and then print it in the newspaper. “Artemis Ward” had been printed many times and he may have been worried about attendance. In his Lansing presentation which is considered the first appearance of “Roughing It” he even took a swipe at local media and their practices. Referring to a reporter in the audience he made the point of saying, “The newspaper reporter has got us lecturers at a disadvabtage.” He went on to rebuke the reporter: “He ought to be generous, and praise us or abuse us, but not print our speeches.”

His request would be to no avail as soon after the Lansing State Republican reprinted his speech in their December 21 edition. Twain’s presentation was performed at the Mead’s Hall and sponsored by the Young Men’s Society. Mead’s Hall was on the Southeast corner of Washington and Ottawa and it is likely that Twain’s fee for the evening was $125. On this tour he performed in Ann Arbor, Jackson and Kalamazoo in addition to Lansing.

Special thanks to Richard Hathaway of Lansing for his efforts in compiling information about this event. Twain would return to Michigan in 1885 and 1896, but this was his last visit to Lansing.