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Autobiographical Dictation, 13 June 1906 ❉ Textual Commentary

Source documents.

TS1      Typescript, leaves numbered 883–95 (altered in pencil to 907–19), made from Hobby’s notes and revised.
TS2 (lost)      Typescript, leaves conjecturally numbered 1036–48, revised (conjecturally) by Clemens and/or Paine; now lost.
Harper’s       “Unpublished Chapters from the Autobiography of Mark Twain: Part II.” Harper’s Monthly Magazine 144 (March 1922): 455–58, typeset from the revised TS2: ‘How . . . a week.’ (114.22–118.33).

TS2, which is missing, presumably incorporated Clemens’s TS1 revisions. Paine probably used TS2 as printer’s copy when he published the dictation in Harper’s Monthly in 1922, where it is paired with the dictation of 14 June 1906. The published text omits the most critical remarks about Bret Harte, which must have been deleted on TS2. It is just possible that Clemens made these revisions to prepare the text for imminent publication; but it is as likely to have been Paine who deleted them for the Harper’s Monthly publication. All the variants are reported, although none is adopted: the omissions were clearly intended to modify the text for magazine publication only, and other minor changes are deemed nonauthorial.

Wednesday, June 13, 1906

The days of reporting on the Morning Call textual note—The advent of Smiggy McGlural and the resignation of Mr. Clemens—Destruction of Morning Call textual note building in recent earthquake—Good times with Bret Harte in Morning Call textual note office.

How wonderful are the ways of Providence! But I will take that up later.

In those days—abouttextual note forty years ago—textual note I was a reporter on the Morning Call of San Francisco. I was more than that—I was the reporter. There was no other. There was enough work for one, and a little over, but not enough for two—according to Mr. Barnes’s idea, and he was the proprietorexplanatory note, and therefore better situated to know about it than other people. By nine in the morning I had to be at thetextual note police court for an hour and make a brief history of the squabbles of the night before. They were usually between Irishmen and Irishmen,textual note and Chinamen and Chinamen, with now and then a squabble between the two races, for a change. Each day’s evidence was substantially a duplicate of the evidence of the day before, therefore the daily performance was killingly monotonous and wearisome. So far as I could see, there was only one man connected with it who found anything like a compensating interest in it, and that was the court interpreter. He was an Englishman who was glibly familiar with fifty-six Chinese dialectsexplanatory note. He had to change from one to another of them every ten minutes, and this exercise was so energizing that it kept him always awake—which was not the case with the reporters. Next, we visited the higher courts,textual note and made notes of the decisions which had been rendered the day [begin page 115] before.textual note All the courts came under the head of “regulars.” They were sources of reportorial information which never failed. During the rest of the day we raked the town from end to end, gathering such material as we might,textual note wherewith to fill our required column—and if there were no fires to report,textual note we started some. At night we visited the six theatrestextual note, one after the other: seventextual note nights in the week, three hundred and sixty-five nights in the year. Wetextual note remained in each of those places five minutes, got the merest passing glimpse of play and opera, and with that for a text we “wrote up” those plays and operas, as the phrase goes, torturing our souls every night, from the beginning of the year to the end of it, in the effort to find something to say about those performances which we had not said a couple of hundred times before. There has never been a time, from that day to this (forty years),textual note that I have been able to look at even the outside of a theatretextual note without a spasm of the dry gripes, as “Uncle Remus”explanatory note calls it—and as for the inside, I know next to nothing about that, for in all this time I have seldom had a sight of it, nor ever had a desire in that regard which couldn’t have been overcome by argument.

After having been hard at work from nine or ten in the morning until eleven at night scraping material together, I took the pen and spread this mucktextual note out in words and phrasesexplanatory note,textual note and made it cover as much acreage as I could. It was fearful drudgery—soulless drudgery—and almost destitute of interest. It was an awful slavery for a lazy man, and I was born lazy. I am no lazier now than I was forty years ago, but that is because I reached the limit forty years ago. You can’t go beyond possibility.

