Dear Forum members:
Two students and I are two weeks into a three-month, 12,000-mile drive around the United States as part of a book, web and documentary project called "Traveling with Twain in Search of America's Identity" (our website is travelingwithtwain.org).  The trip will end in Seattle in December.  William H. Hadley, a family friend, provided me with a clipping from a Frank Lynch column in the January 3, 1957, Seattle Post-Intelligencer.  The column is titled "The Cub Reporter and Mark Twain Unsuited."  The column includes an account by Ray O. Hadley, William Hadley's father, of interviewing Twain, who was in the area for an appearance in 1895 at Lighthouse Hall, later "the upper stories of the Bellingham First National Bank Building."  Hadley was a cub reporter for The Blade, a local tri-weekly.  So the story goes, Hadley went to the Fairhaven Hotel to interview Twain, who was walking around in long, trap-door underwear.   Hadley asked Twain, "And what do you think of our Northwest, sir?"  Having experienced a period of fires, Twain had not seen sun, sky or tree tops.  He said, "My God, I haven't seen any of it but the ground."  Hadley raced back to The Blade to write a short article under the headline: "Mark Twain, Unsuited.  Interviewed by Blade Reporter."  Lynch ends his column about Roy Hadley: "Noting as wonderful ever happened to him again."  Is there a way to determine whether such an article ever ran in the tri-weekly Blade (by the way, it would not have had a byline)?  I have not been able to locate copies of The Blade.    Best, Loren Ghiglione

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Twain Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scott Holmes
Sent: Saturday, October 01, 2011 2:49 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Traveling with the Innocents Abroad

Thank you all for this lead.  I've found copies available on Amazon, some for rather exorbitant amounts and others for less than $20.  I've ordered a copy.  Meanwhile I did find a source of pdfs at California Digital Newspaper Collection, cdnc.ucr.edu The pdfs are readable but the scanned text is almost useless.  If you wish text copies you'd probably save time by just typing the letters out rather than trying to correct the scanned text.

My avatar has been doing readings from The Innocents Abroad in Second Life, the virtual on-line world.  I created a web page from the first chapter that includes a link to the YouTube recording as well as an image of the Letter form Mark Twain published August 18, 1867, written June 6, 1867, the day before the Quaker City left the dock.

http://bsh.bscottholmes.com/twain/innocents/chapter1