ach man. I got the whole story
from the third mate and two 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, and
helped me question the men--throwing away invitations to dinner with the
princes and foreign dignitaries, and neglecting all sorts of things to
accommodate me. You know how I appreciate that kind of thing--especially
from such a man, who is acknowledged to have no superior in the
diplomatic circles of the world, and obtained from China concessions in
favor of America which were refused to Sir Frederick Bruce and Envoys of
France and Russia until procured for them by Burlingame himself--which
service was duly acknowledged by those dignitaries. He hunted me up as
soon as he came here, and has done me a hundred favors since, and says
if I will come to China in the first trip of the great mail steamer
next January and make his house in Pekin my home, he will afford me
facilities that few men can have there for seeing and learning. He will
give me letters to the chiefs of the great Mail Steamship Company which
will be of service to me in this matter. I expect to do all this, but
I expect to go to the States first--and from China to the Paris World's
Fair.

Don't show this letter.

Yours affly
SAM.

P. S. The crown Princess of this Kingdom will be buried tomorrow with
great ceremony--after that I sail in two weeks for California.

This concludes Mark Twain's personal letters from the islands.
Of his descriptive news letters there were about twenty, and they
were regarded by the readers of the Union as distinctly notable.
Re-reading those old letters to-day it is not altogether easy to
understand why. They were set in fine nonpareil type, for one
thing, which present-day eyes simply refuse at any price, and the
reward, by present-day standards, is not especially tempting.

The letters began in the Union with the issue of April the 16th,
1866. The first--of date March 18th--tells of the writer's arrival
at Honolulu. The humor in it is not always of a high order; it
would hardly pass for humor today at all. That the same man who
wrote the Hawaiian letters in 1866 (he was