July 20 Tuesday – Date of publication for Innocents Abroad [MT Encyclopedia, Dickinson 400]—Hirst gives this as the date the earliest copies arrived from the bindery [“A Note on the Text” Oxford edition, 1996]. By early August the book was becoming a best seller. It sold 30,000 copies within three months; 85,000 within sixteen months. Sam’s royalties on the book came to nineteen cents a copy [Willis 51]. Sam had written perhaps the greatest travel book ever penned by an American. With the backing of Jervis Langdon, and his success with Innocents Abroad, more lectures lined up. Things were coming together. He was about to marry into wealth and status, but not without “paddling his own canoe.”