Finally there was an event. One Sunday afternoon I saw some hoodlums chasing and stoning a Chinaman who was heavily laden with the weekly wash of his Christian customers, and I noticed that a policeman was observing this performance with an amused interest—nothing more. He did not interfere. I wrote up the incident with considerable warmth and holy indignation. Usually I didn’t want to read,textual note in the morning,textual note what I had written the night before; ittextual note had come from a torpid heart. But this item had come from a live one. There was fire in it, and I believed it was literature—and so I sought for it in the paper next morning with eagerness. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t there the next morning, nor the next. I went up to the composing-roomtextual note and found it tucked away among condemned matter on the standing galley. I asked about it. The foreman said Mr. Barnes had found it in a galley-prooftextual note and ordered its extinction. And Mr. Barnes furnished his reasons—either to me or to the foreman, I don’t remember which; but they were commercially sound. He said that the Call was like the New York Sun of that day: it was the washerwoman’s paper—that is, ittextual note was the paper of the poor; it was the only cheaptextual note paper. It gathered its livelihood from the poor,textual note and must respect their prejudices,textual note or perish. The Irish were the poor. They were the stay and support of the Morning Call; without them the Morning Call could not survive a month—and they hated the Chinamen. Such an assault as I had attemptedtextual note could rouse the whole Irish hive,textual note and seriouslytextual note damage the paper. The Call could not afford to publish articles criticisingtextual note the hoodlums for stoning Chinamenexplanatory note.

I was lofty in those days. I have survived it. I was unwise,textual note then. I am up-to-date now. Day before yesterday’s New York Sun has a paragraph or two from its London correspondent which enables me to locate myself. The correspondent mentions a few of our [begin page 116] American events of the past twelvemonth, such as the limitlesstextual note rottenness of our great insurance companiestextual note, where theft has been carried on by our most distinguished commercial men as a profession; the exposures of conscienceless graft—colossal graft—in great municipalities like Philadelphia, St. Louis, and other large cities; the recent exposure of million-foldtextual note graft in the great Pennsylvania Railwaytextual note system—with minor uncoverings of commercial swindles from one end of the United States to the otherexplanatory note; and finally to-day’s luridtextual note exposure, by Upton Sinclair,textual note of the most titanictextual note and death-dealing swindle of them all, the Beef Trustexplanatory note, an exposure which has moved the Presidenttextual note to demand of a reluctanttextual note Congress a law which shall protect America and Europe from falling, in a mass, into the hands of the doctor and the undertakerexplanatory note. According to that correspondent, Europe is beginning to wonder if there is really an honest male human creature lefttextual note in the United Statesexplanatory note. A year ago, I was satisfied that there was no such person existing upon American soil—except myself. That exception has since been rubbed out, and now it is my belief that there isn’t a single male human being in America who is honest. I held the belt all alongtextual note, until last January. Then I went down, with Rockefeller and Carnegie and a group of Goulds and Vanderbilts and other professional grafters,textual note and swore off my taxesexplanatory note like the most conscienceless of the lot. I was a great loss to America, because I was irreplaceable. It is my belief that it willtextual note take fifty years to produce my successor. I believe the entire population of the United States—exclusive of the women—to be rotten, as far as the dollar is concerned. Understand, I am saying these things as a dead person. I should consider it indiscreet in any live one to make these remarks publicly.

But, as I was saying, I was loftier forty years ago than I am now, and I felt a deep shame in being situated as I was—slave of such a journal as the Morning Call. If I had been still loftier I would have thrown up my berth and gone out and starved, like any other hero. But I had never had any experience. I had dreamed heroism, like everybody, but I had had no practice, and I didn’t know how to begin. I couldn’t bear to begin with starving. I had already come near to that once or twice in my life,textual note and got no real enjoyment out of remembering about it. I knew I couldn’t get another berth if I resigned. I knew it perfectly well. Therefore I swallowed my humiliation and stayed where I was. Buttextual note whereas there had been little enough interest attaching to my industries, before,textual note there was none at all now. I continued my work, but I took not the least interest in it, and naturally there were results. I got to neglecting it. As I have said, there was too much of it for one man. The way I was conducting it now, there was apparently work enough in it for two or three. Even Barnes noticed that, and told me to get an assistant, on half wages. There was a great hulking creature down in the counting-roomtextual note—good-natured, obliging, unintellectual—and he was getting little or nothing a week and boarding himself. A graceless boy of the counting-room force who had no reverence for anybody or anything, was always making fun of this beachcombertextual note, and he had a name for him which somehow seemed intensely apt and descriptive—I don’t know why. He called him Smiggy McGluralexplanatory note. I offered the berth of assistant to Smiggy,textual note and he accepted it with alacrity and gratitude. He went at his work with ten times the energy that was left in me. He was not intellectual, but mentality was not required or needed in a Morning Call [begin page 117] reporter, and so he conducted his office to perfection. I gradually got to leaving more and more of the work to McGlural. I grew lazier and lazier, and within thirty days he was doing almost the whole of it. It was also plain that he could accomplish the whole of it, and more, all by himself, and therefore had no real need of me.

