These memoirs recount the writer and humorist's scuffling years, during which he beat a path across the American West and all the way to Hawaii. His spirited narrative relates a series of triumphs and misadventures and profiles a many-faceted succession of personalities and locales: the stage drivers and desperadoes of the Great Plains; Mormon society; the mines and miners of Nevada; the climate and characteristics of San Francisco; and the amusing and unexpected traits of Sandwich Island civilization. Twain finds drollery in every corner of his travels, but the sincerity and humanity of his reminiscences provide a realistic vision of now-vanished worlds.