April 9 Tuesday – From the Keokuk Constitution:

It has been many a day since our ribs were tickled so much as at listening to Sam Clemens’ lecture last evening upon the Sandwich Islands….Those of our citizens who did not hear the lecture missed one of the richest treats of their lives [Lorch 57-8].

Sam lectured – “Sandwich Islands” – at the National Hall, Quincy, Illinois, where Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) had spoken in February. Lorch points out, “relatives of the family were living there in 1867 who may have arranged an invitation” [57].

Alta California printed Sam’s article “GRAND EUROPEAN PLEASURE TRIP,” dated Mar. 2 [Schmidt]. Camfield lists this as “Letter from Mark Twain” Number XI [bibliog.].

In his letter to the Alta, which ran May 26, Sam mentioned staying in Quincy with General James W. Singleton (1811-1892) .

But Quincy is a wonderful place. It has always thrived—sometimes slowly and steadily, sometimes with a rush—but always making an unquestionable progress. It claims a population of 25,000 now, and it looks as if the claim were well founded. It is the second city of Illinois, in population, business, activity and enterprise, and high promise for the future. I have small faith in their project of bridging the Mississippi, but they ought to know their own business.

I spent a night at General Singleton’s—one of the farmer princes of Illinois—he lives two miles from Quincy, in a very large and elegantly furnished house, and does an immense farming business and is very wealthy. He lights his house with gas made on the premises—made from the refuse of petroleum, by pressure. The apparatus could be stowed in a bath-room very conveniently. All you have to do is to pour a gallon or two of the petroleum into a brass cylinder and give a crank a couple of turns and the business is done for the next two days. He uses seventy burners in his house, and his gas bills are only a dollar and a quarter a week. I don’t take any interest in prize bulls, astonishing jackasses and prodigious crops, but I took a strong fancy to that gas apparatus [Schmidt].

On this same day, a letter from Sam concerning his lecture ran in the to the Quincy Herald. The letter was preceded by another from one “John Smith” (imaginary), asking him to lecture in Quincy. Sam’s reply:

John Smith, Esq.—Dear Sir: It gratifies me, more than tongue can express, to receive this kind attention at your hand, and I hasten to reply to your flattering note. I am filled with astonishment to find you here, John Smith. I am astonished, because I thought you were in San Francisco. I am almost certain I left you there. I am almost certain it was you, and I know if it was not you, it was a man whose name is familiar.

I am surprised to find you here, John Smith. And yet I ought not to be, either, because I found you in New York, most unexpectedly; and I stumbled on you in Boston; and was amazed to discover you in New Orleans; and thunder-struck to run across you in St. Louis. You must certainly be of a sort of roving disposition, John Smith. You certainly are, John, and you know that a rolling stone gathers no moss. And a rolling Smith never gathers any moss. There is no real use in anybody’s gathering moss, John, because it isn’t worth any more in the market than sawdust is, and hardly even as much—but then, if we want to get along pleasantly with the world, we must respect the world’s little whims and caprices; and you know that the world has a foolish prejudice in favor of a man’s gathering moss. So you had better locate, John, and go to gathering some. It is no credit to you, anyhow, John Smith, that you are always sure to turn up wherever a man goes. It may be—no, it cannot be possible—that there are two John Smiths. The idea is absurd.
…
Come to National Hall Tuesday night, 9 th inst., John, and bring some of your relations. I would say bring all of them, John, and say it with all my heart, too, but the hall covers only one acre of ground, and your Smith family is a large one, John [The Twainian, May 1939 p2-3; Lorch 58-9].