beginning January 9, 1906.Ⓐapparatus note
Note for the Instruction of Future Editors
and Publishers of ThisⒶapparatus note Autobiography
I shall scatter through this Autobiography newspaper clippings without end. When I do not copy them into the text it means that I do not make them a part of the autobiography—at least not of the earlier editions. I put them in on the theory that if they are not interesting in the earlier editions, a time will come when it may be well enough to insert them for the reason that age is quite likely to make them interesting although in their youth they may lack that quality.
The more I think of this, the more nearly impossible the project seems. The difficulties of it grow upon me all the time. For instance, the idea of blocking out a consecutive series of events which have happened to me, or which I imagine have happened to me—I can see that that is impossible for me. The only thing possible for me is to talk about the thing that something suggests at the moment—something in the middle of my life, perhaps, or something that happened only a few months ago.
The only way is for me to write an autobiography—and then, in your case, if you are going to collect from that mass of incidents a brief biography, why you would have to read the thing through and select certain matter—arrange your notes and then write a biographyⒺexplanatory note. That biography would have to be measured by the mass of the autobiography. You would publish this during my life—that is your idea? (Meaning Mr. Paine’s book.)
Mr. PaineⒶapparatus note said: The time of publication could be determined later.
Mr. Clemens.Ⓐapparatus note Yes, that is so, and what is your idea as to length?
Mr. Paine.Ⓐapparatus note The autobiography ought not to exceed 100,000 words? If it grew, and was very interesting, then it could run out to 120,000?
Mr. Clemens.Ⓐapparatus note I should make it in a general way 80,000 words, with 20,000 privilege.
It is my purpose to extend these autobiographical notes to 600,000 words, and possibly more. But that is going to take a long time—a long time.
Mr. Paine. These notes that we are making here will be of the greatest assistance to you in writing the autobiography.
Mr. Clemens.Ⓐapparatus note My idea is this: that I write an autobiography. When that autobiography is finished—or before it is finished, but no doubt after it is finished—then you take the manuscriptⒶapparatus note and we can agree on how much of a biography to make, 80 or 100,000 words, and in that [begin page 251] way we can manage it. But this is no holiday excursion—it is a journey. So my idea is that I do the autobiography, that I own the manuscriptⒶapparatus note, and that I pay for it, and that finally, at the proper time, why then you begin to gather from this manuscriptⒶapparatus note your biography.
Mr. Paine. You have a good deal of this early material in readiness. Suppose while you are doing this autobiography you place portions of that, from time to time, in my hands, so that I can begin to prepare my notes and material for the other book.
Mr. Clemens. That can be arranged. Supposing that we should talk here forⒶapparatus note one or two hours five days in the week—or several days in the week, as it should happen—how many thousand years is it going to take to put together as much as 600,000 words? Let us proceed on this idea, then, and start it, and see, after a few days, if it is going to work.
Now then, let us arrive at the cost of this—say it is to be so many thousand words. You charge in that way, don’t you? (One dollar an hour for dictation, and five cents a hundred words for writing out notes.) We will try this—see whether it is dull or interesting, or whether it will bore us and we will want to commit suicide. I hate to get at it. I hate to begin, but I imagine that if you are here to make suggestions from time to time, we can make it go along, instead of having it drag.
