"But there is a Scriptural command for you to go."

"If you can quote one I'll obey it," said Clemens.

"Very well. The Bible says, 'If any man require thee to walk a mile, go
with him, Twain.'"

The command was regarded as sufficient. Clemens quoted the witticism
later (in his first lecture), and it was often repeated in after-years,
ascribed to Warner, Ward, and a dozen others. Its origin was as here set
down.

Under date of July 4 (1866), Mark Twain's Sandwich Island note-book says:

Went to a ball 8.30 P.M.--danced till 12.30; stopped at General Van
Valkenburg's room and talked with him and Mr. Burlingame and Ed
Burlingame until 3 A.M.

From which we may conclude that he had altogether recovered. A few days
later the legation party had sailed for China and Japan, and on the
19th Clemens himself set out by a slow sailing-vessel to San Francisco.
They were becalmed and were twenty-five days making the voyage. Captain
Mitchell and others of the wrecked Hornet were aboard, and he put in a
good deal of time copying their diaries and preparing a magazine article
which, he believed, would prove his real entrance to the literary world.

The vessel lay almost perfectly still, day after day, and became a
regular playground at sea. Sundays they had services and Mark Twain led
the choir.

"I hope they will have a better opinion of our music in heaven than I
have down here," he says in his notes. "If they don't, a thunderbolt
will knock this vessel endways." It is perhaps worthy of mention that on
the night of the 27th of July he records having seen another "splendidly
colored, lunar rainbow." That he regarded this as an indication of
future good-fortune is not surprising, considering the events of the
previous year.

It was August 13th when he reached San Francisco, and the note-book entry
of that day says:

Home again. No--not home again--in prison again, end all the wild
sense of freedom gone. The city seems so cramped and so dreary with
toil and care and business anxiety. God help me, I wish I were at
sea again!

There were compensations, however. He went over to Sacramento, and was
abundantly welcomed. It was agreed that, in addition to the twenty
dollars allowed for each letter, a special bill should be made for the
Hornet report.

"How much do you think it ought to be, Mark?" James Anthony asked.

"Oh, I'm a modest man; I don't want the whole Union office. Call it $100
a co