It was at this crucial moment that that event happened which I mentioned a whiletextual note ago. Mr. Barnes discharged me. It was the only time in my life that I have ever been discharged, and it hurts yet—although I am in my grave.textual note He did not discharge me rudely. It was not in his nature to do that. He was a large, handsome man, with a kindly face and courteous ways, and was faultless in his dress. He could not have said a rude, ungentle thing to anybody. He took me privately aside and advised me to resign. It was like a father advising a son for his good, and I obeyed.

I was on the world, now,textual note with nowhere to go. By my Presbyterian training,textual note I knew that the Morning Call had brought disaster upon itself. I knew the ways of Providence, and I knew that this offencetextual note would have to be answered for. I could not foresee when the penalty would fall nor what shape it would take, but I was as certain that it would come, sooner or later, as I was of my own existence. I could not tell whether it would fall upon Barnes or upon his newspaper. But Barnes was the guilty one, and I knew, by my training, that the punishment always falls upon the innocent one, consequently I felt sure that it was the newspaper that at some future day would suffer for Barnes’s crime.

Sure enough! Among the very first pictures that arrived, in the fourth week of April—there stood the Morning Call building towering out of the wrecked city, like a Washington Monumenttextual note; and the body of it was all gone, and nothing was left but the iron bonesexplanatory note!textual note It was then that I saidtextual note “How wonderful are the ways of Providence!” I had known it would happen. I had known it for forty years. I had never lost my confidencetextual note in Providence during all that time. It was put off longer than I was expecting, but it was now comprehensive and satisfactory enough to make up for that. Some people would think it curious that Providence should destroy an entire city of four hundred thousand inhabitants to settle an account of forty years’ standing, between a mere discharged reporter and a newspaper, but to me there was nothing strange about that, because I was educated, I was trained, I was a Presbyterian, and I knew how these things are done. I knew that in Biblical times, if a man committed a sin, the extermination of the whole surrounding nation—cattle and all—was likely to happen. I knew that Providence was not particular about the rest, so that He got somebody connected with the one He was after. I remembered that in the Magnalia a man who went home swearing, from prayer-meeting one night, got his reminder within the next nine months. He had a wife and seven children, and all at once they were attacked by a terrible disease, and one by one they died in agony, till at the end of a week there was nothing left but the man himselfexplanatory note. I knew that the idea was to punish the man, and I knew that if he had any intelligence he recognized that that intention had been carried out, although mainly at the expense of other people.textual note

In those ancient times the counting-room of the Morning Call was on the ground floor; the office of the Superintendenttextual note of the United States Mint was on the next floor above, with Bret Harte as private secretary of the Superintendenttextual note explanatory note. The quarters of the [begin page 118] editorial staff and the reporter were on the third floor, and the composing-roomtextual note on the fourth and final floor. I spent a good deal of time with Bret Harte in his office after Smiggy McGlural came, but not before that. Harte was doing a good deal of writing for The textual note Californian—contributing “Condensed Novels”textual note and sketches to it, and also acting as editor, I think. I was a contributorexplanatory note. So was Charles H. Webb;textual note also Prentice Mulford;textual note also a young lawyer named Hastings, who gave promise of distinguishing himself in literature some day. Charles Warren Stoddardexplanatory note was a contributor. Ambrose Bierce, who is still writing acceptably for the magazines to-day, was then employed on some paper in San Francisco— The Golden textual note Era, perhapsexplanatory note. We had very good times together—very social and pleasant times. But that was after Smiggy McGlural came to my assistance; theretextual note was no leisure before that. Smiggy was a great advantage to me—during thirty days. Then he turned into a disaster.

It was Mr. Swain, Superintendenttextual note of the Mint, who discovered Bret Harte. Harte had arrived in California in the ’50stextual note, twenty-three or twenty-four years old, and had wandered up into the surface diggings of the camp at Yreka, a place which had acquired its curious name—textual notewhen in its first days it much needed a name—through an accident. There was a bakeshoptextual note with a canvas sign which had not yet been put up but had been painted and stretched to dry in such a way that the word bakerytextual note showed through and was reversed. A stranger read it wrong end first, Yreka, and supposed that that was the name of the camp. The campers were satisfied with it and adopted itexplanatory note.

