“He accepted it, though, and general peace was restored. One day, soon

after, he said to me:

“‘Steve, do you know that I think that that bogus pipe smokes about as

well as the good one?’”

Many years later (this was in his home at Hartford, and Joe Goodman was

present) Mark Twain one day came upon the old imitation pipe.

“Joe,” he said, “that was a cruel, cruel trick the boys played on me;

but, for the feeling I had during the moment when they presented me

with that pipe and when Charlie Pope was making his speech and I was

making my reply to it—for the memory of that feeling, now, that pipe is

more precious to me than any pipe in the world!”

Eighteen hundred and sixty-three was flood-tide on the Comstock. Every

mine was working full blast. Every mill was roaring and crunching,

turning out streams of silver and gold. A little while ago an old

resident wrote:

When I close my eyes I hear again the respirations of hoisting-engines

and the roar of stamps; I can see the “camels” after midnight packing

in salt; I can see again the jam of teams on C Street and hear the

anathemas of the drivers—all the mighty work that went on in order to

lure the treasures from the deep chambers of the great lode and to

bring enlightenment to the desert.

Those were lively times. In the midst of one of his letters home Mark

Twain interrupts himself to say: “I have just heard five pistol-shots

down the street—as such things are in my line, I will go and see about

it,” and in a postscript added a few hours later:

5 A.M. The pistol-shot did its work well. One man, a Jackson County

Missourian, shot two of my friends (police officers) through the

heart—both died within three minutes. The murderer’s name is John

Campbell.

“Mark and I had our hands full,” says De Quille, “and no grass grew

under our feet.” In answer to some stray criticism of their policy,

they printed a sort of editorial manifesto:

Our duty is to keep the universe thoroughly posted concerning murders

and street fights, and balls, and theaters, and pack-trains, and

churches, and lectures, and school-houses, and city military affairs,

and highway robberies, and Bible societies, and hay-wagons, and the

thousand other things which it is in the province of local reporters to

keep track of and magnify into undue importance for the instruction of

the readers of a great daily newspaper.

It is easy to recognize Mark Twain’s hand in that compendium of labor,

which, in spite of its amusing apposition, was literally true, and so

intended, probably with no special thought of humor in its

construction. It may be said, as well here as anywhere, that it was not

Mark Twain’s habit to strive for humor. He saw facts at curious angles

and phrased them accordingly. In Virginia City he mingled with the

turmoil of the Comstock and set down what he saw and thought, in his

native speech. The Comstock, ready to laugh, found delight in his

expression and discovered a vast humor in his most earnest statements.

On the other hand, there were times when the humor was intended and

missed its purpose. We have already recalled the instance of the

“Petrified Man” hoax, which was taken seriously; but the “Empire City

Massacre” burlesque found an acceptance that even its author considered

serious for a time. It is remembered to-day in Virginia City as the

chief incident of Mark Twain’s Comstock career.

This literary bomb really had two objects, one of which was to punish

the San Francisco Bulletin for its persistent attacks on Washoe

interests; the other, though this was merely incidental, to direct an

unpleasant attention to a certain Carson saloon, the Magnolia, which

was supposed to dispense whisky of the “forty rod” brand—that is, a

liquor warranted to kill at that range. It was the Bulletin that was to

be made especially. ridiculous. This paper had been particularly

disagreeable concerning the “dividend-cooking” system of certain of the

Comstock mines, at the same time calling invidious attention to safer

investments in California stocks. Samuel Clemens, with “half a

trunkful” of Comstock shares, had cultivated a distaste for California

things in general: In a letter of that time he says:

“How I hate everything that looks or tastes or smells like California!”

With his customary fickleness of soul, he was glorifying California

less than a year later, but for the moment he could see no good in that

Nazareth. To his great satisfaction, one of the leading California

corporations, the Spring Valley Water Company, “cooked” a dividend of

its own about this time, resulting in disaster to a number of guileless

investors who were on the wrong side of the subsequent crash. This

afforded an inviting opportunity for reprisal. With Goodman’s consent

he planned for the California papers, and the Bulletin in particular, a

punishment which he determined to make sufficiently severe. He believed

the papers of that State had forgotten his earlier offenses, and the

result would show he was not mistaken.

There was a point on the Carson River, four miles from Carson City,

known as “Dutch Nick’s,” and also as Empire City, the two being

identical. There was no forest there of any sort nothing but

sage-brush. In the one cabin there lived a bachelor with no household.

Everybody in Virginia and Carson, of course, knew these things.

Mark Twain now prepared a most lurid and graphic account of how one

Phillip Hopkins, living “just at the edge of the great pine forest

which lies between Empire City and ‘Dutch Nick’s’,” had suddenly gone

insane and murderously assaulted his entire family consisting of his

wife and their nine children, ranging in ages from one to nineteen

years. The wife had been slain outright, also seven of the children;

the other two might recover. The murder had been committed in the most

brutal and ghastly fashion, after which Hopkins had scalped his wife,

leaped on a horse, cut his own throat from ear to ear, and ridden four

miles into Carson City, dropping dead at last in front of the Magnolia

saloon, the red-haired scalp of his wife still clutched in his gory

hand. The article further stated that the cause of Mr. Hopkins’s

insanity was pecuniary loss, he having withdrawn his savings from safe

Comstock investments and, through the advice of a relative, one of the

editors of the San Francisco Bulletin, invested them in the Spring

Valley Water Company. This absurd tale with startling head-lines

appeared in the Enterprise, in its issue of October 28, 1863.

It was not expected that any one in Virginia City or Carson City would

for a moment take any stock in the wild invention, yet so graphic was

it that nine out of ten on first reading never stopped to consider the

entire impossibility of the locality and circumstance. Even when these

things were pointed out many readers at first refused to confess

themselves sold. As for the Bulletin and other California papers, they

were taken-in completely, and were furious. Many of them wrote and

demanded the immediate discharge of its author, announcing that they

would never copy another line from the Enterprise, or exchange with it,

or have further relations with a paper that had Mark Twain on its

staff. Citizens were mad, too, and cut off their subscriptions. The

joker was in despair.

“Oh, Joe,” he said, “I have ruined your business, and the only

reparation I can make is to resign. You can never recover from this

blow while I am on the paper.”

“Nonsense,” replied Goodman. “We can furnish the people with news, but

we can’t supply them with sense. Only time can do that. The flurry will

pass. You just go ahead. We’ll win out in the long run.”

But the offender was in torture; he could not sleep. “Dan, Dan,” he

said, “I am being burned alive on both sides of the mountains.”

“Mark,” said Dan. “It will all blow over. This item of yours will be

remembered and talked about when the rest of your Enterprise work is

forgotten.”

Both Goodman and De Quille were right. In a month papers and people had

forgotten their humiliation and laughed. “The Dutch Nick Massacre” gave

to its perpetrator and to the Enterprise an added vogue.*

* For full text of the “Dutch Nick” hoax see Appendix C, at the end of

last volume: also, for an anecdote concerning a reporting excursion

made by Alf. Doten and Mark Twain.

XLII

REPORTORIAL DAYS.

Reference has already been made to the fashion among Virginia City

papers of permitting reporters to use the editorial columns for

ridicule of one another. This custom was especially in vogue during the

period when Dan de Quille and Mark Twain and The Unreliable were the

shining journalistic lights of the Comstock. Scarcely a week went by

that some apparently venomous squib or fling or long burlesque assault

did not appear either in the Union or the Enterprise, with one of those

jokers as its author and another as its target. In one of his “home”

letters of that year Mark Twain says:

I have just finished writing up my report for the morning paper and

giving The Unreliable a column of advice about how to conduct himself

in church.

The advice was such as to call for a reprisal, but it apparently made

no difference in personal relations, for a few weeks later he is with

The Unreliable in San Francisco, seeing life in the metropolis, fairly

swimming in its delights, unable to resist reporting them to his

mother.

We fag ourselves completely out every day and go to sleep without

rocking every night. When I go down Montgomery Street shaking hands

with Tom, Dick, and Harry, it is just like being on Main Street in

Hannibal and meeting the old familiar faces. I do hate to go back to

Washoe. We take trips across the bay to Oakland, and down to San

Leandro and Alameda, and we go out to the Willows and Hayes Park and

Fort Point, and up to Benicia; and yesterday we were invited out on a

yachting excursion, and had a sail in the fastest yacht on the Pacific

coast. Rice says: “Oh no—we are not having any fun, Mark —oh no—I

reckon it’s somebody else—it’s probably the gentleman in the wagon”

(popular slang phrase), and when I invite Rice to the Lick House to

dinner the proprietor sends us champagne and claret, and then we do put

on the most disgusting airs. The Unreliable says our caliber is too

light—we can’t stand it to be noticed.

Three days later he adds that he is going sorrowfully “to the snows and

the deserts of Washoe,” but that he has “lived like a lord to make up

for two years of privation.”

Twenty dollars is inclosed in each of these letters, probably as a

bribe to Jane Clemens to be lenient with his prodigalities, which in

his youthful love of display he could not bring himself to conceal. But

apparently the salve was futile, for in another letter, a month later,

he complains that his mother is “slinging insinuations” at him again,

such as “where did you get that money” and “the company I kept in San

Francisco.” He explains:

Why, I sold Wild Cat mining ground that was given me, and my credit was

always good at the bank for $2,000 or $3,000, and I never gamble in any

shape or manner, and never drink anything stronger than claret and

lager beer, which conduct is regarded as miraculously temperate in this

place. As for company, I went in the very best company to be found in

San Francisco. I always move in the best society in Virginia and have a

reputation to preserve.

He closes by assuring her that he will be more careful in future and

that she need never fear but that he will keep her expenses paid. Then

he cannot refrain from adding one more item of his lavish life:

“Put in my washing, and it costs me one hundred dollars a month to

live.”

De Quille had not missed the opportunity of his comrade’s absence to

payoff some old scores. At the end of the editorial column of the

Enterprise on the day following his departure he denounced the absent

one and his “protege,” The Unreliable, after the intemperate fashion of

the day.

It is to be regretted that such scrubs are ever permitted to visit the

bay, as the inevitable effect will be to destroy that exalted opinion

of the manners and morality of our people which was inspired by the

conduct of our senior editor—[which is to say, Dan himself]—.

The diatribe closed with a really graceful poem, and the whole was no

doubt highly regarded by the Enterprise readers.

What revenge Mark Twain took on his return has not been recorded, but

it was probably prompt and adequate; or he may have left it to The

Unreliable. It was clearly a mistake, however, to leave his own local

work in the hands of that properly named person a little later. Clemens

was laid up with a cold, and Rice assured him on his sacred honor that

he would attend faithfully to the Enterprise locals, along with his own

Union items. He did this, but he had been nursing old injuries too

long. What was Mark Twain’s amazement on looking over the Enterprise

next morning to find under the heading “Apologetic” a statement over

his own nom de plume, purporting to be an apology for all the sins of

ridicule to the various injured ones.

To Mayor Arick, Hon. Wm. Stewart, Marshal Perry, Hon. J. B. Winters,

Mr. Olin, and Samuel Wetherill, besides a host of others whom we have

ridiculed from behind the shelter of our reportorial position, we say

to these gentlemen we acknowledge our faults, and, in all weakness and

humility upon our bended marrow bones, we ask their forgiveness,

promising that in future we will give them no cause for anything but

the best of feeling toward us. To “Young Wilson” and The Unreliable (as

we have wickedly termed them), we feel that no apology we can make

begins to atone for the many insults we have given them. Toward these

gentlemen we have been as mean as a man could be—and we have always

prided ourselves on this base quality. We feel that we are the least of

all humanity, as it were. We will now go in sack-cloth and ashes for

the next forty days.

