There was plenty of amusing experience on this tour. At one place, when the lecture was over, an old man came to him and said:
“Be them your natural tones of eloquence?”
At Grass Valley there was a rival show, consisting of a lady tight-rope walker and her husband. It was a small place, and the tight-rope attraction seemed likely to fail. The lady's husband had formerly been a compositor on the Enterprise, so that he felt there was a bond of brotherhood between him and Mark Twain.
“Look here,” he said. “Let's combine our shows. I'll let my wife do the tight-rope act outside and draw a crowd, and you go inside and lecture.”
The arrangement was not made.
Following custom, the lecturer at first thought it necessary to be introduced, and at each place McCarthy had to skirmish around and find the proper person. At Red Dog, on the Stanislaus, the man selected failed to appear, and Denis had to provide another on short notice. He went down into the audience and captured an old fellow, who ducked and dodged but could not escape. Denis led him to the stage, a good deal frightened.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “this is the celebrated Mark Twain from the celebrated city of San Francisco, with his celebrated lecture about the celebrated Sandwich Islands.”
That was as far as he could go; but it was far enough. Mark Twain never had a better introduction. The audience was in a shouting humor from the start.
Clemens himself used to tell of an introduction at another camp, where his sponsor said:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I know only two things about this man: the first is that he's never been in jail, and the second is I don't know why.”