Clemens was responding to the following request:

G. A. Sears and Seymour Pixley were trustees of the First Presbyterian Church in Carson City, whose building, begun in the summer of 1862, was not completed until May 1864 (Angel, 214–15). The Third House was a mock legislative body in existence at least as late as 1901. At its informal meetings—in saloons, public buildings, and the legislative chambers—legislators and other officials were frequently among those participating in burlesque deliberations and law making (MTEnt, 100–101; Doten 1973, 2:1572, 3:1658, 1839, 2098). Clemens had been elected president of the Third House at its meeting on 11 December 1863, after the adjournment of the first Nevada Constitutional Convention, and his remarks to that body were published in the Enterprise on 13 December (SLC 1863, 3:55). But the text of his Third Annual Message to the Third House, delivered on 27 January 1864 at the Ormsby County Courthouse in Carson City while the third Territorial Legislature was in session, is not extant; probably he never acted on the promise he made in his 28 January legislative report to the Enterprise to “correct, amend and publish the message” (SLC 1864, 3:140; see 18 Mar 64 to PAMclick to open link). His friend Clement T. Rice, reporter for the Virginia City Union, commented on 29 January: “Mark Two’s message only helped to keep up the effervescing spirit of the good work in behalf of that same, ever-present, gaping skeleton of a church. The benefit on this occasion was large—perhaps $200—which will take the institution in out of the weather and hasten its completion very materially” (Rice 1864, 1).