August 3 Saturday – The Clemens party (the ladies may have stayed in Butte) traveled some 60 miles to Helena, Mont. and took rooms at the Hotel Helena. Fatout lists a supper speech before the Montana Club [MT Speaking 663]. An incident from that supper from James B. Pond’s diary:

In Helena (August 3d) the people did not care for lectures. They all liked “Mark” and enjoyed meeting him, but there was no public enthusiasm for the man that has made the early history of that mining country romantic and famous all over the world. The Montana Club entertained him grandly after the lecture, and he met many old friends and acquaintances. Some of them had come all the way from Virginia City to see their former comrade of the mining camps. One man, now very rich, came from Virginia City, Nevada, on purpose to see “Mark” and settle an old score. When the glasses were filled, and “Mark’s” health proposed, this man interrupted the proceedings by saying:

“Hold on a minute; before we go further I want to say to you, Sam Clemens, that you did me a d — d dirty trick over there in Silver City, and I’ve come here to have a settlement with you.”

There was a deathly silence for a moment, when “Mark” said in his deliberate drawl:

“Let’s see. That — was — before — I — reformed, wasn’t — it?”

Senator Sanders suggested that inasmuch as the other fellow had never reformed, Clemens and all the others present forgive him and drink together, which all did. Thus “the row was broken up before it commenced” (Buck Fanshaw) — and all was well. “Mark” told stories until after twelve. We walked from the club to the hotel up quite a mountain, the first hard walk he has had. He stands the light air well, and is getting strong.

Fatout quotes the Aug. 5 Helena Daily Herald, which called the house a “culture audience,” which “enjoyed the easy style and unaffected manner of the speaker quite as much as the stories he told.” He also writes about Sam’s endurance:

“Afterward the usual crush of people shook hands, and there was the customary reception, this time at the Montana Club. Mark Twain had stamina. Feeling his age, putting great energy into his readings, and partly disabled by the carbuncle, he yet bore up under a hardy regime both on and off the platform. Besides social events, he faced a steady parade of interviewers. All of them, he said, asked the same questions he had answered”

…so many millions of times already: “First visit? … Where do you go from here? … Have you enjoyed the trip? … Are you going to write a book about the voyage? What will be the character of it?” (tempted to say hydrophobia, seamanship and agriculture.) [Lecture Circuit 248: citing Paine, MT Notebook 248].

The Missoula Montana Evening Republican ran a 4 ½ X 6” picture of Mark Twain with a facsimile of his signature below it and the caption, “At the Bennett Opera House Monday” (Aug. 5) [Copy from Tenney].