Chapter V: Part 5

“Oh, Islands there are on the face of the deep
Where the leaves never fade and the skies never weep.”

The letters tell the story of his sojourn, which stretched itself
into nearly five months.

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

HONOLULU, SANDWICH ISLANDS, April 3, 1866.

MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I have been here two or three weeks, and like the beautiful tropical climate better and better. I have ridden on horseback all over this island (Oahu) in the meantime, and have visited all the ancient battle-fields and other places of interest. I have got a lot of human bones which I took from one of these battle-fields--I guess I will bring you some of them. I went with the American Minister and took dinner this evening with the King's Grand Chamberlain, who is related to the royal family, and although darker than a mulatto, he has an excellent English education and in manners is an accomplished gentleman. The dinner was as ceremonious as any I ever attended in California--five regular courses, and five kinds of wine and one of brandy. He is to call for me in the morning with his carriage, and we will visit the King at the palace--both are good Masons--the King is a Royal Arch Mason. After dinner tonight they called in the “singing girls,” and we had some beautiful music; sung in the native tongue.

The steamer I came here in sails tomorrow, and as soon as she is gone I shall sail for the other islands of the group and visit the great volcano--the grand wonder of the world. Be gone two months.

Yrs.
SAM.

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

WAILUKU SUGAR PLANTATION,

ISLAND OF MAUI, H. I., May 4,1866.

MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--11 O'clock at night.--This is the infernalist darkest country, when the moon don't shine; I stumbled and fell over my horse's lariat a minute ago and hurt my leg, so I must stay here tonight.

I got the same leg hurt last week; I said I hadn't got hold of a spirited horse since I had been on the island, and one of the proprietors loaned me a big vicious colt; he was altogether too spirited; I went to tighten the cinch before mounting him, when he let out with his left leg (?) and kicked me across a ten-acre lot. A native rubbed and doctored me so well that I was able to stand on my feet in half an hour. It was then half after four and I had an appointment to go seven miles and get a girl and take her to a card party at five.

I have been clattering around among the plantations for three weeks, now, and next week I am going to visit the extinct crater of Mount Haleakala--the largest in the world; it is ten miles to the foot of the mountain; it rises 10,000 feet above the valley; the crater is 29 miles in circumference and 1,000 feet deep. Seen from the summit, the city of St. Louis would look like a picture in the bottom of it.

As soon as I get back from Haleakala (pronounced Hally-ekka-lah) I will sail for Honolulu again and thence to the Island of Hawaii (pronounced Hah-wy-ye,) to see the greatest active volcano in the world--that of Kilauea (pronounced Kee-low-way-ah)--and from thence back to San Francisco--and then, doubtless, to the States. I have been on this trip two months, and it will probably be two more before I get back to California.

Yrs affy
SAM.

He was having a glorious time--one of the most happy, carefree
adventures of his career. No form of travel or undertaking could
discountenance Mark Twain at thirty.

To Mrs. Orion Clemens, in Carson City:

HONOLULU, May 22, 1866.

MY DEAR SISTER,--I have just got back from a sea voyage--from the beautiful island of Maui, I have spent five weeks there, riding backwards and forwards among the sugar plantations--looking up the splendid scenery and visiting the lofty crater of Haleakala. It has been a perfect jubilee to me in the way of pleasure.

I have not written a single line, and have not once thought of business, or care or human toil or trouble or sorrow or weariness. Few such months come in a lifetime.

I set sail again, a week hence, for the island of Hawaii, to see the great active volcano of Kilauea. I shall not get back here for four or five weeks, and shall not reach San Francisco before the latter part of July.

So it is no use to wait for me to go home. Go on yourselves.

If I were in the east now, I could stop the publication of a piratical book which has stolen some of my sketches.

It is late-good-bye, Mollie,

Yr Bro
SAM.

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

HONOLULU, SANDWICH ISLANDS, June 21,1866.

MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I have just got back from a hard trip through the Island of Hawaii, begun on the 26th of May and finished on the 18th of June--only six or seven days at sea--all the balance horse-back, and the hardest mountain road in the world. I staid at the volcano about a week and witnessed the greatest eruption that has occurred for years. I lived well there. They charge $4 a day for board, and a dollar or two extra for guides and horses. I had a pretty good time. They didn't charge me anything. I have got back sick--went to bed as soon as I arrived here--shall not be strong again for several days yet. I rushed too fast. I ought to have taken five or six weeks on that trip.

A week hence I start for the Island of Kauai, to be gone three weeks and then I go back to California.

The Crown Princess is dead and thousands of natives cry and wail and dance and dance for the dead, around the King's Palace all night and every night. They will keep it up for a month and then she will be buried.

Hon. Anson Burlingame, U. S. Minister to China, and Gen. Van Valkenburgh, Minister to Japan, with their families and suites, have just arrived here en route. They were going to do me the honor to call on me this morning, and that accounts for my being out of bed now. You know what condition my room is always in when you are not around--so I climbed out of bed and dressed and shaved pretty quick and went up to the residence of the American Minister and called on them. Mr. Burlingame told me a good deal about Hon. Jere Clemens and that Virginia Clemens who was wounded in a duel. He was in Congress years with both of them. Mr. B. sent for his son, to introduce him--said he could tell that frog story of mine as well as anybody. I told him I was glad to hear it for I never tried to tell it myself without making a botch of it. At his request I have loaned Mr. Burlingame pretty much everything I ever wrote. I guess he will be an almighty wise man by the time he wades through that lot.

