Mark Twain - Reporter: Day By Day

February 6 Monday – The men did some mining, but rains returned and they passed time telling tall tales and jokes. Benson writes:
“Most of the days at Angel’s Camp were spent by Mark and Jim and Stoker in the barroom of the dilapidated tavern. Here they found themselves in the company of a frequenter of the tavern, Ben Coon” [126].
Paine writes of Ben Coon:

February 7 Sunday – The New York Mercury ran Sam’s article, “Doings in Nevada” [Powers, MT A Life 134; Camfield bibliog.]. Note: Fatout reports this as “For Sale or to Rent,” a spoof advertising used territorial officials rejected by the voters, and connects this publication to the help of Artemus Ward [MT in VC 131].

February 7 Wednesday – In response to the above letter that appeared in the San Francisco Examiner on Feb. 5 – Twain dated this letter Feb. 5 to the Editors of the Examiner:

February 8 to 15 Monday – Sam and Clement T. Rice reported in “Legislative Proceedings” each day. Some pieces were signed, some not. See Smith, p.153-62 for details.

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 8 Wednesday – Sam served as junior deacon at a meeting of Bear Mountain Masonic Lodge No. 76 [MTNJ 1: 66].

February 8–10 Saturday – Sam’s article “Remarkable Dream” is part of his San Francisco Letter dated Feb. 6 which ran in the Enterprise. The piece is another swipe at “Fitz Smythe.” Other items in the letter: “Ministerial Change,” “Personal,” and “Dogberry’s Lecture.” (Text not available for last two items) [ET&S 2: 353].

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

February 9 Tuesday – Sam’s “Letter from Carson,” with “Concerning Notaries” ran in the Enterprise [Walker 67-70].

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

January 1 Friday – On New Year’s Day, Sam wrote in the Territorial Enterprise:

“Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath” [Fatout, MT Speaks 10-11].

Charles F. Browne (Artemus Ward) wrote from Austin, Nev. to Sam

My Dearest Love,—I arrived here yesterday a.m. at 2 o’clock. It is a wild, untamable place, but full of lion-hearted boys. I speak to-night. See small bills.

January 1 Sunday – In Vallecito, Sam and Jim Gillis inspected a 480-foot tunnel. That night they saw a lunar rainbow. Sam jotted it in his notebook. He also noted that he dreamed that night about James W.E. Townsend (1838-1900), a California and Nevada journalist and editor known as “Lying Jim” because of his imagination and total disregard for the truth in what he wrote or spoke [Sanborn 258]. Telling tall tales by the campfire was a popular activity. One of Jim’s stories about a cat named Tom Quartz that was only interested in mining, found a place in Roughing It, five years later.

January 1–9 Friday – Sam’s article SULPHUR DEPOSIT appeared sometime between these dates in the Enterprise.

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

January 11 Monday – “Letter from Mark Twain” (dated Jan. 10) ran in the Enterprise [Camfield bibliog.]. Sections: “Politics,” “Baggage,” “Young Gillespie,” “Legislature,” “House Warming,” “Warren Engine Co.,” “Religious,” “Squaires Trial,” “Marsh Children,” and “Artemus.”

ARTEMUS

I received a letter from Artemus Ward, to-day, dated “Austin, January 1.” It has been sloshing around between Virginia and Carson for awhile. I hope there is no impropriety in publishing extracts from a private letter – if there be, I ought not to copy the following paragraph of his:

January 11 Thursday – Sam’s San Francisco Letter, dated this day, ran sometime in January in the Enterprise. Sections: “Another Romance,” “Precious Stones,” “Premature,” “A Handsome Testimonial,” “The California Art Union,” “Theatrical,” (text not available for the last four items), and Gorgeous New Romance, By Fitz Smythe!” From “Another Romance”: I don’t want all the glory fastened on the Captains and Chiefs and regulars, and the deeds of the specials— the scallawags who really do all the work—left unsung.

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 12 Tuesday – Sam joined in a photograph of 17 other men in formal garb, legislators and newspaper men, most wore top hats [MTP]. Sam enjoyed R.G. Marsh’s Juvenile Comedians perform at the Opera House in Carson City and wrote about it in his “Legislative Proceedings” letter of Jan. 13. The troupe performed in Carson on Jan. 11, 12 and 13, and included William M. (“Billy”) O’Neil in the farce, The Limerick Boy; or Paddy’s Mischief. Sam wrote that O’Neil, on Jan. 11, had been “The drunkest white man that ever crossed the mountains.” George Boulden and Mr.

January 13 Saturday – The Ajax steamed out of San Francisco “in a pelting rain” on its first voyage to Hawaii. Frear writes:

January 14 Thursday – Sam visited the school of Miss Clapp and Mrs. William K. Cutler, accompanying William M. Gillespie, member of the House Committee on Colleges and Common Schools. Sam noted changes in school lessons and tactics since he’d attended.

January 14 Sunday – The Golden Era printed Sam’s article, “New Year’s Day” [Walker 111].

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 15 Friday – From “Legislative Proceedings”: HOUSE—FOURTH DAY …we had better let “parliamentary usage” alone for the present, until our former knowledge on the knotty subject returns to our memories. Because Providence is not going to put up with this sort of thing much longer, you know. I observe there is no lighting rod on these county buildings. —MARK TWAIN [Smith 141].

January 16–18 Thursday – Sam’s satire sketch about Albert Evans includes vernacular from a boy, something Sam would use to great advantage in his greatest literary work, Huckleberry Finn. The sketch, “Fitz Smythe’s Horse,” and an item “What Have the Police Been Doing?” ran in the Enterprise between these dates. Most copies of the Enterprise are lost, but it required about three days to travel between Virginia City and San Francisco, and the sketch was reprinted under the heading “Mark Twain” by the Golden Era on Jan. 21, thereby dating the Virginia City publication.

January 18 Thursday ca. – According to a Jan. 19 dispatch by Albert Evans, San Francisco correspondent for the Gold Hill Daily News, Sam was “in the dock for being drunk over night.” Since Sam and Evans were anything but on friendly terms, it’s probable that Evans would not delay reporting Sam’s misdeeds. Sam appeared before Justice of the Peace Alfred Barstow [Fanning 107-8].