The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Mark Twain [good summer reads .TXT] 📗

order to build up States and come back as United States Senators. But the man who was acting in the Governor’s place was the Secretary of the Territory, Frank Fuller⁠—called Governor, of course, just as Orion was in the great days when he got that accident-title through Governor Nye’s absences. Titles of honor and dignity once acquired in a democracy, even by accident and properly usable for only forty-eight hours, are as permanent here as eternity is in heaven. You can never take away those titles. Once a justice of the peace for a week, always “judge” afterward. Once a major of militia for a campaign on the Fourth of July, always a major. To be called colonel, purely by mistake and without intention, confers that dignity on a man for the rest of his life. We adore titles and heredities in our hearts, and ridicule them with our mouths. This is our democratic privilege.

Well, Fuller was acting Governor, and he gave us a very good time during those two or three days that we rested in Great Salt Lake City. He was an alert and energetic man; a pushing man; a man who was able to take an interest in anything that was going⁠—and not only that, but take five times as much interest in it as it was worth, and ten times as much as anybody else could take in it⁠—a very live man.

I was on the Pacific coast thereafter five or six years, and returned to the States by the way of the Isthmus in January, ’67. In the previous year I had spent several months in the Sandwich Islands for the Sacramento Union, and had returned to San Francisco empty as to cash, but full of information⁠—information proper for delivery from the lecture platform. My letters from the Islands had given me a large notoriety⁠—local notoriety. It did not extend eastward more than a hundred miles or so, but it was a good notoriety to lecture on, and I made use of it on the platform in California and Nevada and amassed twelve or fifteen hundred dollars in the few nights that I labored for the instruction and amusement of my public. Fifteen hundred dollars was about half⁠—the doorkeeper got the rest. He was an old circus man and knew how to keep door.

When I arrived in New York I found Fuller there in some kind of business. He was very hearty, very glad to see me, and wanted to show me his wife. I had not heard of a wife before; had not been aware that he had one. Well, he showed me his wife, a sweet and gentle woman with most hospitable and kindly and winning ways. Then he astonished me by showing me his daughters. Upon my word, they were large and matronly of aspect, and married⁠—he didn’t say how long. Oh, Fuller was full of surprises. If he had shown me some little children, that would have been well enough, and reasonable. But he was too young-looking a man to have grown children. Well, I couldn’t fathom the mystery and I let it go. Apparently it was a case where a man was well along in life, but had a handsome gift of not showing his age on the outside.

Governor Fuller⁠—it is what all his New York friends called him now, of course⁠—was in the full storm of one of his enthusiasms. He had one enthusiasm per day, and it was always a storm. He said I must take the biggest hall in New York and deliver that lecture of mine on the Sandwich Islands⁠—said that people would be wild to hear me. There was something catching about that man’s prodigious energy. For a moment he almost convinced me that New York was wild to hear me. I knew better. I was well aware that New York had never heard of me, was not expecting to hear of me, and didn’t want to hear of me⁠—yet that man almost persuaded me. I protested, as soon as the fire which he had kindled in me had cooled a little, and went on protesting. It did no good. Fuller was sure that I should make fame and fortune right away without any trouble. He said leave it to him⁠—just leave everything to him⁠—go to the hotel and sit down and be comfortable⁠—he would lay fame and fortune at my feet in ten days.

I was helpless. I was persuadable, but I didn’t lose all of my mind, and I begged him to take a very small hall, and reduce the rates to sideshow prices. No, he would not hear of that⁠—said he would have the biggest hall in New York City. He would have the basement hall in Cooper Institute, which seated three thousand people and there was room for half as many more to stand up; and he said he would fill that place so full, at a dollar a head, that those people would smother and he could charge two dollars apiece to let them out. Oh, he was all on fire with his project. He went ahead with it.

He said it shouldn’t cost me anything. I said there would be no profit. He said: “Leave that alone. If there is no profit that is my affair. If there is profit it is yours. If it is loss, I stand the loss myself, and you will never hear of it.”

He hired Cooper Institute, and he began to advertise this lecture in the usual way⁠—a small paragraph in the advertising columns of the newspapers. When this had continued about three days I had not yet heard anybody or any newspaper say anything about that lecture, and I got nervous. “Oh,” he said, “it’s working around underneath. You don’t see it on the surface.” He said, “Let it alone; now, let it work.”

Very well, I allowed it to work⁠—until about the sixth or seventh day. The lecture would be due in three or four