If the New United States Minister to the Sandwich Islands (Hon. Edwin McCook,) were only here now, so that I could get his views on this new condition of Sandwich Island politics, I would sail for California at once. But he will not arrive for two weeks yet and so I am going to spend that interval on the island of Kauai.

I stopped three days with Hon. Mr. Cony, Deputy Marshal of the Kingdom, at Hilo, Hawaii, last week and by a funny circumstance he knew everybody that I ever knew in Hannibal and Palmyra. We used to sit up all night talking and then sleep all day. He lives like a Prince. Confound that Island! I had a streak of fat and a streak of lean all over it--got lost several times and had to sleep in huts with the natives and live like a dog.

Of course I couldn't speak fifty words of the language. Take it altogether, though, it was a mighty hard trip.

Yours Affect.
SAM.

Burlingame and Van Valkenburgh were on their way to their posts,
and their coming to the islands just at this time proved a most
important circumstance to Mark Twain. We shall come to this
presently, in a summary of the newspaper letters written to the
Union. June 27th he wrote to his mother and sister a letter, only a
fragment of which survives, in which he tells of the arrival in
Honolulu of the survivors of the ship Hornet, burned on the line,
and of his securing the first news report of the lost vessel.

Part of a letter to Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

HONOLULU, June 27, 1866

... with a gill of water a day to each man. I got the whole story from the third mate and two of the sailors. If my account gets to the Sacramento Union first, it will be published first all over the United States, France, England, Russia and Germany--all over the world; I may say. You will see it. Mr. Burlingame went with me all the time, and helped me question the men--throwing away invitations to dinner with the princes and foreign dignitaries, and neglecting all sorts of things to accommodate me. You know how I appreciate that kind of thing--especially from such a man, who is acknowledged to have no superior in the diplomatic circles of the world, and obtained from China concessions in favor of America which were refused to Sir Frederick Bruce and Envoys of France and Russia until procured for them by Burlingame himself--which service was duly acknowledged by those dignitaries. He hunted me up as soon as he came here, and has done me a hundred favors since, and says if I will come to China in the first trip of the great mail steamer next January and make his house in Pekin my home, he will afford me facilities that few men can have there for seeing and learning. He will give me letters to the chiefs of the great Mail Steamship Company which will be of service to me in this matter. I expect to do all this, but I expect to go to the States first--and from China to the Paris World's Fair.

Don't show this letter.

Yours affly
SAM.

P. S. The crown Princess of this Kingdom will be buried tomorrow with great ceremony--after that I sail in two weeks for California.

This concludes Mark Twain's personal letters from the islands.
Of his descriptive news letters there were about twenty, and they
were regarded by the readers of the Union as distinctly notable.
Re-reading those old letters to-day it is not altogether easy to
understand why. They were set in fine nonpareil type, for one
thing, which present-day eyes simply refuse at any price, and the
reward, by present-day standards, is not especially tempting.

The letters began in the Union with the issue of April the 16th,
1866. The first--of date March 18th--tells of the writer's arrival
at Honolulu. The humor in it is not always of a high order; it
would hardly pass for humor today at all. That the same man who
wrote the Hawaiian letters in 1866 (he was then over thirty years
old) could, two years later, have written that marvelous book, the
Innocents Abroad, is a phenomenon in literary development.

The Hawaiian letters, however, do show the transition stage between
the rough elemental humor of the Comstock and the refined and subtle
style which flowered in the Innocents Abroad. Certainly Mark
Twain's genius was finding itself, and his association with the
refined and cultured personality of Anson Burlingame undoubtedly
aided in that discovery. Burlingame pointed out his faults to him,
and directed him to a better way. No more than that was needed at
such a time to bring about a transformation.

The Sandwich Islands letters, however, must have been precisely
adapted to their audience--a little more refined than the log
Comstock, a little less subtle than the Atlantic public--and they
added materially to his Coast prestige. But let us consider a
sample extract from the first Sandwich Islands letter:

Our little band of passengers were as well and thoughtfully cared for by the friends they left weeping upon the wharf, as ever were any similar body of pilgrims. The traveling outfit conferred upon me began with a naval uniform, continued with a case of wine, a small assortment of medicinal liquors and brandy, several boxes of cigars, a bunch of matches, a fine-toothed comb, and a cake of soap, and ended with a pair of socks. (N. B. I gave the soap to Brown, who bit into it, and then. shook his head and said that, as a general thing, he liked to prospect curious, foreign dishes, and find out what they were made of, but he couldn't go that, and threw it overboard.)

It is nearly impossible to imagine humor in this extract, yet it is
a fair sample of the entire letter.

He improves in his next, at least, in description, and gives us a
picture of the crater. In this letter, also, he writes well and
seriously, in a prophetic strain, of the great trade that is to be
established between San Francisco and Hawaii, and argues for a line
of steamers between the ports, in order that the islands might be
populated by Americans, by which course European trade in that
direction could be superseded. But the humor in this letter, such
as it is, would scarcely provoke a smile to-day.

As the letters continue, he still urges the fostering of the island
trade by the United States, finds himself impressed by the work of
the missionaries, who have converted cannibals to Christians, and
gives picturesque bits of the life and scenery.

