But The Jumping Frog did not die.  Papers printed it and reprinted it, and it was translated into foreign tongues.  The name of “Mark Twain” became known as the author of that sketch, and the two were permanently associated from the day of its publication.

Such fame as it brought did not yield heavy financial return.  Its author continued to win a more or less precarious livelihood doing miscellaneous work, until March, 1866, when he was employed by the Sacramento Union to contribute a series of letters from the Sandwich Islands.  They were notable letters, widely read and freely copied, and the sojourn there was a generally fortunate one.  It was during his stay in the islands that the survivors of the wrecked vessel, the Hornet, came in, after long privation at sea.  Clemens was sick at the time, but Anson Burlingame, who was in Honolulu, on the way to China, had him carried in a cot to the hospital, where he could interview the surviving sailors and take down their story.  It proved a great “beat” for the Union, and added considerably to its author’s prestige.  On his return to San Francisco he contributed an article on the Hornet disaster to Harper’s Magazine, and looked forward to its publication as a beginning of a real career.  But, alas! when it appeared the printer and the proof-reader had somehow converted “Mark Twain” into “Mark Swain,” and his dreams perished.

Undecided as to his plans, he was one day advised by a friend to deliver a lecture.  He was already known as an entertaining talker, and his adviser judged his possibilities well.  In Roughing It we find the story of that first lecture and its success.  He followed it with other lectures up and down the Coast.  He had added one more profession to his intellectual stock in trade.

Mark Twain, now provided with money, decided to pay a visit to his people.  He set out for the East in December, 1866, via Panama, arriving in New York in January.  A few days later he was with his mother, then living with his sister, in St. Louis.  A little later he lectured in Keokuk, and in Hannibal, his old home.

It was about this time that the first great Mediterranean steamship excursion began to be exploited.  No such ocean picnic had ever been planned before, and it created a good deal of interest East and West.  Mark Twain heard of it and wanted to go.  He wrote to friends on the ‘Alta California,’ of San Francisco, and the publishers of that paper had sufficient faith to advance the money for his passage, on the understanding that he was to contribute frequent letters, at twenty dollars apiece.  It was a liberal offer, as rates went in those days, and a godsend in the fullest sense of the word to Mark Twain.