Verification
Newspaper reports
Chicago Tribune, March 6, 1882, 2
Chicago Tribune, March 7, 1882, 4
The Record-Union, (Sacramento, CA), March 6, 1882, 2
Wilde was in the middle of eleven consecutive days lecturing in eleven different cities. He was annoyed that the wrong lecture title was being advertised—and this together with the smaller towns he was visiting meant that audiences were much reduced.
He was also becoming physically tired.
On March 1 he cut short his lecture to a small audience in Dubuque, IA. On March 2 he lectured again to a "comparatively small audience" in Rockford, IL, and on March 3 he lectured again in Aurora, IL.
Wisconsin was the third state he had visited that week, and for this lecture on March 4 in Racine, he broke down before a small and unappreciative audience saying he was exhausted and unable to read his manuscript.
It was nights like this that prompted Wilde around this time to write to his manager Col. W. F. Morse (Complete Letters, 146) in which he referred to the 'fiasco of the last ten days' and pleaded for a return to larger cities 'instead of wearing my voice and body to death over wretched houses here.'