Hawaii was then dominated chiefly by French and English; though the
American interests were by no means small.

Extract from letter No. 4:

Cap. Fitch said “There's the king. That's him in the buggy. I know him as far as I can see him.”

I had never seen a king, and I naturally took out a note-book and put him down: “Tall, slender, dark, full-bearded; green frock-coat, with lapels and collar bordered with gold band an inch wide; plug hat, broad gold band around it; royal costume looks too much like livery; this man is not as fleshy as I thought he was.”

I had just got these notes when Cap. Fitch discovered that he'd got hold of the wrong king, or rather, that he'd got hold of the king's driver, or a carriage driver of one of the nobility. The king wasn't present at all. It was a great disappointment to me. I heard afterwards that the comfortable, easy-going king, Kamehameha V., had been seen sitting on a barrel on the wharf, the day before, fishing. But there was no consolation in that. That did not restore me my lost king.

This has something of the flavor of the man we were to know later;
the quaint, gentle resignation to disappointment which is one of the
finest touches in his humor.

Further on he says: “I had not shaved since I left San Francisco.
As soon as I got ashore I hunted up a striped pole, and shortly
found one. I always had a yearning to be a king. This may never
be, I suppose, but, at any rate, it will always be a satisfaction to
me to know that, if I am not a king, I am the next thing to it.
I have been shaved by the king's barber.”

Honolulu was a place of cats. He saw cats of every shade and
variety. He says: “I saw cats--tomcats, Mary-Ann cats, bobtailed
cats, blind cats, one-eyed cats, wall-eyed cats, cross-eyed cats,
gray cats, black cats, white cats, yellow cats, striped cats,
spotted cats, tame cats, wild cats, singed cats, individual cats,
groups of cats, platoons of cats, companies of cats, armies of cats,
multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all of them sleek, fat,
and lazy, and sound asleep.” Which illustrates another
characteristic of the humor we were to know later--the humor of
grotesque exaggeration, in which he was always strong.

He found the islands during his periods of inaction conducive to
indolence. “If I were not so fond of looking into the rich mass of
green leaves,” he says, “that swathe the stately tamarind right
before my door, I would idle less, and write more, I think.”

The Union made good use of his letters. Sometimes it printed them
on the front page. Evidently they were popular from the beginning.
The Union was a fine, handsome paper--beautiful in its minute
typography, and in its press-work; more beautiful than most papers
of to-day, with their machine-set type, their vulgar illustrations,
and their chain-lightning presses. A few more extracts:

“The only cigars here are those trifling, insipid, tasteless,
flavorless things they call Manilas--ten for twenty-five cents--and
it would take a thousand of them to be worth half the money. After
you have smoked about thirty-five dollars' worth of them in the
forenoon, you feel nothing but a desperate yearning to go out
somewhere and take a smoke.”

“Captains and ministers form about half the population. The third
fourth is composed of Kanakas and mercantile foreigners and their
families. The final fourth is made up of high officers of the
Hawaiian government, and there are just about enough cats to go
round.”

In No. 6, April the 2d, he says: “An excursion to Diamond Head, and
the king's cocoanut grove, was planned to-day, at 4.30 P. M., the
party to consist of half a dozen gentlemen and three ladies. They
all started at the appointed hour except myself. Somebody remarked
that it was twenty minutes past five o'clock, and that woke me up.
It was a fortunate circumstance that Cap. Phillips was there with
his 'turn-out,' as he calls his top buggy that Cap. Cook brought
here in 1778, and a horse that was here when Cap. Cook came.”

This bit has something the savor of his subsequent work, but, as a
rule, the humor compares poorly with that which was to come later.

In No. 7 he speaks of the natives singing American songs--not always
to his comfort. “Marching Through Georgia” was one of their
favorite airs. He says: “If it had been all the same to Gen.
Sherman, I wish he had gone around by the way of the Gulf of Mexico,
instead of marching through Georgia.”

Letters Nos. 8, 9, and 10 were not of special importance. In No. 10
he gives some advice to San Francisco as to the treatment of
whalers. He says:

“If I were going to advise San Francisco as to the best strategy to
employ in order to secure the whaling trade, I should say, 'Cripple
your facilities for “pulling” sea captains on any pretence that
sailors can trump up, and show the whaler a little more
consideration when he is in port.'”

In No. 11, May 24th, he tells of a trip to the Kalehi Valley, and
through historic points. At one place he looked from a precipice
over which old Kamehameha I. drove the army of Oahu, three-quarters
of a century before.

The vegetation and glory of the tropics attracted him. “In one open
spot a vine of a species unknown had taken possession of two tall
dead stumps, and wound around and about them, and swung out from
their tops, and twined their meeting tendrils together into a
faultless arch. Man, with all his art, could not improve upon its
symmetry.”

He saw Sam Brannan's palace, “The Bungalow,” built by one Shillaber
of San Francisco at a cost of from thirty to forty thousand dollars.
In its day it had outshone its regal neighbor, the palace of the
king, but had fallen to decay after passing into Brannan's hands,
and had become a picturesque Theban ruin by the time of Mark Twain's
visit.

In No. 12, June 20th (written May 23d), he tells of the Hawaiian
Legislature, and of his trip to the island of Maui, where, as he
says, he never spent so pleasant a month before, or bade any place
good-by so regretfully.