This in his own paper over his own signature was a body blow; but it

had the effect of curing his cold. He was back in the office forthwith,

and in the next morning’s issue denounced his betrayer.

We are to blame for giving The Unreliable an opportunity to

misrepresent us, and therefore refrain from repining to any great

extent at the result. We simply claim the right to deny the truth of

every statement made by him in yesterday’s paper, to annul all

apologies he coined as coming from us, and to hold him up to public

commiseration as a reptile endowed with no more intellect, no more

cultivation, no more Christian principle than animates and adorns the

sportive jackass-rabbit of the Sierras. We have done.

These were the things that enlivened Comstock journalism. Once in a

boxing bout Mark Twain got a blow on the nose which caused it to swell

to an unusual size and shape. He went out of town for a few days,

during which De Quille published an extravagant account of his

misfortune, describing the nose and dwelling on the absurdity of Mark

Twain’s ever supposing himself to be a boxer.

De Quille scored heavily with this item but his own doom was written.

Soon afterward he was out riding and was thrown from his horse and

bruised considerably.

This was Mark’s opportunity. He gave an account of Dan’s disaster;

then, commenting, he said:

The idea of a plebeian like Dan supposing he could ever ride a horse!

He! why, even the cats and the chickens laughed when they saw him go

by. Of course, he would be thrown off. Of course, any well-bred horse

wouldn’t let a common, underbred person like Dan stay on his back! When

they gathered him up he was just a bag of scraps, but they put him

together, and you’ll find him at his old place in the Enterprise office

next week, still laboring under the delusion that he’s a newspaper man.

The author of ‘Roughing It’ tells of a literary periodical called the

Occidental, started in Virginia City by a Mr. F. This was the

silver-tongued Tom Fitch, of the Union, an able speaker and writer,

vastly popular on the Coast. Fitch came to Clemens one day and said he

was thinking of starting such a periodical and asked him what he

thought of the venture. Clemens said:

“You would succeed if any one could, but start a flower-garden on the

desert of Sahara; set up hoisting-works on Mount Vesuvius for mining

sulphur; start a literary paper in Virginia City; h—l!”

Which was a correct estimate of the situation, and the paper perished

with the third issue. It was of no consequence except that it contained

what was probably the first attempt at that modern literary abortion,

the composite novel. Also, it died too soon to publish Mark Twain’s

first verses of any pretension, though still of modest merit—“The Aged

Pilot Man”—which were thereby saved for ‘Roughing It.’

Visiting Virginia now, it seems curious that any of these things could

have happened there. The Comstock has become little more than a memory;

Virginia and Gold Hill are so quiet, so voiceless, as to constitute

scarcely an echo of the past. The International Hotel, that once so

splendid edifice, through whose portals the tide of opulent life then

ebbed and flowed, is all but deserted now. One may wander at will

through its dingy corridors and among its faded fripperies, seeking in

vain for attendance or hospitality, the lavish welcome of a vanished

day. Those things were not lacking once, and the stream of wealth

tossed up and down the stair and billowed up C Street, an ebullient

tide of metals and men from which millionaires would be struck out, and

individuals known in national affairs. William M. Stewart who would one

day become a United States Senator, was there, an unnoticed unit; and

John Mackay and James G. Fair, one a senator by and by, and both

millionaires, but poor enough then—Fair with a pick on his shoulder and

Mackay, too, at first, though he presently became a mine

superintendent. Once in those days Mark Twain banteringly offered to

trade businesses with Mackay.

“No,” Mackay said, “I can’t trade. My business is not worth as much as

yours. I have never swindled anybody, and I don’t intend to begin now.”

Neither of those men could dream that within ten years their names

would be international property; that in due course Nevada would

propose statues to their memory.

Such things came out of the Comstock; such things spring out of every

turbulent frontier.

XLIII

ARTEMUS WARD

Madame Caprell’s warning concerning Mark Twain’s health at twenty-eight

would seem to have been justified. High-strung and neurotic, the strain

of newspaper work and the tumult of the Comstock had told on him. As in

later life, he was subject to bronchial colds, and more than once that

year he found it necessary to drop all work and rest for a time at

Steamboat Springs, a place near Virginia City, where there were boiling

springs and steaming fissures in the mountain-side, and a comfortable

hotel. He contributed from there sketches somewhat more literary in

form than any of his previous work. “Curing a Cold” is a more or less

exaggerated account of his ills.*

* Included in Sketches New and Old. “Information for the Million,” and

“Advice to Good Little Girls,” included in the “Jumping Frog”

Collection, 1867, but omitted from the Sketches, are also believed to

belong to this period.

A portion of a playful letter to his mother, written from the springs,

still exists.

You have given my vanity a deadly thrust. Behold, I am prone to boast

of having the widest reputation as a local editor of any man on the

Pacific coast, and you gravely come forward and tell me “if I work hard

and attend closely to my business, I may aspire to a place on a big San

Francisco daily some day.” There’s a comment on human vanity for you!

Why, blast it, I was under the impression that I could get such a

situation as that any time I asked for it. But I don’t want it. No

paper in the United States can afford to pay me what my place on the

Enterprise is worth. If I were not naturally a lazy, idle,

good-for-nothing vagabond, I could make it pay me $20,000 a year. But I

don’t suppose I shall ever be any account. I lead an easy life, though,

and I don’t care a cent whether school keeps or not. Everybody knows

me, and I fare like a prince wherever I go, be it on this side of the

mountain or the other. And I am proud to say I am the most conceited

ass in the Territory.

You think that picture looks old? Well, I can’t help it—in reality

I’m not as old as I was when I was eighteen.

Which was a true statement, so far as his general attitude was

concerned. At eighteen, in New York and Philadelphia, his letters had

been grave, reflective, advisory. Now they were mostly banter and

froth, lightly indifferent to the serious side of things, though

perhaps only pretendedly so, for the picture did look old. From the

shock and circumstance of his brother’s death he—had never recovered.

He was barely twenty-eight. From the picture he might have been a man

of forty.

It was that year that Artemus Ward (Charles F. Browne) came to Virginia

City. There was a fine opera-house in Virginia, and any attraction that

billed San Francisco did not fail to play to the Comstock. Ward

intended staying only a few days to deliver his lectures, but the whirl

of the Comstock caught him like a maelstrom, and he remained three

weeks.

He made the Enterprise office his headquarters, and fairly reveled in

the company he found there. He and Mark Twain became boon companions.

Each recognized in the other a kindred spirit. With Goodman, De Quille,

and McCarthy, also E. E. Hingston—Ward’s agent, a companionable

fellow—they usually dined at Chaumond’s, Virginia’s high-toned French

restaurant.

Those were three memorable weeks in Mark Twain’s life. Artemus Ward was

in the height of his fame, and he encouraged his new-found

brother-humorist and prophesied great things of him. Clemens, on his

side, measured himself by this man who had achieved fame, and perhaps

with good reason concluded that Ward’s estimate was correct, that he

too could win fame and honor, once he got a start. If he had lacked

ambition before Ward’s visit, the latter’s unqualified approval

inspired him with that priceless article of equipment. He put his soul

into entertaining the visitor during those three weeks; and it was

apparent to their associates that he was at least Ward’s equal in

mental stature and originality. Goodman and the others began to realize

that for Mark Twain the rewards of the future were to be measured only

by his resolution and ability to hold out. On Christmas Eve Artemus

lectured in Silver City and afterward came to the Enterprise office to

give the boys a farewell dinner. The Enterprise always published a

Christmas carol, and Goodman sat at his desk writing it. He was just

finishing as Ward came in:

“Slave, slave,” said Artemus. “Come out and let me banish care from

you.”

They got the boys and all went over to Chaumond’s, where Ward commanded

Goodman to order the dinner. When the cocktails came on, Artemus lifted

his glass and said:

“I give you Upper Canada.”

The company rose, drank the toast in serious silence; then Goodman

said:

“Of course, Artemus, it’s all right, but why did you give us Upper

Canada?”

“Because I don’t want it myself,” said Ward, gravely.

Then began a rising tide of humor that could hardly be matched in the

world to-day. Mark Twain had awakened to a fuller power; Artemus Ward

was in his prime. They were giants of a race that became extinct when

Mark Twain died. The youth, the wine, the whirl of lights and life, the

tumult of the shouting street-it was as if an electric stream of

inspiration poured into those two human dynamos and sent them into a

dazzling, scintillating whirl. All gone—as evanescent, as forgotten, as

the lightnings of that vanished time; out of that vast feasting and

entertainment only a trifling morsel remains. Ward now and then asked

Goodman why he did not join in the banter. Goodman said:

“I’m preparing a joke, Artemus, but I’m keeping it for the present.”

It was near daybreak when Ward at last called for the bill. It was two

hundred and thirty-seven dollars.

“What”’ exclaimed Artemus.

“That’s my joke.” said Goodman.

“But I was only exclaiming because it was not twice as much,” returned

Ward.

He paid it amid laughter, and they went out into the early morning air.

It was fresh and fine outside, not yet light enough to see clearly.

Artemus threw his face up to the sky and said:

“I feel glorious. I feel like walking on the roofs.”

Virginia was built on the steep hillside, and the eaves of some of the

houses almost touched the ground behind them.

“There is your chance, Artemus,” Goodman said, pointing to a row of

these houses all about of a height.

Artemus grabbed Mark Twain, and they stepped out upon the long string

of roofs and walked their full length, arm in arm. Presently the others

noticed a lonely policeman cocking his revolver and getting ready to

aim in their direction. Goodman called to him:

“Wait a minute. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to shoot those burglars,” he said.

“Don’t for your life. Those are not burglars. That’s Mark Twain and

Artemus Ward.”

The roof-walkers returned, and the party went down the street to a

corner across from the International Hotel. A saloon was there with a

barrel lying in front, used, perhaps for a sort of sign. Artemus

climbed astride the barrel, and somebody brought a beer-glass and put

it in his hand. Virginia City looks out over the Eastward Desert.

Morning was just breaking upon the distant range-the scene as beautiful

as when the sunrise beams across the plain of Memnon. The city was not

yet awake. The only living creatures in sight were the group of belated

diners, with Artemus Ward, as King Gambrinus, pouring a libation to the

sunrise.

That was the beginning of a week of glory. The farewell dinner became a

series. At the close of one convivial session Artemus went to a

concert-hall, the “Melodeon,” blacked his face, and delivered a speech.

He got away from Virginia about the close of the year.

A day or two later he wrote from Austin, Nevada, to his new-found

comrade as “My dearest Love,” recalling the happiness of his stay:

“I shall always remember Virginia as a bright spot in my existence, as

all others must or rather cannot be, as it were.”

Then reflectively he adds:

“Some of the finest intellects in the world have been blunted by

liquor.”

Rare Artemus Ward and rare Mark Twain! If there lies somewhere a place

of meeting and remembrance, they have not failed to recall there those

closing days of ’63.

