Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/416

 MARK TWAIN

signment to visit Hawaii for the Sacramento Union and write about the sugar interests. It was in Honolulu that he accomplished one of his greatest feats of &quot;straight newspaper work.&quot; The clipper Hornet had been burned on &quot;the line,&quot; and when the skeleton survivors arrived, after a passage of forty- three days in an open boat on ten days pro visions, Mark Twain gathered their stories, worked all day and all night, and threw a complete account of the horror aboard a schooner that had already cast off. It was the only full account that reached California, and it was not only a clean &quot;scoop&quot; of unusual magnitude, but an admirable piece of literary art. The Union testified its appreciation by paying the correspondent ten times the current rates for it. After six months in the islands, Mark Twain re turned to California, and made his first venture upon the lecture platform. He was warmly received, and delivered several lectures with profit. In 1867 he went East by way of the Isthmus, and joined the Quaker City excursion to Europe and the Holy Land, as correspondent of the Alia California, of San Francisco. During this tour of five or six months the party visited the principal ports of the Mediter ranean and the Black Sea, From this trip grew The Innocents Abroad, the creator of Mark Twain s reputation as a literary force of the first order. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County had preceded it, but The Innocents gave the author his first introduction to international literature. A hun dred thousand copies were sold the first year, and as many more later.

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