JanuaryⒶapparatus note 9, 1906.Ⓐapparatus note
Now let me see, there was something I wanted to talk about—and I supposed it would stay in my head. I know what it is—about the big Bonanza in Nevada.Ⓐapparatus note I want to readⒶapparatus note from the commercial columns of the New York TimesⒶapparatus note, of a day or two ago, what practically was the beginning of the great Bonanza in Nevada, and these details seem to me to be correct—that in Nevada, during 1871Ⓐapparatus note, John Mackay and Fair got control of the “Consolidated Virginia Mine”Ⓐapparatus note for $26,000Ⓐapparatus note; that in 1873, two years later, its 108,000 shares sold at $45Ⓐapparatus note per share; and that it was at that time that Fair made the famous silver ore find of the great Bonanza. Also, according to these statistics, in November ’74 the stock went to 115, and in the following month suddenlyⒶapparatus note jumped up to 610, and in the next month—JanuaryⒶapparatus note ’75—it reached 700. The shares of the companion mine,Ⓐapparatus note the “California,”Ⓐapparatus note rose in four months from 37 to 780—Ⓐapparatus notea total property which in 1869 was valued on the Mining Exchange at $40,000, was quoted six years later at $160,000,000Ⓐapparatus note Ⓔexplanatory note. I think those dates are correct. That great Bonanza occupies a rather prominent place in my mind for the reason that I knew persons connected with it. For instance, I knew John Mackay very well—that would be in 1862, ’63 and ’64Ⓐapparatus note, I should say. I don’t remember what he was doing when I came to Virginia in 1862 from starving to death down in the so-called mines of Esmeralda, which consisted in that day merely of silver-bearing quartz—Ⓐapparatus noteplenty of bearingⒶapparatus note, and didn’t have much load to carry in the way of silver—and it was a happy thing for me when I was summoned to come up to Virginia City to be local editor of the Virginia City Enterprise during three months, while Mr. William H. Wright should go East, to Iowa, and visit his family whom he hadn’t seen for some years. I took the position of local editor with joy, because there was a salary of forty dollars a week attached to itⒺexplanatory note and I judgedⒶapparatus note that that was all of thirty-nineⒶapparatus note dollars more than I was worth, and I had always wanted a position which paid in the opposite proportion of value to amount of work. I took that position with pleasure, not with confidence—but I had a difficult job.Ⓐapparatus note I was to furnish one column of leaded nonpareil every dayⒺexplanatory note, and as much more as I could get on paper before the paper should [begin page 252] go to press at two o’clock in the morning. By and by, in the course of a few months I met John Mackay, with whom I had already been well acquainted for some time. He had established a broker’s office on C streetⒶapparatus note, in a new frame house, and it was rather sumptuous for that day and place, for it had part of a carpet on the floor and two chairs instead of a candle-box.Ⓐapparatus note I was envious of Mackay, who had not been in such very smooth circumstances as this before, and I offered to trade places with him—take his business and let him have mine—and he asked me how much mine was worth. I said forty dollars a week. He said “I never swindled anybody in my life, and I don’t want to begin withⒶapparatus note you. This business of mine is not worth forty dollars a week. You stay where you are and I will try to get a living out of thisⒺexplanatory note.”Ⓐapparatus note
I left Nevada in 1864 to avoid a term in the penitentiary (in another chapter I shall have to explain thatⒺexplanatory note)Ⓐapparatus note so that it wasⒶapparatus note all of ten years, apparently, before John Mackay developed suddenly into the first of the hundred-millionairesⒶapparatus note. Apparently his prosperity began in ’71—that discovery was made in ’71. I know how it was made. I remember those details, for they came across the country to me in Hartford.Ⓐapparatus note There was a tunnel 1,700Ⓐapparatus note feet long which struck in from ’wayⒶapparatus note down on the slope of the mountain and passed under some portion of Virginia City, at a great depth. It was striking for a lode which it did not find, and I think the searchⒶapparatus note had been long abandoned. NowⒶapparatus note in groping around in that abandoned tunnelⒶapparatus note Mr. Fair (afterwards U.S. Senator and multimillionaire,)Ⓐapparatus note came across a body of rich ore—so the story ran—and he came and reported his findⒶapparatus note to John Mackay. They examined this treasureⒶapparatus note and found that there was a very great depositⒶapparatus note of it. They prospected it in the usual way and proved its magnitudeⒶapparatus note, and that it was extremely rich. They thought it was a “chimneyⒺexplanatory note”Ⓐapparatus note—belonging probably to the “California,”Ⓐapparatus note awayⒶapparatus note up on the mountain-side, which had an abandoned shaft—or possibly the “Virginia”Ⓐapparatus note mine which was not worked then—nobody caring anything about the “Virginia,”Ⓐapparatus note an empty mine. TheseⒶapparatus note men determined that this body of ore properly belonged to the “California”Ⓐapparatus note mine and by some trick of nature had been shaken down the mountain-side. They gotⒶapparatus note O’Brien—who was a silver expert in San FranciscoⒺexplanatory note—to come inⒶapparatus note as capitalist, and they bought up a controlling interest in the abandoned claims,Ⓐapparatus note and no doubt got it at that figure—$26,000,Ⓐapparatus note—six years later to be worthⒶapparatus note $160,000,000.
