July 18 Thursday - The Clemens party arrived in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and checked into the Hotel Iroquois. Sam gave his talk at the Soo Opera House. J.B. Pond did not make a diary entry on this stop, nor did Sam mention it in any letters extant. Gaw writes,"I found only one ad previewing the arrival of Twain in the July 13 edition of the Sault Ste. Marie News and one small paragraph in the same paper of July 20 that characterized the lecture merely as 'entertaining.' However, in view of the lack of positive mention by either Twain or Pond, it is reasonable to assume that Twain did not consider this lecture outstanding"[Gaw 24].
From The Twainian Volume 7 no. 2,(1948) George Hiram Brownell, editor
AMONG THE MANY newspaper clippings in the folder labeled “Twain Curiosa” on my desk is one that came to me from Hon. Chase Osborn whose winter residence is Poulan, Georgia, and whose summer residence is Homestead, Michigan, near Sault Ste. Marie. I was reminded of the clipping by the receipt of a letter from a Ph. D. aspirant asking about the towns in northern Michigan where Twain lectured during his boat trip from Cleveland to Duluth at the outset of his globe-encircling tour in 1895. The inquirer specifically asks if Twain, on his lake trip, delivered a lecture in the town of Petoskey.
Yes, Twain delivered a lecture in Petoskey on the evening of Saturday, July 20, according to a paragraph in Pond’s “Eccentricities of Genius,” page 204 (Dillingham, New York, 1900). He had lectured the previous evening at Mackinaw Island, but consented to back-track his trip to Petoskey because a large Chautauqua gathering in that city would assure a packed house. George Kennan was one of the audience.
The clipping sent to me by Chase (my friend since 1910) contains a letter written to the Evening News, of Sault Ste. Marie, by a member of the Chippewa County Historical Society, Mr. Edwin T. Brown. Pond, in his book, does not mention that Twain, after leaving Mackinaw Island, also lectured at the “Soo.” Mr. Brown, however, was present at Twain's lecture and recalls the event as follows:
I wonder if there are many who know that he was one of the earth’s greats who have come to our town and traversed our streets. I well remember the occasion in about the year 1895, I think, that I had the greatest pleasure and honor of greeting him at the old Sault Opera House that stood on the present site of The Evening News building, and, as he stood in the center of the stage he must have been on the very spot where the compositor is now sitting who sets this item in type.
I recall that he was one of the finest and most distinguished looking men I ever saw, and his great mass of curly snow-white hair, I think, was his most striking feature.
As he stood there and related his famous story, “The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” and other anecdotes I recalled the great thrill given me while reading his boys’ books, “Tom Sawyer,” “Huckleberry Finn,” and “The Prince and the Pauper” and I thought him even a greater storyteller in print than as a talker.