3 February 1863
In all probability this letter was completed on Saturday evening, 31 January 1863, mailed to Virginia City the next day, and published in the Territorial Enterprise on Tuesday, February 3. (The paper did not publish on Mondays.) The text is preserved in a clipping in one of Clemens' scrapbooks.1 It is likely that this letter was the first piece to which Clemens signed the name “Mark Twain,” in which case his remark “I feel very much as if I had just awakened out of a long sleep” seems deeply appropriate. The appearance of the taciturn Joseph T. Goodman in Clemens' account of the trip to Carson City is also significant. As proprietor and senior editor of the Enterprise, Goodman shared responsibility for hiring Clemens and for establishing the journalistic policy that fostered his development as a reporter and humorist in Nevada. In fact, this early example of an out-of-town newspaper letter is a sign of Goodman's willingness to give Clemens great freedom. Clemens had served as local editor for only a month, but had already managed to persuade his boss to give him a vacation: “They let me go, about the first of the month, to stay twenty-four hours in Carson,” he reported to his family, “and I staid a week.”2 It was a productive week: in that time he wrote and sent three letters signed “Mark Twain.”
In 1863 the newspaper letter from distant points was a standard, often a rather personal, way of reporting the news. Clemens learned to use the form more inventively than most other reporters did. At his best, he could float bits of hard news in a strong current of personal narrative and imaginative comedy, and he soon achieved an appealing informality and a flexible medium which commanded a large audience. In 1865 Goodman would [begin page 193] agree to pay him $100 a month for a daily letter from San Francisco, and in 1866 the Sacramento Union and the San Francisco Alta California would commission him to write two long series of travel letters.3
To sustain the comedy and provide an element of continuity in such a letter, Clemens often employed a stooge who was sometimes purely imaginary, sometimes based on a real acquaintance. In reporting the proceedings of the Territorial Legislature in November and December 1862 Clemens had adopted a character called the Unreliable—in reality Clement T. Rice, his friend of at least a year's standing and a respected reporter for the Virginia City Union.4 On 23 December 1862, for instance, Clemens sent his paper an account of the postadjournment celebration held in Washoe City, and he said in part:
The supper and the champagne were excellent and abundant, and I offer no word of blame against anybody for eating and drinking pretty freely. If I were to blame anybody, I would commence with the Unreliable—for he drank until he lost all sense of etiquette. I actually found myself in bed with him with my boots on. However, as I said before, I cannot blame the cuss; it was a convivial occasion, and his little shortcomings ought to be overlooked.5
Rice, who was probably also the original of the character Boggs in Roughing It, was an especially good straight man because he was cheerfully willing to keep the game going—making the Reliable, or Mark Twain, his stooge in the columns of the Union. Rice was a thoroughly reputable figure in Nevada society: he was the registrar of the United States Land Office in Carson City from 1862 to 1864, and like Clemens he had prospected and staked out Nevada mining claims. In 1863 he was secretary of the Watson Consolidated Gold and Silver Mining Company. Reputed to have made a sizable fortune in Nevada, Rice later went into business in New York City. Clemens reported his presence there in March 1867.6
Carson, Saturday Night.
Eds. Enterprise: I feel very much as if I had just awakened out of a long sleep. I attribute it to the fact that I have slept the greater part of the time for the last two days and nights. On Wednesday, I sat up all night, in Virginia, in order to be up early enough to take the five o'clock stage on Thursday morning. I was on time. It was a great success. I had a cheerful trip down to Carson, in company with that incessant talker, Joseph T. GoodmanⒺexplanatory note. I never saw him flooded with such a flow of spirits before. He restrained his conversation, though, until we had traveled three or four miles, and were just crossing the divide between Silver CityⒺexplanatory note and Spring ValleyⒺexplanatory note, when he thrust his head out of the dark stage, and allowed a pallid light from the coach lamp to illuminate his features for a moment, after which he returned to darkness again, and sighed and said, “Damn it!” with some asperity. I asked him who he meant it forⒶtextual note, and he said, “The weather out there.” As we approached Carson, at about half past seven o'clock, he thrust his head out again, and gazed earnestly in the direction of that city—after which he took it in again, with his nose very much frosted. He propped the end of that organ upon the end of his finger, and looked down pensively upon it—which had the effect of making him appear cross-eyed—and remarked, “O, damn it!” with great bitterness. I asked him what he was up to this time, and he said, “The cold, damp fog—it is worse than the weather.” This was his last. He never spoke again in my hearing. He went on over the mountains, [begin page 195] with a lady fellow-passenger from here. That will stop his clatter, you know, for he seldom speaks in the presence of ladies.