In No. 13 he continues the Legislature, and gives this picture of
Minister Harris: “He is six feet high, bony and rather slender;
long, ungainly arms; stands so straight he leans back a little; has
small side whiskers; his head long, up and down; he has no command
of language or ideas; oratory all show and pretence; a big washing
and a small hang-out; weak, insipid, and a damn fool in general.”

In No. 14, June 22d, published July 16th, he tells of the death and
burial ceremonies of the Princess Victoria K. K., and, what was to
be of more importance to him, of the arrival of Anson Burlingame,
U. S. Minister to China, and Gen. Van Valkenburgh, U. S. Minister to
Japan. They were to stay ten or fourteen days, he said, but an
effort would be made to have them stay over July 4th.

Speaking of Burlingame: “Burlingame is a man who could be esteemed,
respected, and popular anywhere, no matter whether he was among
Christians or cannibals.” Then, in the same letter, comes the great
incident. “A letter arrived here yesterday, giving a meagre account
of the arrival, on the Island of Hawaii, of nineteen poor, starving
wretches, who had been buffeting a stormy sea, in an open boat, for
forty-three days. Their ship, the Hornet, from New York, with a
quantity of kerosene on board had taken fire and burned in Lat. 2d.
north, and Long. 35d. west. When they had been entirely out of
provisions for a day or two, and the cravings of hunger become
insufferable, they yielded to the ship-wrecked mariner's fearful and
awful alternative, and solemnly drew lots to determine who of their
number should die, to furnish food for his comrades; and then the
morning mists lifted, and they saw land. They are being cared for
at Sanpahoe (Not yet corroborated).”

The Hornet disaster was fully told in his letter of June 27th. The
survivors were brought to Honolulu, and with the assistance of the
Burlingame party, Clemens, laid up with saddle boils, was carried on
a stretcher to the hospital, where, aided by Burlingame, he
interviewed the shipwrecked men, securing material for the most
important piece of serious writing he had thus far performed.
Letter No. 15 to the Union--of date June 25th--occupied the most of
the first page in the issue of July 19. It was a detailed account
of the sufferings of officers and crew, as given by the third
officer and members of the crew.

From letter No. 15:

In the postscript of a letter which I wrote two or three days ago, and sent by the ship “Live Yankee,” I gave you the substance of a letter received here from Hilo, by Walker Allen and Co., informing them that a boat, containing fifteen men in a helpless and starving condition, had drifted ashore at Sanpahoe, Island of Hawaii, and that they had belonged to the clipper ship “Hornet”--Cap. Mitchell, master--had been afloat since the burning of that vessel, about one hundred miles north of the equator, on the third of May--forty-three days.

The Third Mate, and ten of the seamen have arrived here, and are now in the hospital. Cap. Mitchell, one seaman named Antonio Passene, and two passengers, Samuel and Henry Ferguson, of New York City, eighteen and twenty-eight years, are still at Hilo, but are expected here within the week. In the Captain's modest epitome of the terrible romance you detect the fine old hero through it. It reads like Grant.

Here follows the whole terrible narrative, which has since been
published in more substantial form, and has been recognized as
literature. It occupied three and a half columns on the front page
of the Union, and, of course, constituted a great beat for that
paper--a fact which they appreciated to the extent of one hundred
dollars the column upon the writer's return from the islands.

In letters Nos. 14. and 15. he gives further particulars of the
month of mourning for the princess, and funeral ceremonials. He
refers to Burlingame, who was still in the islands. The remaining
letters are unimportant.

The Hawaiian episode in Mark Twain's life was one of those spots
that seemed to him always filled with sunlight. From beginning to
end it had been a long luminous dream; in the next letter, written
on the homeward-bound ship, becalmed under a cloudless sky, we
realize the fitting end of the experience.

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

ON BOARD SHIP Smyrniote,

AT SEA, July 30, 1866.

DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I write, now, because I must go hard at work as soon as I get to San Francisco, and then I shall have no time for other things--though truth to say I have nothing now to write which will be calculated to interest you much. We left the Sandwich Islands eight or ten days--or twelve days ago--I don't know which, I have been so hard at work until today (at least part of each day,) that the time has slipped away almost unnoticed. The first few days we came at a whooping gait being in the latitude of the “North-east trades,” but we soon ran out of them. We used them as long as they lasted-hundred of miles--and came dead straight north until exactly abreast of San Francisco precisely straight west of the city in a bee-line--but a long bee-line, as we were about two thousand miles at sea-consequently, we are not a hundred yards nearer San Francisco than you are. And here we lie becalmed on a glassy sea--we do not move an inch-we throw banana and orange peel overboard and it lies still on the water by the vessel's side. Sometimes the ocean is as dead level as the Mississippi river, and glitters glassily as if polished--but usually, of course, no matter how calm the weather is, we roll and surge over the grand ground-swell. We amuse ourselves tying pieces of tin to the ship's log and sinking them to see how far we can distinguish them under water--86 feet was the deepest we could see a small piece of tin, but a white plate would show about as far down as the steeple of Dr. Bullard's church would reach, I guess. The sea is very dark and blue here.

