tty sure to have a
good house. But he did not realize this, and, as the evening approached,
his dread of failure increased. Arriving at the theater, he entered by
the stage door, half expecting to find the place empty. Then, suddenly,
he became more frightened than ever; peering from the wings, he saw that
the house was jammed--packed from the footlights to the walls!
Terrified, his knees shaking, his tongue dry, he managed to emerge, and
was greeted with a roar, a crash of applause that nearly finished him.
Only for an instant--reaction followed; these people were his friends,
and he was talking to them. He forgot to be afraid, and, as the applause
came in great billows that rose ever higher, he felt himself borne with
it as on a tide of happiness and success. His evening, from beginning to
end, was a complete triumph. Friends declared that for descriptive
eloquence, humor, and real entertainment nothing like his address had
ever been delivered. The morning papers were enthusiastic.

Mark Twain no longer hesitated as to what he should do now. He would
lecture. The book idea no longer attracted him; the appearance of the
"Hornet" article, signed, through a printer's error, "Mark Swain," cooled
his desire to be a magazine contributor. No matter--lecturing was the
thing. Dennis McCarthy, who had sold his interest in the "Enterprise,"
was in San Francisco. Clemens engaged this honest, happy-hearted
Irishman as manager, and the two toured California and Nevada with
continuous success.

Those who remember Mark Twain as a lecturer in that early day say that on
entering he would lounge loosely across the platform, his manuscript
--written on wrapping-paper and carried under his arm--looking like a
ruffled hen. His delivery they recall as being even more quaint and
drawling than in later life. Once, when his lecture was over, an old man
came up to him and said:

"Be them your natural tones of eloquence?"

In those days it was thought proper that a lecturer should be introduced,
and Clemens himself used to tell of being presented by an old miner, who
said:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I know only two things about this man: the first
is that he's never been in jail, and the second is, I don't know why."

When he reached Virginia, his old friend Goodman said, "Sam, you don't
need anybody to introduce you," and he suggested a novel plan. That
night, when the curtain rose, it showed Mark Twain seated at a piano,
playing and singin