Harte taughttextual note school in that camp several months. He also edited the weekly rag which was doing duty as a newspaper. He spent a little time also in the pocket-miningtextual note camp of Jackass Gulch (wheretextual note I tarried, some years later, during three months)explanatory note.textual note It was at Yreka and Jackass Gulch that Harte learned to accurately observe and put with photographic exactness on paper the woodland scenery of California and the general country aspects—the stage-coachtextual note, its driver and its passengers, and the clothing and general style of the surface-minertextual note, the gambler, and their women; and it was also in these places that he learned, without the trouble of observing, all that he didn’t know about mining, and how to make it read as if an expert were behind the pen. It was in those places that he also learned how to fascinate Europe and America with the quaint dialect of the miner—a dialect which no man in heaven or earth had ever used until Harte invented itexplanatory note.textual note With Harte it died, but it was no loss.textual note By and by he came to San Francisco. He was a compositor,textual note by trade, and got work in the Golden textual note Era officeexplanatory note at ten dollars a week.

Textual Notes Wednesday, June 13, 1906
  Morning Call  ●  Morning Call (TS1) 
  Morning Call  ●  Morning Call (TS1) 
  Morning Call  ●  Morning Call (TS1) 
  In those days—about ●  In those days—about (TS1)  About (Harper’s) 
  ago— ●  ago— (TS1)  ago (Harper’s) 
  at the ●  at the (TS1)  at (Harper’s) 
  Irishmen, ●  Irishmen,  (TS1-SLC)  Irishmen, (Harper’s) 
  courts, ●  courts,  (TS1-SLC)  courts, (Harper’s) 
  day before. ●  previous day. before.  (TS1-SLC)  day before. (Harper’s) 
  might, ●  might,  (TS1-SLC)  might, (Harper’s) 
  report, ●  report,  (TS1-SLC)  report, (Harper’s) 
  theatres ●  theaters (TS1, Harper’s) 
  other: seven ●  other: . S seven period mended to a colon; ‘S’ marked for lowercase with a slash and ‘l.c.’  (TS1-SLC)  other, seven (Harper’s) 
  year. We ●  year. , w We ‘w’ underscored three times to capitalize  (TS1-SLC)  year. We (Harper’s) 
  this (forty years), ●  this, (forty years),  (TS1-SLC)  this (forty years), (Harper’s) 
  theatre ●  theater (TS1, Harper’s) 
  muck ●  muck (TS1)  much (Harper’s) 
  phrases, ●  phrases,  (TS1-SLC)  phrases, (Harper’s) 
  read, ●  read,  (TS1-SLC)  read, (Harper’s) 
  morning, ●  morning,  (TS1-SLC)  morning, (Harper’s) 
  before; it ●  before; . I it period mended to a semicolon; ‘I’ marked for lowercase with a slash and ‘l.c.’  (TS1-SLC)  before; it (Harper’s) 
  composing-room ●  composing-room (TS1)  composing room (Harper’s) 
  galley-proof ●  galley-proof (TS1)  galley proof (Harper’s) 
  was like the New York Sun of that day: it was the washerwoman’s paper—that is, it ●  was . . . day: . I it . . . washer- | woman’s paper—that is, it period mended to a colon; ‘I’ marked for lowercase with a slash and ‘l.c.’  (TS1-SLC)  not in  (Harper’s) 
  cheap ●  penny cheap  (TS1-SLC)  cheap (Harper’s) 
  poor, ●  poor,  (TS1-SLC)  poor, (Harper’s) 
  prejudices, ●  prejudices,  (TS1-SLC)  prejudices, (Harper’s) 
  attempted ●  made attempted  (TS1-SLC)  attempted (Harper’s) 
  hive, ●  hive,  (TS1-SLC)  hive, (Harper’s) 
  seriously ●  must seriously SLC wrote an insertion caret under the deleted word and then canceled it  (TS1-SLC)  seriously (Harper’s) 
  criticising ●  criticizing (TS1, Harper’s) 
  unwise, ●  unwise,  (TS1-SLC)  unwise, (Harper’s) 
  limitless ●  gigantic limitless  (TS1-SLC)  limitless (Harper’s) 
  insurance companies ●  Insurance Companies (TS1, Harper’s) 
  million-fold ●  millionfold (TS1, Harper’s) 
  Railway ●  Railway (TS1)  railway (Harper’s) 
  lurid ●  lurid  (TS1-SLC)  lurid (Harper’s) 