Ever since we got becalmed--five days--I have been copying the diary of one of the young Fergusons (the two boys who starved and suffered, with thirteen others, in an open boat at sea for forty-three days, lately, after their ship, the “Hornet,” was burned on the equator.) Both these boys, and Captain Mitchell, are passengers with us. I am copying the diary to publish in Harper's Magazine, if I have time to fix it up properly when I get to San Francisco.

I suppose, from present appearances,--light winds and calms,--that we shall be two or three weeks at sea, yet--and I hope so--I am in no hurry to go to work.

Sunday Morning, Aug. 6.

This is rather slow. We still drift, drift, drift along--at intervals a spanking breeze and then--drift again--hardly move for half a day. But I enjoy it. We have such snowy moonlight, and such gorgeous sunsets. And the ship is so easy--even in a gale she rolls very little, compared to other vessels--and in this calm we could dance on deck, if we chose. You can walk a crack, so steady is she. Very different from the Ajax. My trunk used to get loose in the stateroom and rip and tear around the place as if it had life in it, and I always had to take my clothes off in bed because I could not stand up and do it.

There is a ship in sight--the first object we have seen since we left Honolulu. We are still 1300 or 1400 miles from land and so anything like this that varies the vast solitude of the ocean makes all hands light-hearted and cheerful. We think the ship is the “Comet,” which left Honolulu several hours before we did. She is about twelve miles away, and so we cannot see her hull, but the sailors think it is the Comet because of some peculiarity about her fore-top-gallant sails. We have watched her all the forenoon.

Afternoon We had preaching on the quarter-deck by Rev. Mr. Rising, of Virginia City, old friend of mine. Spread a flag on the booby-hatch, which made a very good pulpit, and then ranged the chairs on either side against the bulwarks; last Sunday we had the shadow of the mainsail, but today we were on the opposite tack, close hauled, and had the sun. I am leader of the choir on this ship, and a sorry lead it is. I hope they will have a better opinion of our music in Heaven than I have down here. If they don't a thunderbolt will come down and knock the vessel endways.

The other ship is the Comet--she is right abreast three miles away, sailing on our course--both of us in a dead calm. With the glasses we can see what we take to be men and women on her decks. I am well acquainted with nearly all her passengers, and being so close seems right sociable.

Monday 7--I had just gone to bed a little after midnight when the 2d mate came and roused up the captain and said “The Comet has come round and is standing away on the other tack.” I went up immediately, and so did all our passengers, without waiting to dress-men, women and children. There was a perceptible breeze. Pretty soon the other ship swept down upon us with all her sails set, and made a fine show in the luminous starlight. She passed within a hundred yards of us, so we could faintly see persons on her decks. We had two minutes' chat with each other, through the medium of hoarse shouting, and then she bore away to windward.

In the morning she was only a little black peg standing out of the glassy sea in the distant horizon--an almost invisible mark in the bright sky. Dead calm. So the ships have stood, all day long--have not moved 100 yards.

Aug. 8--The calm continues. Magnificent weather. The gentlemen have all turned boys. They play boyish games on the poop and quarter-deck. For instance: They lay a knife on the fife-rail of the mainmast--stand off three steps, shut one eye, walk up and strike at it with the fore-finger; (seldom hit it;) also they lay a knife on the deck and walk seven or eight steps with eyes close shut, and try to find it. They kneel--place elbows against knees--extend hands in front along the deck--place knife against end of fingers--then clasp hands behind back and bend forward and try to pick up the knife with their teeth and rise up from knees without rolling over or losing their balance. They tie a string to the shrouds--stand with back against it walk three steps (eyes shut)--turn around three times and go and put finger on the string; only a military man can do it. If you want to know how perfectly ridiculous a grown man looks performing such absurdities in the presence of ladies, get one to try it.

Afternoon--The calm is no more. There are three vessels in sight. It is so sociable to have them hovering about us on this broad waste of water. It is sunny and pleasant, but blowing hard. Every rag about the ship is spread to the breeze and she is speeding over the sea like a bird. There is a large brig right astern of us with all her canvas set and chasing us at her best. She came up fast while the winds were light, but now it is hard to tell whether she gains or not. We can see the people on the forecastle with the glass. The race is exciting. I am sorry to know that we shall soon have to quit the vessel and go ashore if she keeps up this speed.

Friday, Aug. 10--We have breezes and calms alternately. The brig is two miles to three astern, and just stays there. We sail directly east--this brings the brig, with all her canvas set, almost in the eye of the sun, when it sets--beautiful. She looks sharply cut and black as a coal, against a background of fire and in the midst of a sea of blood.

San Francisco, Aug. 20.--We never saw the Comet again till the 13th, in the morning, three miles away. At three o'clock that afternoon, 25 days out from Honolulu, both ships entered the Golden Gate of San Francisco side by side, and 300 yards apart. There was a gale blowing, and both vessels clapped on every stitch of canvas and swept up through the channel and past the fortresses at a magnificent gait.

I have been up to Sacramento and squared accounts with the Union. They paid me a great deal more than they promised me.

Yrs aff
SAM.

VI. LETTERS 1866-67. THE LECTURER. SUCCESS ON THE COAST. IN NEW YORK. THE GREAT OCEAN EXCURSION.

It was August 13th when he reached San Francisco and wrote in his
note-book, “Home again. No--not home again--in prison again, and
all the wild sense of freedom gone. City seems so cramped and so
dreary with toil and care and business anxieties. God help me, I
wish I were at sea again!”

