June 27 Wednesday – Sam wrote from Honolulu to his mother, Jane Clemens and sister Pamela of his story on the Hornet crew. I got the whole story from the third mate & ten of the sailors. If my account gets to the Sacramento Union first, it will be published first all over the United States, France, England, Russia and Germany —all over the world, I may say. You will see it. Mr. Burlingame went with me all the time & helped me question the men—throwing away invitations to dinner with princes & foreign dignitaries, & neglecting all sorts of things to accommodate me—& you know I appreciate that kind of thing… [MTL 1: 347].
Anson Burlingame (1820-1870), lawyer, legislator, and diplomat, put Sam on a stretcher and helped him interview the crew. Sam was suffering from saddle boils. It was Burlingame who gave Sam the advice which is thought to have influenced his future choices:
“You have great ability; I believe you have genius. What you need now is the refinement of association. Seek companionship among men of superior intellect and character. Refine yourself and your work. Never affiliate with inferiors; always climb” [MTB 287].

Frear writes of Sam reconnecting with friends and new ones he made during the Hawaii stay: He found two Coast friends, Rev. Franklin S. Rising and James J. Ayers, who arrived a little before he did [on Mar. 18], and others from the Coast with whom he was not so well acquainted. The closest new friends he made seem to have been Anson Burlingame, his son Edward, and General Van Valkenburgh, visitors, and “Father” Samuel C. Damon, Henry M. Whitney and Henry Macfarlane, local residents. There were others not so close but of whom he thought highly, such as G.P. Judd, at first medical missionary and then long one of the foremost benefactors of Hawaii in government service, his son, A.F. Judd, later Chief Justice, Rev. Lorrin Andrews, missionary, author of the Hawaiian dictionary and phrase book…and Prof. William DeWitt. Alexander, missionary son, salutatorian at Yale, President of Oahu College, historian and philologist, “one of the finest Greek scholars ever produced,” so Twain wrote [24].
Notes: see also source notes. Editorial emphasis. Rising, in the islands for his health, had been rector of the Episcopal church in Virginia City, “a noble young fellow—& for 3 years, there, he & I were fast friends” [MTNJ 1:110n2]. Ayers was one of the founders of the S.F. Call, and would found the Daily Hawaiian Herald in Sept. Whitney (1824-1904) Hawaii’s first postmaster and owner of the Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser. See Nov. 30, 1895 to Whitney. Macfarlane, a Honolulu liquor dealer. One of Clemens’s companions on his “equestrian excursion” on the island of Oahu in March 1866. Van Valkenburg (1821-1888), sometimes without the ending “h,” “former Republican congressman from New York (1861–65) and commander of the 107th Regiment, New York Volunteer Infantry, at the battle of Antietam (1862), was on his way to Japan to take up his duties as American minister resident there” [MTPO; 21 June 1866 to Jane & Pamela, n.5]. Edward “Ned” Burlingame, who originated the joke from Matthew 5:41, “And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.” Andrews (1795-1865) also opened the first post-secondary school for Hawaiians called Lahainaluna Seminary, which evolved into the University of Hawaii. Albert Francis Judd (1838- 1900) chief justice (1881-1900), whose father was physician and statesman, Gerrit Parmele Judd (1803-1873); see also MTNJ 1: 97-98. William DeWitt Alexander (1833-1913), besides Greek scholarship, he was an educator, author and linguist, son of missionary William Patterson Alexander (1805-1884).