Explanatory Notes
Apparatus Notes
MTPDocEd
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50. [Champagne with the Board of Brokers]
7 March 1863

Myron Angel's History of Nevada is the only extant source of this account of the champagne supper at Almack's Oyster and Liquor Saloon following the organization of the Washoe Stock and Exchange Board in Virginia City on Friday, 6 March 1863. Because Mark Twain “adjourned to make this report,” we can be fairly certain that the item appeared in the Territorial Enterprise the next day.

The president of the new board was A. C. Wightman, who with his partner, John A. Mitchell, headed an important firm of stockbrokers in the city. The vice-president was Jackson McKenty.1 Presumably Rollin M. Daggett was present not only in his role as good fellow, but also as the vice-president of the Virginia Stock and Exchange Board—an already established group—and as a leading stockbroker. Daggett, who came to the Pacific Coast from Ohio in 1849, began the Golden Era in San Francisco in 1852. He came to Nevada in 1862, and two years later became an editor on the Enterprise.2

Editorial Notes
1 Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, 10 January 1863, p. 2, PH in MTP; ibid., 3 April 1863, p. 1.
2 See MTEnt , p. 227, and Francis P. Weisenburger, Idol of the West: The Fabulous Career of Rollin Mallory Daggett (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1965).
Textual Commentary

The first printing in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, probably on 7 March 1863, is not extant. The sketch survives in the only known reprinting of the Enterprise in Myron Angel, ed., History of Nevada (Oakland: Thompson and West, 1881), p. 577, which is copy-text. Copy: first edition from Bancroft. There are no textual notes.

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[Champagne with the Board of Brokers]

By a sort of instinct we happened in at Almack's just at the moment that the corks were about to pop, and discovering that we had intruded we were retreating when Daggett, the soulless, insisted upon our getting—with the Board of Brokers, and we very naturally did so. The President had already been toasted, the Vice-President had likewise been complimented in the same manner. Mr. Mitchell emendationhad delivered an address through his unsolicited mouth-piece, Mr. Daggett, whom he likened unto Baalam's assexplanatory note—and very aptly too—and the press had been toasted, and he had attempted to respond and got overcome by something—feelings perhaps—when that everlasting, omnipresent, irrepressible, “Unreliable” crowded himself into the festive apartment, where he shed a gloom upon the Board of Brokers, and emptied their glasses while they made speeches. The imperturbable impudence of that iceberg surpasses anything we ever saw. By a concerted movement the young man was partially put down at length, however, and the Board launched out into speech-making emendationagain, but finally somebody put up five feet of “Texas,”explanatory note which changed hands at eight dollars a foot, and from that they branched off into a wholesale emendationbartering of “wildcat”—for their natures were aroused by the first smell of blood of course—and we adjourned to make this report. The Board will begin its regular meetings Monday next.

Editorial Emendations [Champagne with the Board of Brokers]
  Mitchell (I-C)  ●  Mitchel
  speech-making (I-C)  ●  speech- | making
  wholesale (I-C)  ●  whole- | sale
Explanatory Notes [Champagne with the Board of Brokers]
 Baalam's ass] An early appearance of one of Mark Twain's favorite comic similes. Compare 2 Pet. 2:15–16 and Num. 22:27–31. Mark Twain alludes indirectly to Baalam's ass in “City Marshal Perry” (no. 49) when he says that the founder of the house of Perry “was the property of one Baalam.”
 “Texas,”] The mine of the Texas Mining Company was on Cedar Hill near Virginia City (Kelly, Second Directory, p. 155).