May 11 Saturday – John Stanton (Corry O’Lanus) (1826-1871) was a reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle, and likely the reviewer of Sam’s May 10 lecture at the Brooklyn Athenaeum. Shortly thereafter, Sam inscribed (no date written) a copy of The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches: “To Cory [sic] O’Lanus, the compt’s of Mark Twain” [Sotheby’s Apr. 4, 2004 auction, Lot 18].
May 23-25 Friday – In the few days between his return from Maui and sailing for the big island of Hawaii, Sam visited the Legislature and wrote two letters about it to the Union [Frear 56].
March 3? Saturday – Sam wrote from San Francisco to Billy Gillis (William R. Gillis, who paraphrased this letter from Sam later), telling him that he was leaving in a “short time for Sandwich Islands in company with a party of U.S. surveyors, a special correspondent of the Alta California” [MTL 1: 332]. (Sam had made a deal with the Sacramento Union, not the Alta.)
Mining and Tall Tales, Angels Camp – Jumping Frog
Literary Celebrity – Pistol to the Head
November 19 Saturday – Sam’s article, “A Full and Reliable Account of the Extraordinary Meteoric Shower of Last Saturday Night,” was published in the Californian [ET&S 2: 116].
November 19 or 21 Monday – Sam’s article, “The Pioneers’ Ball,” first ran in the Enterprise [Budd, “Collected” 1005].
Third Territorial Legislature – Jennie Clemens Dead
Miscegenation Firestorm – “Poltroon and a Puppy”
San Francisco City Beat for the Morning Call – Jackass Hill
Busy Reporter & Local Editor – “Mark Twain” & “Unreliable”
Bohemian of the Sagebrush – Lingering in S.F. – Burned out Sam – Mineral Baths
Bloody Massacre – Constitutional Convention – Third House – Artemus
1863 or 1864 – An article (title lost) describing the clergymen in Virginia City appeared in the Enterprise [Schmidt].
1862 or 1863 – 16 th of unidentified month – Enterprise item by Sam. No title.
November to December – Sam neglected his letter writing for this period and continued to work as a reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise.
August, late – Sam arrived at the Virginia City Enterprise, a “small rickety frame building at the corner of A Street and Sutton Avenue,” [Fatout, MT in VC 11] (later a large brick building on C Street) to take the job. According to Paine, Sam claimed he walked the 130 miles from Aurora and arrived in the afternoon of a “hot, dusty August day” and drawled to Denis E. McCarthy (1840-1885) one of the owners: