1885
Mark Twain was staying the Plankinton Hotel when this menu appeared in 1885. He was in Milwaukee on tour with Southern author George W. Cable, who marveled at Twain’s talent as a stand-up comedian. Writing to his wife Louise the next day, Cable revealed that Twain “worked & worked incessantly on these programs until he has effected in all of them—there are 3—a gradual growth of both interest & humor so that the audience never has to find anything less, but always more, entertaining than what precedes it. He says, ‘I don’t want them to get tired out laughing before we get to the end.’ The result is we have always a steady crescendo ending in a double climax….his careful, untiring, incessant labors are an education.”