February 8 Sunday – Another “Letter from Carson,” headed “Thursday Morning,” (Feb. 5) was published in the Enterprise.
“The ways of the Unreliable are past finding out…I never saw such an awkward, ungainly lout in my life. He had on a pair of Jack Wilde’s pantaloons, and a swallow-tail coat…and they fitted him as neatly as an elephant’s hide would fit a poodle” [ET&S 1: 207-8].
February 6 Friday – Another “Letter from Carson” [Camfield, bibliog.].
January 31 Saturday – Sam was in Carson City to send news back to the Territorial Enterprise. He sent at least three letters back, including the first article known to be signed “Mark Twain” [MTL 1: 245-6]. Throughout his life, Sam stuck to the story that he’d taken the name from Captain Isaiah Sellers, but researchers have never found any use of that name by Sellers. Another story ascribes the name to a barroom handle given to Sam when he ordered two drinks on credit. Of course, the term was a steamboat designation for twelve feet of water, barely enough for passage of a large steamboat.
January 28 Wednesday – Sam sat up all night to take the stage to Carson City where he spent the first week of February. Between Jan. 22 and Jan. 28 he wrote “Territorial Sweets” which appeared in the Enterprise [ET&S 1: 190].
January 8 Thursday – The Enterprise printed Sam’s article, “Unfortunate Thief,” excoriating the man who stole his hat at the Gold Hill Ball. We have been suffering from the seven years’ itch for many months. It is probably the most aggravating disease in the world. It is contagious.
January 7 Wednesday – Sam attended the Odd Fellow’s Ball in Gold Hill. His hat was stolen [ET&S 1: 181]. In his Apr. 6, 1906 Autobiographical Dictation, Clemens likely recalled the ball for this day. Relating being in Washington Square, NYC and running into a woman on the street who recognized him: I had known only one Etta Booth in my lifetime, and that one rose before me in an instant, and vividly.
January 6 Tuesday – Sam’s Enterprise Local Column: “Free Fight,” “Humbolt Stocks,” “Jno. D. Kinney,” “Milstead,” “Board of Education” [ET&S 1: 399].
January 4 Sunday – one item about the Storey Ball, “Election,” “Public School,” “New Years Extension,” “Supreme Court,” “Ball in Carson,” “Mass,” “Fireman’s Meeting,” and “Recorder’s Court.”
January 1 Thursday – “More Ghosts” ran in the Local Column of the Enterprise. The item spoofs through objection an article that appeared in the paper in the last week of Dec., 1862 about a “haunted house” on E Street in Virginia City: “Are we to be scared to death every time we venture into the street? May we be allowed to quietly go about our business, or are we to be assailed at every corner by fearful apparitions?” [ET&S 1: 177-8]. Also published:
NEW YEAR’S DAY
December 16 Tuesday ca. – An article attributed to Sam that was reprinted Dec. 18 in the Sacramento Daily Bee ran in the Enterprise. Sam was in Carson City and reported on the excitement of the hotly debated “corporation bill” which prohibited that “the majority of stock in all Nevada mining companies be owned by residents of the Territory, that company offices be established there, and that corporations formed under the laws of other states and territories be prohibited from doing business in Nevada” [Fatout, MT in VC 24].