THE BOYS' LIFE OF MARK TWAIN
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.
But it seems now only a chance that he arrived at all. Crossing the Isthmus, he embarked for New York on what proved to be a cholera ship. For a
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