From Buffalo, Collins continued west along the southern shore of Lake Erie to Cleveland, Ohio, arriving on 8 January, his fiftieth birthday. The press announcements for his reading that evening spoke to his attraction as ‘one whose creations pass into the common speech and thought of mankind’ causing ‘a desire as universal and as old as the world’ to see what manner of man he was. The reading was to be at Case Hall, on the corner of Superior and East Third Streets, and locally considered the most noted concert hall of its day. The third-floor auditorium accommodated 2,000 people in what were then called ‘patent opera chairs’. Its walls and ceilings, decorated by Italian artist Garibaldi, had echoed the voices of Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Horace Greeley, and Henry Ward Beecher. Reserved seats for Collins's reading were available for $0.75 and $1.00. The evening began at ‘precisely eight o'clock [when] Mr. Collins stepped down upon the platform with a firm, quick step, unattended by the usual “introducer”’. Throughout the performance, the audience listened with ‘intense interest’, and not one person left the hall early.

On the following evening, Collins was in nearby Sandusky, Ohio where he gave a reading to ‘a very fair audience’ at the Opera House. E. S. Payson, who, under Redpath's auspices had assisted with Dickens's visit, had come ahead to firm up the arrangements and met Collins on his arrival. The next day's review was positive, stating that Collins's reading was ‘well rendered and was listened to with rapt attention’. That night, Collins and Ward stayed at the Lake House Hotel, where he wrote to George Bentley, ‘the snow is falling and the Lake is close under my windows’.

Continuing west along the lake for sixty miles to Toledo, Ohio, Collins gave a reading at the Wheeler Opera House on Monday evening, 12 January. The review in the Toledo Blade described the ‘paucity’ of the audience and contained a lackluster response to the reading. It concluded: