February 6 Thursday – The Brooklyn Eagle ran an unsigned, teasing announcement on page 3 of Sam’s lecture for the following night. It has that Mark Twain ring to it.

MARK TWAIN

      Mark Twain will lecture on the Sandwich Islands at the Academy on Friday night. His lecture is not to be commended at all. It is painful in its treatment of facts. He has compelled the belief that he is an historical fraud, or that the encyclopedias must all be re-written. This wretched being actually displays no accountability to truth as misunderstood by the Historical Society. He thinks that a ton of fun and not the least scruple of fact is a mixture he can serve up with impunity and dispatch. As to the Sandwich Islands, he was there six months six years ago, and while there suffered incarceration for debt in a live volcano. The painful results are now set at large for an hour’s talk which has compelled him when delivered to leave one place for some other place, then to deliver it as soon as possible. We have no confidence in Mark Twain. He makes people laugh so much that they are precluded from thoughtful attention to the grave themes that might be but are not put into his lecture.