Albert Bigelow Paine

“ I am on the verge of suicide. I would commit suicide if I had the pluck and the outfit. You must paper the house, Fuller. You must send out a flood of complimentaries!"
"Very well," said Fuller. "What we want this time is reputation, anyway—money is secondary. I'll put you before the choicest and most intelligent audience that was ever gathered in New York City."
Fuller immediately sent out complimentary tickets to the school-teachers of New York and Brooklyn—a general invitation to come and hear Mark Twain's great lecture on the Sandwich Islands. ”

“ It brought Mark Twain a good deal of a reputation in New York, even if no financial profit, though, in spite of the flood of complimentaries, there was a cash return of something like three hundred dollars. This went a good way toward paying the expenses, while Fuller, in his royal way, insisted on making up the deficit, declaring he had been paid for everything in the fun and joy of the game.
"Mark," he said, "it's all right. The fortune didn't come, but it will. The fame has arrived; with this lecture and your book just out, you are going to be the most-talked-of man in the country. ”

“ A man with him asked:
"Who's Mark Twain?"
"Goodness knows! I don't."
The lecturer could not ride any farther. He hunted up his patron.
"Fuller," he groaned, "there isn't a sign—a ripple of interest."
Fuller assured him that things were "working underneath," and would be all right. But Clemens wrote home: "Everything looks shady, at least, if not dark." And he added that, after hiring the largest house in New York, he must play against Schuyler Colfax, Ristori, and a double troupe of Japanese jugglers, at other places of amusement. ”