April 18 Saturday – Sam gave his lecture in Marysville, California. The Sacramento Daily Union ran this revealing review Sam’s performance of the night before:

MARK TWAIN’S LECTURE.—The Metropolitan Theater was crowded last night with a fashionable and intellectual audience to hear Mark Twain’s lecture. The speak began about half past eight o’clock and continued till ten. He began by correcting a misstatement of the subject of the lecture as published in the papers. He said he did not intend to speak much about the Holy Land, but mostly about the voyage of the Quaker City and the company aboard of her. This part of the discourse was characterized throughout by the speaker’s peculiar humor and wit; for Clemens is a wit as well as a humorist, and either as wit or humorist, much superior to Artemus Ward. A remarkable peculiarity of his style is the angularity of his contrasts, sharp turns from the ridiculous to the sublime, and comparisons which bring astonishment and laughter in touching distance. His use of adjectives is something marvelous, especially in piling up invective. The listener fears at first that the sentence is going to be weakened or lost in the confusion of polysyllabics, but to his amazement out plumps the exact fitting substantive at last which requires the force of every expletive used. The same thing is observable in his writing. No modern letter writer has so well succeeded in the use of long sentences or their proper relief by the right sort of proceeding and succeeding short ones. The first five minutes of the lecture sounded extremely frivolous, and reminded us of Artemus Ward’s “Babes in the Wood.” The next fifteen minutes brought the speaker and his audience to a mutually good understanding, and was something more than mere humor. The last hour was a decidedly rich treat and at times held the crowd with the deepest attention, eliciting applause. The applause and close attention were in every case compliments to the substance and not the style of Mr. Clemens’ lecture, for his address is not very good and his voice is low and sometimes aggravating to listeners. He draws upon rhetoric, history, fancy and the poetic, just often enough to show that he appreciates these qualities, but not so much as to weary those who appreciate them less than the humorous traits of his mind. His allusions to the ruined historical grandeurs along the shores of the Mediterranean was an eloquent and concise summary wrought up with skill to its climax and not continued a minute beyond the point where good taste and good sense, which is only another name for good taste, demanded its dismissal. The picture of Palestine did not disappoint the expectations of those who had read his letters from there; but it was greatly at variance with the customary sentimentalities and grandiloquent musings of the popular travelers who have within the last half century written on that subject. No two men are alike impressed with any scene. What inspires one with sublime fervor sometimes excites ridicule in another. Renan dressed out some of his finest thoughts on the sad shores of the Sea of Galilee, and Lamartine took some of his loftiest flights in Judea. Twain did not behold these scenes through the same glasses. He saw them only with the eyes of a practical American, keenly alive to progress and the present, and prepared for ridicule in spite of the gloss of romance and the eld of history. Yet they are mistaken who deem that he has no fancy or poetic feeling. Voltaire had this none the less because he ridiculed time-honored custom and things held sacred by great names. We confess to a partiality for this California humorist. At the bottom of his intellectual character there seems to us to lie a vast deal of good sense, which his humor is only used to dress up in such presentable style as will hardly fail to please any audience. He lectures to-night in Marysville, and goes thence to Nevada county, and thence of Virginia City [Railton].