February 13 Saturday – “Letter from Mark Twain,” Carson City, was published in the Enterprise. The weekly letter, “The Carson Undertaker,” was an attack on the Carson Independent [Smith 159].

February 16 Tuesday – “The Removal of the Capital,” attributed to Sam, ran in the Enterprise. [Smith 162]. Note: see also Aug. 17, 1869.

February 21 Sunday – Sam’s sketch “Those Blasted Children,” (written on Jan. 9 and completed during a long night session lasting until 7 AM on Jan. 10) was published in the New York Sunday Mercury [ET&S 1: 348]. Sam’s made-up letter to “Mark Twain” from “Zeb. Leavenworth” contained a “sovereign remedy” for stammering children—sawing off the child’s underjaw. Zeb and Beck Jolly had been Sam’s shipmates on the John J. Roe [MTL 1: 271-2n2].

February 27 Saturday – Adah Isaacs Menken (1835?-1868) arrived in Virginia City. In Sept. 1863 Sam saw her in one of her sixty San Francisco performances of Mazeppa, where she rode horseback in nothing but flesh-colored body-tights. Sam wasn’t impressed with her performances. Adah invited Sam to dinner in her hotel room with Dan De Quille and the Bohemian poet Ada Clare (Jane McElhinney, 1836?-1874). Menken’s current husband, her third, poet and dramatic critic Orpheus C. Kerr (Robert H. Newell 1836-1901), was not allowed in the room. The Jewish actress had also been married to John C.

February 28 Sunday – Sam’s recent Enterprise article “Concerning Notaries” was reprinted in the Golden Era as “Washoe Wit Mark Twain on the Rampage” [Walker 67; Camfield bibliog.].

February 29 Monday – In Virginia City, Sam wrote to J.T. Goodman & Co., asking them to pay Orion $150. This may have been money Sam owed Orion [MTL 1: 273].

March 1 Tuesday – Governor James Warren Nye (1815-1876) appointed Sam to a two-year term as notary for Storey County [MTL 1: 279n9]. In his Autobiographical Dictation of Apr. 2, 1906 Sam described Nye:

March 2 Wednesday – Menken and troupe opened at Maguire’s New Opera House. Sam had written a series of reviews including some severe criticism of other companies who performed in Maguire’s Opera House. No doubt he was on hand for Adah Menken’s Virginia City debut. Benson writes, “Every seat in the house had been sold the day previous…as no one wanted to miss seeing the glamorous star” [95]. The show was not a great success due to Adah’s choice of the play The French Spy for opening night, where she wore too many clothes [Fatout, MT in VC 162].

March 3 Thursday – Henry L. Blodgett and Sam. L. Clemens, notaries public, began running advertisements in the Virginia City Evening Bulletin [MTL 1: 279n9].

March 4 to 7 Monday – Sam visited Como, Nevada, near Carson City, purpose unknown. Daniel Martin, a past resident of Hannibal owned a saloon in Como, so it’s likely Sam saw him. He would see him again in the Sandwich Islands, and write about a “learned pig” Martin had. Martin claimed the pig could speak seven languages! [MTL 1: 340n3].

March 6 Sunday – Sam was “an associate, apparently in a sort of unofficial advisory capacity” for The Weekly Occidental, a new literary paper published by Thomas Fitch and Co. This was an ambitious journal that may have had as many as seven editions. The first five, from Mar. 6 to Apr. 3, 1864 [RI UC 1993 explanatory notes 678]. The contributors were Joe Goodman, Dan De Quille, Dr. R. Eichler, Fitch and Rollin Daggett. It was once thought the publication had only one issue.

March 7 Monday – By this date, Adah Menken was giving the miners what they wanted and what had built her reputation, Mazeppa, where she rode a steed up an incline in flesh colored tights which left little to the imagination. That is, Adah wore the tights, not the steed. Fatout writes: “Julie Bulette, the highly esteemed madam, regal in sables, occupied a stage box. Joe Goodman went all out in unrestrained praise…” [MT in VC 162].