  Sinclair, ●  St. Clair, Sinclair,  (TS1-SLC)  Sinclair (Harper’s) 
  titanic ●  T titanic (TS1-SLC)  titanic (Harper’s) 
  moved the President ●  compelled the Government and moved the President—manifestly against their will— the will of the House of Repres  (TS1-SLC)  moved the President (Harper’s) 
  a reluctant ●  a reluctant  (TS1-SLC)  a reluctant (Harper’s) 
  creature left ●  being creature left SLC wrote a partial circle around ‘left’ and then canceled it  (TS1-SLC)  creature left (Harper’s) 
  along ●  along (TS1)  alone (Harper’s) 
  professional grafters, ●  professional grafters, of minor importance,  (TS1-SLC)  professional grafters (Harper’s) 
  will ●  would will  (TS1-SLC)  will (Harper’s) 
  life, ●  life,  (TS1-SLC)  life, (Harper’s) 
  But ●  But (TS1)  But, (Harper’s) 
  industries, before, ●  industries, before,  (TS1-SLC)  industries before, (Harper’s) 
  counting-room ●  counting-room (TS1)  counting room (Harper’s) 
  beachcomber ●  beachcomber ‘beach comber’ marked to close up  (TS1-SLC)  beach- | comber (Harper’s) 
  Smiggy, ●  Smiggy,  (TS1-SLC)  Smiggy, (Harper’s) 
  a while ●  a while (TS1)  awhile (Harper’s) 
  It was . . . discharged, . . . my grave. ●  It was . . . discharged, . . . in my grave. (TS1-SLC)  not in  (Harper’s) 
  now, ●  now,  (TS1-SLC)  now, (Harper’s) 
  training, ●  training, (TS1)  training (Harper’s) 
  offence ●  offense (TS1, Harper’s) 
  Monument ●  monument (TS1)  Monument (Harper’s) 
  bones! ●  bones. ! period mended to an exclamation point  (TS1-SLC)  bones! (Harper’s) 
  said ●  said (TS1)  said, (Harper’s) 
  confidence ●  confidence trust  (TS1-SLC)  confidence (Harper’s) 
  Some . . . account . . . years’ . . . sin, . . . swearing, . . . children, . . . out, although mainly at the expense of other people. ●  Some . . . account, . . . years’ . . . sin, . . . swearing, . . . children, . . . out. , although mainly at the expense of other people.  (TS1-SLC)  not in  (Harper’s) 
  Superintendent ●  Superintendent (TS1)  superindentent (Harper’s) 
  Superintendent ●  Superintendent (TS1)  superintendent (Harper’s) 
  composing-room ●  composing-room (TS1)  composing room (Harper’s) 
  The  ●  the (TS1, Harper’s) 
  “Condensed Novels” ●  c Condensed n Novels  (TS1-SLC)  “Condensed Novels” (Harper’s) 
  Webb; ●  Webb; (TS1)  Webb, (Harper’s) 
  Prentice Mulford; ●  app Prentice ss Mulford; (TS1-SLC)  Prentiss Mulford, (Harper’s) 
  The Golden  ●  The Current Golden Paine made the correction to Golden in pencil; SLC confirmed it by underscoring the word  (TS1-Paine + SLC)  the Golden  (Harper’s) 
  assistance; there ●  assistance; . T there period mended to a semicolon  (TS1-SLC)  assistance; there (Harper’s) 
  Swain, Superintendent ●  Swain, Superintendent (TS1-SLC)  Swain, superintendent (Harper’s) 
  ’50s ●  fifties (TS1)  ’fifties (Harper’s) 
  name— ●  name  (TS1-Hobby?)  name (Harper’s) 
  bakeshop ●  bakeshop (TS1)  bake shop (Harper’s) 
  bakery ●  bakery (TS1)  bakery, all but the B, (Harper’s) 
  taught ●  kept taught  (TS1-SLC)  taught (Harper’s) 
  pocket-mining ●  pocket- | mining (TS1)  pocket mining (Harper’s) 
  (where ●  (where (TS1-SLC)  (where (Harper’s) 
  months). ●  months.)  (TS1-SLC)  months.) (Harper’s) 
  stage-coach ●  stagecoach (TS1, Harper’s) 
  surface-miner ●  surface miner (TS1, Harper’s) 
  it. ●  it. followed by a caret with no insertion; caret canceled in pencil, possibly by Paine  (TS1-SLC + Paine?)  it. (Harper’s) 
  loss. ●  loss. followed by a caret with no insertion; caret canceled in pencil, possibly by Paine  (TS1-SLC + Paine?)  loss. (Harper’s) 
  compositor, ●  compositor,  (TS1-SLC)  compositor (Harper’s) 
  the Golden  ●  The Current Golden  (TS1-Paine)  the Golden  (Harper’s) 
Explanatory Notes Wednesday, June 13, 1906
 

