I'll put you before the choicest, most intelligent
audience that ever was gathered in New York City. I will bring in the
school-instructors--the finest body of men and women in the world."
Fuller immediately sent out a deluge of complimentary tickets, inviting
the school-teachers of New York and Brooklyn, and all the adjacent
country, to come free and hear Mark Twain's great lecture on Kanakadom.
This was within forty-eight hours of the time he was to appear.
Senator Nye was to have joined Clemens and Fuller at the Westminster,
where Clemens was stopping, and they waited for him there with a
carriage, fuming and swearing, until it was evident that he was not
coming. At last Clemens said:
"Fuller, you've got to introduce me."
"No," suggested Fuller; "I've got a better scheme than that. You get up
and begin by bemeaning Nye for not being there. That will be better
anyway."
Clemens said:
"Well, Fuller, I can do that. I feel that way. I'll try to think up
something fresh and happy to say about that horse-thief."
They drove to Cooper Union with trepidation. Suppose, after all, the
school-teachers had declined to come? They went half an hour before the
lecture was to begin. Forty years later Mark Twain said:
"I couldn't keep away. I wanted to see that vast Mammoth cave and die.
But when we got near the building I saw that all the streets were blocked
with people, and that traffic had stopped. I couldn't believe that these
people were trying to get into Cooper Institute; but they were, and when
I got to the stage at last the house was jammed full-packed; there wasn't
room enough left for a child.
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