MARK TWAIN, LECTURER
in vain to find a publisher for them, brought them out himself, on the 1st of May, 1867.[1] It seems curious now that any publisher should have declined the little volume, for the sketches, especially the frog story, had been successful, and there was little enough good American humor in print. However, publishing was a matter not lightly undertaken in those days.
Mark Twain seems to have been rather pleased with the appearance of his first book. To Bret Harte he wrote:
The book is out and is handsome. It is full of . . . errors, . . . but be a friend and say nothing about those things. When my hurry is over, I will send you a copy to pizen the children with.
The little cloth-and-gold volume, so valued by book-collectors to-day, contained the frog story and twenty-six other sketches, some of which are still preserved in Mark Twain's collected works. Most of them were not Mark Twain's best literature, but they were fresh and readable and suited the taste of that period. The book sold very well, and, while it did not bring either great fame or fortune to its author, it was by no means a failure.
The "hurry" mentioned in Mark Twain's letter to Bret Harte related to his second venture—that is to say, his New York lecture, an enterprise managed by an old Comstock friend, Frank Fuller, ex-Governor of Utah. Fuller, always a sanguine and
- ↑ The printing was done by John A. Gray & Green, the firm for which the boy Sam Clemens had set type thirteen years before.
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