He talks about wiping out in his letters to the Sacramento Union about his time in the Sandwich Island. This book has an illustration of it, too. http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Twains-Letters-Hawaii-Twain/dp/0824802888/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y Maybe he didn't like to admit failure of this kind in his lectures. Arianne Laidlaw On Mon, May 4, 2015 at 1:08 PM, David Matuszak <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Mr. Griffin: > > I posted the inquiry below on the Twain Forum some time ago, but = > received just a single response. > =20 > Is there, by chance, any reference in any of the new Twain materials to = > his surfing experience in Hawaii? > =20 > I am attempting to document any Twain reference/comment to surfing = > ("surf-bathing") other than his comments in his novel Roughing It. = > (Twain attempted surfing while in Hawaii, failed miserably, and = > described the experience years later in Roughing It.) > > My extensive review of the literature (including the Twain Project = > website) revealed that Twain rarely, if ever, mentioned his surfing = > attempt in his lectures. Given the novelty of "surf-bathing" or = > "wave-sliding" at the time, it seems odd that Twain routinely omitted = > the experience from his lectures. > > Questions: > 1. Does anyone have a Twain lecture review that specifically mentions > surfing ("surf-bathing" or "wave-sliding")? > 2. Does anyone have any ideas or would like to speculate why Twain > prominently mentions his surfing attempt in the novel Roughing It, but > failed to routinely include it his Sandwich Island or Roughing It = > lectures? > > I look forward to hearing from you, > David Matuszak > > > On May 4, 2015, at 11:14 AM, Benjamin GRIFFIN wrote: > > > There are going to be more stories in the press about this. It's great = > that > > there's interest in our next volume, but because some of the stories = > are > > pretty garbled, I want to clarify that no discrete "cache" or "trove" = > of > > anything has been recently found. > >=20 > > Rick Bucci, a former editor at the MT Project who now lives and works = > in > > New York, has prepared a critical, annotated edition of Mark Twain's > > newspaper correspondence from San Francisco to the Virginia City > > Territorial Enterprise. Rick's painstaking work of many years is now = > being > > copy-edited and re-checked here in Berkeley. > >=20 > > The discovery of new articles by Mark Twain is, as Forum readers will > > realize, a constant process, not a single find. Of the things that are > > "new" in this volume, some have been found by Rick, some by other > > researchers, over a period of many years. > >=20 > > --=20 > > Benjamin Griffin > > Associate Editor, Mark Twain Project > > The Bancroft Library > > University of California, Berkeley 94720-6000 > > (510) 664-4238 > -- Arianne Laidlaw A '58