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528 MARK TWAIN SPEAKING· 159 · When Clara Clemens made her American concert debut as a contralto, news stories referred to her as "Mark Twain's daughter." The identification annoyed her but delighted herfather. Under strict orders not to usurp the limelight, he attended the concert, sat quietly in the third row, and applauded the singing, as well as the solos of Isadore Luckstone, accompanist, and Marie Nichols, a Boston violinist. Then, when he took a bow with Clara at the end ofthe program, neither was surprised that the audience clamoredfor a speech. Remarks American Concert Debut of Clara Clemens, Eldridge Gymnasium, Norfolk, Connecticut, September 22, 1906 My heart goes out in sympathy to anyone who is making his first appearance before an audience of human beings. By a direct process of memory I go back forty years, less one month-for I'm older than I look. I recall the occasion of my first appearance. San Francisco knew me then only as a reporter, and I was to make my bow to San Francisco as a lecturer. I knew that nothing short ofcompulsion' would get me to the theater. So I bound myself by a hard-and-fast contract so that I could not escape. I got to the theater forty-five minutes before the hour set for the lecture. My knees were shaking so that I didn't know whether I could stand up. If there is an awful, horrible malady in the world, it is stage fright-and seasickness. They are a pair. I had stage fright then for the first and last time. I was only seasick once, too. It was on a little ship on which there were two hundred other passengers. I-was-sick. I was so sick there wasn't any left for those other two hundred passengers. It was dark and lonely behind the scenes in that theater, and I peeked through the little peek holes they have in theater curtains and looked into the big auditorium. That was dark and empty, too. By and by it lighted up, and the audience began to arrive. I had got a number of friends of mine, stalwart men, to sprinkle themselves through the audience armed with big clubs. Every time I MARK TWAIN SPEAKING 529 said anything they could possibly guess I intended to be funny they were to pound those clubs on the floor. Then there was a kind lady in a box up there, also a good friend of mine, the wife of the governor. She was to watch me intently, and whenever I glanced toward her she was going to deliver a gubernatorial laugh that would lead the whole audience into applause. At last I began. I had the manuscript tucked under a United States flag in front of me where I could get at it in case of need. But I managed to get started without it. I walked up and down-I was young in those days and needed the exercise-and talked and talked. Right in the middle of the speech I had placed a gem. I had put in a moving, pathetic part which was to get at the hearts and souls of my hearers. When I delivered it they did just what I hoped and expected. They sat silent and awed. I had touched them. Then I happened to glance up at the box where the governor's wife was-you know what happened. Well, after the first agonizing five minutes, my stage fright left me, never to return. I know if I was going to be hanged I could get up and make a good showing, and I intend to. But I shall never forget my feelings before the agony left me, and I got up here to thank you for her for helping my daughter, by your kindness, to live through her first appearance. And I want to thank you for your appreciation of her singing, which is, by the way, hereditary. Text / "Mark Twain's First Appearance" in MTS(10):221-23; and MTS(23):303-5. myfirst appearance / This story, similar to the version in chapter 78 of Roughing It, may be only a fanciful recollection of what happened at Mark Twain's first San Francisco lecture on October 2, 1866. See Paul Fatout, "Mark Twain's First Lecture: a Parallel," Pacific Historical Review 25, no. 4 (November 1956):347-54. ...

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