Mark Twain Speaking

12. Roughing it Lecture

48 MARK TWAIN SPEAKING Boston's Brattle Street Church, professor of Greek at Harvard, governor of Massachusetts, ambassador to England, president of Harvard, and secretary of state. He had a great reputation as a public speaker of the formal sort. According to McGuffey's Sixth Reader, "He is celebrated as an elegant and forceful writer, and a chaste orator." "Is he gone to the land ofno laughter" / This poem, by James Rhoades, was published in the London Spectator on March 9,1867, soon after the death of Ward in Southampton. It was a late addition to the lecture, put in after a number of Mark Twain's performances had been sharply criticized. All reports agree that he impressed his audiences by reading the verses eloquently.· 12· For the last eight weeks of the lyceum season of 1871-72, Mark Twain used "Roughing It," which was much morefavorably received than his two previous lectures on this tour. It was also successful in London, where he delivered itfor two weeks in December 1873, then in Leicester and Liverpool under the title, "Roughing It On the Silver Frontier." Roughing It Lecture Lecture Season, 1871-72; England, 1873 Ladies and genfiemen: By request of the chairman of the committee , who has been very busy, and is very tired, I suppose, I ask leave to introduce to you the lecturer of the evening, Mr. Clemens, otherwise Mark Twain, a gentleman whose great learning, whose historical accuracy, whose devotion to science, and whose veneration for the truth, are only equaled by his high moral character and his majestic presence. I refer in these vague and general terms to myself. I am a little opposed to the custom ofceremoniously introducing a lecturer to an audience, partly because it seems to me that it is not entirely necessary where a man has been pretty well advertised, and partly MARK TWAIN SPEAKING 49 because it makes a lecturer feel uncomfortably awkward. But where it is necessary I would much rather make it myself. Then I can get in all the facts. But it is not really the introduction that I care for-I don't care about that-that don't discommode me-but it's the compliments that sometimes go with it. That's what hurts. It would hurt anybody. The idea of a young lady being introduced into society as the sweetest singer or the finest conversationalist! You might as well knock her in the head at once. She could not say a word the rest of the evening. I never had but one public introduction that seemed to me just exactly the thing-an introduction brimful of grace. Why, it was a sort of inspiration. And yet the man who made it wasn't acquainted with me; but he was sensible to the backbone, and he said to me: "Now you don't want any compliments?" I said he was exactly right, I didn't want any compliments. And when he introduced me he said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I shan't fool away any unnecessary time in this introduction . I don't know anything about this man; at least I know only two things: one is, that he has never been in the penitentiary; and the other is, I don't know why." Such an introduction as that puts a man at his ease right off. Now when I first started out on this missionary expedition, I had a lecture which I liked very well, but by and by I got tired of telling that same old stuff over and over again, and then I got up another lecture, and after that another one, and I am tired of that; so I just thought tonight I would try something fresh, ifyou are willing. I don't suppose you care what a lecturer talks about if he only tells the truth-at intervals. Now I have got a book in press (it will be out pretty soon), over 600 octavo pages, and illustrated after the fashion oftheInnocents Abroad. Terms-however I am not around canvassing for the work. I should like to talk a little of that book to you tonight. It is very fresh in my mind, as it is not more than three months since I wrote it. Say thirty or forty pages-or if you prefer it the whole 600. Ten or twelve years ago, I crossed the continent from Missouri to California, in the old overland stagecoach, a good while before the Pacific...