XLIV

GOVERNOR OF THE “THIRD HOUSE”

With Artemus Ward’s encouragement, Clemens began to think of extending

his audience eastward. The New York Sunday Mercury published literary

matter. Ward had urged him to try this market, and promised to write a

special letter to the editors, introducing Mark Twain and his work.

Clemens prepared a sketch of the Comstock variety, scarcely refined in

character and full of personal allusion, a humor not suited to the

present-day reader. Its general subject was children; it contained some

absurd remedies, supposedly sent to his old pilot friend Zeb

Leavenworth, and was written as much for a joke on that good-natured

soul as for profit or reputation.

“I wrote it especially for Beck Jolly’s use,” the author declares, in a

letter to his mother, “so he could pester Zeb with it.”

We cannot know to-day whether Zeb was pestered or not. A faded clipping

is all that remains of the incident. As literature the article,

properly enough, is lost to the world at large. It is only worth

remembering as his metropolitan beginning. Yet he must have thought

rather highly of it (his estimation of his own work was always unsafe),

for in the letter above quoted he adds:

I cannot write regularly for the Mercury, of course, I sha’n’t have

time. But sometimes I throw off a pearl (there is no self-conceit about

that, I beg you to observe) which ought for the eternal welfare of my

race to have a more extensive circulation than is afforded by a local

daily paper.

And if Fitzhugh Ludlow (author of the ‘Hasheesh Eater’) comes your way,

treat him well. He published a high encomium upon Mark Twain (the same

being eminently just and truthful, I beseech you to believe) in a San

Francisco paper. Artemus Ward said that when my gorgeous talents were

publicly acknowledged by such high authority I ought to appreciate them

myself, leave sage-brush obscurity, and journey to New York with him,

as he wanted me to do. But I preferred not to burst upon the New York

public too suddenly and brilliantly, so I concluded to remain here.

He was in Carson City when this was written, preparing for the opening

of the next legislature. He was beyond question now the most

conspicuous figure of the capital; also the most wholesomely respected,

for his influence had become very large. It was said that he could

control more votes than any legislative member, and with his friends,

Simmons and Clagget, could pass or defeat any bill offered. The

Enterprise was a powerful organ—to be courted and dreaded—and Mark

Twain had become its chief tribune. That he was fearless, merciless,

and incorruptible, without doubt had a salutary influence on that

legislative session. He reveled in his power; but it is not recorded

that he ever abused it. He got a bill passed, largely increasing

Orion’s official fees, but this was a crying need and was so

recognized. He made no secret promises, none at all that he did not

intend to fulfill. “Sam’s word was as fixed as fate,” Orion records,

and it may be added that he was morally as fearless.

The two Houses of the last territorial legislature of Nevada assembled

January 12, 1864.* A few days later a “Third House” was organized—an

institution quite in keeping with the happy atmosphere of that day and

locality, for it was a burlesque organization, and Mark Twain was

selected as its “Governor.”

* Nevada became a State October 31, 1864.

The new House prepared to make a public occasion of this first session,

and its Governor was required to furnish a message. Then it was decided

to make it a church benefit. The letters exchanged concerning this

proposition still exist; they explain themselves:

CARSON CITY, January 23, 1864.

GOV. MARK TWAIN, Understanding from certain members of the Third House

of the territorial Legislature that that body will have effected a

permanent organization within a day or two, and be ready for the

reception of your Third Annual Message,* we desire to ask your

permission, and that of the Third House, to turn the affair to the

benefit of the Church by charging toll-roads, franchises, and other

persons a dollar apiece for the privilege of listening to your

communication.

S. PIXLEY,

G. A. SEARS,

Trustees.

* There had been no former message. This was regarded as a great joke.

CARSON CITY, January 23, 1864.

GENTLEMEN,—Certainly. If the public can find anything in a grave state

paper worth paying a dollar for, I am willing they should pay that

amount, or any other; and although I am not a very dusty Christian

myself, I take an absorbing interest in religious affairs, and would

willingly inflict my annual message upon the Church itself if it might

derive benefit thereby. You can charge what you please; I promise the

public no amusement, but I do promise a reasonable amount of

instruction. I am responsible to the Third House only, and I hope to be

permitted to make it exceedingly warm for that body, without caring

whether the sympathies of the public and the Church be enlisted in

their favor, and against myself, or not.

Respectfully,

MARK TWAIN.

Mark Twain’s reply is closely related to his later style in phrase and

thought. It might have been written by him at almost any subsequent

period. Perhaps his association with Artemus Ward had awakened a new

perception of the humorous idea—a humor of repression, of

understatement. He forgot this often enough, then and afterward, and

gave his riotous fancy free rein; but on the whole the simpler, less

florid form seemingly began to attract him more and more.

His address as Governor of the Third House has not been preserved, but

those who attended always afterward referred to it as the “greatest

effort of his life.” Perhaps for that audience and that time this

verdict was justified.

It was his first great public opportunity. On the stage about him sat

the membership of the Third House; the building itself was packed, the

aisles full. He knew he could let himself go in burlesque and satire,

and he did. He was unsparing in his ridicule of the Governor, the

officials in general, the legislative members, and of individual

citizens. From the beginning to the end of his address the audience was

in a storm of laughter and applause. With the exception of the dinner

speech made to the printers in Keokuk, it was his first public

utterance —the beginning of a lifelong series of triumphs.

Only one thing marred his success. Little Carrie Pixley, daughter of

one of the “trustees,” had promised to be present and sit in a box next

the stage. It was like him to be fond of the child, and he had promised

to send a carriage for her. Often during his address he glanced toward

the box; but it remained empty. When the affair was ended, he drove

home with her father to inquire the reason. They found the little girl,

in all her finery, weeping on the bed. Then he remembered he had

forgotten to send the carriage; and that was like him, too.

For his Third House address Judge A. W. (Sandy) Baldwin and Theodore

Winters presented him with a gold watch inscribed to “Governor Mark

Twain.” He was more in demand now than ever; no social occasion was

regarded as complete without him. His doings were related daily and his

sayings repeated on the streets. Most of these things have passed away

now, but a few are still recalled with smiles. Once, when conundrums

were being asked at a party, he was urged to make one.

“Well,” he said, “why am I like the Pacific Ocean?”

Several guesses were made, but none satisfied him. Finally all gave it

up.

“Tell us, Mark, why are you like the Pacific Ocean?”

“I don’t know,” he drawled. “I was just asking for information.”

At another time, when a young man insisted on singing a song of eternal

length, the chorus of which was, “I’m going home, I’m going home, I’m

going home tomorrow,” Mark Twain put his head in the window and said,

pleadingly:

“For God’s sake go to-night.”

But he was also fond of quieter society. Sometimes, after the turmoil

of a legislative morning, he would drop in to Miss Keziah Clapp’s

school and listen to the exercises, or would call on Colonel Curry—“old

Curry, old Abe Curry”—and if the colonel happened to be away, he would

talk with Mrs. Curry, a motherly soul (still alive at ninety-three, in

1910), and tell her of his Hannibal boyhood or his river and his mining

adventures, and keep her laughing until the tears ran.

He was a great pedestrian in those days. Sometimes he walked from

Virginia to Carson, stopping at Colonel Curry’s as he came in for rest

and refreshment.

“Mrs. Curry,” he said once, “I have seen tireder men than I am, and

lazier men, but they were dead men.” He liked the home feeling there

—the peace and motherly interest. Deep down, he was lonely and

homesick; he was always so away from his own kindred.

Clemens returned now to Virginia City, and, like all other men who ever

met her, became briefly fascinated by the charms of Adah Isaacs Menken,

who was playing Mazeppa at the Virginia Opera House. All men—kings,

poets, priests, prize-fighters—fell under Menken’s spell. Dan de Quille

and Mark Twain entered into a daily contest as to who could lavish the

most fervid praise on her in the Enterprise. The latter carried her his

literary work to criticize. He confesses this in one of his home

letters, perhaps with a sort of pride.

I took it over to show to Miss Menken the actress, Orpheus C. Ken’s

wife. She is a literary cuss herself.

She has a beautiful white hand, but her handwriting is infamous; she

writes fast and her chirography is of the door-plate order—her letters

are immense. I gave her a conundrum, thus:

“My dear madam, why ought your hand to retain its present grace and

beauty always? Because you fool away devilish little of it on your

manuscript.”

But Menken was gone presently, and when he saw her again, somewhat

later, in San Francisco, his “madness” would have seemed to have been

allayed.

XLV

A COMSTOCK DUEL

The success—such as it was—of his occasional contributions to the New

York Sunday Mercury stirred Mark Twain’s ambition for a wider field of

labor. Circumstance, always ready to meet his wishes, offered

assistance, though in an unexpected form.

Goodman, temporarily absent, had left Clemens in editorial charge. As

in that earlier day, when Orion had visited Tennessee and returned to

find his paper in a hot personal warfare with certain injured citizens,

so the Enterprise, under the same management, had stirred up trouble.

It was just at the time of the “Flour Sack Sanitary Fund,” the story of

which is related at length in ‘Roughing It’. In the general hilarity of

this occasion, certain Enterprise paragraphs of criticism or ridicule

had incurred the displeasure of various individuals whose cause

naturally enough had been espoused by a rival paper, the Chronicle.

Very soon the original grievance, whatever it was, was lost sight of in

the fireworks and vitriol-throwing of personal recrimination between

Mark Twain and the Chronicle editor, then a Mr. Laird.

A point had been reached at length when only a call for bloodshed—a

challenge—could satisfy either the staff or the readers of the two

papers. Men were killed every week for milder things than the editors

had spoken each of the other. Joe Goodman himself, not so long before,

had fought a duel with a Union editor—Tom Fitch—and shot him in the

leg, so making of him a friend, and a lame man, for life. In Joe’s

absence the prestige of the paper must be maintained.

Mark Twain himself has told in burlesque the story of his duel, keeping

somewhat nearer to the fact than was his custom in such writing, as may

be seen by comparing it with the account of his abettor and second—of

course, Steve Gillis. The account is from Mr. Gillis’s own hand:

When Joe went away, he left Sam in editorial charge of the paper. That

was a dangerous thing to do. Nobody could ever tell what Sam was going

to write. Something he said stirred up Mr. Laird, of the Chronicle, who

wrote a reply of a very severe kind. He said some things that we told

Mark could only be wiped out with blood. Those were the days when

almost every man in Virginia City had fought with pistols either

impromptu or premeditated duels. I had been in several, but then mine

didn’t count. Most of them were of the impromptu kind. Mark hadn’t had

any yet, and we thought it about time that his baptism took place.

He was not eager for it; he was averse to violence, but we finally

prevailed upon him to send Laird a challenge, and when Laird did not

send a reply at once we insisted on Mark sending him another challenge,

by which time he had made himself believe that he really wanted to

fight, as much as we wanted him to do. Laird concluded to fight, at

last. I helped Mark get up some of the letters, and a man who would not

fight after such letters did not belong in Virginia City—in those days.

Laird’s acceptance of Mark’s challenge came along about midnight, I

think, after the papers had gone to press. The meeting was to take

place next morning at sunrise.

