July 31 Wednesday – After a trip of some 700 miles from Crookston, Minn. the Clemens party arrived at Great Falls, Mont. From J.B. Pond’s informative diary:
We arrived at the Park Hotel here at 7:30 A.M. after a good night’s sleep. Interest grows more and more intense as we come nearer to the Rocky Mountains. It brings back fond memories of other days. The two Brothers Gibson, proprietors of the hotel, drove our party out to Giant Spring, three miles distant. It is a giant, too. I never saw a more beautiful or more wonderful spring. A big river fairly boils up out of the ground, of the most beautiful deep peacock green color I ever saw in clear water. The largest copper ore smelters in the world are here. The Great Falls could supply power enough for all the machinery west of Chicago, with some to spare.
“Mark” is improving. For the first time since we started he appeared about the hotel corridors and on the street. He and I walked about the outskirts of the town, and I caught a number of interesting snapshots among the Norwegian shanties. I got a good group including four generations, with eight children, a calf and five cats. “Mark” wanted a photograph of each cat. He caught a pair of kittens in his arms, greatly to the discomfort of their owner, a little girl. He tried to make friends with the child and buy the kittens, but she began to cry and beg that her pets might be liberated. He soon captured her with a pretty story, and she finally consented to let them go. Few know “Mark’s” great love for cats, as well as for every living creature [Eccentricities of Genius 209].
On Aug. 1, the Great Falls Daily Tribune reported the event:
MARK TWAIN
Delighted a Large Audience Last Night at the Opera House.
The inimitable Mark Twain, who has chased away somber thoughts and straightened out the creases in millions of brows by his quaint humor, visited Great Falls for the first time yesterday [July 31]. He was accompanied by his wife and daughter and Maj. Pond, who is so well known as the veteran lecture bureau man. Mrs. Pond also accompanies the party, who are bent on making a trip around the world.
The lecture last night was attended by the best people in the city and thoroughly enjoyed by them. It was largely made up from selections from his works. The quaintness and originality of the man and his manner gave an added charm to the stories. The finale of the lecture was a ghost story, which ended with a surprise to the audience, and illustrated as well perhaps as anything the peculiar humor of the man.
After the lecture Mr. Clemens (Mark Twain) and Maj. Pond were the guests of the Electric club, and it is unnecessary to say that they had a jolly good time.
Sam’s notebook:
July 31. Drove with the Gibsons to the 49-foot fall & the wonderful fountain, which Lewis & Clark, 1805 found to be blue & retained its blue color for half a mile down the Missouri. / Didn’t visit the Great Falls [NB 35 TS 20].
Fatout lists that Sam gave a supper speech for the Electric Club [MT Speaking 662].