I was a reporter on the Morning Call . . . Mr. Barnes’s idea, and he was the proprietor] Clemens was the local reporter for the Call from June to October 1864. For George Barnes, see AutoMT1 , 536 n. 226.36–37.

 

court interpreter . . . familiar with fifty-six Chinese dialects] Charles T. Carvalho (1834?–70), the official court interpreter, was a native of Java (“Death of Charles T. Carvalho,” San Francisco Bulletin, 31 Jan 1870, 3; CofC, 76–77; San Francisco Mortality Schedules 1870, 74).

 

“Uncle Remus”] Author Joel Chandler Harris ( AutoMT1 , 532–33 n. 217.25–27; see also AD, 16 Oct 1906).

 

I took the pen and spread this muck out in words and phrases] Much of Clemens’s local reporting is collected in Clemens of the “Call”; for the theater and crime news described here see “The Stage” ( CofC, 93–98) and “Part Two: Crime and Court Reporter” ( CofC, 139–205).

 

The Call could not afford to publish articles criticising the hoodlums for stoning Chinamen] Clemens had previously described this incident in a May 1870 Galaxy article, “Disgraceful Persecution of a Boy”: “Brannan street butchers set their dogs on a Chinaman who was quietly passing with a basket of clothes on his head; and while the dogs mutilated his flesh, a butcher increased the hilarity of the occasion by knocking some of the Chinaman’s teeth down his throat with half a brick” (SLC 1870a, 723). Later in 1870 he used the attack in a Galaxy sketch entitled “Goldsmith’s Friend Abroad Again,” in which some jeering young men set a fierce dog on a Chinese man. Two policemen at first ignore him, then beat and arrest him for “being disorderly and disturbing the peace” (SLC 1870b, 571). In an 1880 letter to Howells Clemens recalled the “degraded ‘Morning Call,’ whose mission from hell & politics was to lick the boots of the Irish & throw bold brave mud at the Chinamen” (3 Sept 1880, Letters 1876–1880 ).

 

Day before yesterday’s New York Sun . . . from one end of the United States to the other] Clemens describes a “special cable despatch” from the London correspondent for the Sun, published on the front page on 10 June 1906. The article, entitled “Blow to America Abroad,” noted that recent revelations about Chicago meat packers “have come as a climax to a long series of exposures with which American telegrams to English and European papers have teemed for many months,” citing the life insurance scandal in particular (see AutoMT1 , 549 n. 257.6–9). The dispatch (the only one that has been found) made no specific reference, however, to the other instances of graft that Clemens mentions, in municipal government and the railroad industry. Stories about corruption in Philadelphia and St. Louis had been appearing in newspapers since at least early 1905. More recently, in May 1906, the officials of the Pennsylvania Railroad had come under scrutiny for granting lower freight charges to coal companies in return for gifts of stock (see, for example, New York Times: “Railroad Officials Got Rich Gifts of Stock,” 17 May 1906, 1; “High Railroad Men Called,” 22 May 1906, 6; Washington Post: “Responsibility for Ring Rule,” 21 Apr 1905, 6; “Nation’s Awakening,” 25 Nov 1905, 5).

 

to-day’s lurid exposure, by Upton Sinclair, of the . . . Beef Trust] Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) published his novel The Jungle in serial form in 1905, and it became a best-selling book in early 1906. Its horrifying description of the Chicago stockyards and revelations about the sale of tainted meat awakened public outrage against the Beef Trust (a conglomerate of the three largest Chicago meat-packing firms, Swift, Armour, and Morris). The Sun’s London correspondent commented that even “a cleaning of the Augean stables at Chicago” would not suffice “to restore European belief in American honesty” (“Blow to America Abroad,” New York Sun, 10 June 1906, 1; “Report on Beef Trust,” Wall Street Journal, 5 June 1906, 7). Clemens wrote to Sinclair on 22 June 1906: “In dictating the morning’s chapter in my autobiography one day last week, I uttered a paragraph, which indicates that I realize the magnitude and effectiveness of the earthquake which ‘The Jungle’ has set going under the Canned Polecat Trust of Chicago”; he then quoted his own remarks from this dictation (“Mark Twain on ‘The Jungle,’ ” Eau Claire [Wis.] Leader, 7 Aug 1906, unknown page).

 

an exposure which has moved the President . . . hands of the doctor and the undertaker] After reading The Jungle President Roosevelt ordered an investigation and forwarded the resulting report to Congress on 4 June, urging immediate action. The Meat Inspection Act, which he signed into law on 30 June, provided a permanent appropriation for the inspection of animals before and after slaughter, and established regulations to ensure the safety of meat products (“Report on Beef Trust,” Wall Street Journal, 5 June 1906, 7; “Congress Passes Three Big Bills,” Chicago Tribune, 30 June 1906, 1, 4).

 

According to that correspondent . . . an honest male human creature left in the United States] The Sun correspondent opined that “it becomes the duty, however painful, of any conscientious correspondent to inform his countrymen of the indictment which the world at large is bringing against them and to warn them that it is not corporate criminals alone who are being arraigned. It is the whole American people who stand to-day at the bar of public opinion before their sister nations” (“Blow to America Abroad,” New York Sun, 10 June 1906, 1).

 

swore off my taxes] See AutoMT1 , 573 n. 304.11.

 

He called him Smiggy McGlural] Clemens’s colleague on the Call was William K. McGrew (1827–1903), who was also undoubtedly the man he recalls here. The nickname “Smiggy McGlural” was borrowed from the title of a humorous song popular in the early 1860s. McGrew was born to a wealthy family, but lost his inheritance in the financial panic of 1857. He took a position on the New York Times, but after the death of his wife he began a series of remarkable travels: he crossed the continent on foot three times and walked from Central America to San Francisco, supporting himself by playing the flute. In 1864 he was a relatively new Call employee, and he went on leave in the fall of 1865. He returned to his position intermittently until 1889, when he resigned to practice law ( San Francisco Census 1900, 103:13B; CofC, 18–19, 304 nn. 62–63; ET&S2, 546; Waltz and Engle 2011; San Francisco Chronicle: “A Fatal Accident,” 3 Oct 1893, 5; “Deaths,” 1 May 1903, 13).

 

Morning Call building . . . nothing was left but the iron bones] The nineteen-story Call building (later known as the Spreckels building), erected in 1897 at Market and Third streets, was for many years the tallest edifice west of the Mississippi. It was badly damaged by the 1906 fire, but its steel frame remained intact, and the building, reconstructed and remodeled, still stands today (Himmelwright 1906, 231–34).

 

in the Magnalia . . . nothing left but the man himself] Magnalia Christi Americana; or, The Ecclesiastical History of New-England, from Its First Planting in the Year 1620 unto the Year of Our Lord, 1698 was the greatest work of Puritan minister Cotton Mather (1663–1728). The work was first published in London in 1702; Clemens owned the first American edition, issued in 1820 in two volumes (Gribben 1980, 1:457). The passage that Clemens remembers has not been identified.

 

In those ancient times . . . Bret Harte as private secretary of the Superintendent] In 1864 the Call was located in a new brick building at 612 Commercial Street, next door to the United States Branch Mint. The superintendent of the mint, Robert B. Swain (1822–72), rented offices in the building; Harte worked as his secretary from 1863 to 1869, a position that left him ample time to write ( CofC, 12, 227–28; 29 Dec 1868 to Langdon, L2, 363 n. 9; Scharnhorst 2000a, 18). Clemens describes Swain’s patronage of Harte in the Autobiographical Dictation of 14 June 1906.