In the evening I felt a mighty inclination to go to a party somewhere. There was to be one at GovernorⒶemendation J. Neely Johnson'sⒺexplanatory note, and I went there and asked permission to stand around awhile. This was granted in the most hospitable mannerⒶemendation, and visions of plain quadrilles soothed my weary soul. I felt particularly comfortable, for if there is one thing more grateful to my feelings than another, it is a new house—a large house, with its ceilings embellished with snowy mouldings; its floors glowing with warm-tinted carpets; with cushioned chairs and sofas to sit on, and a piano to listen to; with fires so arranged that you can see them, and know that there is no humbug about it; with walls garnished with pictures, and above all, mirrors, wherein you may gaze, and always find something to admire, you know. I have a great regard for a good house,Ⓐemendation and a girlish passion for mirrors. Horace SmithⒺexplanatory note, Esq., is also very fond of mirrors. He came and looked in the glass for an hour, with me. Finally, it cracked—the night was pretty cold—and Horace Smith's reflection was split right down the centre. But where his face had been, the damage was greatest—a hundred cracks converged from his reflected nose, like spokes from the hub of a wagon wheel. It was the strangest freak the weather has done this Winter. And yet the parlor seemed very warm and comfortable, too.
About nine o'clock the Unreliable came and asked Gov. Johnson to let him stand on the porch. That creature has got more impudence than any person I ever saw in my lifeⒶemendation. Well, he stood and flattened his nose against the parlor window, and looked hungry and vicious —he always looks that way—until Col. MusserⒺexplanatory note arrived with some ladies, when he actually fell in their wake and came swaggering in, looking as if he thought he had been anxiously expected. He had on my fine kid boots, and my plug hat and my white kid gloves, (with slices of his prodigious hands grinning through the bursted seams), and my heavy gold repeater, which I had been offered thousands and thousands of dollars for, many and many a time. He took these articles out of my trunk, at Washoe CityⒺexplanatory note, about a month ago, when we went out there to report the proceedings of the ConventionⒺexplanatory note. The Unreliable intruded himself upon me in his cordial way, and said, “How are you, Mark, old boy? when d'you come down? It's brilliant, [begin page 196] ain't it? Appear to enjoy themselves, don'tⒶemendation they? Lend a fellowⒶemendation two bits, can't you?” He always winds up his remarks that way. He appears to have an insatiable craving for two bits.
The music struck up just then, and saved me. The next moment I was far, far at sea in a plain quadrille. We carried it through with distinguished success; that is, we got as far as “balance around,” and “half-a-man-left,”Ⓔexplanatory note when I smelled hot whisky punch, or something of that nature. I tracked the scent through several rooms, and finally discovered the large bowl from whence it emanated. I found the omnipresent Unreliable there, also. He set down an empty goblet, and remarked that he was diligently seeking the gentlemen's dressing room. I would have shown him where it was, but it occurred to him that the supper table and the punch-bowl ought not to be left unprotected; wherefore, we staid there and watched them until the punch entirelyⒶemendation evaporated. A servant came in then to replenish the bowl, and we left the refreshments in his charge. We probably did wrong, but we were anxious to join the hazy dance. The dance was hazier thanⒶemendation usual, after that. Sixteen couples on the floor at once, with a few dozen spectators scattered around, is calculated to have that effect in a brilliantly lighted parlor, I believe. Everything seemed to buzz, at any rate. After all the modern dances had been danced several times, the people adjourned to the supper-room. I found my wardrobe out there, as usual, with the Unreliable in it. His old distemper was upon him: he was desperately hungry. I never saw a man eat as much as he did in my life. I have the various items of his supper here in my note-book. First, he ate a plate of sandwiches; then he ate a handsomely iced poundcake; then he gobbled a dish of chicken salad; after which he ate a roast pig; after that, a quantity of blanc-mangeⒶemendation; then he threwⒶemendation in several glasses of punch to fortify his appetite, and finished his monstrous repast with a roast turkey. Dishes of brandy-grapes, and jellies, and such things, and pyramids of fruits, melted away before him as shadows fly at the sun's approach. I am of the opinion that none of his ancestors were present when the five thousand were miraculously fed in the old Scriptural times. I base my opinion upon the twelve baskets of scraps and the little fishes that remained over after that feastⒺexplanatory note. If the Unreliable himself had been there, the provisions would just about have held out, I think.
