Day By Day Dates

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 6 Tuesday – Sam’s Enterprise Local Column: “Free Fight,” “Humbolt Stocks,” “Jno. D. Kinney,” “Milstead,” “Board of Education” [ET&S 1: 399].

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 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 10 Saturday – Sam’s Enterprise Local Column: “Due Notice,” “New Court House,”
“Music,” and “The Sanitary Ball”:

January 11–21 Wednesday – Sam’s Enterprise Local Column: “The High Price of Pork” [ET&S 1: 401]. Two litigants spent six or seven hundred dollars litigating ownership of two pigs worth perhaps twenty dollars.

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.].

January 23? Friday – Sam’s article “A Sunday in Carson” about a murder ran on this date in the Enterprise [Camfield, bibliog.].

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 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.

February 3 Tuesday – The article “Letter from Carson City,” signed, “Yours, dreamily, Mark Twain” ran in the Enterprise. This is the first article so signed. In this piece Sam pokes fun at his rival, Clement T. Rice, the “Unreliable” [MTL 1: 246].

February 5 Thursday – Sam’s “Letter from Carson” ran in the Enterprise and included: Sturtevant & Curry wedding, a murder case, and mining companies, and “The Unreliable”:

February 6 Friday – Another “Letter from Carson” [Camfield, bibliog.].

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 9 Monday – “Isreal Putnam” (likely a pseudonym) wrote to Sam, referring to his new pen name.

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].

February 16 Monday – Sam wrote from Virginia City to his mother, Jane Clemens, and sister Pamela Moffett.

My Dr Mother & Sister:

February 17–22 Sunday – “Silver Bars—How Assayed,” ran in the Enterprise. Branch calls this sketch “a good example of Clemens’ capacity to assimilate technical information to his humorous vision, transforming it yet also presenting the facts in a reasonably intelligent way” [ET&S 1: 210].

February 17–26 Thursday – Sam’s item in the Enterprise Local Column:

February 18 Wednesday – Sam assigned a “special power of attorney” over his mining interests to Daniel H. Twing [MTL 1: 237n2].

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 22 Sunday – Sam left Carson City [ET&S 1: 221].

February 23 Monday – Sam attended the Firemen’s Ball at Topliffe’s Theater on North C Street in Virginia City [ET&S 1: 223]. The next day, Clement T. Rice (“The Unreliable”) of the Virginia Daily Union wrote:

“Mark Twain was at the Fireman’s ball last night dressed in a most ridiculous manner. He had on a linen coat, calf-skin vest, and a pair of white pants, the whole set off with a huge pair of Buffalo shoes and lemon-colored kids” [Marleau, “Some Early” 13].

February 24–March 31 Tuesday – “A Sunday in Carson” ran in the Enterprise:

February 25 Wednesday – Sam’s Local Column in the Enterprise included: “The Unreliable,” a continuing mock attack on his rival at the Virginia Union, Clement T. Rice, in answer to his article of Feb. 24 on Sam’s dress: