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.
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