 

Harte was doing a good deal of writing for The Californian . . . I was a contributor] Harte edited the Californian from 10 September to 19 November 1864, and was probably responsible for accepting Clemens’s first nine literary contributions to the journal (25 Sept 1864 to JLC and PAM, L1, 314 n. 5). Harte described his “Condensed Novels” as “a humorous condensation of the salient characteristics of certain writers” (Harte 1867). These parodies of well-known authors—such as James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Dickens, and Victor Hugo—were widely praised. The first two appeared in the Golden Era in August 1862, and the series continued in the Californian from July 1865 to June 1866. In 1867 Harte collected all fifteen pieces in Condensed Novels. And Other Papers (New York: G. W. Carleton and Co.) (Scharnhorst 1995, 83–84, 92–98; Scharnhorst 2000a, 25–26).

 

Charles H. Webb; also Prentice Mulford . . . Charles Warren Stoddard] For Webb see the Autobiographical Dictation of 21 May, note at 46.23–25; for Mulford and Stoddard see AutoMT1 , 509–10 n. 150.2–4, 516 n. 161.27–30. Hastings has not been identified.

 

Ambrose Bierce, who is still writing acceptably for the magazines . . . Golden Era, perhaps] In 1905–6 Bierce wrote primarily for the New York American and Cosmopolitan magazine, to which he contributed a column called “The Passing Show.” He was not in San Francisco in 1864 (he was fighting in the Union army), nor did he publish anything in the Golden Era until July 1868. Clemens is probably recalling his own last visit to the West Coast, in the spring and early summer of 1868: in March of that year, Bierce began contributing articles regularly to the San Francisco News Letter and California Advertiser, and he later stated that he first met Clemens in the offices of that newspaper (Morris 1995, 117, 238–40; Joshi and Schultz 1999, 75–76, 238–51; AutoMT1 , 509–10 n. 150.2–4).

 

Harte had arrived in California . . . campers were satisfied with it and adopted it] Harte arrived in California in 1854—when he was seventeen—to join his mother, who had recently remarried. He is not known to have been in Yreka, which is in Siskiyou County. It is likely that Clemens confused “Yreka” with “Eureka” (see the note at 118.21–23). He makes the same error in the Autobiographical Dictation of 4 February 1907. “Yreka” is thought to derive from a Native American name for Mount Shasta (George R. Stewart 1931, 29–30; Gudde 1962, 353).

 

Harte taught school . . . Jackass Gulch (where I tarried, some years later, during three months)] In the summer of 1857 Harte left San Francisco to join his married sister in Union (or Uniontown, now Arcata), on the coast near Eureka in Humboldt County. He taught school, and then in December 1858 was hired as a printer’s assistant on the town’s newspaper, the Northern Californian. His sojourn at Jackass Hill, near the mining town of Jackass Gulch in Tuolumne County, predated his time in Uniontown: according to Jim Gillis, Harte stayed with him briefly in December 1855 in his cabin there. Clemens visited the area several years later, in the winter of 1864–65. He describes some of his experiences in the Autobiographical Dictations of 23 January and 4 February 1907 (George R. Stewart 1931, 52–53, 75–88; Gudde 1962, 13; O’Connor 1966, 32; Gillis 1930, 178–81; AutoMT1 , 552–53 n. 261.21–24).

 

quaint dialect of the miner . . . until Harte invented it] Clemens also criticized Harte’s unauthentic dialect in chapter 7 of Is Shakespeare Dead?

I know the argot of the quartz-mining and milling industry familiarly; and so whenever Bret Harte introduces that industry into a story, the first time one of his miners opens his mouth I recognize from his phrasing that Harte got the phrasing by listening—like Shakespeare—I mean the Stratford one—not by experience. No one can talk the quartz dialect correctly without learning it with pick and shovel and drill and fuse. (SLC 1909c, 74–75)

Clemens had been sharply dismissive of Harte’s use of dialect since at least 1873 (see N&J1, 553). He repeated his criticism in various (undated) marginalia on Harte’s works. For example, in his own copy of The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other Sketches he wrote, “Miggles is an excellent sketch. The girl’s ‘dialect’ is not good, but it has at least one saving feature—it is difficult to explain why it isn’t good, or point out the precise errors. It has a grand general badness” (Harte 1870a, 55; Clemens’s marginalia in this volume are published in Booth 1954).

 

By and by he . . . got work in the Golden Era office] In February 1860, while substituting for the absent editor of the Northern Californian, Harte published an article condemning a local massacre of Native American women and children. He was allegedly forced to leave Uniontown, and returned to San Francisco. He had previously published some writings—both verse and prose—in the Golden Era in 1857–58, and he soon joined the staff as a compositor (O’Connor 1966, 42–47; Scharnhorst 1995, 3–4).