Mark Twain's Sandwich Islands Lecture at St. Louis

W5 tHEN ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE compiled Twain's Speeches,' he included in the volume some extracts from Twain's original lecture on the Sandwich Islands, delivered in San Francisco on October 2, i866. In a preface to the extracts Paine informs the reader that this lecture was times repeated in this country and Great Britain. This statement is, however, only approximately correct, for while Twain lectured on the Sandwich Islands at many times and places during i866 and I867, he varied the lectures considerably to suit the circumstances under which each speech was given. It was on Monday evening, March 25, 1867, that Twain delivered the Sandwich Islands lecture in St. Louis. Six years had elapsed since he had given up piloting and had left the city which had been his home for nearly four years to go West with his brother Orion, the newly appointed Secretary of the Nevada Territory. Now, back in St. Louis for a brief visit with his family and friends, he appeared on the platform at Mercantile Hall, no longer Sam Clemens, obscure river man and pilot, but Mark Twain, journalist, author, lecturer, and well-known humorist. Using the same techniques for ballyhooing the St. Louis lecture that he had used so successfully in San Francisco and other Western towns, Twain captured local interest by means of a humorous advertisement in which he promised, in order to illustrate the customs of the ancient cannibals of the Sandwich Islands, to devour a child in the presence of the audience, if some lady will kindly volunteer an infant for the occasion.2 In the Sunday edition of the Missouri Republican he also published a letter, in which he humorously explained his fitness to lecture for the benefit of his sponsors, the South St. Louis Mission Sunday School, and offered a number of farcical prizes in order to promote interest in his lecture. The letter is so typical of Twain's earlier humor and of his technique in advertising his first public appearances that it is offered here in full

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