Read The Complete Novels of Mark Twain and the Complete Biography of Mark Twain for Free Online

humorous observer; Europe had not yet become the playground of America. It was rather a terra incognita , regarded with a sort of reverential ignorance by the average American tourist. By the range of his humour, the pertinency of his observation, and the vigour of his expression he awoke immediate attention. And he aroused a deeply sympathetic response in the hearts of Americans by his manly and outspoken expression—his respect for the worthy, the admirable, the praiseworthy, his scorn and detestation for the spurious, the specious and the fraudulent. In this book, for the first time, he strikes the key-note of his life and thought, which sounds so clearly throughout all his later works. It is the true beginning of his career.
    On his return to the United States in November, he resumed his newspaper work, this time at the National Capital. On his arrival there he found a letter from Elisha Bliss, of the 'American Publishing Company', proposing a volume recounting the adventures of the "Excursion," to be elaborately illustrated, and sold by subscription on a five per cent. royalty. He eagerly accepted the offer and set to work on his notes.
    "I knew Mark Twain in Washington," says Senator William M. Stewart of Nevada, in his reminiscences 'A Senator of the Sixties', "at a time when he was without money. He told me his condition, and said he was very anxious to get out his book. He showed me his notes, and I saw that they would make a great book, and probably bring him in a fortune. I promised that I would 'stake' him until he had the book written. I made him a clerk to my committee in the senate, which paid him six dollars per day; then I hired a man for one hundred dollars per month to do the work!" His mischievously extravagant description of Mark Twain at this time is eminently worthy of record "He was arrayed in a seedy suit which hung upon his lean frame in bunches, with no style worth mentioning. A sheaf of scraggly, black hair leaked out of a battered, old, slouch hat, like stuffing from an ancient Colonial sofa, and an evil-smelling cigar butt, very much frazzled, protruded from the corner of his mouth. He had a very sinister appearance. He was a man I had known around the Nevada mining camps several years before, and his name was Samuel L. Clemens."
    It was during this winter that Mark wrote a number of humorous articles and sketches—'The Facts in the Case of the Great Beef Contract', the account of his resignation as clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology, and 'Riley—Newspaper Correspondent'. His time was chiefly devoted to preparing the material for his book; but finding Washington too distracting, he returned to San Francisco and completed the manuscript therein July, 1868. For a year the publication of the book was delayed, as recorded in the Autobiography; but it finally appeared in print following Mark's indignant telegram to Bliss that, if the book was not on sale in twenty-four hours, he would bring suit for damages. Mark Twain records that in nine months the book had taken the publishing house out of debt, advanced its stock from twenty-five to two hundred, and left seventy thousand dollars clear profit. Eighty-five thousand copies were sold within sixteen months, the largest sale of a four dollar book ever achieved in America in so short a time up to that date. It is, miraculous to relate, still the leader in its own special field—a "bestseller" for forty years!
    The proprietors of the 'Alta California' were exceeding wroth when they heard that Clemens was preparing for publication the very letters which they had commissioned him to write and had printed in their own paper. They prepared to publish a cheap paper-covered edition of the letters, and sent the American Publishing Co. a challenge in the shape of an advance notice of their publication. Clemens hurried back to San Francisco from the East, and soon convinced the proprietors of the 'Alta California' of the authenticity of his copyright.