The transition from the dreamland of a becalmed sailing-vessel to
the dull, cheerless realities of his old life, and the uncertainties
of his future, depressed him--filled him with forebodings. At one
moment he felt himself on the verge of suicide--the world seemed so
little worth while.

He wished to make a trip around the world, a project that required
money. He contemplated making a book of his island letters and
experiences, and the acceptance by Harper's Magazine of the revised
version of the Hornet Shipwreck story encouraged this thought.

Friends urged him to embody in a lecture the picturesque aspect of
Hawaiian life. The thought frightened him, but it also appealed to
him strongly. He believed he could entertain an audience, once he
got started on the right track. As Governor of the Third House at
Carson City he had kept the audience in hand. Men in whom he had
the utmost confidence insisted that he follow up the lecture idea
and engage the largest house in the city for his purpose. The
possibility of failure appalled him, but he finally agreed to the
plan.

In Roughing It, and elsewhere, has been told the story of this
venture--the tale of its splendid success. He was no longer
concerned, now, as to his immediate future. The lecture field was
profitable. His audience laughed and shouted. He was learning the
flavor of real success and exulting in it. With Dennis McCarthy,
formerly one of the partners in the Enterprise, as manager, he made
a tour of California and Nevada.

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and others, in St. Louis:

VIRGINIA CITY, Nov. 1, 1866.

ALL THE FOLKS, AFFECTIONATE GREETING,--You know the flush time's are past, and it has long been impossible to more than half fill the Theatre here, with any sort of attraction, but they filled it for me, night before last--full--dollar all over the house.

I was mighty dubious about Carson, but the enclosed call and some telegrams set that all right--I lecture there tomorrow night.

They offer a full house and no expense in Dayton--go there next. Sandy Baldwin says I have made the most sweeping success of any man he knows of.

I have lectured in San Francisco, Sacramento, Marysville, Grass Valley, Nevada, You Bet, Red Dog and Virginia. I am going to talk in Carson, Gold Hill, Silver City, Dayton, Washoe, San Francisco again, and again here if I have time to re-hash the lecture.

Then I am bound for New York--lecture on the Steamer, maybe.

I'll leave toward 1st December--but I'll telegraph you.

Love to all.
Yrs.
MARK.

His lecture tour continued from October until December, a
period of picturesque incident, the story of which has been
recorded elsewhere. --[See Mark Twain: A Biography, by the
same author]--It paid him well; he could go home now,
without shame. Indeed, from his next letter, full of the
boyish elation which always to his last years was the
complement of his success, we gather that he is going home
with special honors--introductions from ministers and the
like to distinguished personages of the East.

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis:

SAN F., Dec. 4, 1866.

MY DEAR FOLKS,--I have written to Annie and Sammy and Katie some time ago--also, to the balance of you.

I called on Rev. Dr. Wadsworth last night with the City College man, but he wasn't at home. I was sorry, because I wanted to make his acquaintance. I am thick as thieves with the Rev. Stebbings, and I am laying for the Rev. Scudder and the Rev. Dr. Stone. I am running on preachers, now, altogether. I find them gay. Stebbings is a regular brick. I am taking letters of introduction to Henry Ward Beecher, Rev. Dr. Tyng, and other eminent parsons in the east. Whenever anybody offers me a letter to a preacher, now I snaffle it on the spot. I shall make Rev. Dr. Bellows trot out the fast nags of the cloth for me when I get to New York. Bellows is an able, upright and eloquent man--a man of imperial intellect and matchless power--he is Christian in the truest sense of the term and is unquestionably a brick....

Gen. Drum has arrived in Philadelphia and established his head-quarters there, as Adjutant Genl. to Maj. Gen. Meade. Col. Leonard has received a letter from him in which he offers me a complimentary benefit if I will come there. I am much obliged, really, but I am afraid I shan't lecture much in the States.

The China Mail Steamer is getting ready and everybody says I am throwing away a fortune in not going in her. I firmly believe it myself.

I sail for the States in the Opposition steamer of the 5th inst., positively and without reserve. My room is already secured for me, and is the choicest in the ship. I know all the officers.

Yrs. Affy
MARK.

We get no hint of his plans, and perhaps he had none. If his
purpose was to lecture in the East, he was in no hurry to begin.
Arriving in New York, after an adventurous voyage, he met a number
of old Californians--men who believed in him--and urged him to
lecture. He also received offers of newspaper engagements, and from
Charles Henry Webb, who had published the Californian, which Bret
Harte had edited, came the proposal to collect his published
sketches, including the jumping Frog story, in book form. Webb
himself was in New York, and offered the sketches to several
publishers, including Canton, who had once refused the Frog story by
omitting it from Artemus Ward's book. It seems curious that Canton
should make a second mistake and refuse it again, but publishers
were wary in those days, and even the newspaper success of the Frog
story did not tempt him to venture it as the title tale of a book.
Webb finally declared he would publish the book himself, and
Clemens, after a few weeks of New York, joined his mother and family
in St. Louis and gave himself up to a considerable period of
visiting, lecturing meantime in both Hannibal and Keokuk.

