frenetic pace. In 1888, he published six collections of short stories: Soldiers Three, The Story of the Gadsbys, In Black and White, Under the Deodars, The Phantom Rickshaw, and Wee Willie Winkie. These contain a total of 41 stories, some quite long. In addition, as The Pioneers special correspondent in the western region of Rajputana, he wrote many sketches that were later collected in Letters of Marque and published in From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, Letters of Travel. Kipling was discharged from The Pioneer in early 1889 after a dispute. By this time, he had been increasingly thinking of his future. He sold the rights to his six volumes of stories for £200 and a small royalty, and the Plain Tales for £50; in addition, he received six-months' salary from The Pioneer, in lieu of notice. Return to London Kipling decided to use the money to move to London, the literary centre of the British Empire. On 9 March 1889, he left India, travelling first to San Francisco via Rangoon, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. Kipling was favourably impressed by Japan, calling its people and ways "gracious folk and fair manners". The Nobel Prize committee cited Kipling's writing on the manners and customs of the Japanese when they awarded his Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907. Kipling later wrote that he "had lost his heart" to a geisha whom he called O-Toyo, writing while in the United States during the same trip across the Pacific, "I had left the innocent East far behind.... Weeping softly for O-Toyo.... O-Toyo was a darling." Kipling then travelled through the United States, writing articles for The Pioneer that were later published in From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, Letters of Travel. Starting his North American travels in San Francisco, Kipling went north to Portland, Oregon, then Seattle, Washington, up to Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia, through Medicine Hat, Alberta, back into the US to Yellowstone National Park, down to Salt Lake City, then east to Omaha, Nebraska and on to Chicago, then to Beaver, Pennsylvania on the Ohio River to visit the Hill family. From there, he went to Chautauqua with Professor Hill, and later to Niagara Falls, Toronto, Washington, D.C., New York, and Boston. In the course of this journey he met Mark Twain in Elmira, New York, and was deeply impressed. Kipling arrived unannounced at Twain's home, and later