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 singing, as if still cub pilot on the “John J. Roe:” 

     “Had an old horse whose name was Methusalem,
      Took him down and sold him in Jerusalem,
          A long time ago.”

Pretending to be surprised and startled at the burst of applause, he sprang up and began to talk.  How the audience enjoyed it!

Mark Twain continued his lecture tour into December, and then, on the 15th of that month, sailed by way of the Isthmus of Panama for New York.  He had made some money, and was going home to see his people.  He had planned to make a trip around the world later, contributing a series of letters to the “Alta California,” lecturing where opportunity afforded.  He had been on the Coast five and a half years, and to his professions of printing and piloting had added three others—­mining, journalism, and lecturing.  Also, he had acquired a measure of fame.  He could come back to his people with a good account of his absence and a good heart for the future.