August 1 Thursday – James B. Pond’s diary recorded the day’s travel to Butte, Mont.:
Thursday, August 1st, Great Falls to Butte, Montana. [100+ miles]
We started at 7:35 A.M. All seem tired. The light air and the long drive yesterday told very much on us all.
“Mark” had an off night [July 31 in Great Falls] and was not at his best, which has almost broken his heart. He couldn’t get over it all day. The Gibson Brothers have done much to make our visit delightful, and it has proved very enjoyable indeed. Of course, being proprietors of the hotel, they lose nothing, for I find they charge us five dollars a day each, and the extortions from porters, baggagemen and bellboys surpass anything I know of. The smallest money is two bits (25 cents) here — absurd! [Eccentricities of Genius 209-10].
The Clemens party took rooms at the Butte Hotel. Fatout lists Sam for a supper speech [MT Speaking 663]. The Aug. 2 Butte Miner review of the lecture was reprinted in the Aug. 5 Missoula Evening Republican, p.4 “Mark Twain”:
If anyone attended with the expectation of hearing an hour of flaming eloquence or ponderous logic he was disappointed; if in the audience was one who was misled by the advertisement in expecting a lecture in the ordinary acceptation of the term he listened in vain for the studied arguments and stirring peroration. Those who went for the purpose of seeing and hearing Mark Twain, the droll genius whose quaint humor and native wit have sent refreshing waves of bubbling laughter around the world, were not only satisfied but went away feeling that they had been in the presence of one of the most admirable characters which the struggles and eccentricities of American life have produced
Fatout continues: “After the performance, mining veterans of the Comstock Lode carried him off to a club for champagne and stories till midnight” [247].
The Anaconda Standard of Aug. 2 also reported on the Butte lecture:
MARK’S ALL RIGHT.
He Can Keep an Audience in an Uproar Without an Effort.
Butte, Aug. 1. — It is doubtful if Maguire’s opera house ever contained a more delighted audience than the one that filled it to-night to listen to Mark Twain. From his first story of the night he spent with a coroner’s subject until he startled the audience out of their seats by the sudden ending of his ghost story, the people laughed until laughing became painful. He spoke for an hour and a half and told the ludicrous story of the jumping frog, the story about Huckleberry Finn when his feeling got the best of his “consciences” while aiding “Jim,” the slave, to escape. Greater was the man who started to tell about an experience his grandfather had with a ram, but just before reaching the thrilling part of his narrative wandered from his subject and never got back to it. The story reminded many people in the audience of a well-known citizen of Butte.
Then came the story about Mr. Twain’s first theft, when he stole a watermelon from a peddler’s wagon, and finding that it was green, how his conscience troubled him, until he returned it to the peddler and made him give him a ripe one in exchange for it. The next narrative was about Tom Sawyer’s crusade, and that was followed with the final number of the programme, the ghost story about the golden arm.
After the lecture many were honored with an introduction to the noted humorist and called on him at the Butte where Mr. Clemens, wife and daughter and Major J. B. Pond and wife are stopping.
The next day (Aug. 2) J.B. Pond entered this in his diary about the lecture and good time afterward:
We enter the Rocky Mountains through a canyon of the Upper Missouri; we have climbed mountains all day, and at Butte are nearly 8,000 feet high. It tells on me, but the others escape. The ladies declare it has been one of the most interesting days of their lives, and “Mark” has taken great interest in everything, but kept from talking. After reaching the hotel, he kept quiet in bed until he went to the hall. He more than made up for last night’s disappointment and was at his best. I escorted Mrs. Clemens and Clara to a box in the theatre, expecting to return immediately to the hotel, but I found myself listening, and sat through the lecture, enjoying every word. It actually seemed as if I had never known him to be quite so good. He was great. The house was full and very responsive.
After the lecture many of his former Nevada friends came forward to greet him. We went to a fine club, where champagne and stories blended until twelve, much to the delight of many gentlemen. “Mark” never drinks champagne. His is hot Scotch, winter and summer, without any sugar, and never before 11 p.m.