Of course I was selected as Mark’s second, and at daybreak I had him up

and out for some lessons in pistol practice before meeting Laird. I

didn’t have to wake him. He had not been asleep. We had been talking

since midnight over the duel that was coming. I had been telling him of

the different duels in which I had taken part, either as principal or

second, and how many men I had helped to kill and bury, and how it was

a good plan to make a will, even if one had not much to leave. It

always looked well, I told him, and seemed to be a proper thing to do

before going into a duel. So Mark made a will with a sort of gloomy

satisfaction, and as soon as it was light enough to see, we went out to

a little ravine near the meeting-place, and I set up a board for him to

shoot at. He would step out, raise that big pistol, and when I would

count three he would shut his eyes and pull the trigger. Of course he

didn’t hit anything; he did not come anywhere near hitting anything.

Just then we heard somebody shooting over in the next ravine. Sam said:

“What’s that, Steve?”

“Why,” I said, “that’s Laud. His seconds are practising him over

there.”

It didn’t make my principal any more cheerful to hear that pistol go

off every few seconds over there. Just then I saw a little mud-hen

light on some sage-brush about thirty yards away.

“Mark,” I said, “let me have that pistol. I’ll show you how to shoot.”

He handed it to me, and I let go at the bird and shot its head off,

clean. About that time Laird and his second came over the ridge to meet

us. I saw them coming and handed Mark back the pistol. We were looking

at the bird when they came up.

“Who did that?” asked Laird’s second.

“Sam,” I said.

“How far off was it?”

“Oh, about thirty yards.”

“Can he do it again?”

“Of course,” I said; “every time. He could do it twice that far.”

Laud’s second turned to his principal.

“Laird,” he said, “you don’t want to fight that man. It’s just like

suicide. You’d better settle this thing, now.”

So there was a settlement. Laird took back all he had said; Mark said

he really had nothing against Laird—the discussion had been purely

journalistic and did not need to be settled in blood. He said that both

he and Laird were probably the victims of their friends. I remember one

of the things Laird said when his second told him he had better not

fight.

“Fight! H—l, no! I am not going to be murdered by that d—d desperado.”

Sam had sent another challenge to a man named Cutler, who had been

somehow mixed up with the muss and had written Sam an insulting letter;

but Cutler was out of town at the time, and before he got back we had

received word from Jerry Driscoll, foreman of the Grand jury, that the

law just passed, making a duel a penitentiary offense for both

principal and second, was to be strictly enforced, and unless we got

out of town in a limited number of hours we would be the first examples

to test the new law.

We concluded to go, and when the stage left next morning for San

Francisco we were on the outside seat. Joe Goodman had returned by this

time and agreed to accompany us as far as Henness Pass. We were all in

good spirits and glad we were alive, so Joe did not stop when he got to

Henness Pass, but kept on. Now and then he would say, “Well, I had

better be going back pretty soon,” but he didn’t go, and in the end he

did not go back at all, but went with us clear to San Francisco, and we

had a royal good time all the way. I never knew any series of duels to

close so happily.

So ended Mark Twain’s career on the Comstock. He had come to it a weary

pilgrim, discouraged and unknown; he was leaving it with a new name and

fame—elate, triumphant, even if a fugitive.

XLVI

GETTING SETTLED IN SAN FRANCISCO

This was near the end of May, 1864. The intention of both Gillis and

Clemens was to return to the States; but once in San Francisco both

presently accepted places, Clemens as reporter and Gillis as

compositor, on the ‘Morning Call’.

From ‘Roughing It’ the reader gathers that Mark Twain now entered into

a life of butterfly idleness on the strength of prospective riches to

be derived from the “half a trunkful of mining stocks,” and that

presently, when the mining bubble exploded, he was a pauper. But a good

many liberties have been taken with the history of this period.

Undoubtedly he expected opulent returns from his mining stocks, and was

disappointed, particularly in an investment in Hale and Norcross

shares, held too long for the large profit which could have been made

by selling at the proper time.

The fact is, he spent not more than a few days—a fortnight at most—in

“butterfly idleness,” at the Lick House before he was hard at work on

the ‘Call’, living modestly with Steve Gillis in the quietest place

they could find, never quiet enough, but as far as possible from dogs

and cats and chickens and pianos, which seemed determined to make the

mornings hideous, when a weary night reporter and compositor wanted to

rest. They went out socially, on occasion, arrayed in considerable

elegance; but their recreations were more likely to consist of private

midnight orgies, after the paper had gone to press—mild dissipations in

whatever they could find to eat at that hour, with a few glasses of

beer, and perhaps a game of billiards or pool in some all-night resort.

A printer by the name of Ward—“Little Ward,”* they called him—often

went with them for these refreshments. Ward and Gillis were both bantam

game-cocks, and sometimes would stir up trouble for the very joy of

combat. Clemens never cared for that sort of thing and discouraged it,

but Ward and Gillis were for war. “They never assisted each other. If

one had offered to assist the other against some overgrown person, it

would have been an affront, and a battle would have followed between

that pair of little friends.”** Steve Gillis in particular, was fond of

incidental encounters, a characteristic which would prove an important

factor somewhat later in shaping Mark Twain’s career. Of course, the

more strenuous nights were not frequent. Their home-going was usually

tame enough and they were glad enough to get there.

* L. P. Ward; well known as an athlete in San Francisco. He lost his

mind and fatally shot himself in 1903.

** S. L. C., 1906.

Clemens, however, was never quite ready for sleep. Then, as ever, he

would prop himself up in bed, light his pipe, and lose himself in

English or French history until sleep conquered. His room-mate did not

approve of this habit; it interfered with his own rest, and with his

fiendish tendency to mischief he found reprisal in his own fashion.

Knowing his companion’s highly organized nervous system he devised

means of torture which would induce him to put out the light. Once he

tied a nail to a string; an arrangement which he kept on the floor

behind the bed. Pretending to be asleep, he would hold the end of the

string, and lift it gently up and down, making a slight ticking sound

on the floor, maddening to a nervous man. Clemens would listen a moment

and say:

“What in the nation is that noise”

Gillis’s pretended sleep and the ticking would continue.

Clemens would sit up in bed, fling aside his book, and swear violently.

“Steve, what is that d—d noise?” he would say.

Steve would pretend to rouse sleepily.

“What’s the matter, Sam? What noise? Oh, I guess that is one of those

death-ticks; they don’t like the light. Maybe it will stop in a

minute.”

It usually did stop about that time, and the reading would be apt to

continue. But no sooner was there stillness than it began again—tick,

tick, tick. With a wild explosion of blasphemy, the book would go

across the floor and the light would disappear. Sometimes, when he

couldn’t sleep, he would dress and walk out in the street for an hour,

while the cruel Steve slept like the criminal that he was.

At last, one night, he overdid the thing and was caught. His tortured

room-mate at first reviled him, then threatened to kill him, finally

put him to shame. It was curious, but they always loved each other,

those two; there was never anything resembling an estrangement, and to

his last days Mark Twain never could speak of Steve Gillis without

tenderness.

They moved a great many times in San Francisco. Their most satisfactory

residence was on a bluff on California Street. Their windows looked

down on a lot of Chinese houses—“tin-can houses,” they were

called—small wooden shanties covered with beaten-out cans. Steve and

Mark would look down on these houses, waiting until all the Chinamen

were inside; then one of them would grab an empty beer-bottle, throw it

down on those tin can roofs, and dodge behind the blinds. The Chinamen

would swarm out and look up at the row of houses on the edge of the

bluff, shake their fists, and pour out Chinese vituperation. By and by,

when they had retired and everything was quiet again, their tormentors

would throw another bottle. This was their Sunday amusement.

At a place on Minna Street they lived with a private family. At first

Clemens was delighted.

“Just look at it, Steve,” he said. “What a nice, quiet place. Not a

thing to disturb us.”

But next morning a dog began to howl. Gillis woke this time, to find

his room-mate standing in the door that opened out into a back garden,

holding a big revolver, his hand shaking with cold and excitement.

“Came here, Steve,” he said. “Come here and kill him. I’m so chilled

through I can’t get a bead on him.”

“Sam,” said Steve, “don’t shoot him. Just swear at him. You can easily

kill him at that range with your profanity.”

Steve Gillis declares that Mark Twain then let go such a scorching,

singeing blast that the brute’s owner sold him next day for a Mexican

hairless dog.

We gather that they moved, on an average, about once a month. A home

letter of September 25, 1864, says:

We have been here only four months, yet we have changed our lodging

five times. We are very comfortably fixed where we are now and have no

fault to find with the rooms or the people. We are the only lodgers-in

a well-to-do private family . . . . But I need change and must move

again.

This was the Minna Street place—the place of the dog. In the same

letter he mentions having made a new arrangement with the Call, by

which he is to receive twenty-five dollars a week, with no more

night-work; he says further that he has closed with the Californian for

weekly articles at twelve dollars each.

XLVII

BOHEMIAN DAYS

Mark Twain’s position on the ‘Call’ was uncongenial from the start. San

Francisco was a larger city than Virginia; the work there was

necessarily more impersonal, more a routine of news-gathering and

drudgery. He once set down his own memories of it:

At nine in the morning I had to be at the police court for an hour and

make a brief history of the squabbles of the night before. They were

usually between Irishmen and Irishmen, and Chinamen and Chinamen, with

now and then a squabble between the two races, for a change.

During the rest of the day we raked the town from end to end, gathering

such material as we might, wherewith to fill our required columns; and

if there were no fires to report, we started some. At night we visited

the six theaters, one after the other, seven nights in the week. We

remained in each of those places five minutes, got the merest passing

glimpse of play and opera, and with that for a text we “wrote up” those

plays and operas, as the phrase goes, torturing our souls every night

in the effort to find something to say about those performances which

we had not said a couple of hundred times before.

It was fearful drudgery-soulless drudgery—and almost destitute of

interest. It was an awful slavery for a lazy man.

On the Enterprise he had been free, with a liberty that amounted to

license. He could write what he wished, and was personally responsible

to the readers. On the Call he was simply a part of a news-machine;

restricted by a policy, the whole a part of a still greater machine

—politics. Once he saw some butchers set their dogs on an unoffending

Chinaman, a policeman looking on with amused interest. He wrote an

indignant article criticizing the city government and raking the

police. In Virginia City this would have been a welcome delight; in San

Francisco it did not appear.

At another time he found a policeman asleep on his beat. Going to a

near-by vegetable stall he borrowed a large cabbage-leaf, came back and

stood over the sleeper, gently fanning him. It would be wasted effort

to make an item of this incident; but he could publish it in his own

fashion. He stood there fanning the sleeping official until a large

crowd collected. When he thought it was large enough he went away. Next

day the joke was all over the city.

Only one of the several severe articles he wrote criticizing officials

and institutions seems to have appeared—an attack on an undertaker

whose establishment formed a branch of the coroner’s office. The

management of this place one day refused information to a Call

reporter, and the next morning its proprietor was terrified by a

scathing denunciation of his firm. It began, “Those body-snatchers” and

continued through half a column of such scorching strictures as only

Mark Twain could devise. The Call’s policy of suppression evidently did

not include criticisms of deputy coroners.

Such liberty, however, was too rare for Mark Twain, and he lost

interest. He confessed afterward that he became indifferent and lazy,

and that George E. Barnes, one of the publishers of the Call, at last

allowed him an assistant. He selected from the counting-room a big,

hulking youth by the name of McGlooral, with the acquired prefix of

“Smiggy.” Clemens had taken a fancy to Smiggy McGlooral—on account of

his name and size perhaps—and Smiggy, devoted to his patron, worked

like a slave gathering news nights—daytimes, too, if necessary—all of

which was demoralizing to a man who had small appetite for his place

anyway. It was only a question of time when Smiggy alone would be

sufficient for the job.