After supper, the dancing was resumed, and after awhile, the guests [begin page 197] indulged in music to a considerable extent. Mrs. J. sang a beautiful Spanish song; Miss R., Miss T., Miss P., and Miss S., sang a lovely duettⒶtextual note; Horace Smith, Esq., sang “I'm sitting on the stile, Mary,”Ⓔexplanatory note with a sweetness and tenderness of expression which I have never heard surpassed; Col. Musser sang “From Greenland's Icy Mountains” so fervently that every heart in that assemblage was purified and made better by it; Mrs. T. and Miss C., and Mrs. T. and Mrs. G. sang “Meet me by moonlight alone” charmingly; Judge DixsonⒺexplanatory note sang “O, Charming May” with great vivacity and artistic effect; Joe WintersⒺexplanatory note and Hal ClaytonⒺexplanatory note sang the Marseilles Hymn in French, and did it well; Mr. WassonⒺexplanatory note sang “Call me pet names” with his usual excellence—(Wasson has a cultivated voice, and a refined musical taste, but like Judge BrumfieldⒺexplanatory note, he throws so much operatic affectation into his singing that the beauty of his performance is sometimes marred by it—I could not help noticing this fault when Judge Brumfield sang “Rock me to sleep, mother;”)Ⓐemendation Wm. M. GillespieⒺexplanatory note sang “Thou hastⒶemendation Ⓐtextual note wounded the spirit that loved thee,” gracefully and beautifully, and wept at the recollection of the circumstance which he was singing about. Up to this time I had carefully kept the Unreliable in the back ground, fearful that, under the circumstances, his insanity would take a musical turn; and my prophetic soulⒺexplanatory note was right; he eluded me and planted himself at the piano; when he opened his cavernous mouth and displayed his slanting and scattered teeth,Ⓐemendation the effect upon that convivial audience was as if the gates of a graveyard, with its crumbling tombstones, had been thrown open in their midst; then he shouted some thing about he “would not live alway”—and if I ever heard anything absurd in my life, that was it. He must have made up that song as he went along. Why, there was no more sense in it, and no more music, than there is in his ordinary conversation. The only thing in the whole wretched performance that redeemed it for a moment, was something about “the few lucid moments that dawn on us here.” That was all right; because the “lucid moments” that dawn on that Unreliable are almighty few, I can tell you. I wish one of them would strike him while I am here, and prompt him to return my valuables to me. I doubt if he ever gets lucid enough for that, though. After the Unreliable had finished squawking, I sat down to the piano and sang—however, what I sang is of no consequence to anybody. It was only a graceful little gem from the horse opera.
[begin page 198]At about two o'clock in the morning the pleasant party broke up and the crowd of guests distributed themselves around town to their respective homes; and after thinking the fun all over again, I went to bed at four o'clock. So, having been awake forty-eight hours, I slept forty-eight,Ⓐemendation in order to get even again, which explains the proposition I began this letter with.
Yours, dreamily,
Mark Twain.
The first printing appeared in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, almost certainly on 3 February 1863. The only known copy of this printing, in a clipping in Scrapbook 4, p. 11, MTP, is copy-text.