As I say, I was not there. I had been here in the East, six, seven, or eight years—but friends of mine were interested. John P. Jones, who has lately resigned as U.S. Senator after an uninterrupted term of perhaps thirty yearsⒺexplanatory note,Ⓐapparatus note was living in San Francisco. HeⒶapparatus note had a great affection for a couple of old friends of mine—Joseph T. Goodman and DenisⒶapparatus note McCarthy. They had been proprietors of that paper that I served—the Virginia City Enterprise—and they had enjoyed great prosperity in that position. They were young journeymenⒶapparatus note printers, type-setting in San Francisco in 1858, and they went over the Sierras whenⒶapparatus note they heard of the discovery of silver in that unknown region of Nevada, to push their fortunes. When they arrived at that miserable little camp, Virginia City, they had no money to push their fortunes with. They had only youth, energy, hope. They found Williams there, (“Stud” Williams was his society name,)Ⓐapparatus note who had started a weekly newspaper, and he had one journeyman, who set up theⒶapparatus note paper, and printed itⒶapparatus note on a hand press with Williams’sⒶapparatus note help and the help of a Chinaman. TheyⒶapparatus note all slept in one room—cooked and slept and worked,Ⓐapparatus note and disseminated intelligence in this paper of theirs. Well, Williams was in debt fourteen dollars. He didn’t see any way to get out of it with his newspaper, [begin page 253] and so he sold the paperⒶapparatus note to DenisⒶapparatus note McCarthy and GoodmanⒺexplanatory note for two hundred dollars, they to assume the debt of fourteen dollars and alsoⒶapparatus note pay the two hundred dollars,Ⓐapparatus note in this world or the next—there was no definite arrangementⒶapparatus note about that. But as Virginia City developed new mines were discovered,Ⓐapparatus note new people began to flock in, and there was talk of a faro bank andⒶapparatus note a church and all those things that go to make a frontier ChristianⒶapparatus note city. ThereⒶapparatus note was vast prosperity,Ⓐapparatus note and Goodman and DenisⒶapparatus note reaped the advantage of it.Ⓐapparatus note Their ownⒶapparatus note prosperity was so great that they builtⒶapparatus note a three-storyⒶapparatus note brick building, which was a wonderful thing for that town, and their business increased so mightilyⒶapparatus note that they would often plantⒶapparatus note out eleven columnsⒶapparatus note of new ads per dayⒶapparatus note on a standing galley and leave them there to sleep and rest and breed income.Ⓐapparatus note When any manⒶapparatus note objected, after searching the paper in the hope of seeing hisⒶapparatus note advertisement, they would say “We are doing the best we can.” Now and then the advertisements would appear, but the standing galley was doing its money-coiningⒶapparatus note work all the time. But after a while Nevada TerritoryⒶapparatus note was turned into a StateⒶapparatus note, in order to furnish office for some people who neededⒶapparatus note office, and by and by theⒶapparatus note paper, from payingⒶapparatus note those boys twenty to forty thousand dollars a year, ceasedⒶapparatus note to pay anything. I suppose they were gladⒶapparatus note to get rid of it—and probably on the old terms—Ⓐapparatus noteto some journeyman who was willing to take the old fourteen dollars’Ⓐapparatus note indebtedness and payⒶapparatus note it when he could.
These boys went down to San Francisco, setting type again. They were delightful fellows, always ready for a good time, and that meant that everybody got their money except themselves. And when the Bonanza was about to be discovered, JoeⒶapparatus note Goodman arrived here from somewhere that he’d been—I suppose trying to make business, or a livelihood, or something—and he came to see me to borrow three hundred dollars to take him out to San FranciscoⒺexplanatory note. And if I remember rightly he had no prospect in front of him at all, but thought he would be more likely to find it out there among the old friends, and he went to San Francisco. He arrived there just in time to meet Jones (afterwards U.S. Senator,)Ⓐapparatus note who was a delightful man. Jones met him and said privately “There has been a great discovery made in Nevada, and I am on the inside.” DenisⒶapparatus note was setting type in one of the offices there. He was married, and was building a wooden house, to cost $1,800,Ⓐapparatus note and he had paid a part and was building it on instalments out of his wages. And Jones said “I am going to put you and DenisⒶapparatus note in privately on the big Bonanza. I am on the inside, I will watch it and we will put this money up on a margin. Therefore when I say it is time to sell, it will be very necessary to sell.” So he put up 20 per centⒶapparatus note margins for those two boys—and that is the time when this great spurt must have happened which sent that stock up to the starsⒶapparatus note in one flight—because,Ⓐapparatus note as the history was told to me by Joe Goodman, when that thing happenedⒶapparatus note Jones said to Goodman and DenisⒶapparatus note “Now then, sell. YouⒶapparatus note can come out $600,000Ⓐapparatus note ahead, each of you, and that is enough. SellⒶapparatus note.”
“No,” Joe objected, “It willⒶapparatus note go higher.”
Jones said,Ⓐapparatus note “I am on the inside, you are not. Sell.”
Joe’s wife implored him to sell, he wouldn’tⒶapparatus note do it. Denis’sⒶapparatus note family implored him to sell. DenisⒶapparatus note wouldn’t sell. And so it went on during two weeks. Each time the stock madeⒶapparatus note a flight Jones tried toⒶapparatus note get the boys to sell. They wouldn’t do it. They said,Ⓐapparatus note “It is going higher.” WhenⒶapparatus note he said “Sell at $900,000,” they saidⒶapparatus note “No,Ⓐapparatus note it will go to a million.”Ⓐapparatus note
Then the stockⒶapparatus note began to go down very rapidly. After a little,Ⓐapparatus note Joe sold, and he got out with [begin page 254] $600,000Ⓐapparatus note cash. DenisⒶapparatus note waited for the million, but he never got a cent. His holding wasⒶapparatus note sold for the “mud”—so that heⒶapparatus note came out without anything and had to begin again setting type.
That is the story, as it was told to me manyⒶapparatus note years ago—I imagine by Joe Goodman, I don’t remember now. DenisⒶapparatus note, by and by, died poor,—never got a start againⒺexplanatory note.Ⓐapparatus note
Joe Goodman immediately went into the brokerⒶapparatus note business. $600,000Ⓐapparatus note was just good capital. He wasn’t in a position to retire yet. And he sent me the three hundred dollars,Ⓐapparatus note and said that now he had started in the broking business and that he was making an abundance of money. I didn’t hear any more then for a long time; thenⒶapparatus note I learned that heⒶapparatus note had not been content with mere brokingⒶapparatus note but had speculated on his own account and lost everything he had. And when that happened, John Mackay, who was always a good friend of the unfortunate,Ⓐapparatus note lentⒶapparatus note him $4,000Ⓐapparatus note to buy a grape ranch with inⒶapparatus note Fresno County, and Joe went up there. He didn’t know anything about the grape culture, but he and his wifeⒶapparatus note learned itⒶapparatus note in a very little while. He learned it a little better thanⒶapparatus note anybody else, andⒶapparatus note got a good living out of it until 1886 or ’87;Ⓐapparatus note then he sold it for several times what he paid for it originallyⒺexplanatory note.
HeⒶapparatus note was here a year ago and I saw him.Ⓐapparatus note He livesⒶapparatus note in the garden of California—in Alameda. Before this eastern visit heⒶapparatus note had been putting in twelve years of his time in the most unpromising and difficult and stubborn study that anybody has undertaken since Champollion’s time;Ⓐapparatus note for he undertook to find out what those sculptures mean that they find down there in the forests of Central America. And he did find out; andⒶapparatus note published a great bookⒶapparatus note, the result of his twelve years of study. InⒶapparatus note this book he furnishes the meanings of those hieroglyphsⒶapparatus note—and his position as a successful expert in that complex study is recognized by the scientists in that line in London and Berlin, and elsewhere. But he is no better known than he was before—he is known onlyⒶapparatus note to those people. HisⒶapparatus note book was published in about 1901Ⓔexplanatory note.
This account in the New York TimesⒶapparatus note Ⓔexplanatory note says that in consequence of that strike in the great Bonanza a tempest of speculation ensued, and that the group of mines right around that centreⒶapparatus note reached a value in the stock market of close upon $400,000,000Ⓐapparatus note; and six months after that, thatⒶapparatus note value had been reduced by three-quarters;Ⓐapparatus note and by 1880, five years later, the stock of the “Consolidated Virginia”Ⓐapparatus note was under $2Ⓐapparatus note a share, and the stock in the “California”Ⓐapparatus note was only $1.75—for the Bonanza was now confessedly exhaustedⒺexplanatory note.
you are going to collect from that mass of incidents . . . and then write a biography] Clemens was speaking to Albert Bigelow Paine (1861–1937), who planned to write his biography. Paine grew up in Iowa and Illinois, leaving school at fifteen. At twenty he went to St. Louis, where he worked as a photographer; several years later he operated a photographic supply business in Kansas. After one of his stories was accepted by Harper’s Weekly, he moved to New York in 1895, where he wrote for periodicals and published books for both children and adults. In 1899 he became an editor of St. Nicholas, a magazine for young people, and in 1904 published Th. Nast: His Period and His Pictures, the first of his many biographies. His Mark Twain: A Biography appeared in 1912, and was followed by editions of the Letters (1917), Autobiography (1924), and Notebook (1935). Paine explained in his edition of the autobiography:
It was in January, 1906, that the present writer became associated with Mark Twain as his biographer. Elsewhere I have told of that arrangement and may omit most of the story here. It had been agreed that I should bring a stenographer, to whom he would dictate notes for my use, but a subsequent inspiration prompted him to suggest that he might in this way continue his autobiography, from which I would be at liberty to draw material for my own undertaking. We began with this understanding, and during two hours of the forenoon, on several days of each week, he talked pretty steadily to a select audience of two, wandering up and down the years as inclination led him, relating in his inimitable way incidents, episodes, conclusions, whatever the moment presented to his fancy. ( MTA, 1:ix–x)
Paine devoted a chapter of his biography to an account of his conversation with Clemens at The Players club dinner on 3 January 1906, and the “arrangement” they agreed on three days later (see MTB, 4:1257–66; AD, 10 Jan 1906). Clemens’s secretary, Isabel V. Lyon, made a note of their discussion in her diary on 6 January 1906:
Albert Bigelow Paine came this morning to talk over the matter of writing Mr. Clemens’s Biography—Mr. Clemens has consented to have some shorthander come & take down the chat that is to flow from Mr. Clemens’s lips—I hope it may prove inspirational—The commercial machine (Columbia Graphophonic) that Mr. Clemens was looking upon as a boon—hasn’t proved so—He dictated his birthday speech into it—and a few letters—but that is all—There is something infinitely sad in the voice as it is reproduced from the cylenders—and how strickening it would be to hear the voice of one gone— (Lyon 1906, 6)
The “shorthander,” one of the “select audience of two” for the Autobiographical Dictations, was stenographer and typist Josephine S. Hobby (1862–1950), formerly a secretary to Mary Mapes Dodge, the editor of St. Nicholas magazine from 1872 until her death in 1905 (for the “birthday speech” see AD, 12 Jan 1906; Lyon 1906, 47, 71–72; “Aide to Mark Twain Dies,” New York Times, 31 Jan 1950, 21; see also the Introduction, pp. 25–27).
I want to read . . . quoted six years later at $160,000,000] The article Clemens “read” from has not been found in the New York Times. His account is substantially confirmed by independent sources, however, including the astonishing rise in the 1874–75 stock prices (see Lord 1883, 309, 314–15). John W. Mackay (1831–1902) was born in Ireland and came to America as a boy. From 1851 until 1859 he was a miner in California and then moved to Nevada. In January 1872, in partnership with James G. Fair (1831–94), also originally from Ireland, and two others (see the note at 252.25), Mackay took control of the Consolidated Virginia mine, whose stock in the previous year had fallen below $2 per share. The “Big Bonanza” silver strike in the Consolidated Virginia and the adjacent California mine, made in October 1874, was ultimately valued as high as $1.5 billion ( L6: 24 Mar 1875 to Bliss, 425 n. 2; 29 Mar and 4 Apr 1875 to Wright, 439 nn. 5, 9).
when I came to Virginia in 1862 . . . forty dollars a week attached to it] Clemens arrived in Aurora, in the rich Esmeralda mining district claimed by both Nevada Territory and California, in April 1862. There, living hand to mouth, he immediately set about wielding pick and shovel while energetically speculating in mining “feet,” or shares, to the extent his limited funds allowed. That April he also began contributing letters, under the pen name “Josh,” to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. Before the end of July, partly on the strength of the “Josh” letters, none of which survive, he was offered the post of local reporter, as a temporary substitute for the paper’s local editor, William Wright (1829–98), best known under his pen name, “Dan De Quille.” By late September 1862, having failed to strike it rich in Aurora, Clemens had relocated to Virginia City and was reporting for the Enterprise. His earliest extant articles appeared in the paper on 1 October 1862 (see ET&S1, 389–91). He remained on the Enterprise staff until he left Virginia City for San Francisco in late May 1864. For his vivid accounts of his experiences in Aurora and Virginia City see his letters of the period (10? Apr 1862 to OC through 28 May 1864 to Cutler, L1, 184–301) and chapters 35–37, 40–49, 51–52, and 54–55 of Roughing It.
one column of leaded nonpareil every day] Nonpareil was a small (six point) type, commonly used in newspapers.
I met John Mackay . . . I will try to get a living out of this] It is not known when Mackay and Clemens first became acquainted. According to the Second Directory of Nevada Territory, by sometime in 1863 Mackay was living on C Street and was working as the superintendent of the Milton Silver Mining Company (Kelly 1863, 254). Clemens gave a similar account of their Virginia City encounter in an 1897 interview (Budd 1977, 78).
I left Nevada in 1864 to avoid a term . . . have to explain that] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 19 January 1906.
chimney] A “chimney,” or “ore-shoot,” was “a body of ore, usually of elongated form, extending downward within a vein” (Raymond 1881, 19, 20).
O’Brien—who was a silver expert in San Francisco] William Shoney O’Brien (1826–78), like Mackay and Fair a native of Ireland, had come to San Francisco in 1849 where he had a succession of businesses—including a tobacco shop, a newspaper agency, a ship chandlery, and a saloon—before becoming a dealer in silver stocks. He and his San Francisco partner, James Clair Flood (1826–89), along with Mackay and Fair, came to be known as the “Bonanza Firm” and together controlled the Comstock Lode (Oscar Lewis 1947, 222–23; Hart 1987, 358–59).
John P. Jones . . . thirty years] See “The Machine Episode,” note at 104.16–17.
Joseph T. Goodman . . . Williams . . . sold the paper to Denis McCarthy and Goodman] Goodman (1838–1917) emigrated from New York to California in 1854 and worked as a compositor and writer on San Francisco newspapers. He and McCarthy (1840–85) were fellow typesetters on two journals there, the Mirror and the Golden Era, before buying into the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, then owned by Jonathan Williams (d. 1876), in March 1861. By 1865 Goodman was the sole proprietor; he sold out at a considerable profit in February 1874, not to “some journeyman” but to the Enterprise Publishing Company (21 Oct 1862 to OC and MEC, L1, 242 n. 2; Angel 1881, 317).
And when the Bonanza . . . to San Francisco] Following his February 1874 sale of the Enterprise, Goodman had at least two opportunities to see Clemens that year. In April, after moving to San Francisco, he and his first wife, Ellen (1837?–93), stopped in the East on their way to Europe; they returned in October, the same month the “Big Bonanza” silver discovery was made. Although Goodman could have met with Clemens in April, it is more likely that he would have needed a loan at the trip’s conclusion if he found himself temporarily short of ready cash for the return to San Francisco (L6: 23 Apr 1874 to Finlay, 115–16 n. 5; 29 Mar and 4 Apr 1875 to Wright, 439 n. 8).
Denis . . . never got a start again] After selling his interest in the Enterprise in 1865, McCarthy went to San Francisco, where he invested unsuccessfully in the stock market and soon lost his considerable profit. He was working as the managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle when the “Big Bonanza” was discovered in 1874, and through successful speculation earned another fortune. He returned to Virginia City and bought the Evening Chronicle, which became, within a year, the most widely circulated newspaper in Nevada history. Goodman told Clemens in 1881 that McCarthy’s strong “appetite for liquor” had made him seriously ill, and his death four years later was apparently the result of “dissipation” (Goodman to SLC, 11 Dec 1881, CU-MARK; Angel 1881, 326–27; “Death of D. E. McCarthy,” Virginia City Evening Chronicle, 17 Dec 1885, 2).
Joe Goodman . . . several times what he paid for it originally] Goodman was a member of the San Francisco Stock and Exchange Board from 1877 to 1880 and then became a raisin farmer in Fresno, southeast of the city. He had informed Clemens of the change in occupations in a letter of 9 March 1881:
I got busted in San Francisco—dead broke. Mackay (who owns half of the Enterprise) offered to buy the other half and give it to me; but I saw no profit in it,—Virginia City will soon be as desolate a place as Baalbec,—and, besides, my health was too poor to undertake literary work; so I borrowed $4,000 from Mackay and have started in to vine-growing in this region. I don’t know how it will turn out—and don’t care much. We are about 200 miles from San Francisco, in the San Joaquin Valley. Four or five years ago it was all a desert, but they have brought in irrigating ditches and the land is being rapidly settled—some places already being marvelously fine. I have only 130 acres, but it is quite as much as I shall be able to get under cultivation. At present it is the merest and most desolate speck in the desert you can imagine. Mrs. Goodman gets so homesick she almost cries her eyes out. But, if I live, I will make it a paradise—on a small scale. If you and Mrs. Clemens should ever come to California you will want to see this wonderful southern country, and I extend you a hearty invitation to come and visit us. Should you chance to come soon there would be only the original desert prospect, so far as my ranch is concerned, but there shall be a fountain of welcome for you, and an oasis of hospitality, and—to make the picture complete—I will import a bird for the occasion to sing in the solitude. (CU-MARK)
Goodman remained in Fresno until 1891, when he moved to Alameda, California (Goodman to Alfred B. Nye, 6 Nov 1905, CU-BANC; Joseph L. King 1910, 59, 339, 344).
