Mark Twain - Reporter: Day By Day

1862 or 1863 – 16 th of unidentified month – Enterprise item by Sam. No title.

April 1 Friday – “Another Traitor – Hang Him!” a hoax article in the Enterprise is attributed to Sam [Fatout, MT in VC 180]. Also printed in the Evening Bulletin on Apr. 1 as “Another Goak” [Camfield bibliog.].

April 11–12 Sunday – Sam wrote from Virginia City to his mother, and sister Pamela Moffett.

My Dear Mother & Sister

It is very late at night, & I am writing in my room, which is not quite as large or as nice as the one I had at home. My board, washing & lodging cost me seventy-five dollars a month.

April 14 Thursday – Sam wrote to Orion, resigning his commission as a notary public for Storey County [MTL 1: 279n9]. No reason was given, but this work was similar to the scraps of work and fees his father, John Marshall Clemens, had sought, and so by association, Sam may have concluded the small fees were not worth the effort. Noted on the letter for Apr. 15 is Orion’s acceptance.

April 16 Thursday – Sam wrote a letter from Virginia City to his mother, of which a fragment survives.
…

April 16 Saturday – Sam and Dan De Quille had been taking fencing lessons from Professor O. V. Chauvel, who ran a gymnasium at 12 North C Street [Mack 251]. The Gold Hill Daily News ran an article about their fencing expertise:

April 16 Monday – Sam’s first letter from the Sandwich Islands ran in the Sacramento Union. (See Mar. 18 entry) [Day 3].

April 16–18 Saturday – “Horrible Affair” was published in the Enterprise. Sam wrote that five Indians “had been smothered to death in a tunnel back of Gold Hill.” He included this account in a list of hoaxes some five years after [ET&S 1: 244-7].

April 17 Friday – The Enterprise ran Sam’s article “Latest from Washoe” about the Gold Hill discovery [MTL 1: 251-2n3]:
The recent discovery at Gold Hill has materially advanced the rates of the claims on the main range, and is really of great importance. The discovery consists of a newly developed ledge, of surprising richness, immediately in front of what has been supposed to be the front vein in that locality. Should the new ledge prove to be permanent and continuous, it will doubtless be claimed as a portion of the main Gold Hill possessions.

April 17 Tuesday – Sam’s second letter from the Sandwich Islands ran in the Sacramento Union. (See Mar. 19 entry) [Day 9].

April 17–24 Sunday – Sam’s item in the Enterprise Local Column was “Missionaries Wanted.” This humorous drubbing of two locals in a fictional scene was typical of Sam’s barbs for those he wanted to deflate. Such reports won him the title of “wild and unpredictable humorist.”
Yesterday morning [John] Gashwiler and Charley Funck, citizens of Virginia City and of the Territory of Nevada, and officers of the great Virginia and Gold Hill Water Company, came rushing into our office in a state of excitement bordering on lunacy… [Note: John W. Gashwiler (1831-1883) “Old Gash”]

April 18 Wednesday – Sam’s third letter to the Union dated “Honolulu, March, 1866: STILL AT SEA” ran in the Union: “I have been here a day or two now, but I do not know enough concerning the country yet to commence writing about it with confidence, so I will drift back to sea again.” He then wrote a long letter about the Ajax and the need to establish a permanent steamship line to the islands [Day 18].

April – Sam’s sketch, “A Strange Dream,” was written: a tale about a fictional search for the bones of Kamehameha i (1737? -1819), the conqueror of the Hawaiian Islands [MTL 1: 344 n1].

April 19 Tuesday – Ruel Colt Gridley (1829-1870), an “old schoolfellow of Mark Twain’s” and owner of the Gridley Store in Austin, made a wager on the outcome of a city election, with the loser having to carry a fifty-pound sack of flour from Austin to Clifton, a mile and a quarter’s distance [Fatout, MT in VC 186]. Note: the next day the process began which led to the great flour sack promotions for the Sanitary Fund, a forerunner of the American Red Cross (See May 17 entry.)

April 19 Thursday – Sam’s fourth letter to the Union, dated “Honolulu, March, 1866: OUR ARRIVAL ELABORATED A LITTLE MORE” ran in the Union:
I had not shaved since I left San Francisco – ten days. As soon as I got ashore I hunted for a striped pole, and shortly found one. I always had a yearning to be a King. This may never be, I suppose. But at any rate it will always be a satisfaction to me to know that if I am not a King, I am the next thing to it – I have been shaved by the King’s barber [Day 29].

April 19–30 Thursday – Sam’s Local Column in the Enterprise contained “Electric Mill Machinery,” a short squib reporting a new “infernal” invention to “turn quartz mills” [ET&S 1: 413].

April 20 Wednesday – “Frightful Accident to Dan De Quille,” was printed in the Territorial Enterprise. Branch called this sketch “in Mark Twain’s best vein–a typical product of the mutual raillery he carried on with De Quille, resembling his earlier ‘feuds’ with the Unreliable” [ET&S 1: 359].

April 20 Friday – Sam’s fifth letter to the Union, dated “Honolulu, March, 1866: BOARD AND LODGING SECURED” ran in the Union:

April 21 Saturday – Sam’s sixth letter, dated “Honolulu, March, 1866: COMING HOME FROM PRISON” ran in the Union:

April 22 Friday – In his Autobiography, Sam wrote of his attempt at a duel with James L. Laird, editor of the Virginia City Union and how it all came about:

April 24 Friday – Sam was up to his old journalism tricks again as he recalled in the Enterprise the excitement of the past week and included a spoof of mining strikes:

April 24 Sunday ca. – Sam got his nose bloodied by George F. Dawson at Chauvel’s Fencing Club, a Virginia City gymnasium. Dawson, an Englishman, at the time an assistant editor at the Enterprise, was a skilled boxer [Mack 252; Fatout, MT in VC 184]. Sam clowned around with a pair of boxing gloves, but evidently Dawson thought Sam was threatening, so uncorked a punch to Sam’s unguarded nose. De Quille claimed a “plentiful flow of claret” and a nose “like an egg-plant” that supposedly embarrassed Sam enough for him to take an out of town assignment for the newspaper.

April 24 Tuesday – Sam’s seventh letter, dated “Honolulu, March, 1866: THE EQUESTRIAN EXCURSION CONCLUDED” ran in the Union:

April 26 Tuesday ca. – Sam left for Silver Mountain to report on mining activity there and to allow his swollen nose to recede for a couple of days.

April 26 Thursday – Sam wrote from Wailuku, Maui, to the Kimball brothers who had been fellow passengers on the Ajax.
Messrs Kimball—