8, when I found myself in front of the only audience I had ever
faced, for the fright which pervaded me from head to foot was
paralyzing. It lasted two minutes and was as bitter as death, the memory
of it is indestructible, but it had its compensations, for it made me
immune from timidity before audiences for all time to come. I lectured
in all the principal Californian towns and in Nevada, then lectured once
or twice more in San Francisco, then retired from the field rich--for
me--and laid out a plan to sail Westward from San Francisco, and go
around the world. The proprietors of the "Alta" engaged me to write an
account of the trip for that paper--fifty letters of a column and a half
each, which would be about two thousand words per letter, and the pay to
be twenty dollars per letter.

I went East to St. Louis to say good-bye to my mother, and then I was
bitten by the prospectus of Captain Duncan of the "Quaker City"
excursion, and I ended by joining it. During the trip I wrote and sent
the fifty letters; six of them miscarried, and I wrote six new ones to
complete my contract. Then I put together a lecture on the trip and
delivered it in San Francisco at great and satisfactory pecuniary
profit, then I branched out into the country and was aghast at the
result: I had been entirely forgotten, I never had people enough in my
houses to sit as a jury of inquest on my lost reputation! I inquired
into this curious condition of things and found that the thrifty owners
of that prodigiously rich "Alta" newspaper had _copyrighted_ all those
poor little twenty-dollar letters, and had threatened with prosecution
any journal which should venture to copy a paragraph from them!

And there I was! I had contracted to furnish a large book, concerning
the excursion, to the American Publishing Co. of Hartford, and I
supposed I should need all those letters to fill it out with. I was in
an uncomfortable situation--that is, if the proprietors of this
stealthily acquired copyright should refuse to let me use the letters.
That is just what they did; Mr. Mac--something--I have forgotten the
rest of his name--said his firm were going to make a book out of the
letters in order to get back the thousand dollars which they had paid
for them. I said that if they had acted fairly and honorably, and had
allowed the country press to use the letters or portions of them, my
lecture-skirmish on the coast would have paid me ten thousand dollars,
whereas