Before this eastern visit . . . published in about 1901] In a letter of 24 May 1902, Goodman informed Clemens:
Eighteen years ago my attention was called to the inscriptions on the ruins of Central America and Yucatan, and I inconsiderately said I could decipher them. I worked seven years without accomplishing a thing, but then I succeeded in breaking an opening into the mystery. In 1895 they sent for me to come to London and publish the results of my studies up to then. I telegraphed you from Chicago to try to meet me in New York, but as I heard nothing from you I supposed you didn’t get the message in time. Since then I’ve kept on working at the glyphs until I have the whole thing pretty well thrashed out, and am now putting it into book form. So far as concerns me and mine, the pursuit has been a sheer waste of time, money and nerve force. There is no hope of profit in it. Not a thousand persons care anything about the study. The only compensation is that I found out what nobody else could, and that my name will always be associated with the unraveling of the Maya glyphs, as Champollion’s is with the Egyptian. But that is poor pay for what will be twenty years’ hard work. I will send you a copy of the London volume—not that I think it will interest you at all, but as a curiosity. I have since discovered that I made a few mistakes in it, but the bulk of it will stand the test of all time. (CU-MARK)
At the urging of prominent archaeologist Alfred P. Maudslay (1850–1931), Goodman traveled to London in 1895. There in 1897 he published his findings as The Archaic Maya Inscriptions, a book-length work that Maudslay later made the appendix to his own multivolume Archaeology. In 1898 Goodman published a monograph, The Maya Graphic System: Reasons for Believing It to Be Nothing but a Cipher Code, and in 1905 he published an article, “Maya Dates” (Tozzer 1931, 403, 407–8; Goodman 1897; Goodman 1898; Goodman 1905; Maudslay and Goodman 1889–1902). Modern scholarship has validated Goodman’s confidence in his discoveries. Michael D. Coe, in Breaking the Maya Code, noted that Goodman “made some truly lasting contributions,” among them “calendrical tables . . . still in use among scholars working out Maya dates” and his “amazing achievement” in proposing “a correlation between the Maya Long Count calendar and our own” (Coe 1999, 112, 114). Jean François Champollion (1790–1832), considered the father of Egyptology, was the first to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics.
account in the New York Times] The article referred to at 251.20, which has not been found.
strike in the great Bonanza . . . now confessedly exhausted] The total value of the Consolidated Virginia, the California, and the other mines of the Comstock Lode declined from more than $393 million in 1875 to just under $7 million in 1880 (Angel 1881, 619–20).
Source documents.
TS1 (incomplete) Typescript, leaves numbered 4–15 (1–3 are missing), made from Hobby’s notes and revised: ‘I want . . . confessedly exhausted.’ (251.19–254.29).TS2 (incomplete) Typescript, leaves numbered 150–60 (147–49 are missing), made from the revised TS1 and further revised: ‘time to . . . confessedly exhausted.’ (251.15–254.29).
TS4 Typescript, leaves numbered 408–21, made from the revised TS1.
The pages missing from TS1 and TS2 were discarded by Paine when he edited the dictation for MTA, which omits much of the corresponding text. TS4 is therefore the only source for the first part of the text, ‘January 9 . . . suggestions from’ (250 title–254.29). For a small portion of the text, TS1 is lost but TS2 survives (251.15–19). Hobby incorporated the revisions that Clemens made on TS1 into TS2, and they were incorporated into TS4 as well. TS4 has no authority for the text that survives in TS1. Where TS1 is missing, however, TS4 was collated and its one variant reported, because TS2 and TS4 derive independently from TS1 and therefore either may incorporate authorial readings not present in the other. When TS2 and TS4 agree, they confirm the readings of the missing portion of TS1.
In early 1907 Clemens considered publishing this dictation text in the NAR. Before his review, however, Paine read the typescript and suggested several revisions. He also wrote a lengthy marginal note on TS2, summarizing the contents and suggesting the addition of excerpts from two later ADs (19 January and 23 January 1906) to make up an installment of twenty-three pages. When Clemens decided that none of this dictation was ‘usable’, he (and Paine) had already marked up the last page of TS2 (page 160) with instructions about the excerpt from the AD of 19 January that would have followed it. He deleted the end of the account of the Big Bonanza on page 160 and added a fictitious dateline—‘Dictated March 12, 1906’—in lieu of the title ‘Dueling Again’, which Paine had suggested for the material from the AD of 19 January. This leaf was temporarily removed from the dictation, and folded and mailed to the NAR along with the rest of the printer’s copy for what became NAR 22, even though the only text it contained was the added March dateline.
Marginal Notes on TS2 Concerning Publication in the NAR