Duncan began running an advertisement in the Tribune and other newspapers on Monday, 3 June, announcing that “all baggage should be on board on saturday morning, and passengers are requested to be on board at 2 o’clock. The ship will positively sail at 3” (“Ocean Steamers,” New York Tribune, 3 June 67, 7).

“Private Miles O’Reilly” was Charles Graham Halpine, editor of the New York Citizen, the organ of the reform movement. He was an Irishman, educated at Trinity College, Dublin, who had worked on B. P. Shillaber’s Boston Carpet-Bag, as well as on the New York Times, Herald, and Leader before he enlisted in the Union forces, where he distinguished himself both in battle and as an administrator, resigning ultimately with the brevet of brigadier general. Halpine’s creation “Miles O’Reilly,” an uneducated Irish private in the Forty-seventh New York Regiment, became popular through his wartime newspaper letters. In early 1864 these and other works by Halpine were published by Carleton as The Life and Adventures, Songs, Services, and Speeches of Private Miles O’Reilly (47th Regiment, New York Volunteers), with comic illustrations by Edward F. Mullen. This volume sold well, and was followed promptly in 1866 by Baked Meats of the Funeral. A Collection of Essays, Poems, Speeches, Histories, and Banquets. By Private Miles O’Reilly, also published by Carleton. Charles Henry Webb had recently been contributing to the New York Citizen (as well as half a dozen other journals) and may have introduced Clemens to Halpine, whose journal had puffed his lecture and reviewed the Jumping Frog book favorably in early May (“The Citizen’s Book Table,” New York Citizen, 4 May 67, 4). Halpine and Clemens dined with John Russell Young, managing editor of the New York Tribune, the weekly edition of which had a circulation of 190,000, making it one of the most widely sold periodicals in the United States. Clemens’s letters appeared first in the daily Tribune, which had a circulation of about 43,000, and then in the weekly. His New York Herald letters reached 65,000 in the daily form, more than 10,000 in the weekly. By contrast, the San Francisco Alta California (one of the largest western newspapers) had a circulation of 10,000 in its daily form, and at least 5,000 in its weekly (Rowell, 11, 71, 171).

The New York business agent for the Alta California, John J. Murphy, and his wife (who is otherwise unidentified) lived at 36 East Thirty-first Street, just five blocks uptown from Dan Slote’s house (Wilson 1867, 752). Frederick MacCrellish, principal owner of the Alta, lived in San Francisco but, by this account, was planning to be in New York by Christmas.

The likely source of this offer is suggested by the notebook Clemens kept between mid-May and 2 July 1867. On its endpaper he wrote: “Edwin Lee Brown ǀ Lecture Man ǀ Chicago.” Brown represented the Young Men’s Library Association in Chicago and, until recently, had served also as secretary of the Associated Western Literary Societies, whose chief task was to coordinate the requests of the member societies with the available time of individual lecturers. On 8 May, however, by a vote of the delegates at their annual meeting in Chicago, Brown was replaced by G. L. Torbert. Brown promptly “established a lecture agency of his own in direct opposition to the Associated Western Literary Societies,” and he evidently declined to turn over even the membership records to Torbert ( N&J1 , 315; Hoeltje, 126–29; “Northwestern Literary Association,” Chicago Times, 9 May 67, 4). Clemens must have replied favorably to Brown’s initial inquiry, since he apparently received another, more specific, offer from Brown in August through his agent, Frank Fuller: see 7 Aug 67 to Fullerclick to open link.

Clemens and McComb were both Masons. At this time and until October 1867, McComb was serving as grand marshal of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the State of California (Langley 1867, 673).