In the early morning hours of 12 April 1863, John Campbell murdered two policemen, Dennis McMahon and Thomas Reed. Clemens mentioned the double murder in “Horrible Affair,” published in the Territorial Enterprise sometime between 16 and 18 April (see ET&S1 , 244–47).

“Advice to the Unreliable on Church-Going” probably appeared in the Enterprise on 12 April (see ET&S1 , 241–43). It was the latest installment in a continuing mock feud between Mark Twain and the Unreliable, Clement T. Rice, who was the local reporter for the Virginia City Union and a good friend. For Mark Twain’s other contributions to this feud, see ET&S1 , passim.

The East India Gold and Silver Mining Company was incorporated on 31 March 1863, claiming a capital stock of $550,000 divided into 1,100 shares. Among the incorporators were Clemens’s friends William M. Gillespie and Clement T. Rice, each of whom originally owned 100 shares. Company records indicate that Gillespie contributed 40 shares and Rice 10 shares to make up the gift to Clemens (East India Gold and Silver Mining Company documents, PH in CU-MARK, courtesy of Michael H. Marleau: certificate of incorporation, 31 Mar 63; trust deed, 31 Mar 63; power of attorney to Leonard M. Ferris, 4 Apr 63). The East India mine, located in the middle of C Street in Virginia City, turned out to be a “wildcat” claim—that is, a claim of dubious value (SLC 1868, 2). In chapter 44 of Roughing It Clemens acknowledged that the owners of such claims often gave reporters stock in exchange for publicity. East India stock, he recalled, “sold briskly although there was an ancient tunnel running directly under the claim and any man could go into it and see that it did not cut a quartz ledge or anything that remotely resembled one.” No Enterprise notice of the East India claim is extant, although Clemens may well have published one in return for his gift. Clement T. Rice probably wrote the following puff, which appeared in the Virginia City Union, the paper he worked for, on 2 April: “The East India Company (Waterloo ledge) yesterday produced some very rich gold-bearing rock. The gold stuck out in big flakes in many places” (Rice 1863, 4).

Clemens apparently wrote the similar description of rich Gould and Curry ore which appeared in the Enterprise on 3 April (see ET&S1 , 312).

The Nevada-California boundary-line dispute (see 24 and 25 Apr 62 to OC, n. 8click to open link) had erupted into violence in February 1863, when officials of Roop (formerly Lake) County, Nevada, and Plumas County, California, took up arms over the issue of their respective jurisdictions along the disputed line. The war in Roop County brought the whole boundary matter to a crisis, with the primary issue being not the Roop County line, but whether Aurora was in Mono County, California, or Esmeralda County, Nevada. (There was no “Esmeralda county, California.”) In March 1863 Orion Clemens, acting governor while James W. Nye was in the East, announced that he would begin to organize Esmeralda County (including Aurora), appointing Nevada officials to replace the incumbent Mono County officers, immediately after the California legislature adjourned on 8 April. He hoped that the legislature would act to resolve the dispute in Nevada’s favor before that date. Governor Leland Stanford of California warned that if Nevada attempted “to include within its limits the thriving and important town of Aurora . . . together with some of the richest and most valuable mining localities,” the action would “pave the way for serious difficulties” (Stanford, 2:35). To this challenge the Enterprise responded on 3 April with a long editorial, which said in part:

By 9 April Orion Clemens had decided to defer organizing Esmeralda County until sometime after 20 April, the rescheduled adjournment date of the California legislature. Although feelings remained high, in May a joint commission of California and Nevada surveyors was appointed to run a final boundary line. Partisans for both sides in Aurora remained in doubt until September, when the surveyors reached that area and determined, still amid some controversy, that it was in fact part of Nevada Territory. The boundary findings were formally accepted by the California legislature in April 1864 and by the Nevada state legislature in February 1865 (Angel 100–102, 401–3; Mack 1936, 398–406; Mack 1961, 33; Mack 1961, 85; Virginia City Territorial Enterprise: “Further of the Boundary Question,” 9 Apr 63, clipping in Scrapbook 2:37, CU-MARK; “The Boundary Line between California and Washoe,” 17 Sept 63, clipping in Scrapbook 2:78, CU-MARK).

That is, Californians would be humbled, made to qualify or retract their boasts, or even be forced “to be silent or dumb” (OED, 9:529 [second page sequence]).

Clemens’s distaste for California was not long-lived: in less than a month he and Clement T. Rice were to leave Virginia City to spend two months in San Francisco. His momentary antipathy is probably explained by the border dispute with California. Since this passage occurs in one manuscript fragment, while the allusion to being “on the verge of war” with California occurs in the other, it seems plausible, if not certain, that the two fragments belong to the same letter (see the textual apparatus for details). Clemens’s efforts to identify Mark Twain as a Missourian cannot now be documented, probably because so little of what he wrote for the Enterprise between February (when he first signed the name) and April 1863 survives.

Emma Comfort Roe (1844–1904) was the daughter of John J. Roe (1809–70), long identified with St. Louis commerce as commission merchant, steamboat owner, meat packer, railroad magnate, banker, insurance executive, and one of the city’s wealthiest citizens. Clemens served on several boats—including the John J. Roe—in which Roe held an interest. On 26 August 1862 Emma Roe married John G. Copelin, who became her father’s business partner. For decades she took an active role in the social life of the city’s wealthiest class (“Death of a Prominent Citizen,” St. Louis Missouri Republican, 15 Feb 70, 2; Walter B. Stevens, 2:453–54; “Deaths,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 27 Mar 1904, sec. 5:2; Roe-Copelin marriage record, PH in CU-MARK).

Among those to whom Clemens sends regards are Zeb Leavenworth, James and Ella Lampton, and the Moffett servant, Margaret. “Cousin Bettie” may be Elizabeth Ann Lampton (1823–1906), Jane Clemens’s first cousin (Selby, 106). Clemens’s ironic suggestion that “the whole party . . . stay in St. Louis—it is such a slow, old fogy, easy-going humbug of a town” echoes a note he had struck in the second paragraph (“You folks do not believe in Nevada, and I am glad you don’t. Just keep on thinking so”). The compatibility of these statements, which occur in separate manuscript fragments, strongly suggests that the fragments are from a single letter. The statements reinforce Clemens’s ironic argument, most of which is missing, that Pamela would find nothing of interest if she were to visit Nevada, except the inside of a mine shaft and the daily transporting of “two or three thousand pounds of silver bullion.”