fe and thought, which sounds so clearly throughout all
his later works. It is the true beginning of his career.

On his return to the United States in November, he resumed his newspaper
work, this time at the National Capital. On his arrival there he found
a letter from Elisha Bliss, of the 'American Publishing Company',
proposing a volume recounting the adventures of the "Excursion," to be
elaborately illustrated, and sold by subscription on a five per cent.
royalty. He eagerly accepted the offer and set to work on his notes.

"I knew Mark Twain in Washington," says Senator William M. Stewart of
Nevada, in his reminiscences 'A Senator of the Sixties', "at a time when
he was without money. He told me his condition, and said he was very
anxious to get out his book. He showed me his notes, and I saw that
they would make a great book, and probably bring him in a fortune. I
promised that I would 'stake' him until he had the book written. I made
him a clerk to my committee in the senate, which paid him six dollars
per day; then I hired a man for one hundred dollars per month to do the
work!" His mischievously extravagant description of Mark Twain at this
time is eminently worthy of record "He was arrayed in a seedy suit which
hung upon his lean frame in bunches, with no style worth mentioning. A
sheaf of scraggly, black hair leaked out of a battered, old, slouch hat,
like stuffing from an ancient Colonial sofa, and an evil-smelling cigar
butt, very much frazzled, protruded from the corner of his mouth. He
had a very sinister appearance. He was a man I had known around the
Nevada mining camps several years before, and his name was Samuel L.
Clemens."

It was during this winter that Mark wrote a number of humorous articles
and sketches--'The Facts in the Case of the Great Beef Contract', the
account of his resignation as clerk of the Senate Committee on
Conchology, and 'Riley--Newspaper Correspondent'. His time was chiefly
devoted to preparing the material for his book; but finding Washington
too distracting, he returned to San Francisco and completed the
manuscript therein July, 1868. For a year the publication of the book
was delayed, as recorded in the Autobiography; but it finally appeared
in print following Mark's indignant telegram to Bliss that, if the book
was not on sale in twenty-four hours, he would bring suit for damages.
Mark Twain records that in nine months the book had taken the publishing
house