Already, in Nevada, Mark Twain had been pointed out as one of the sights of the territory; his sayings were everywhere repeated on the streets. Tom Sawyer was walking the stage and "revelling in his power." Crashes of applause greeted his platform sallies; "the Comstock, ready to laugh," says Mr. Paine, "found delight in his expression and discovered a vast humor in his most earnest statements"; the opera-houses of the mining-towns wherever he went were packed at two dollars a seat; "his improved dress and increased prosperity commanded additional respect." He had "acquired," in short, "a new and lucrative profession at a bound"; and before he went East, and owing to the success of "The Jumping Frog," "those about him were inclined to regard him, in some degree at least, as a national literary figure, and to pay tribute accordingly." When he set out on the voyage of the _Quaker City_ he found himself "billed as an attraction" with General Sherman and Henry Ward Beecher. But this was only a faint promise of the glory that was to follow the publication of "The Innocents Abroad." It was his second book: his profits were $300,000, and it brought him into instant and intimate contact with the most distinguished people in America. Besides this, it brought him the recognition of _The Atlantic Monthly_. It brought him offers of political preferment: a diplomatic position, the postmastership of San Francisco, with a salary of $10,000 a year, a choice of five influential offices in California, anything he might be disposed to accept--"they want to send me abroad, as a Consul or a Minister," he writes from Washington: judges pledge the President's appointment, senators guarantee the confirmation of the Senate. It brought him presently a tremendous reception from "the brains of London, assembled at the annual dinner of the sheriffs of London--mine being (between you and me)," he writes to his publisher, "a name which was received with a flattering outburst of spontaneous applause when the long list of guests was called." It brought him an offer from at least one magazine of "$6,000 cash for twelve articles, of any length and on any subject." It brought him lecture engagements that paid him $1,600 in gold for a single evening; and so popular were these lectures that when one night in Pittsburgh he "played" against Fanny Kemble, the favorite actress of the period, "Miss Kemble had an audience of two hundred against nearly ten times the number who gathered to hear Mark Twain." Could this divided soul, who had rebelled against the career into which he was drifting, question a verdict like that? Almost from the outset his filial conscience had been appeased: of his first lecture tour in Nevada and California we are told that "it paid him well; he could go home now, without shame." But even the promptings of his artistic conscience were now parried and laid at rest: "he had grown more lenient in his opinion of the merits of the 'Frog' story itself since it had