May 16, 1863

May 16 Saturday – Sam wrote to the Territorial Enterprise, “Letter from Mark Twain.” The sketch anticipated the fictional “Mr. Brown” and “Mr. Twain” of his 1866 Sandwich Islands Letters to the Sacramento Union [MTL 1: 256n1; ET&S 1: 248-9].

March 31, 1863

March 31 Tuesday – The Enterprise item, “Captain Alpheus Smith,” is attributed to Sam [Fatout, MT in VC 137]. Fatout presents this article to reflect the “furor” made about the Reese River mining district, and as an object lesson that Sam did not “rush off to the diggings,” because he’d “had enough of that.”

March or April 1863

March or April – The Enterprise printed Sam’s humorous “Examination of Teachers”:

Under the head of ‘Object Teaching,’ we found some ten questions…We barely glanced at the list… when we felt great beads of perspiration starting out of our brow—our massive intellect oozing out. Happening to read a question like this, ‘Name four of the faculties of children that are earliest developed,’ we at once became anxious to get out of the room [ET&S 1: 232].

February 19, 1863

February 19 Thursday – “Ye Sentimental Law Student,” dated Feb. 14 ran in the Enterprise. Joe Goodman claimed this was the first use of the signature “Mark Twain,” so he may not have known about the Feb. 3 letter. The article is a parody of poetic excess in description of what was not viewable even from the top of the mountains around Virginia City—all laid at the feet of the “Unreliable” [ET&S 1: 215-9]. Sam’s Local Column included: “LaPlata Ore Company,” “Concert,” and:

February 12 or 22 1863

February 12 or 22 Sunday – Sam’s second visit to the Spanish Mine was written up and published in the Enterprise as “The Spanish” [ET&S 1: 160-1]. Sam threw in a verbal poke at his Union rival: “…and by way of driving the proposition into heads like the Unreliable’s, which is filled with oysters instead of brains…” [ET&S 1: 167].

January 15, 1863

January 15 Thursday – Sam’s article “A Big Thing in Washoe City” ran about this day in the Enterprise, and two days later in the Placer Weekly Courier [Camfield, bibliog.].

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