There were other and pleasanter things in San Francisco. The personal

and literary associations were worth while. At his right hand in the

Call office sat Frank Soule—a gentle spirit—a graceful versifier who

believed himself a poet. Mark Twain deferred to Frank Soule in those

days. He thought his verses exquisite in their workmanship; a word of

praise from Soule gave him happiness. In a luxurious office up-stairs

was another congenial spirit—a gifted, handsome fellow of twenty-four,

who was secretary of the Mint, and who presently became editor of a new

literary weekly, the Californian, which Charles Henry Webb had founded.

This young man’s name was Francis Bret Harte, originally from Albany,

later a miner and school-teacher on the Stanislaus, still later a

compositor, finally a contributor, on the Golden Era. His fame scarcely

reached beyond San Francisco as yet; but among the little coterie of

writing folk that clustered about the Era office his rank was high.

Mark Twain fraternized with Bret Harte and the Era group generally. He

felt that he had reached the land—or at least the borderland—of

Bohemia, that Ultima Thule of every young literary dream.

San Francisco did, in fact, have a very definite literary atmosphere

and a literature of its own. Its coterie of writers had drifted from

here and there, but they had merged themselves into a California

body-poetic, quite as individual as that of Cambridge, even if less

famous, less fortunate in emoluments than the Boston group. Joseph E.

Lawrence, familiarly known as “Joe” Lawrence, was editor of the Golden

Era,* and his kindness and hospitality were accounted sufficient

rewards even when his pecuniary acknowledgments were modest enough. He

had a handsome office, and the literati, local and visiting, used to

gather there. Names that would be well known later were included in

that little band. Joaquin Miller recalls from an old diary, kept by him

then, having seen Adah Isaacs Menken, Prentice Mulford, Bret Harte,

Charles Warren Stoddard, Fitzhugh Ludlow, Mark Twain, Orpheus C. Kerr,

Artemus Ward, Gilbert Densmore, W. S. Kendall, and Mrs. Hitchcock

assembled there at one time. The Era office would seem to have been a

sort of Mount Olympus, or Parnassus, perhaps; for these were mainly

poets, who had scarcely yet attained to the dignity of gods. Miller was

hardly more than a youth then, and this grand assemblage impressed him,

as did the imposing appointments of the place.

* The Golden Era, California’s first literary publication, was founded

by Rollin M. Daggett and J. McDonough Foard in 1852.

The Era rooms were elegant—[he says]—the most grandly carpeted and most

gorgeously furnished that I have ever seen. Even now in my memory they

seem to have been simply palatial. I have seen the world well since

then—all of its splendors worth seeing—yet those carpeted parlors, with

Joe Lawrence and his brilliant satellites, outshine all things else, as

I turn to look back.

More than any other city west of the Alleghanies, San Francisco has

always been a literary center; and certainly that was a remarkable

group to be out there under the sunset, dropped down there behind the

Sierras, which the transcontinental railway would not climb yet, for

several years. They were a happy-hearted, aspiring lot, and they got as

much as five dollars sometimes for an Era article, and were as proud of

it as if it had been a great deal more. They felt that they were

creating literature, as they were, in fact; a new school of American

letters mustered there.

Mark Twain and Bret Harte were distinctive features of this group. They

were already recognized by their associates as belonging in a class by

themselves, though as yet neither had done any of the work for which he

would be remembered later. They were a good deal together, and it was

when Harte was made editor of the Californian that Mark Twain was put

on the weekly staff at the then unexampled twelve-dollar rate. The

Californian made larger pretensions than the Era, and perhaps had a

heavier financial backing. With Mark Twain on the staff and Bret Harte

in the chair, himself a frequent contributor, it easily ranked as first

of San Francisco periodicals. A number of the sketches collected by

Webb later, in Mark Twain’s first little volume, the Celebrated Jumping

Frog, Etc., appeared in the Era or Californian in 1864 and 1865. They

were smart, bright, direct, not always refined, but probably the best

humor of the day. Some of them are still preserved in this volume of

sketches. They are interesting in what they promise, rather than in

what they present, though some of them are still delightful enough.

“The Killing of Julius Caesar Localized” is an excellent forerunner of

his burlesque report of a gladiatorial combat in The Innocents Abroad.

The Answers to Correspondents, with his vigorous admonition of the

statistical moralist, could hardly have been better done at any later

period. The Jumping Frog itself was not originally of this harvest. It

has a history of its own, as we shall see a little further along.

The reportorial arrangement was of brief duration. Even the great San

Francisco earthquake of that day did not awaken in Mark Twain any

permanent enthusiasm for the drudgery of the ‘Call’. He had lost

interest, and when Mark Twain lost interest in a subject or an

undertaking that subject or that undertaking were better dead, so far

as he was concerned. His conclusion of service with the Call was

certain, and he wondered daily why it was delayed so long. The

connection had become equally unsatisfactory to proprietor and

employee. They had a heart-to-heart talk presently, with the result

that Mark Twain was free. He used to claim, in after-years, with his

usual tendency to confess the worst of himself, that he was discharged,

and the incident has been variously told. George Barnes himself has

declared that Clemens resigned with great willingness. It is very

likely that the paragraph at the end of Chapter LVIII in ‘Roughing It’

presents the situation with fair accuracy, though, as always, the

author makes it as unpleasant for himself as possible:

“At last one of the proprietors took me aside, with a charity I still

remember with considerable respect, and gave me an opportunity to

resign my berth, and so save myself the disgrace of a dismissal.”

As an extreme contrast with the supposititious “butterfly idleness” of

his beginning in San Francisco, and for no other discoverable reason,

he doubtless thought it necessary, in the next chapter of that book, to

depict himself as having reached the depths of hard luck, debt, and

poverty.

“I became an adept at slinking,” he says. “I slunk from back street to

back street…. I slunk to my bed. I had pawned everything but the

clothes I had on.”

This is pure fiction. That he occasionally found himself short of funds

is likely enough—a literary life invites that sort of thing—but that he

ever clung to a single “silver ten-cent piece,” as he tells us, and

became the familiar of mendicancy, was a condition supplied altogether

by his later imagination to satisfy what he must have regarded as an

artistic need. Almost immediately following his separation from the

‘Call’ he arranged with Goodman to write a daily letter for the

Enterprise, reporting San Francisco matters after his own notion with a

free hand. His payment for this work was thirty dollars a week, and he

had an additional return from his literary sketches. The arrangement

was an improvement both as to labor and income.

Real affluence appeared on the horizon just then, in the form of a

liberal offer for the Tennessee land. But alas! it was from a

wine-grower who wished to turn the tract into great vineyards, and

Orion had a prohibition seizure at the moment, so the trade was not

made. Orion further argued that the prospective purchaser would

necessarily be obliged to import horticultural labor from Europe, and

that those people might be homesick, badly treated, and consequently

unhappy in those far eastern Tennessee mountains. Such was Orion’s way.

XLVIII

THE REFUGE OF THE HILLS

Those who remember Mark Twain’s Enterprise letters (they are no longer

obtainable)—[Many of these are indeed now obtainable by a simple Web

search. D.W.]—declare them to have been the greatest series of daily

philippics ever written. However this may be, it is certain that they

made a stir. Goodman permitted him to say absolutely what he pleased

upon any subject. San Francisco was fairly weltering in corruption,

official and private. He assailed whatever came first to hand with all

the fierceness of a flaming indignation long restrained.

Quite naturally he attacked the police, and with such ferocity and

penetration that as soon as copies of the Enterprise came from Virginia

the City Hall began to boil and smoke and threaten trouble. Martin G.

Burke, then chief of police, entered libel suit against the Enterprise,

prodigiously advertising that paper, copies of which were snatched as

soon as the stage brought them.

Mark Twain really let himself go then. He wrote a letter that on the

outside was marked, “Be sure and let Joe see this before it goes in.”

He even doubted himself whether Goodman would dare to print it, after

reading. It was a letter describing the city’s corrupt morals under the

existing police government. It began, “The air is full of lechery, and

rumors of lechery,” and continued in a strain which made even the

Enterprise printers aghast.

“You can never afford to publish that,” the foreman said to, Goodman.

“Let it all go in, every word,” Goodman answered. “If Mark can stand

it, I can!”

It seemed unfortunate (at the time) that Steve Gillis should select

this particular moment to stir up trouble that would involve both

himself and Clemens with the very officials which the latter had

undertaken to punish. Passing a saloon one night alone, Gillis heard an

altercation going on inside, and very naturally stepped in to enjoy it.

Including the barkeeper, there were three against two. Steve ranged

himself on the weaker side, and selected the barkeeper, a big bruiser,

who, when the fight was over, was ready for the hospital. It turned out

that he was one of Chief Burke’s minions, and Gillis was presently

indicted on a charge of assault with intent to kill. He knew some of

the officials in a friendly way, and was advised to give a straw bond

and go into temporary retirement. Clemens, of course, went his bail,

and Steve set out for Virginia City, until the storm blew over.

This was Burke’s opportunity. When the case was called and Gillis did

not appear, Burke promptly instituted an action against his bondsman,

with an execution against his loose property. The watch that had been

given him as Governor of the Third House came near being thus

sacrificed in the cause of friendship, and was only saved by skilful

manipulation.

Now, it was down in the chain of circumstances that Steve Gillis’s

brother, James N. Gillis, a gentle-hearted hermit, a pocket-miner of

the halcyon Tuolumne district—the Truthful James of Bret Harte—happened

to be in San Francisco at this time, and invited Clemens to return with

him to the far seclusion of his cabin on Jackass Hill. In that peaceful

retreat were always rest and refreshment for the wayfarer, and more

than one weary writer besides Bret Harte had found shelter there. James

Gillis himself had fine literary instincts, but he remained a

pocket-miner because he loved that quiet pursuit of gold, the Arcadian

life, the companionship of his books, the occasional Bohemian pilgrim

who found refuge in his retreat. It is said that the sick were made

well, and the well made better, in Jim Gillis’s cabin on the hilltop,

where the air was nectar and the stillness like enchantment. One could

mine there if he wished to do so; Jim would always furnish him a

promising claim, and teach him the art of following the little fan-like

drift of gold specks to the nested deposit of nuggets somewhere up the

hillside. He regularly shared his cabin with one Dick Stoker (Dick

Baker, of ‘Roughing It’), another genial soul who long ago had retired

from the world to this forgotten land, also with Dick’s cat, Tom

Quartz; but there was always room for guests.

In ‘Roughing It’, and in a later story, “The Californian’s Tale,” Mark

Twain has made us acquainted with the verdant solitude of the Tuolumne

hills, that dreamy, delicious paradise where once a vast population had

gathered when placer-mining had been in its bloom, a dozen years

before. The human swarm had scattered when the washings failed to pay,

leaving only a quiet emptiness and the few pocket-miners along the

Stanislaus and among the hills. Vast areas of that section present a

strange appearance to-day. Long stretches there are, crowded and jammed

and drifted with ghostly white stones that stand up like fossils of a

prehistoric life —the earth deposit which once covered them entirely

washed away, every particle of it removed by the greedy hordes, leaving

only this vast bleaching drift, literally the “picked bones of the

land.” At one place stands Columbia, regarded once as a rival to

Sacramento, a possible State capital—a few tumbling shanties now—and a

ruined church.