March 8 Tuesday – Dan De Quille paid Daggett & Myers $75 toward rent owed with Sam [Mack 246].

March 10, Thursday – Joseph Alfred Slade (Jack) was hanged at Bannock City, Idaho [RI UC 1993 587].

March 18 Friday – Sam wrote from Virginia City to sister Pamela and sent a drawing he made of himself for his niece, Annie Moffett. He wrote about Joe Goodman going to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii): “I wanted to go with Joe, but the news-editor was expecting every day to get sick (he has since accomplished it,) & we could not all leave at once.” Sam also wrote of the gold watch he’d received at the meeting of the Third House of the legislature on Jan. 25 [MTL 1: 275].

March 27 Sunday – Sam’s article “Those Blasted Children” ran in the Golden Era [Walker 18].

March 31 Thursday – Adah Menken “suddenly left Virginia without saying goodbye to anybody, and returned to San Francisco.” Of course, she had $36,000 worth of comfort plus gifts of stock certificates bearing a naked lady on a galloping stallion, which she sold a year later for $50,000 [Fatout, MT in VC 167]. She died in 1868 at age 33.

April 1 Friday – “Another Traitor – Hang Him!” a hoax article in the Enterprise is attributed to Sam [Fatout, MT in VC 180]. Also printed in the Evening Bulletin on Apr. 1 as “Another Goak” [Camfield bibliog.].

April 14 Thursday – Sam wrote to Orion, resigning his commission as a notary public for Storey County [MTL 1: 279n9]. No reason was given, but this work was similar to the scraps of work and fees his father, John Marshall Clemens, had sought, and so by association, Sam may have concluded the small fees were not worth the effort. Noted on the letter for Apr. 15 is Orion’s acceptance.

April 16 Saturday – Sam and Dan De Quille had been taking fencing lessons from Professor O. V. Chauvel, who ran a gymnasium at 12 North C Street [Mack 251]. The Gold Hill Daily News ran an article about their fencing expertise:

April 17–24 Sunday – Sam’s item in the Enterprise Local Column was “Missionaries Wanted.” This humorous drubbing of two locals in a fictional scene was typical of Sam’s barbs for those he wanted to deflate. Such reports won him the title of “wild and unpredictable humorist.”
Yesterday morning [John] Gashwiler and Charley Funck, citizens of Virginia City and of the Territory of Nevada, and officers of the great Virginia and Gold Hill Water Company, came rushing into our office in a state of excitement bordering on lunacy… [Note: John W. Gashwiler (1831-1883) “Old Gash”]

April 19 Tuesday – Ruel Colt Gridley (1829-1870), an “old schoolfellow of Mark Twain’s” and owner of the Gridley Store in Austin, made a wager on the outcome of a city election, with the loser having to carry a fifty-pound sack of flour from Austin to Clifton, a mile and a quarter’s distance [Fatout, MT in VC 186]. Note: the next day the process began which led to the great flour sack promotions for the Sanitary Fund, a forerunner of the American Red Cross (See May 17 entry.)

April 20 Wednesday – “Frightful Accident to Dan De Quille,” was printed in the Territorial Enterprise. Branch called this sketch “in Mark Twain’s best vein–a typical product of the mutual raillery he carried on with De Quille, resembling his earlier ‘feuds’ with the Unreliable” [ET&S 1: 359].

April 22 Friday – In his Autobiography, Sam wrote of his attempt at a duel with James L. Laird, editor of the Virginia City Union and how it all came about:

April 24 Sunday ca. – Sam got his nose bloodied by George F. Dawson at Chauvel’s Fencing Club, a Virginia City gymnasium. Dawson, an Englishman, at the time an assistant editor at the Enterprise, was a skilled boxer [Mack 252; Fatout, MT in VC 184]. Sam clowned around with a pair of boxing gloves, but evidently Dawson thought Sam was threatening, so uncorked a punch to Sam’s unguarded nose. De Quille claimed a “plentiful flow of claret” and a nose “like an egg-plant” that supposedly embarrassed Sam enough for him to take an out of town assignment for the newspaper.