York, had been reprinted East and West, and laughed over in at least
a million homes. Fame had not come to him, but it was on the way.

Yet his outlook seems not to have been a hopeful one.


To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 20, 1866.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I do not know what to write; my life is so
uneventful. I wish I was back there piloting up and down the river
again. Verily, all is vanity and little worth--save piloting.

To think that, after writing many an article a man might be excused for
thinking tolerably good, those New York people should single out a
villainous backwoods sketch to compliment me on! "Jim Smiley and His
Jumping Frog"--a squib which would never have been written but to please
Artemus Ward, and then it reached New York too late to appear in his
book.

But no matter. His book was a wretchedly poor one, generally speaking,
and it could be no credit to either of us to appear between its covers.

This paragraph is from the New York correspondence of the San Francisco
Alta:

(Clipping pasted in.)

"Mark Twain's story in the Saturday Press of November 18th, called
'Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,' has set all New York in a roar,