TO THE 1,500 AND OTHERS,--It seems to me that your course is entirely
unprecedented. Heretofore, when lecturers, singers, actors, and other
frauds have said they were about to leave town, you have always been the
very first people to come out in a card beseeching them to hold on
for just one night more, and inflict just one more performance on the
public, but as soon as I want to take a farewell benefit you come after
me, with a card signed by the whole community and the board of aldermen,
praying me not to do it. But it isn't of any use. You cannot move me
from my fell purpose. I will torment the people if I want to. I have a
better right to do it than these strange lecturers and orators that come
here from abroad. It only costs the public a dollar apiece, and if they
can't stand it what do they stay here for? Am I to go away and let them
have peace and quiet for a year and a half, and then come back and only
lecture them twice? What do you take me for?
No, gentlemen, ask of me anything else and I will do it cheerfully; but
do not ask me not to afflict the people. I wish to tell them all I know
about VENICE. I wish to tell them about the City of the Sea--that most
venerable, most brilliant, and proudest Republic the world has ever
seen. I wish to hint at what it achieved in twelve hundred years,
and what it lost in two hundred. I wish to furnish a deal of pleasant
information, somewhat highly spiced, but still palatable, digestible,
and eminently fitted for the intellectual stomach. My last lecture was
not as fine as I thought it was, but I have submitted this discourse to
several able critics, and they have pronounced it good. Now, therefore,
why should I withhold it?
Let me talk only just this once, and I will sail positively on the 6th
of July, and stay away until I return from China--two years.
Yours truly, MARK TWAIN.
(FURTHER REMONSTRANCE)
SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th.
MR. MARK TWAIN,--Learning with profound regret that you have concluded
to postpone your departure until the 6th July, and learning also, with
unspeakable grief, that you propose to read from your forthcoming book,
or lecture again before you go, at the New Mercantile Library, we hasten
to beg of you that you will not do it. Curb this spirit of lawless
violence, and emigrate at once. Have the vessel's bill for your passage
sent to us. We will pay it.
Your friends,
Pacific Board of Brokers [and
other financial and social
institutions]
SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th.
MR. MARK TWAIN--DEAR SIR,--Will you start now, without any unnecessary
delay?
Yours truly,
Proprietors of the Alta,
Bulletin, Times, Call, Examiner
[and other San Francisco
publications].
SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th.
MR. MARK TWAIN--DEAR SIR,--Do not delay your departure. You can come
back and lecture another time. In the language of the worldly--you can
“cut and come again.”
Your friends,
THE CLERGY.
SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th.
MR. MARK TWAIN--DEAR SIR,--You had better go.
Yours,
THE CHIEF OF POLICE.
(REPLY)
SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th.
GENTLEMEN,--Restrain your emotions; you observe that they cannot avail.
Read:
NEW MERCANTILE LIBRARY
Bush Street
Thursday Evening, July 2, 1868
One Night Only
FAREWELL LECTURE
of
MARK TWAIN
Subject:
The Oldest of the Republics
VENICE
PAST AND PRESENT
Box-Office open Wednesday and Thursday
No extra charge for reserved seats
ADMISSION........... ONE DOLLAR
Doors open at 7 Orgies to commence at 8 P. M.
The public displays and ceremonies projected to give fitting eclat
to this occasion have been unavoidably delayed until the 4th. The
lecture will be delivered certainly on the 2d, and the event will be
celebrated two days afterward by a discharge of artillery on the
4th, a procession of citizens, the reading of the Declaration of
Independence, and by a gorgeous display of fireworks from Russian
Hill in the evening, which I have ordered at my sole expense, the
cost amounting to eighty thousand dollars.
AT NEW MERCANTILE LIBRARY
Bush Street
Thursday Evening, July 2, 1868