The Friends of Newburgh Free Library found another review for our
enjoyment.  I can see why Cable though so highly of himself after this
show.  The reviewer was certainly pleased with Cable.


> Newburgh Daily Journal November 21, 1884 p.2, col 5
> 
> 
> The Twain-Cable Readings.
> 
> 
> A Newburgh audience has had the pleasure of spending an evening with
> “Mark Twain” and George W. Cable. And enjoyed it to the utmost. The
> Opera House, where the entertainment was given, was only half filled.
> This may be accounted for by several reasons: Weather—several other
> largely attended first class entertainments on preceding evenings this
> week—the price of reserved seats—another reading in town the same
> evening—the night on which several church organizations hold weekly
> service, etc. But the gathering was select and appreciative.
> 
> 
> Gifted as Samuel L. Clemens is as a humorist and amusing as his
> writings are, it is questionable whether the author is not more
> delightful still when as a reader he gives additional life and color
> to his characters on the stage. As a reader Mr. Clemens is utterly
> outside and beyond the reach of all conventional rule. But coming from
> his own lips his lines gather and convey innumerable new and charming
> significancies. He is a wonderful story-teller, and, with one or two
> exceptions,--when he read about “King Sollermunn” from the advance
> sheets of “Huckleberry Finn,” and the “Tragic Tale of a Fishwife”--it
> seemed as if he had just dropped in to tell a story. When telling
> about “the duel,” and the “ghost story,” and his “trying situation” at
> Luzerne and how the stranger was cured of stammering, it was difficult
> to realize that he was reciting from a book. He found the listeners
> bubbling over with expectation and welcome, and more and more
> demonstrative as he from time to time presented pictures extremely
> ludicrous. Mr. Clemens may have over-estimated his reputation when he
> assumed that the audience would willingly tolerate from his lips
> occasionally what some of his hearers considered coarse or unrefined
> sentences that could have been modified or dispensed with—that added
> nothing to the pleasure of the entertainment.
> 
> 
> It is now about eight years since Mr. Cable's first story appeared in
> “Scribner's Monthly” and at once proclaimed to those who were on the
> watch for such things that a new literary field was being opened up.
> Then followed “Les Belles Demoiselles,” “Cafe des Exiles,” “Posson
> Jones,” etc., till this unique and spontaneous literary growth seemed
> to culminate in that prose epic of Creole pride and decline, “The
> Grandissimes.” As might be surmissed from his writings Mr. Cable is a
> Southerner. Family misfortunes compelled him to leave school at
> fourteen; at nineteen he entered the Southern army and studied his
> Bible and Latin grammar in his leisure moments. Afterwards he became a
> civil engineer and studied the Southern swamps and bayous which he
> describes so wonderfully. Next he entered a cotton mercantile house,
> where he studied Creole manners and dialect from contact, and in the
> intervals of his leisure began to write the stories that have since
> revealed him to the world. He is said to be of Virginia cavalier stock
> on his father's, and Puritan New England on his mother's side. But
> surely there must be a strong infusion of the French element on some
> side for the man's mental make-up and sympathetic insight is as Gallic
> as is his physical appearance.
> 
> 
> Mr. Cable's reading consisted of a number of the most striking scenes
> from “Dr. Sevier,” interspersed with snatches of Creole songs. In the
> scenes in which the interviews between the widow Kate Riley and
> Narcissae and the courtship and capture of the impressible Kate by the
> Italian Ristofallo are re-enacted, the unctious brogue of the widow
> and the “cheek” of Ristofalo were set forth by the author in capital
> style. The gem of Mr. Cable's reading was “Mary's Night Ride.” He
> re-enacted this exquisite chapter with great dramatic power and fire,
> and held his audience almost breathless. He pictured out the story so
> eloquently and vividly that it seemed as though one could almost see
> it for himself. It was a literary gem beautifully recited.
> 
> 
> It was a treat to hear these two great writers interpret their own
> imaginations. It will be a long time—or until they come again—before
> Newburgh will hear another entertainment of the kind equally
> meritorious. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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