Fate had great matters in preparation for him. The Quaker City
Mediterranean excursion, the first great ocean picnic, was announced
that spring, and Mark Twain realized that it offered a possible
opportunity for him to see something of the world. He wrote at once
to the proprietors of the Alta-California and proposed that they
send him as their correspondent. To his delight his proposition was
accepted, the Alta agreeing to the twelve hundred dollars passage
money, and twenty dollars each for letters.

The Quaker City was not to sail until the 8th of June, but the Alta
wished some preliminary letters from New York. Furthermore, Webb
had the Frog book in press, and would issue it May 1st. Clemens,
therefore, returned to New York in April, and now once more being
urged by the Californians to lecture, he did not refuse. Frank
Fuller, formerly Governor of Utah, took the matter in hand and
engaged Cooper Union for the venture. He timed it for May 6th,
which would be a few days after the appearance of Webb's book.
Clemens was even more frightened at the prospect of this lecture
than he had been in San Francisco, and with more reason, for in New
York his friends were not many, and competition for public favor was
very great. There are two letters written May 1st, one to his
people, and one to Bret Harte, in San Francisco; that give us the
situation.

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1867-1875

By Mark Twain

ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

VOLUME II.

*****

To Bret Harte, in San Francisco:

WESTMINSTER HOTEL, May 1, 1867.

DEAR BRET,--I take my pen in hand to inform you that I am well and hope these few lines will find you enjoying the same God's blessing.

The book is out, and is handsome. It is full of damnable errors of grammar and deadly inconsistencies of spelling in the Frog sketch because I was away and did not read the proofs; but be a friend and say nothing about these things. When my hurry is over, I will send you an autograph copy to pisen the children with.

I am to lecture in Cooper Institute next Monday night. Pray for me.

We sail for the Holy Land June 8. Try to write me (to this hotel,) and it will be forwarded to Paris, where we remain 10 or 15 days.

Regards and best wishes to Mrs. Bret and the family.

Truly Yr Friend
MARK.

*****

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis:

WESTMINSTER HOTEL, May 1, 1867.

DEAR FOLKS,--Don't expect me to write for a while. My hands are full of business on account of my lecture for the 6th inst., and everything looks shady, at least, if not dark. I have got a good agent--but now after we have hired Cooper Institute and gone to an expense in one way or another of $500, it comes out that I have got to play against Speaker Colfax at Irving Hall, Ristori, and also the double troupe of Japanese jugglers, the latter opening at the great Academy of Music--and with all this against me I have taken the largest house in New York and cannot back water. Let her slide! If nobody else cares I don't.

I'll send the book soon. I am awfully hurried now, but not worried.

Yrs.
SAM.

The Cooper Union lecture proved a failure, and a success.
When it became evident to Fuller that the venture was not
going to pay, he sent out a flood of complimentaries to the
school-teachers of New York City and the surrounding
districts. No one seems to have declined them. Clemens
lectured to a jammed house and acquired much reputation.
Lecture proposals came from several directions, but he could
not accept them now. He wrote home that he was eighteen Alta
letters behind and had refused everything. Thos. Nast, the
cartoonist, then in his first fame, propped a joint tour,
Clemens to lecture while he, Nast, would illustrate with
“lightning” sketches; but even this could not be considered
now. In a little while he would sail, and the days were
overfull. A letter written a week before he sailed is full
of the hurry and strain of these last days.

*****

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis:

WESTMINSTER HOTEL, NEW YORK, June 1, 1867.

DEAR FOLKS,--I know I ought to write oftener (just got your last,) and more fully, but I cannot overcome my repugnance to telling what I am doing or what I expect to do or propose to do. Then, what have I left to write about? Manifestly nothing.

It isn't any use for me to talk about the voyage, because I can have no faith in that voyage till the ship is under way. How do I know she will ever sail? My passage is paid, and if the ship sails, I sail in her--but I make no calculations, have bought no cigars, no sea-going clothing--have made no preparation whatever--shall not pack my trunk till the morning we sail. Yet my hands are full of what I am going to do the day before we sail--and what isn't done that day will go undone.

All I do know or feel, is, that I am wild with impatience to move--move--move! Half a dozen times I have wished I had sailed long ago in some ship that wasn't going to keep me chained here to chafe for lagging ages while she got ready to go. Curse the endless delays! They always kill me--they make me neglect every duty and then I have a conscience that tears me like a wild beast. I wish I never had to stop anywhere a month. I do more mean things, the moment I get a chance to fold my hands and sit down than ever I can get forgiveness for.

Yes, we are to meet at Mr. Beach's next Thursday night, and I suppose we shall have to be gotten up regardless of expense, in swallow-tails, white kids and everything en regle.

I am resigned to Rev. Mr. Hutchinson's or anybody else's supervision. I don't mind it. I am fixed. I have got a splendid, immoral, tobacco-smoking, wine-drinking, godless room-mate who is as good and true and right-minded a man as ever lived--a man whose blameless conduct and example will always be an eloquent sermon to all who shall come within their influence. But send on the professional preachers--there are none I like better to converse with. If they're not narrow minded and bigoted they make good companions.

I asked them to send the N. Y. Weekly to you--no charge. I am not going to write for it. Like all other, papers that pay one splendidly it circulates among stupid people and the 'canaille.' I have made no arrangement with any New York paper--I will see about that Monday or Tuesday.

Love to all
Good bye,
Yrs affy
SAM.

