November 11 Thursday – Sam lectured at Trinity Church, Charlestown, Mass. [MTPO].

Sam wrote from Boston at midnight:

“…bought full wedding outfit to-day (haven’t got a cent left) & occasionally the packages will arrive by express directed simply to J. Langdon, Elmira. Now your mother must unpack them & put them away for me & be sure not to let Mr. Langdon go wearing them around. I tell you, they are starchy.”

The reviews from Boston newspapers confirmed that Sam’s lecture had been an overwhelming success. This from The Boston Daily Advertiser:

Mark Twain is a very good looking man. He is of medium height and moderately slender build, has light brown hair, a reddish brown moustache, regular features and a fresh complexion; and he has a queer way of wrinkling up his nose and half closing his eyes when he speaks. The expression of his face is as calm and imperturbable as that of the sphinx. Looking at him you feel it to be an impossibility that he should ever hurry or ever be out of temper, and you might suppose him to be incapable of a joke, if it were not for the peculiar twinkle in his merry eyes. His voice is remarkably light and remarkably dry—like some German wines—and it seems to be modulated to only two keys. His style of speaking is unique to the last degree. It is all of a piece with the quality of his humor, and fits him like a glove. He delivers his sentences without haste, and in a tone of utter indifference, marking the highest waves of his thought only by a strong flavor of nasality, and knowing for the most part only the rising inflection at the beginning, middle and end of his sentences. The rising inflection is not native here, nor is it born in the manner of any of our own speakers. Mr. Dickens first taught us how it might be used to advantage; and Mark Twain, doubtless without borrowing a leaf from Mr. Dickens’s note-book, has found out for himself how effective an adjunct it is to humorous speech. In short, the platform manner of Mr. Clemens is the exact reflection in speech of his peculiar style of composition. The fun of both is genuine enough; but the perception of the fun is unmeasurably heightened by the apparently serious intention of the general discourse, and at times by an air of half seriousness in the joke itself. The audience gets into a queer state after a while. It knows not what to trust; for while much is meant to be seriously taken, the fun is felt to be the real life of the thing; and yet they never know where the fun will come in. Even when Mr. Clemens has made a really fine period, or introduced a brilliant descriptive passage, he takes pains to turn the affair into a joke at the end.

And this example from the lecture itself:

At one point in his lecture, namely, in the midst of a discussion of cannibalism, Mark Twain paused and said with an indescribable look: “At this point I usually illustrate cannibalism before the audience: but I am a stranger here, and feel diffident about asking favors. However,” he said, “if there is any one present who is willing to contribute a baby for the purposes of the lecture, I should be glad to know it now. I am aware, though, that children have become scarce and high of late, having been thinned out by neglect and ill treatment since the woman movement began.”

“Hanging to Slow Music,” an unsigned article attributed to Sam, ran in the Express [McCullough 88].