per Denis E. McCarthy and Telegraph Operator
26 October 1866 • Meadow Lake, Calif. (Goodman, 2, UCCL 11613)
Our circus is coming. Sound the hewgag. 1explanatory note
A toy instrument resembling a kazoo, dating from the 1850s, which produced a doleful sound. Used humorously, the word was understood to mean “an imaginary musical instrument feigned to be loudly sounded on occasions of special jubilation” (Whitney and Smith, 3:2818–19).
Clemens, who was traveling with his friend and lecture manager Denis E. McCarthy (“Mac”), had delivered his Sandwich Islands lecture in You Bet (Nevada County, California) on 25 October, and planned to lecture next in Virginia City, Nevada. En route, they stopped in Meadow Lake (Nevada County) on 26 October and remained overnight, traveling south early the next morning to Cisco (formerly Heaton Station, Placer County). From there they took the Pioneer stage to Virginia City, arriving that same evening. To advertise Clemens’s lecture, the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise reprinted his latest Sandwich Islands letter to the Sacramento Union on 27 October, “How, for Instance?” from the New York Weekly Review on 28 October, and the telegram itself on 28 October, noting:
Mark Twain Coming.—“Mark Twain,” who stands at the head of American humorists, is dignifiedly wending his way toward Virginia, as will be seen by the following characteristic dispatch: ...
The “circus” alluded to is “Mark’s” lecture on the Sandwich Islands—a stupendously amusing affair, if we are to credit the California journals. “Mac.,” which follows the signature of the lecturer, represents our old confrere, D. E. McCarthy, who, we take it, is preceding Mark in his journeyings and making the crooked paths straight. Of course the whole of Virginia will turn out to see Sam. Clemens and his “show” when he makes his appearance here.
P. S.—Since the foregoing was written Mark Twain and D. E. McCarthy have arrived. (Goodman, 2)
On 30 October the Enterprise first announced that Clemens would lecture in Virginia City the following evening, adding the comment, “We expect to see the very mountains shake with a tempest of applause” (“Mark Twain,” 3; “Arrival,” Meadow Lake Weekly Sun, 27 Oct 66, 3; Gudde, 62; L1 , 361–62; Doten, 2:900; SLC 1866; SLC 1866).
Goodman, 2. Copy-text is a microfilm edition of the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise for 28 October 1866 in the Newspaper and Microcopy Division, University of California, Berkeley (CU-NEWS). The California State Telegraph Company form is recreated from Dixon Wecter’s transcription of a 1 Nov 66 telegram to Abraham V. Z. Curry and others ( L1 , 363, 544–45). The California State Telegraph Company was the only telegraph company operating in California in 1866 (Langley 1865, 628–29; 1867, 693–94).
L5 , 681–682; Salt Lake City Union Vedette, 3 Nov 66, 2.