The “immoral” room-mate whose conduct was to be an “eloquent
example” was Dan Slote, immortalized in the Innocents as “Dan”
--a favorite on the ship, and later beloved by countless readers.

There is one more letter, written the night before the Quaker City
sailed-a letter which in a sense marks the close of the first great
period of his life--the period of aimless wandering--adventure
--youth.

Perhaps a paragraph of explanation should precede this letter.
Political changes had eliminated Orion in Nevada, and he was now
undertaking the practice of law. “Bill Stewart” was Senator
Stewart, of Nevada, of whom we shall hear again. The “Sandwich
Island book,” as may be imagined, was made up of his letters to the
Sacramento Union. Nothing came of the venture, except some chapters
in 'Roughing It', rewritten from the material. “Zeb and John
Leavenworth” were pilots whom he had known on the river.

*****

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family in St. Louis:

NEW YORK, June 7th, 1867.

DEAR FOLKS, I suppose we shall be many a league at sea tomorrow night, and goodness knows I shall be unspeakably glad of it.

I haven't got anything to write, else I would write it. I have just written myself clear out in letters to the Alta, and I think they are the stupidest letters that were ever written from New York. Corresponding has been a perfect drag ever since I got to the states. If it continues abroad, I don't know what the Tribune and Alta folks will think. I have withdrawn the Sandwich Island book--it would be useless to publish it in these dull publishing times. As for the Frog book, I don't believe that will ever pay anything worth a cent. I published it simply to advertise myself--not with the hope of making anything out of it.

Well, I haven't anything to write, except that I am tired of staying in one place--that I am in a fever to get away. Read my Alta letters--they contain everything I could possibly write to you. Tell Zeb and John Leavenworth to write me. They can get plenty of gossip from the pilots.

An importing house sent two cases of exquisite champagne aboard the ship for me today--Veuve Clicquot and Lac d'Or. I and my room-mate have set apart every Saturday as a solemn fast day, wherein we will entertain no light matters of frivolous conversation, but only get drunk. (That is a joke.) His mother and sisters are the best and most homelike people I have yet found in a brown stone front. There is no style about them, except in house and furniture.

I wish Orion were going on this voyage, for I believe he could not help but be cheerful and jolly. I often wonder if his law business is going satisfactorily to him, but knowing that the dull season is setting in now (it looked like it had already set in before) I have felt as if I could almost answer the question myself--which is to say in plain words, I was afraid to ask. I wish I had gone to Washington in the winter instead of going West. I could have gouged an office out of Bill Stewart for him, and that would atone for the loss of my home visit. But I am so worthless that it seems to me I never do anything or accomplish anything that lingers in my mind as a pleasant memory. My mind is stored full of unworthy conduct toward Orion and towards you all, and an accusing conscience gives me peace only in excitement and restless moving from place to place. If I could say I had done one thing for any of you that entitled me to your good opinion, (I say nothing of your love, for I am sure of that, no matter how unworthy of it I may make myself, from Orion down you have always given me that, all the days of my life, when God Almighty knows I seldom deserve it,) I believe I could go home and stay there and I know I would care little for the world's praise or blame. There is no satisfaction in the world's praise anyhow, and it has no worth to me save in the way of business. I tried to gather up its compliments to send to you, but the work was distasteful and I dropped it.

You observe that under a cheerful exterior I have got a spirit that is angry with me and gives me freely its contempt. I can get away from that at sea, and be tranquil and satisfied--and so, with my parting love and benediction for Orion and all of you, I say goodbye and God bless you all--and welcome the wind that wafts a weary soul to the sunny lands of the Mediterranean!

Yrs. Forever,
SAM.

VII. LETTERS 1867. THE TRAVELER. THE VOYAGE OF THE “QUAKER CITY”

Mark Twain, now at sea, was writing many letters; not
personal letters, but those unique descriptive relations of
travel which would make him his first great fame--those
fresh first impressions preserved to us now as chapters of
The Innocents Abroad. Yet here and there in the midst of
sight-seeing and reporting he found time to send a brief
line to those at home, merely that they might have a word
from his own hand, for he had ordered the papers to which he
was to contribute--the Alta and the New York Tribune--sent
to them, and these would give the story of his travels. The
home letters read like notebook entries.

*****

Letters to Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis:

FAYAL (Azores,) June 20th, 1867.

DEAR FOLKS,--We are having a lively time here, after a stormy trip. We meant to go to San Miguel, but were driven here by stress of weather. Beautiful climate.

Yrs.
Affect.
SAM.

GIBRALTAR, June 30th, 1867.

DEAR FOLKS,--Arrived here this morning, and am clear worn out with riding and climbing in and over and around this monstrous rock and its fortifications. Summer climate and very pleasant.

Yrs.
SAM.

TANGIER, MOROCCO, (AFRICA), July 1, 1867.

DEAR FOLKS, Half a dozen of us came here yesterday from Gibraltar and some of the company took the other direction; went up through Spain, to Paris by rail. We decided that Gibraltar and San Roque were all of Spain that we wanted to see at present and are glad we came here among the Africans, Moors, Arabs and Bedouins of the desert. I would not give this experience for all the balance of the trip combined. This is the infernalest hive of infernally costumed barbarians I have ever come across yet.

Yrs.
SAM.

AT SEA, July 2, 1867.