May 1 Wednesday – Fuller and Sam had taken Cooper Institute’s hall at a $500 expense before they discovered the many competing attractions: Schuyler Colfax (1823-1885) speaking at Irving Hall; Adelaide Ristori (1822-1906), famous singer, at the French Theatre; Thomas Maguire’s “Imperial Troupe of Japanese Jugglers” at the New York Academy of Music; and “The Black Crook,” an act Lorch calls “the most daring girlie show of the time,” at Niblo’s Garden [Lorch 63].
Sam wrote from New York to his mother, Jane Clemens, and family in St. Louis, expressing worry. He told of his hiring the Cooper at a $500 expense, his worry for the outcome, the conflict with other attractions:
“…everything looks shady, at least, if not dark….I have taken the largest house in New York, and cannot back water. Let her slide! If nobody else cares I don’t” [MTL 2: 38].
Sam inscribed a copy of the Jumping Frog: “To My Mother—the dearest Friend I even had, & the truest. Mark Twain. New York, May 1, 1867” [MTL 2: 38-9n1-2].
Sam also wrote Bret Harte:
The book [Jumping Frog] is out, & is handsome. It is full of damnable errors of grammar & deadly inconsistencies of spelling…I was away & did not read the proofs—but be a friend and say nothing of these things. When my hurry is over I will send you an autograph copy to pisen the children with….I am to lecture in Cooper Institute next Monday night. Pray for me. We sail for the Holy Land June 8. Try & write me (to this hotel,) & it will be forwarded to Paris, where we remain 10 to 15 days [MTL 2: 39].
Due to pre-publication editions of the Jumping Frog, reviews appeared on May 1:

In full: Mr. C.H. Webb has celebrated his debut as publisher by bestowing upon a community long rested from loud laughs, a book calculated to promote healthy good humor in the system. Mark Twain’s book of California stories, The Jumping Frog and Other Sketches—is a work that will make all its readers merry. Mark Twain never resorts to tricks of spelling nor rhetorical buffoonery for the purpose of provoking a laugh; the vein of his humor runs too high and deep to make surface-gilding necessary.—But there are few who can resist the quaint smiles, keen satire, and hard good sense which form the staple of his writings (“Literacy” in the New York Evening Express, p2) [Budd, Reviews 25].
There is a great deal of quaint humor and much pithy wisdom in his writings, and their own merit, as well as the attractive style in which they are produced, must secure them a popularity which will bring its own profit… (“New Publications” in the New York Times, p2) [Budd, Reviews 25].