28–30 April 1864
This brief scrap appears to be Mark Twain's further comment on Dan De Quille's accident (see “Frightful Accident to Dan De Quille,” no. 73). The sketch, of which this is presumably only a fragment, was published in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise in late April after Mark Twain returned from his assignment in Silver Mountain. The text is preserved only in Albert Bigelow Paine's Mark Twain: A Biography, where he mistakenly identified it as the author's initial response to Dan's accident. Indeed, since Paine's source is not known, and since the fragment bears some similarity to the previous sketch, there is a remote possibility that Paine printed Mark Twain's recollection of what he had written there.
However, on balance, it seems somewhat more likely that Mark Twain did write a second piece on the accident for the Enterprise. The very much more sarcastic tone suggests that he was responding to what transpired after he left Virginia City with his swollen nose. In 1893 Dan recalled:
No sooner was Mark away than I wrote for the Enterprise a description of his arrival at Silver Mountain. In this it was said that as the stage was entering the town Mark placed himself at the window of the vehicle. The alert suburban inhabitants caught sight of his nose and raised the cry that a “freak” show was coming. . . . This was a mild and innocent squib for a Comstock paper in those days, but Mark said “it wasn't a d—— bit smart.” He was hot about it when he got back to Virginia City. He said I had caused him to be annoyed by all the bums in Carson when he got back to that town, as he was obliged to stand treat to shut their mouths.
Dan further recalled—mistakenly, however—that Clemens' response was to publish “Frightful Accident.” Since that sketch clearly appeared before Mark Twain's departure for Silver Mountain, it seems more likely that [begin page 363] “Dan Reassembled” was Mark Twain's response. Dan, at any rate, remembered that when he discovered the piece his friend chuckled and said: “Now, blast you, may be you'll hereafter let my nose alone!”1
The idea of a plebeian like Dan supposing he could ever ride a horse! He! why, even the cats and the chickens laughed when they saw him go by. Of course, he would be thrown off. Of course, any well-bred horse wouldn't let a common, underbred person like Dan stay on his back! When they gathered him up he was just a bag of scraps, but they put him together, and you'll find him at his old place in the Enterprise office next week, still laboring under the delusion that he's a newspaper man.
The first printing in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, probably sometime between 28 and 30 April 1864, is not extant. The text survives in Albert Bigelow Paine's MTB (1:236), which is copy-text. Copy: first edition in MTP. The source of Paine's text is not known. There are no textual notes or emendations.