ust this once. Continuing, the handbill presented a second
protest, signed by the various clubs and business firms; also others
bearing variously the signatures of the newspapers, and the clergy,
ending with the brief word:

You had better go. Yours, CHIEF OF POLICE.

All of which drollery concluded with his announcement of place and date
of his lecture, with still further gaiety at the end. Nothing short of
a seismic cataclysm--an earthquake, in fact--could deter a San Francisco
audience after that. Mark Twain's farewell address, given at the
Mercantile Library July 2 (1868), doubtless remains today the leading
literary event in San Francisco's history.--[Copy of the lecture
announcement, complete, will be found in Appendix H, at the end of last
volume.]

He sailed July 6th by the Pacific mail steamer Montana to Acapulco,
caught the Henry Chauncey at Aspinwall, reached New York on the 28th,
and a day or two later had delivered his manuscript at Hartford.

But a further difficulty had arisen. Bliss was having troubles himself,
this time, with his directors. Many reports of Mark Twain's new book had
been traveling the rounds of the press, some of which declared it was
to be irreverent, even blasphemous, in tone. The title selected, The
New Pilgrim's Progress, was in itself a sacrilege. Hartford was a
conservative place; the American Publishing Company directors were of
orthodox persuasion. They urged Bliss to relieve the company of this
impending disaster of heresy. When the author arrived one or more of
them labored with him in person, without avail. As for Bliss, he was
stanch; he believed in the book thoroughly, from every standpoint.
He declared if the company refused to print it he would resign the
management and publish the book himself. This was an alarming suggestion
to the stockholders. Bliss had returned dividends--a boon altogether
too rare in the company's former history. The objectors retired and were
heard of no more. The manuscript was placed in the hands of Fay and Cox,
illustrators, with an order for about two hundred and fifty pictures.

Fay and Cox turned it over to True Williams, one of the well-known
illustrators of that day. Williams was a man of great talent--of fine
imagination and sweetness of spirit--but it was necessary to lock him in
a room when industry was required, with nothing more exciting than
cold water as a beverage. Clemens himself aided in the illustrating by
obtaining of