It was the 4th of December, 1864, when Mark Twain arrived at Jim

Gillis’s cabin. He found it a humble habitation made of logs and slabs,

partly sheltered by a great live-oak tree, surrounded by a stretch of

grass. It had not much in the way of pretentious furniture, but there

was a large fireplace, and a library which included the standard

authors. A younger Gillis boy, William, was there at this time, so that

the family numbered five in all, including Tom Quartz, the cat. On

rainy days they would gather about the big, open fire and Jim Gillis,

with his back to the warmth, would relate diverting yarns, creations of

his own, turned out hot from the anvil, forged as he went along. He had

a startling imagination, and he had fostered it in that secluded place.

His stories usually consisted of wonderful adventures of his companion,

Dick Stoker, portrayed with humor and that serene and vagrant fancy

which builds as it goes, careless as to whither it is proceeding and

whether the story shall end well or ill, soon or late, if ever. He

always pretended that these extravagant tales of Stoker were strictly

true; and Stoker—“forty-six and gray as a rat”—earnest, thoughtful, and

tranquilly serene, would smoke and look into the fire and listen to

those astonishing things of himself, smiling a little now and then but

saying never a word. What did it matter to him? He had no world outside

of the cabin and the hills, no affairs; he would live and die there;

his affairs all had ended long ago. A number of the stories used in

Mark Twain’s books were first told by Jim Gillis, standing with his

hands crossed behind him, back to the fire, in the cabin on jackass

Hill. The story of Dick Baker’s cat was one of these; the jaybird and

Acorn story of ‘A Tramp Abroad’ was another; also the story of the

“Burning Shame,” and there are others. Mark Twain had little to add to

these stories; in fact, he never could get them to sound as well, he

said, as when Jim Gillis had told them.

James Gillis’s imagination sometimes led him into difficulties. Once a

feeble old squaw came along selling some fruit that looked like green

plums. Stoker, who knew the fruit well enough, carelessly ventured the

remark that it might be all right, but he had never heard of anybody

eating it, which set Gillis off into eloquent praises of its delights,

all of which he knew to be purely imaginary; whereupon Stoker told him

if he liked the fruit so well, to buy some of it. There was no escape

after that; Jim had to buy some of those plums, whose acid was of the

hair-lifting aqua-fortis variety, and all the rest of the day he stewed

them, adding sugar, trying to make them palatable, tasting them now and

then, boasting meanwhile of their nectar-like deliciousness. He gave

the others a taste by and by—a withering, corroding sup—and they

derided him and rode him down. But Jim never weakened. He ate that

fearful brew, and though for days his mouth was like fire he still

referred to the luscious health-giving joys of the “Californian plums.”

Jackass Hill was not altogether a solitude; here and there were

neighbors. Another pocket-miner; named Carrington, had a cabin not far

away, and a mile or two distant lived an old couple with a pair of

pretty daughters, so plump and trim and innocent, that they were called

the “Chapparal Quails.” Young men from far and near paid court to them,

and on Sunday afternoons so many horses would be tied to their front

fence as to suggest an afternoon service there. Young “Billy” Gillis

knew them, and one Sunday morning took his brother’s friend, Sam

Clemens, over for a call. They went early, with forethought, and

promptly took the girls for a walk. They took a long walk, and went

wandering over the hills, toward Sandy Bar and the Stanislaus—through

that reposeful land which Bret Harte would one day light with idyllic

romance—and toward evening found themselves a long way from home. They

must return by the nearest way to arrive before dark. One of the young

ladies suggested a short cut through the Chemisal, and they started.

But they were lost, presently, and it was late, very late, when at last

they reached the ranch. The mother of the “Quails” was sitting up for

them, and she had something to say. She let go a perfect storm of

general denunciation, then narrowed the attack to Samuel Clemens as the

oldest of the party. He remained mildly serene.

“It wasn’t my fault,” he ventured at last; “it was Billy Gillis’s

fault.”

“No such thing. You know better. Mr. Gillis has been here often. It was

you.”

“But do you realize, ma’am, how tired and hungry we are? Haven’t you

got a bite for us to eat?”

“No, sir, not a bite—for such as you.”

The offender’s eyes, wandering about the room, spied something in a

corner.

“Isn’t that a guitar over there?” he asked.

“Yes, sir, it is; what of it?”

The culprit walked over, and taking it up, tuned the strings a little

and struck the chords. Then he began to sing. He began very softly and

sang “Fly Away, Pretty Moth,” then “Araby’s Daughter.” He could sing

very well in those days, following with the simpler chords. Perhaps the

mother “Quail” had known those songs herself back in the States, for

her manner grew kindlier, almost with the first notes. When he had

finished she was the first to ask him to go on.

“I suppose you are just like all young folks,” she said. “I was young

myself once. While you sing I’ll get some supper.”

She left the door to the kitchen open so that she could hear, and

cooked whatever she could find for the belated party.

XLIX

THE JUMPING FROG

It was the rainy season, the winter of 1864 and 1865, but there were

many pleasant days, when they could go pocket-hunting, and Samuel

Clemens soon added a knowledge of this fascinating science to his other

acquirements. Sometimes he worked with Dick Stoker, sometimes with one

of the Gillis boys. He did not make his fortune at pocket-mining; he

only laid its corner-stone. In the old note-book he kept of that

sojourn we find that, with Jim Gillis, he made a trip over into

Calaveras County soon after Christmas and remained there until after

New Year’s, probably prospecting; and he records that on New Year’s

night, at Vallecito, he saw a magnificent lunar rainbow in a very

light, drizzling rain. A lunar rainbow is one of the things people

seldom see. He thought it an omen of good-fortune.

They returned to the cabin on the hill; but later in the month, on the

they crossed over into Calaveras again, and began pocket-hunting not

far from Angel’s Camp. The note-book records that the bill of fare at

the Camp hotel consisted wholly of beans and something which bore the

name of coffee; also that the rains were frequent and heavy.

January 27. Same old diet—same old weather—went out to the

pocket-claim—had to rush back.

They had what they believed to be a good claim. Jim Gillis declared the

indications promising, and if they could only have good weather to work

it, they were sure of rich returns. For himself, he would have been

willing to work, rain or shine. Clemens, however, had different views

on the subject. His part was carrying water for washing out the pans of

dirt, and carrying pails of water through the cold rain and mud was not

very fascinating work. Dick Stoker came over before long to help.

Things went a little better then; but most of their days were spent in

the bar-room of the dilapidated tavern at Angel’s Camp, enjoying the

company of a former Illinois River pilot, Ben Coon,* a solemn,

fat-witted person, who dozed by the stove, or told slow, endless

stories, without point or application. Listeners were a boon to him,

for few came and not many would stay. To Mark Twain and Jim Gillis,

however, Ben Coon was a delight. It was soothing and comfortable to

listen to his endless narratives, told in that solemn way, with no

suspicion of humor. Even when his yarns had point, he did not recognize

it. One dreary afternoon, in his slow, monotonous fashion, he told them

about a frog—a frog that had belonged to a man named Coleman, who

trained it to jump, but that failed to win a wager because the owner of

a rival frog had surreptitiously loaded the trained jumper with shot.

The story had circulated among the camps, and a well-known journalist,

named Samuel Seabough, had already made a squib of it, but neither

Clemens nor Gillis had ever happened to hear it before. They thought

the tale in itself amusing, and the “spectacle of a man drifting

serenely along through such a queer yarn without ever smiling was

exquisitely absurd.” When Coon had talked himself out, his hearers

played billiards on the frowsy table, and now and then one would remark

to the other:

“I don’t see no p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other

frog,” and perhaps the other would answer:

“I ain’t got no frog, but if I had a frog I’d bet you.”

* This name has been variously given as “Ros Coon,” “Coon Drayton,”

etc. It is given here as set down in Mark Twain’s notes, made on the

spot. Coon was not (as has been stated) the proprietor of the hotel

(which was kept by a Frenchman), but a frequenter of it.

Out on the claim, between pails of water, Clemens, as he watched Jim

Gillis or Dick Stoker “washing,” would be apt to say, “I don’t see no

p’ints about that pan o’ dirt that’s any better’n any other pan o’

dirt,” and so they kept it up.

Then the rain would come again and interfere with their work. One

afternoon, when Clemens and Gillis were following certain tiny-sprayed

specks of gold that were leading them to pocket—somewhere up the long

slope, the chill downpour set in. Gillis, as usual, was washing, and

Clemens carrying water. The “color” was getting better with every pan,

and Jim Gillis believed that now, after their long waiting, they were

to be rewarded. Possessed with the miner’s passion, he would have gone

on washing and climbing toward the precious pocket, regardless of

everything. Clemens, however, shivering and disgusted, swore that each

pail of water was his last. His teeth were chattering and he was wet

through. Finally he said, in his deliberate way:

“Jim, I won’t carry any more water. This work is too disagreeable.”

Gillis had just taken out a panful of dirt.

“Bring one more pail, Sam,” he pleaded.

“Oh, hell, Jim, I won’t do it; I’m freezing!”

“Just one more pail, Sam,” he pleaded.

“No, sir, not a drop, not if I knew there were a million dollars in

that pan.”

Gillis tore a page out of his note-book, and hastily posted a

thirty-day claim notice by the pan of dirt, and they set out for

Angel’s Camp. It kept on raining and storming, and they did not go

back. A few days later a letter from Steve Gillis made Clemens decide

to return to San Francisco. With Jim Gillis and Dick Stoker he left

Angel’s and walked across the mountains to Jackass Hill in the

snow-storm—“the first I ever saw in California,” he says in his notes.

In the mean time the rain had washed away the top of the pan of earth

they had left standing on the hillside, and exposed a handful of

nuggets-pure gold. Two strangers, Austrians, had come along and,

observing it, had sat down to wait until the thirty-day claim notice

posted by Jim Gillis should expire. They did not mind the rain—not with

all that gold in sight—and the minute the thirty days were up they

followed the lead a few pans farther and took out—some say ten, some

say twenty, thousand dollars. In either case it was a good pocket. Mark

Twain missed it by one pail of water. Still, it is just as well,

perhaps, when one remembers that vaster nugget of Angel’s Camp—the

Jumping Frog. Jim Gillis always declared, “If Sam had got that pocket

he would have remained a pocket-miner to the end of his days, like me.”

In Mark Twain’s old note-book occurs a memorandum of the frog story—a

mere casual entry of its main features:

Coleman with his jumping frog—bet stranger $50—stranger had no frog,

and C. got him one:—in the mean time stranger filled C.’s frog full of

shot and he couldn’t jump. The stranger’s frog won.

It seemed unimportant enough, no doubt, at the time; but it was the

nucleus around which was built a surpassing fame. The hills along the

Stanislaus have turned out some wonderful nuggets in their time, but no

other of such size as that.

L

BACK TO THE TUMULT

FROM the note-book:

February 25. Arrived in Stockton 5 p.m. Home again home again at the

Occidental Hotel, San Francisco—find letters from Artemus Ward asking

me to write a sketch for his new book of Nevada Territory Travels which

is soon to come out. Too late—ought to have got the letters three

months ago. They are dated early in November.

He was sorry not to oblige Ward, sorry also not to have representation

in his book. He wrote explaining the circumstance, and telling the

story of his absence. Steve Gillis, meantime, had returned to San

Francisco, and settled his difficulties there. The friends again took

up residence together.

