It had been more than thirteen years since his first arrival in New
York. Then he had been a youth, green, untraveled, eager to get away
from home. Now a veteran, he was as eager to return.
He stopped only long enough in New York to see Charles Henry Webb, late
of California, who had put together a number of the Mark Twain sketches,
including “The Jumping Frog,” for book publication. Clemens himself
decided to take the book to Carleton, thinking that, having missed the
fame of the “Frog” once, he might welcome a chance to stand sponsor for
it now. But Carleton was wary; the “Frog” had won favor, and even fame,
in its fugitive, vagrant way, but a book was another matter. Books were
undertaken very seriously and with plenty of consideration in those
days. Twenty-one years later, in Switzerland, Carleton said to Mark
Twain:
“My chief claim to immortality is the distinction of having declined
your first book.”
Clemens was ready enough to give up the book when Carleton declined
it, but Webb said he would publish it himself, and he set about it
forthwith. The author waited no longer now, but started for St. Louis,
and was soon with his mother and sister, whom he had not seen since that
eventful first year of the war. They thought he looked old, which was
true enough, but they found him unchanged in his manner: buoyant, full
of banter and gravely quaint remarks--he was always the same. Jane
Clemens had grown older, too. She was nearly sixty-four, but as keen
and vigorous as ever-proud (even if somewhat critical) of this handsome,
brilliant man of new name and fame who had been her mischievous,
wayward boy. She petted him, joked with him, scolded him, and inquired
searchingly into his morals and habits. In turn he petted, comforted,
and teased her. She decided that he was the same Sam, and always would
be--a true prophecy.
He went up to Hannibal to see old friends. Many were married; some had
moved away; some were dead--the old story. He delivered his lecture
there, and was the center of interest and admiration--his welcome might
have satisfied even Tom Sawyer. From Hannibal he journeyed to Keokuk,
where he lectured again to a crowd of old friends and new, then returned
to St. Louis for a more extended visit.
It was while he was in St. Louis that he first saw the announcement of
the Quaker City Holy Land Excursion, and was promptly fascinated by what
was then a brand-new idea in ocean travel--a splendid picnic--a choice
and refined party that would sail away for a long summer's journeying
to the most romantic of all lands and seas, the shores of the
Mediterranean. No such argosy had ever set out before in pursuit of the
golden fleece of happiness.
His projected trip around the world lost its charm in the light of this
idyllic dream. Henry Ward Beecher was advertised as one of the party;
General Sherman as another; also ministers, high-class journalists--the
best minds of the nation. Anson Burlingame had told him to associate
with persons of refinement and intellect. He lost no time in writing to
the Alta, proposing that they send him in this select company.
Noah Brooks, who was then on the Alta, states--[In an article published
in the Century Magazine.]--that the management was staggered by the
proposition, but that Col. John McComb insisted that the investment in
Mark Twain would be sound. A letter was accordingly sent, stating that
a check for his passage would be forwarded in due season, and that
meantime he could contribute letters from New York City. The rate
for all letters was to be twenty dollars each. The arrangement was a
godsend, in the fullest sense of the word, to Mark Twain.
It was now April, and he was eager to get back to New York to arrange
his passage. The Quaker City would not sail for two months yet (two
eventful months), but the advertisement said that passages must be
secured by the 5th, and he was there on that day. Almost the first man
he met was the chief of the New York Alta bureau with a check for twelve
hundred and fifty dollars (the amount of his ticket) and a telegram
saying, “Ship Mark Twain in the Holy Land Excursion and pay his
passage.”
--[The following letter, which bears no date, was probably handed to
him later in the New York Alta office as a sort of credential: