er
that came his lecture. The first sentence captured the audience. From
that moment to the end it was either in a roar of laughter or half
breathless by his beautiful descriptive passages. People were positively
ill for days, laughing at that lecture."

So it was a success: everybody was glad to have been there; the papers
were kind, congratulations numerous. --[Kind but not extravagant; those
were burning political times, and the doings of mere literary people
did not excite the press to the extent of headlines. A jam around Cooper
Union to-day, followed by such an artistic triumph, would be a news
event. On the other hand, Schuyler Colfax, then Speaker of the House,
was reported to the extent of a column, nonpareil. His lecture was of
no literary importance, and no echo of it now remains. But those were
political, not artistic, days.

Of Mark Twain's lecture the Times notice said:

"Nearly every one present came prepared for considerable provocation
for enjoyable laughter, and from the appearance of their mirthful
faces leaving the hall at the conclusion of the lecture but few were
disappointed, and it is not too much to say that seldom has so large
an audience been so uniformly pleased as the one that listened to Mark
Twain's quaint remarks last evening. The large hall of the Union was
filled to its utmost capacity by fully two thousand persons, which fact
spoke well for the reputation of the lecturer and his future success.
Mark Twain's style is a quaint one both in manner and method, and
through his discourse he managed to keep on the right side of the
audience, and frequently convulsed it with hearty laughter.... During
a description of the topography of the Sandwich Islands the lecturer
surprised his hearers by a graphic and eloquent description of the
eruption of the great volcano, which occurred in 1840, and his language
was loudly applauded.

"Judging from the success achieved by the lecturer last evening, he
should repeat his experiment at an early date."]

COOPER INSTITUTE
By Invitation of s large number of prominent Californians and
Citizens of New York,

MARK TWAIN

WILL DELIVER A
SERIO-HUMEROUS LECTURE
CONERNING

KANAKDOM
OR
THE SANDWICH ISLANDS,

COOPER INSTITUTE,
On Mon