I most cordially hate the lecture-field. And, after all, I shudder to think that I may never get out of it.
- letter to Jane Clemens, 4 June 1869

It is a dismal sort of business, even to a lazy man like me -- it would kill a nervous thunderbolt like you.
- letter to Frank Fuller, 26 April 1870

I got horribly tired of the platform toward the last -- tired of the slavery of it; tired of having to rest-up for it; diet myself for it; take everlasting care of my body and my mind for it; deny myself in a thousand ways in its interest. Why, there isn't any slavery that is so exacting and so infernal. I hope I have trodden it for the last time; that bread-and-butter stress will never crowd me onto it again.
- letter to Henry H. Rogers, July 1896