prosperity and
triumph. He had acquired a new and lucrative profession at a bound. The
papers lauded him as the "most piquant and humorous writer and lecturer
on the Coast since the days of the lamented John Phoenix." He felt that
he was on the highroad at last.

Denis McCarthy, late of the Enterprise, was in San Francisco, and was
willing to become his manager. Denis was capable and honest, and Clemens
was fond of him. They planned a tour of the near-by towns, beginning
with Sacramento, extending it later even to the mining camps, such as
Red Dog and Grass Valley; also across into Nevada, with engagements at
Carson City, Virginia, and Gold Hill. It was an exultant and hilarious
excursion--that first lecture tour made by Denis McCarthy and Mark
Twain. Success traveled with them everywhere, whether the lecturer
looked across the footlights of some pretentious "opera-house" or
between the two tallow candles of some camp "academy." Whatever the
building, it was packed, and the returns were maximum.

Those who remember him as a lecturer in that long-ago time say that his
delivery was more quaint, his drawl more exaggerated, even than in
later life; that his appearance and movements on the stage were natural,
rather than graceful; that his manuscript, which he carried under his
arm, looked like a ruffled hen. It was, in fact, originally written on
sheets of manila paper, in large characters, so that it could be read
easily by dim light, and it was doubtless often disordered.

There was plenty of amusing experience on this tour. At one place, when
the lecture was over, an old man came to him and said:

"Be them your natural tones of eloquence?"

At Grass Valley there was a rival show, consisting of a lady tight-rope
walker and her husband. It was a small place, and the tight-rope
attraction seemed likely to fail. The lady's husband had formerly been
a compositor on the Enterprise, so that he felt there was a bond of
brotherhood between him and Mark Twain.

"Look here," he said. "Let's combine our shows. I'll let my wife do the
tight-rope act outside and draw a crowd, and you go inside and lecture."

The arrangement was not made.

Following custom, the lecturer at first thought it necessary to be
introduced, and at each place McCarthy had to skirmish around and find
the proper person. At Red Dog, on the Stanislaus, the man selected
failed to appear, and Denis had to provide another on short notice. He
went down into