Mark Twain resumed his daily letters to the Enterprise, without further

annoyance from official sources. Perhaps there was a temporary truce in

that direction, though he continued to attack various abuses—civic,

private, and artistic—becoming a sort of general censor, establishing

for himself the title of the “Moralist of the Main.” The letters were

reprinted in San Francisco and widely read. Now and then some one had

the temerity to answer them, but most of his victims maintained a

discreet silence. In one of these letters he told of the Mexican

oyster, a rather tough, unsatisfactory article of diet, which could not

stand criticism, and presently disappeared from the market. It was a

mistake, however, for him to attack an Alta journalist by the name of

Evans. Evans was a poet, and once composed an elegy with a refrain

which ended:

Gone, gone, gone

—Gone to his endeavor;

Gone, gone, gone,

Forever and forever.

In the Enterprise letter following its publication Mark Twain referred

to this poem. He parodied the refrain and added, “If there is any

criticism to make on it I should say there is a little too much ‘gone’

and not enough ‘forever.’”

It was a more or less pointless witticism, but it had a humorous

quotable flavor, and it made Evans mad. In a squib in the Alta he

retaliated:

Mark Twain has killed the Mexican oyster. We only regret that the act

was not inspired by a worthier motive. Mark Twain’s sole reason for

attacking the Mexican oyster was because the restaurant that sold them

refused him credit.

A deadly thrust like that could not be parried in print. To deny or

recriminate would be to appear ridiculous. One could only sweat and

breathe vengeance.

“Joe,” he said to Goodman, who had come over for a visit, “my one

object in life now is to make enough money to stand trial and then go

and murder Evans.”

He wrote verses himself sometimes, and lightened his Enterprise letters

with jingles. One of these concerned Tom Maguire, the autocrat manager

of San Francisco theaters. It details Maguire’s assault on one of his

actors.

Tom Maguire,

Roused to ire,

Lighted on McDougal;

Tore his coat,

Clutched his throat,

And split him in the bugle.

For shame! oh, fie!

Maguire, why

Will you thus skyugle?

Why curse and swear,

And rip and tear

The innocent McDougal?

Of bones bereft,

Almost, you’ve left

Vestvali, gentle Jew gal;

And now you’ve smashed

And almost hashed

The form of poor McDougal!

Goodman remembers that Clemens and Gillis were together again on

California Street at this time, and of hearing them sing, “The Doleful

Ballad of the Rejected Lover,” another of Mark Twain’s compositions. It

was a wild, blasphemous outburst, and the furious fervor with which

Mark and Steve delivered it, standing side by side and waving their

fists, did not render it less objectionable. Such memories as these are

set down here, for they exhibit a phase of that robust personality,

built of the same primeval material from which the world was

created—built of every variety of material, in fact, ever incorporated

in a human being—equally capable of writing unprintable coarseness and

that rarest and most tender of all characterizations, the

‘Recollections of JOAN of ARC’.

LI

THE CORNER-STONE

Along with his Enterprise work, Clemens continued to write occasionally

for the Californian, but for some reason he did not offer the story of

the jumping frog. For one thing, he did not regard it highly as

literary material. He knew that he had enjoyed it himself, but the

humor and fashion of its telling seemed to him of too simple and mild a

variety in that day of boisterous incident and exaggerated form. By and

by Artemus Ward turned up in San Francisco, and one night Mark Twain

told him his experiences with Jim Gillis, and in Angel’s Camp; also of

Ben Coon and his tale of the Calaveras frog. Ward was delighted.

“Write it,” he said. “There is still time to get it into my volume of

sketches. Send it to Carleton, my publisher in New York.”*

* This is in accordance with Mr. Clemens’s recollection of the matter.

The author can find no positive evidence that Ward was on the Pacific

coast again in 1865. It seems likely, therefore, that the telling of

the frog story and his approval of it were accomplished by exchange of

letters.

Clemens promised to do this, but delayed fulfilment somewhat, and by

the time the sketch reached Carleton, Ward’s book was about ready for

the press. It did not seem worth while to Carleton to make any change

of plans that would include the frog story. The publisher handed it

over to Henry Clapp, editor of the Saturday Press, a perishing sheet,

saying: “Here, Clapp, here’s something you can use in your paper.”

Clapp took it thankfully enough, we may believe.

“Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog”* appeared in the Saturday Press of

November 18, 1865, and was immediately copied and quoted far and near.

It brought the name of Mark Twain across the mountains, bore it up and

down the Atlantic coast, and out over the prairies of the Middle West.

Away from the Pacific slope only a reader here and there had known the

name before. Now every one who took a newspaper was treated to the tale

of the wonderful Calaveras frog, and received a mental impress of the

author’s signature. The name Mark Twain became hardly an institution,

as yet, but it made a strong bid for national acceptance.

* This was the original title.

As for its owner, he had no suspicion of these momentous happenings for

a considerable time. The telegraph did not carry such news in those

days, and it took a good while for the echo of his victory to travel to

the Coast. When at last a lagging word of it did arrive, it would seem

to have brought disappointment, rather than exaltation, to the author.

Even Artemus Ward’s opinion of the story had not increased Mark Twain’s

regard for it as literature. That it had struck the popular note meant,

as he believed, failure for his more highly regarded work. In a letter

written January 20, 1866, he says these things for himself:

I do not know what to write; my life is so uneventful. I wish I was

back there piloting up and down the river again. Verily, all is vanity

and little worth—save piloting.

To think that, after writing many an article a man might be excused for

thinking tolerably good, those New York people should single out a

villainous backwoods sketch to compliment me on! “Jim Smiley and His

Jumping Frog”—a squib which would never have been written but to please

Artemus Ward, and then it reached New York too late to appear in his

book.

But no matter. His book was a wretchedly poor one, generally speaking,

and it could be no credit to either of us to appear between its covers.

This paragraph is from the New York correspondence of the San Francisco

Alta:

“Mark Twain’s story in the Saturday Press of November 18th, called ‘Jim

Smiley and His Jumping Frog,’ has set all New York in a roar, and he

may be said to have made his mark. I have been asked fifty times about

it and its author, and the papers are copying it far and near. It is

voted the best thing of the day. Cannot the ‘Californian’ afford to

keep Mark all to itself? It should not let him scintillate so widely

without first being filtered through the California press.”

The New York publishing house of Carleton & Co. gave the sketch to the

Saturday Press when they found it was too late for the book.

It is difficult to judge the jumping Frog story to-day. It has the

intrinsic fundamental value of one of Æsop’s Fables.* It contains a

basic idea which is essentially ludicrous, and the quaint simplicity of

its telling is convincing and full of charm. It appeared in print at a

time when American humor was chaotic, the public taste unformed. We had

a vast appreciation for what was comic, with no great number of

opportunities for showing it. We were so ready to laugh that when a

real opportunity came along we improved it and kept on laughing and

repeating the cause of our merriment, directing the attention of our

friends to it. Whether the story of “Jim Smiley’s Frog,” offered for

the first time today, would capture the public, and become the initial

block of a towering fame, is another matter. That the author himself

underrated it is certain. That the public, receiving it at what we now

term the psychological moment, may have overrated it is by no means

impossible. In any case, it does not matter now. The stone rejected by

the builder was made the corner-stone of his literary edifice. As such

it is immortal.

* The resemblance of the frog story to the early Greek tales must have

been noted by Prof. Henry Sidgwick, who synopsized it in Greek form and

phrase for his book, Greek Prose Composition. Through this originated

the impression that the story was of Athenian root. Mark Twain himself

was deceived, until in 1899, when he met Professor Sidgwick, who

explained that the Greek version was the translation and Mark Twain’s

the original; that he had thought it unnecessary to give credit for a

story so well known. See The Jumping Frog, Harper & Bros., 1903, p. 64.

In the letter already quoted, Clemens speaks of both Bret Harte and

himself as having quit the ‘Californian’ in future expecting to write

for Eastern papers. He adds:

Though I am generally placed at the head of my breed of scribblers in

this part of the country, the place properly belongs to Bret Harte, I

think, though he denies it, along with the rest. He wants me to club a

lot of old sketches together with a lot of his, and publish a book. I

wouldn’t do it, only he agrees to take all the trouble. But I want to

know whether we are going to make anything out of it, first. However,

he has written to a New York publisher, and if we are offered a bargain

that will pay for a month’s labor we will go to work and prepare the

volume for the press.

Nothing came of the proposed volume, or of other joint literary schemes

these two had then in mind. Neither of them would seem to have been

optimistic as to their future place in American literature; certainly

in their most exalted moments they could hardly have dreamed that

within half a dozen years they would be the head and front of a new

school of letters—the two most talked-of men in America.

LII

A COMMISSION TO THE SANDWICH ISLANDS

Whatever his first emotions concerning the success of “Jim Smiley’s

Frog” may have been, the sudden astonishing leap of that batrachian

into American literature gave the author an added prestige at home as

well as in distant parts. Those about him were inclined to regard him,

in some degree at least, as a national literary figure and to pay

tribute accordingly. Special honors began to be shown to him. A fine

new steamer, the Ajax, built for the Sandwich Island trade, carried on

its initial trip a select party of guests of which he was invited to

make one. He did not go, and reproached himself sorrowfully afterward.

If the _Ajax_ were back I would go quick, and throw up my

correspondence. She had fifty-two invited guests aboard—the cream of

the town—gentlemen and ladies, and a splendid brass band. I could not

accept because there would be no one to write my correspondence while I

was gone.

In fact, the daily letter had grown monotonous. He was restless, and

the Ajax excursion, which he had been obliged to forego, made him still

more dissatisfied. An idea occurred to him: the sugar industry of the

islands was a matter of great commercial interest to California, while

the life and scenery there, picturesquely treated, would appeal to the

general reader. He was on excellent terms with James Anthony and Paul

Morrill, of the Sacramento Union; he proposed to them that they send

him as their special correspondent to report to their readers, in a

series of letters, life, trade, agriculture, and general aspect of the

islands. To his vast delight, they gave him the commission. He wrote

home joyously now:

I am to remain there a month and ransack the islands, the cataracts and

volcanoes completely, and write twenty or thirty letters, for which

they pay as much money as I would get if I stayed at home.

He adds that on his return he expects to start straight across the

continent by way of the Columbia River, the Pend Oreille Lakes, through

Montana and down the Missouri River. “Only two hundred miles of land

travel from San Francisco to New Orleans.”

So it is: man proposes, while fate, undisturbed, spins serenely on.

He sailed by the Ajax on her next trip, March 7 (1866), beginning his

first sea voyage—a brand-new experience, during which he acquired the

names of the sails and parts of the ship, with considerable knowledge

of navigation, and of the islands he was to visit—whatever information

passengers and sailors could furnish. It was a happy, stormy voyage

altogether. In ‘Roughing It’ he has given us some account of it.

It was the 18th of March when he arrived at Honolulu, and his first

impression of that tranquil harbor remained with him always. In fact,

his whole visit there became one of those memory-pictures, full of

golden sunlight and peace, to be found somewhere in every human past.

The letters of introduction he had brought, and the reputation which

had preceded him, guaranteed him welcome and hospitality. Officials and

private citizens were alike ready to show him their pleasant land, and

he fairly reveled in its delicious air, its summer warmth, its soft

repose.

