Imagine the most famous man in the world, if you will.
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Now imagine he went on a speaking tour across the world, and ended up in Horsham.
In 1895, Mark Twain was about as famous as one could be; a bestseller author, speaker, intellectual and enthusiastic adventurer whose works were adored by millions.
Born Samuel Clemens, Twain had emerged from Hannibal, Missouri to write some of the most influential works of the 19th century.
At the time of his arrival in the Wimmera, he was described by this masthead as someone whose name was "a household word wherever the English language is spoken".
He was about as famous as one could be, in an era when even the telephone was in its infancy.
Horsham was a speck of a town - indeed, it was to be one of the smallest venues on Twain's speaking tour.
One might even wonder why a visit to Horsham and Stawell would feature on Twain's whirlwind tour of a young Australia, and the answer is twofold.
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The first, because they were convenient stops between Melbourne and Adelaide; and secondly because he was broke - destitute, penniless, bankrupt and facing debts of $100,000 (A$4,581,440 today) after a series of failed investments.
Facing ruin at the tender age of 60, Twain embarked on a marathon speaking tour of the British colonies - largely due to the fact it offered him the most opportunities to lecture in English.
The Wimmera was to be a blip on the tour, a few nights stay between Melbourne and Adelaide, however when Twain arrived in Australia he was in bad health.
Sickness forced him to change plans - he was initially set to visit Horsham and Stawell on the way to Adelaide; instead there was a bump in the road, several in fact.
A carbuncle - a cluster of painful, pus filled bumps and boils that formed a connected area of infection under the skin caused the tour's route to change and he took a boat from Melbourne to Adelaide and travelled overland back to Melbourne.
In good health for the first time since landing in Australia, Twain arrived in Horsham in mid-October, 1895.
His first impression of the Wimmera was of the land.
"Horsham sits in a plain which is as level as a floor-one of those famous dead levels which Australian books describe so often; gray, bare, sombre, melancholy, baked, cracked, in the tedious long drouths, but a horizonless ocean of vivid green grass the day after a rain," he wrote.
Amid this arid ocean, sat Horsham - "a country town, peaceful, reposeful, inviting, full of snug homes, with garden plots, and plenty of shrubbery and flowers".
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He stayed at the White Hart Hotel, and spoke at the Mechanics Hall, a "house crowded in every part" as audiences clamoured to hear the man speak.
Twain's wife, Olivia, wrote in a letter to their daughter Susy that Twain had "never talked to a more enthusiastic audience".
The reviews were, to say the least, positive.
This masthead wrote that "if to read Mark Twain is delightful, to listen to him is to reach a height of enjoyment attainable only once or twice in a lifetime".
The next day, Twain paid a visit to Longerenong College, and spent some time describing the weather on the journey.
"The conveyance was an open wagon; the time, noonday; no wind; the sky without a cloud, the sunshine brilliant-and the mercury at 92 deg. in the shade," he wrote.
"In some countries an indolent unsheltered drive of an hour and a half under such conditions would have been a sweltering and prostrating experience; but there was nothing of that in this case.
"It is a climate that is perfect. There was no sense of heat; indeed, there was no heat; the air was fine and pure and exhilarating; if the drive had lasted half a day I think we should not have felt any discomfort, or grown silent or droopy or tired.
"Of course, the secret of it was the exceeding dryness of the atmosphere. In that plain 112 deg. in the shade is without doubt no harder upon a man than is 88 or 90 deg. in New York."
While at the college, Twain praised the way the Wimmera's sun-baked residents had found success at cultivating all kinds of plants, and could make any farming venture "productive and profitable".
"It was long believed that fruit trees would not grow in that baked and waterless plain around Horsham, but the agricultural college has dissipated that idea," Twain wrote.
"Its ample nurseries were producing oranges, apricots, lemons, almonds, peaches, cherries, 48 varieties of apples-in fact, all manner of fruits, and in abundance.
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"The trees did not seem to miss the water; they were in vigorous and flourishing condition."
From Horsham, Twain was whisked away by rail to Stawell and was thrust from a farming community into the goldfields.
After arriving and being greeted by the mayor, he was met at the Town Hall by the Minister of Mines for the colony, before he spoke at a reception there.
It cost four shillings (about A$30 today), but, like in Horsham, there was a packed house and raucous reviews.
The next day Twain was again taken to see a major industry of the region; this time wine rather than agriculture.
"The Stawell region is not productive of gold only; it has great vineyards, and produces exceptionally fine wines," Twain wrote.
Wine that preceded it in certain circles - "its product has reputation abroad. It yields a choice champagne and a fine claret, and its hock took a prize in France two or three years ago".
Returning to Stawell, Twain was fascinated by a visit to the Three Sisters.
"A curiosity oddly located; for it was upon high ground, with the land sloping away from it, and no height above it from whence the boulders could have rolled down," he wrote.
"Relics of an early ice-drift, perhaps. They are noble boulders. One of them has the size and smoothness and plump sphericity of a balloon of the biggest pattern."
From there, Twain's visit to the Wimmera would end - he was off to Ballarat and beyond, but forever would there be a record when the most famous man in the world came to stay.
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