ng to be the most talked-of man in the country. Your letters for the
Alta and the Tribune will get the widest reception of any letters of
travel ever written."

LIX

THE FIRST BOOK

With the shadow of the Cooper Institute so happily dispelled, The
Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and his following of Other
Sketches, became a matter of more interest. The book was a neat
blue-and-gold volume printed by John A. Gray & Green, the old firm for
which the boy, Sam Clemens, had set type thirteen years before. The
title-page bore Webb's name as publisher, with the American News Company
as selling agents. It further stated that the book was edited by "John
Paul," that is to say by Webb himself. The dedication was in keeping
with the general irresponsible character of the venture. It was as
follows:

TO
JOHN SMITH
WHOM I HAVE KNOWN IN DIVERS AND SUNDRY
PLACES ABOUT THE WORLD, AND WHOSE
MANY AND MANIFOLD VIRTUES DID
ALWAYS COMMAND MY ESTEEM,
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

It is said that the man to whom a volume is dedicated always buys a copy.
If this prove true in the present instance, a princely affluence is about
to burst upon
THE AUTHOR.

The "advertisement" stated that the author had "scaled the heights of
popularity at a single jump, and won for himself the sobriquet of the
'Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope'; furthermore, that he was known to
fame as the 'Moralist of the Main,'" and that as such he would be likely
to go down to posterity, adding that it was in his secondary character,
as humorist, rather than in his primal one of moralist, that the volume
aimed to present him.--[The advertisement complete, with extracts from
the book, may be found under Appendix E, at the end of last volume.]

Every little while, during the forty years or more that have elapsed
since then, some one has come forward announcing Mark Twain to be as much
a philosopher as a humorist, as if this were a new discovery. But it was
a discovery chiefly to the person making the announcement. Every one who
ever knew Mark Twain at any period of his life made the same discovery.
Every one who ever took the trouble to familiarize himself with his work
made it. Those who did not make it have known his work only by hearsay
and quotation, or they have read it very casually, or have bee