are
still preserved in Mark Twain's collected works. Most of them were not
Mark Twain's best literature, but they were fresh and readable and suited
the taste of that period. The book sold very well, and, while it did not
bring either great fame or fortune to its author, it was by no means a
failure.

The "hurry" mentioned in Mark Twain's letter to Bret Harte related to his
second venture--that is to say, his New York lecture, an enterprise
managed by an old Comstock friend, Frank Fuller, ex-Governor of Utah.
Fuller, always a sanguine and energetic person, had proposed the lecture
idea as soon as Mark Twain arrived in New York. Clemens shook his head.

"I have no reputation with the general public here," he said. "We
couldn't get a baker's dozen to hear me."

But Fuller insisted, and eventually engaged the largest hall in New York,
the Cooper Union. Full of enthusiasm and excitement, he plunged into the
business of announcing and advertising his attraction, and inventing
schemes for the sale of seats. Clemens caught Fuller's enthusiasm by
spells, but between times he was deeply depressed. Fuller had got up a
lot of tiny hand-bills, and had arranged to hang bunches of these in the
horse-cars. The little dangling clusters fascinated Clemens, and he rode
about to see if anybody else noticed them. Finally, after a long time, a
passenger pulled off one of the bills and glanced at it. A man with him
asked:

"Who's Mark Twain?"

"Goodness knows! I don't."

The lecturer could not ride any farther. He hunted up his patron.

"Fuller," he groaned, "there isn't a sign--a ripple of interest."

Fuller assured him that things were "working underneath," and would be
all right. But Clemens wrote home: "Everything looks shady, at least, if
not dark." And he added that, after hiring the largest house in New
York, he must play against Schuyler Colfax, Ristori, and a double troupe
of Japanese jugglers, at other places of amusement.

When the evening of the lecture approached and only a few tickets had
been sold, the lecturer was desperate.

"Fuller," he said, "there'll be nobody in Cooper Union that night but you
and me. I am on the verge of suicide. I would commit suicide if I had
the pluck and the outfit. You must paper the house, Fuller. You must
send out a flood of complimentaries!"

"Very well," said Fuller. "What we want this time is reputation, anyway
--money is secondary. I'll put you before the choicest and most
intel