Mar. 22—When famed author, writer, newspaperman and satirist Mark Twain enjoyed his first "Day at Niagara" in 1869, he encountered signs of frustration just about every place he visited.
As Twain himself noted, there were signs in the Falls advising him to bolt his door and tie up his dog and others warning him against scraping matches on the wall of his hotel and to turn the gas off when he retired for the evening.
"I always had a high regard for the signers of the Declaration of Independence, but now they do not really seem to amount to much alongside the signers of Niagara Falls," Twain wrote in "A Day at Niagara," a piece he published on Aug. 21, 1869, in the Buffalo Express, a newspaper where he assumed roles as part owner and managing editor days earlier.
In his first story about his experiences in the Falls, Twain said he wanted to roll on the grass, climb a tree, have a smoke and toss a rock at some picnickers during his first visit to the American side.
Instead, he found himself "annoyed" by all the signs telling him to behave.
"I drew my flask from my pocket, but it was all in vain," Twain wrote. "A sign confronted me which said: 'No drinking allowed on these premises.'"
Twain's humorous takes on Niagara Falls from both sides of the border are recounted in a new book by local author and former Niagara Gazette staffer Thomas J. Reigstad.
"The Illustrated Mark Twain and the Buffalo Express: 10 Stories and over a Century of Sketches" offers an illustrated look at Twain's life and work from 1869 to 1872 when he called Western New York home.
The book collects 10 feature stories published by Twain for the Buffalo Express newspaper as well as an analysis from Reigstad, a Mark Twain scholar and emeritus professor of English at Buffalo State University who worked at the Niagara Gazette following the closure of the Courier Express where he was a librarian, features writer and copy editor from 1969 until 1982.
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