March – † Sometime during the month an unidentified person wrote asking where Mark Twain got his material from for his books. The following has been taken from Paine, corrections to the original TS in the MTP have been added or made, including the phrase “& superficially” attributed to Bret Harte’s knowledge of mines, which Paine removed to sanitize Twain’s persona. This piece affords a remarkable view into Sam’s taking stock right after the dreams of monumental wealth were dashed. It is given in full, though the first page, and the identity of the correspondent, is lost.

Your surmise is correct, sharply & exactly so — that I confine myself to life with which I am familiar when pretending to portray life. But I confined myself to the boy-life out on the Mississippi because that had a peculiar charm for me, & not because I was not familiar with other phases of life. I was a soldier two weeks once in the beginning of the war, & was hunted like a rat the whole time. Familiar? My splendid Kipling himself hasn’t a more burnt-in, hard-baked, & unforgetable familiarity with that death-on-the-pale-horse-with-hell-following-after, which is a raw soldier’s first fortnight in the field — & which, without any doubt, is the most tremendous fortnight & the vividest he is ever going to see.

Yes, & I have shoveled silver tailings in a quartz-mill a couple of weeks, & acquired the last possibilities of culture in that direction. And I’ve done “pocket-mining” during three months in the one little patch of ground in the whole globe where Nature conceals gold in pockets — or did before we robbed all of those pockets & exhausted, obliterated, annihilated the most curious freak Nature ever indulged in. There are not thirty men left alive who, being told there was a pocket hidden on the broad slope of a mountain, would know how to go & find it, or have even the faintest idea of how to set about it; but I am one of the possible 20 or 30 who possess the secret, & I could go & put my hand on that hidden treasure with a most deadly precision.

And I’ve been a prospector, & know pay rock from poor when I find it — just with a touch of the tongue. And I’ve been a silver miner & know how to dig & shovel & drill & put in a blast. And so I know the mines & the miners interiorly as well as Bret Harte knows them exteriorly & superficially.

And I was a newspaper reporter four years in cities, & so saw the inside of many things; & was reporter in a legislature two sessions & the same in Congress one session, & thus learned to know personally three sample bodies of the smallest minds & the selfishest souls & the cowardliest hearts that God makes.

And I was some years a Mississippi pilot, & familiarly knew all the different kinds of steamboatmen — a race apart, & not like other folk.

And I was for some years a traveling “jour” printer, & wandered from city to city — & so I know that sect familiarly.

And I was a lecturer on the public platform a number of seasons & was a responder to toasts at all the different kinds of banquets — & so I know a great many secrets about audiences — secrets not to be got out of books, but only acquirable by experience.

And I watched over one dear project of mine for years, spent a fortune on it, & failed to make it go — & the history of that would make a large book in which a million men would see themselves as in a mirror; & they would testify & say, Verily, this is not imagination; this fellow has been there — & after would they cast dust upon their heads, cursing & blaspheming.

And I am a publisher, & did pay to one author’s widow (General Grant’s) the largest copyright checks this world has seen — aggregating more than £80,000 in the first year.

And I have been an author for 20 years & an ass for 55.

Now then: as the most valuable capital or culture or education usable in the building of novels is personal experience I ought to be well equipped for that trade. I surely have the equipment, a wide culture; & all of it real, none of it artificial, for I don’t know anything about books. And yet I can’t go away from the boyhood periods & write novels, because capital is not sufficient by itself & I lack the other essential: interest in handling the men & experiences of later times. Yes, & there was another consideration: the boyhood field isn’t much or effectively occupied, there’s plenty of room: but the other field is crowded, & most competently, too [MTB 915-6 & the MTP version].

Sam also wrote a short note to Franklin G. Whitmore that in January they’d paid the Telephone Co. “about $10 too much — the service has been wretched.” Sam wanted to discontinue the service when they left for the summer [MTP].

Webster & Co. sent a ledger page report, “Books sent out during February, 1891” totaling 11,986 [MTP]. Note: the MTP catalogued as an incoming letter for Feb.1891.