Oh, islands there are on the face of the deep

Where the leaves never fade and the skies never weep,

he quotes in his note-book, and adds:

Went with Mr. Damon to his cool, vine-shaded home; no careworn or

eager, anxious faces in this land of happy contentment. God, what a

contrast with California and the Washoe!

And in another place:

They _live_ in the S. I.—no rush, no worry—merchant goes down to his

store like a gentleman at nine—goes home at four and thinks no more of

business till next day. D—n San F. style of wearing out life.

He fitted in with the languorous island existence, but he had come for

business, and he lost not much time. He found there a number of friends

from Washoe, including the Rev. Mr. Rising, whose health had failed

from overwork. By their direction, and under official guidance, he set

out on Oahu, one of the several curious horses he has immortalized in

print, and, accompanied by a pleasant party of ladies and gentlemen,

encircled the island of that name, crossed it and recrossed it, visited

its various battle-fields, returning to Honolulu, lame, sore, sunburnt,

but triumphant. His letters home, better even than his Union

correspondence, reveal his personal interest and enthusiasms.

I have got a lot of human bones which I took from one of these

battle-fields. I guess I will bring you some of them. I went with the

American Minister and took dinner this evening with the King’s Grand

Chamberlain, who is related to the royal family, and though darker than

a mulatto he has an excellent English education, and in manners is an

accomplished gentleman. He is to call for me in the morning; we will

visit the King in the palace, After dinner they called in the “singing

girls,” and we had some beautiful music, sung in the native tongue.

It was his first association with royalty, and it was human that he

should air it a little. In the same letter he states: “I will sail in a

day or two on a tour of the other islands, to be gone two months.”

‘In Roughing It’ he has given us a picture of his visits to the

islands, their plantations, their volcanoes, their natural and historic

wonders. He was an insatiable sight-seer then, and a persevering one.

The very name of a new point of interest filled him with an eager

enthusiasm to be off. No discomfort or risk or distance discouraged

him. With a single daring companion—a man who said he could find the

way—he crossed the burning floor of the mighty crater of Kilauea (then

in almost constant eruption), racing across the burning lava floor,

jumping wide and bottomless crevices, when a misstep would have meant

death.

By and by Marlette shouted “Stop!” I never stopped quicker in my life.

I asked what the matter was. He said we were out of the path. He said

we must not try to go on until we found it again, for we were

surrounded with beds of rotten lava, through which we could easily

break and plunge down 1,000 feet. I thought Boo would answer for me,

and was about to say so, when Marlette partly proved his statement,

crushing through and disappearing to his arm-pits.

They made their way across at last, and stood the rest of the night

gazing down upon a spectacle of a crater in quivering action, a

veritable lake of fire. They had risked their lives for that scene, but

it seemed worth while.

His open-air life on the river, and the mining camps, had prepared

Samuel Clemens for adventurous hardships. He was thirty years old, with

his full account of mental and physical capital. His growth had been

slow, but he was entering now upon his golden age; he was fitted for

conquest of whatever sort, and he was beginning to realize his power.

LIII

ANSON BURLINGAME AND THE “HORNET” DISASTER

It was near the end of June when he returned to Honolulu from a tour of

all the islands, fairly worn out and prostrated with saddle boils. He

expected only to rest and be quiet for a season, but all unknown to him

startling and historic things were taking place in which he was to have

a part—events that would mark another forward stride in his career.

The _Ajax_ had just come in, bringing his Excellency Anson Burlingame,

then returning to his post as minister to China; also General Van

Valkenburg, minister to Japan; Colonel Rumsey and Minister Burlingame’s

son, Edward,* then a lively boy of eighteen. Young Burlingame had read

“The Jumping Frog,” and was enthusiastic about Mark Twain and his work.

Learning that he was in Honolulu, laid up at his hotel, the party sent

word that they would call on him next morning.

* Edward L. Burlingame, now for many years editor of Scribner’s

Magazine.

Clemens felt that he must not accept this honor, sick or well. He

crawled out of bed, dressed and shaved himself as quickly as possible,

and drove to the American minister’s, where the party was staying. They

had a hilariously good time. When he returned to his hotel he sent

them, by request, whatever he had on hand of his work. General Van

Valkenburg had said to him:

“California is proud of Mark Twain, and some day the American people

will be, too, no doubt.”

There has seldom been a more accurate prophecy.

But a still greater event was imminent. On that very day (June 21,

1866) there came word of the arrival at Sanpahoe, on the island of

Hawaii, of an open boat containing fifteen starving wretches, who on

short, ten-day rations had been buffeting a stormy sea for forty-three

days! A vessel, the Hornet, from New York, had taken fire and burned

“on the line,” and since early in May, on that meager sustenance, they

had been battling with hundreds of leagues of adverse billows, seeking

for land.

A few days following the first report, eleven of the rescued men were

brought to Honolulu and placed in the hospital. Mark Twain recognized

the great news importance of the event. It would be a splendid beat if

he could interview the castaways and be the first to get their story to

his paper. There was no cable in those days; a vessel for San Francisco

would sail next morning. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, and he

must not miss it. Bedridden as he was, the undertaking seemed beyond

his strength.

But just at this time the Burlingame party descended on him, and almost

before he knew it he was on the way to the hospital on a cot, escorted

by the heads of the joint legations of China and Japan. Once there,

Anson Burlingame, with his splendid human sympathy and handsome,

courtly presence, drew from those enfeebled castaways all the story of

their long privation and struggle, that had stretched across

forty-three distempered days and four thousand miles of sea. All that

Mark Twain had to do was to listen and make the notes.

He put in the night-writing against time. Next morning, just as the

vessel for the States was drifting away from her dock, a strong hand

flung his bulky envelope of manuscript aboard, and if the vessel

arrived his great beat was sure. It did arrive, and the three-column

story on the front page of the Sacramento Union, in its issue of July

19th, gave the public the first detailed history of the terrible Hornet

disaster and the rescue of those starving men. Such a story occupied a

wider place in the public interest than it would in these crowded days.

The telegraph carried it everywhere, and it was featured as a

sensation.

Mark Twain always adored the name and memory of Anson Burlingame. In

his letter home he tells of Burlingame’s magnanimity in “throwing away

an invitation to dine with princes and foreign dignitaries” to help

him. “You know I appreciate that kind of thing,” he says; which was a

true statement, and in future years he never missed an opportunity of

paying an instalment on his debt of gratitude. It was proper that he

should do so, for the obligation was a far greater one than that

contracted in obtaining the tale of the Hornet disaster. It was the

debt which one owes to a man who, from the deep measure of his

understanding, gives encouragement and exactly needed and convincing

advice. Anson Burlingame said to Samuel Clemens:

“You have great ability; I believe you have genius. What you need now

is the refinement of association. Seek companionship among men of

superior intellect and character. Refine yourself and your work. Never

affiliate with inferiors; always climb.”

Clemens never forgot that advice. He did not always observe it, but he

rarely failed to realize its gospel. Burlingame urged him to travel.

“Come to Pekin next winter,” he said, “and visit me. Make my house your

home. I will give you letters and introduce you. You will have

facilities for acquiring information about China.”

It is not surprising then that Mark Twain never felt his debt to Anson

Burlingame entirely paid. Burlingame came more than once to the hotel,

for Clemens was really ill now, and they discussed plans for his future

betterment.

He promised, of course, to visit China, and when he was alone put in a

good deal of time planning a trip around the world which would include

the great capitals. When not otherwise employed he read; though there

was only one book in the hotel, a “blue and gold” edition of Dr.

Holmes’s Songs in Many Keys, and this he soon knew almost by heart,

from title-page to finis.

He was soon up and about. No one could remain ill long in those happy

islands. Young Burlingame came, and suggested walks. Once, when Clemens

hesitated, the young man said:

“But there is a Scriptural command for you to go.”

“If you can quote one I’ll obey it,” said Clemens.

“Very well. The Bible says, ‘If any man require thee to walk a mile, go

with him, Twain.’”

The command was regarded as sufficient. Clemens quoted the witticism

later (in his first lecture), and it was often repeated in after-years,

ascribed to Warner, Ward, and a dozen others. Its origin was as here

set down.

Under date of July 4 (1866), Mark Twain’s Sandwich Island note-book

says:

Went to a ball 8.30 P.M.—danced till 12.30; stopped at General Van

Valkenburg’s room and talked with him and Mr. Burlingame and Ed

Burlingame until 3 A.M.

From which we may conclude that he had altogether recovered. A few days

later the legation party had sailed for China and Japan, and on the

19th Clemens himself set out by a slow sailing-vessel to San Francisco.

They were becalmed and were twenty-five days making the voyage. Captain

Mitchell and others of the wrecked Hornet were aboard, and he put in a

good deal of time copying their diaries and preparing a magazine

article which, he believed, would prove his real entrance to the

literary world.

The vessel lay almost perfectly still, day after day, and became a

regular playground at sea. Sundays they had services and Mark Twain led

the choir.

“I hope they will have a better opinion of our music in heaven than I

have down here,” he says in his notes. “If they don’t, a thunderbolt

will knock this vessel endways.” It is perhaps worthy of mention that

on the night of the 27th of July he records having seen another

“splendidly colored, lunar rainbow.” That he regarded this as an

indication of future good-fortune is not surprising, considering the

events of the previous year.

It was August 13th when he reached San Francisco, and the note-book

entry of that day says:

Home again. No—not home again—in prison again, end all the wild sense

of freedom gone. The city seems so cramped and so dreary with toil and

care and business anxiety. God help me, I wish I were at sea again!

There were compensations, however. He went over to Sacramento, and was

abundantly welcomed. It was agreed that, in addition to the twenty

dollars allowed for each letter, a special bill should be made for the

Hornet report.

“How much do you think it ought to be, Mark?” James Anthony asked.

“Oh, I’m a modest man; I don’t want the whole Union office. Call it

$100 a column.”

There was a general laugh. The bill was made out at that figure, and he

took it to the business office for payment.

“The cashier didn’t faint,” he wrote, many years later, “but he came

rather near it. He sent for the proprietors, and they only laughed in

their jolly fashion, and said it was a robbery, but ‘no matter, pay it.

It’s all right.’ The best men that ever owned a newspaper.”*

* “My Début as a Literary Person.”—Collected works.

Though inferior to the descriptive writing which a year later would

give him a world-wide fame, the Sandwich Island letters added greatly

to his prestige on the Pacific coast. They were convincing, informing;

tersely—even eloquently—descriptive, with a vein of humor adapted to

their audience. Yet to read them now, in the fine nonpareil type in

which they were set, is such a wearying task that one can only marvel

at their popularity. They were not brilliant literature, by our

standards to-day. Their humor is usually of a muscular kind, varied

with grotesque exaggerations; the literary quality is pretty

attenuated. Here and there are attempts at verse. He had a fashion in

those days of combining two or more poems with distracting, sometimes

amusing, effect. Examples of these dislocations occur in the Union

letters; a single stanza will present the general idea:

The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,

The turf with their bayonets turning,

And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold,

And our lanterns dimly burning.

Only a trifling portion of the letters found their way into his

Sandwich Island chapters of ‘Roughing It’, five years later. They do,

however, reveal a sort of transition stage between the riotous

florescence of the Comstock and the mellowness of his later style. He

was learning to see things with better eyes, from a better point of

view. It is not difficult to believe that this literary change of heart

was in no small measure due to the influence of Anson Burlingame.