 CHAPTER XIII In that early day, to be a pilot was to be greater than a king. The Mississippi River pilot was a law unto himself. There was none above him. His direction of the boat was absolute. He could start or lay up when he chose. He could pass a landing regardless of business there, consulting nobody, not even the captain. He could take the boat into what seemed certain destruction, if he had that in mind, and the captain was obliged to stand by helpless and silent, for the law was with the pilot in everything. Furthermore, the pilot was a gentleman. His work was clean and physically light. It ended the instant the boat was tied to the landing, and did not begin again until it was ready to back into the stream. Also, for those days his salary was princely. The vice-president of the United States did not receive more. As for prestige, the Mississippi pilot, perched high in his glass enclosure, fashionably dressed, and commanding all below him, was the most conspicuous and showy, the most observed and envied creature in the world. No wonder Sam Clemens, with his love of the river and his boyish fondness for honors, should aspire to that stately rank. Even at twenty-one he was still just a boy, as indeed he was till his death, and we may imagine how elated he was, starting up the great river as a real apprentice pilot, who in a year or two would stand at the wheel as his chief was now standing, a monarch with a splendid income and all the great river packed away in his head. In that last item lay the trouble. In the Mississippi book he tells of it in a way that no one may hope to equal, and if the details are not exact, the truth is there, at least in substance. For a distance above New Orleans, Mr. Bixby had volunteered information about the river naming the points and crossings in what seemed a casual way, all through his watch of four hours. Their next watch began in the middle of the night, and Mark Twain tells how surprised and disgusted he was to learn that pilots must get up in the night to run their boats, and his amazement to find Mr. Bixby plunging into the blackness ahead as if it had been daylight. Very likely this is mainly fiction but hardly the following. Presently he turned to me and said, Watch the name of the first point above New Orleans. I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said, I didn't know. Don't know! His manner jolted me. I was down at the foot again in a moment, but I had to say just what I had said before. Well, you're a smart one, said Mr. Bixby. Watch the name of the next point. Once more, I didn't know. Well, this beats anything. Tell me the name of any point or place I told you. I studied a while and decided that I couldn't. Look here. What do you start from above 12-mile point to cross over? I—I—I don't know. You—you don't know, mimicking my drawing manner of speech. What do you know? I—I—nothing for certain. Bixby was a small nervous man, hot and quick-firing. He went off now and said a number of severe things. Then— Look here. What do you suppose I told you the names of those points for? I tremblingly considered a moment. Then the devil of temptation provoked me to say— Well, to—to be entertaining, I thought. This was a red flag to the bull. He raged and stormed, so he was crossing the river at the time. That I judged it made him blind because he ran over the steering-or of a trading-scowl. Of course, the traders sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. Never was a man so grateful as Mr. Bixby was, because he was brimful and here were subjects who would talk back. He threw open a window, thrust his head out, and such an eruption followed as I had never heard before. When he closed the window he was empty. Presently he said to me, in the gentlest way, My boy, you must get a little memorandum book, and every time I tell you a thing, put it down right away. There's only one way to be a pilot, and that is to get this entire river by heart. You have to know it just like A-B-C. This little memorandum book which Sam Clemens bought, probably at the next daylight landing, still exists—the same that he says, fairly bristled with the names of towns, points, bars, islands, bends, reaches, etc. But it made his heart ache to think he had only half the river set down, for as the watches were four hours off and four hours on, there were the long gaps where he had slept. It is not easy to make out the penciled notes today. The small, neat writing is faded, and many of them are in an abbreviation made only for himself. It is hard even to find these examples to quote, Maryweather's Bend, one-fourth less three—footnote three—depth of water, one-quarter less than three fathoms—end of footnote three. Run shape of upper bar and go into the low place in the willows about two hundred feet lower down than last year. Outside of Montezuma, six or eight feet more water, shape bar till high timber on towhead gets nearly even with low willows. Then hold a little open on right of low willows, run them close if you want to, but come out two hundred yards when you get nearly to head of towhead. The average mind would not hold a single one of these notes ten seconds, yet by the time he reached St. Louis he had set down pages that today make one's head weary even to contemplate, and those long four-hour gaps where he had been asleep, they are still there, and now, after nearly sixty years, the old heartache is still in them. He must have bought a new book for the next trip and laid this one away. To the new cub it seemed a long way to St. Louis that first trip, but in the end it was rather grand to come steaming up to the big busy city, with its thronging waterfront flanked with a solid mile of steam-boats, and to nose one's way to a place in that stately line. At St. Louis, Sam borrowed from his brother-in-law the one hundred dollars he had agreed to pay, and so closed his contract with Bixby. A few days later his chief was engaged to go on a very grand boat, indeed. A sumptuous temple, he tells us, all brass and inlay, with a pilot house so far above the water that he seemed perched on a mountain. This part of learning the river was worthwhile, and when he found that the regiment of natty servants respectfully served him, his happiness was complete. But he was in the depth again presently, for when they started down the river and he began to take account of his knowledge, he found that he had none. Everything had changed, that is, he was seeing it all from the other direction. What with the four-hour gaps and this transformation he was lost completely. How could the easygoing, dreamy, unpractical man whom the world knew as Mark Twain ever have persisted against discouragement like that to acquire the vast, the absolute, limitless store of information necessary to Mississippi piloting? The answer is that he loved the river, the picturesqueness and poetry of a steamboat, the ease and glory of a pilot's life, and then, in spite of his own later claims to the contrary, Samuel Clemens, boy and man, in the work suited to his tastes and gifts, was the most industrious of persons. Work of the other sort he avoided, overlooked, refused to recognize, but never any labor for which he was qualified by his talents or training. Piloting suited him exactly and he proved an apt pupil. Horace Bixby said to the writer of this memoir, Sam was always good-natured, and he had a natural taste for the river. He had a fine memory and never forgot what I told him. Yet there must have been hard places all along, for to learn every crook and turn and stump and snag and bluff and bar and sounding of that twelve hundred miles of mighty shifting water was a gigantic task. Mark Twain tells us how, when he was getting along pretty well, his chief one day turned on him suddenly with this settler. What is the shape of Walnut Bend? He might as well have asked me my grandmother's opinion of protoplasm. I replied respectfully and said I didn't know it had any particular shape. My gunpowdery chief went off with a bang, of course, and then went on loading and firing until he was out of adjectives. I waited. By and by he said, My boy, you've got to know the shape of the river perfectly. It is all that is left to steer by on a very dark night. Everything else is blotted out and gone. But, mind you, it hasn't got the same shape in the night that it has in the daytime. How on earth am I going to learn it then? How do you follow a hall at home in the dark? Because you know the shape of it. You can't see it. Do you mean to say that I've got to know all the million trifling variations of shape in the banks of this interminable river, as well as I know the shape of the front hall at home? On my honor, you've got to know them better than any man ever did know the shapes of the halls in his own house. I wish I was dead. But the reader must turn to Chapter Eight of Life on the Mississippi and read or re-read the pages which follow this extract. Nothing can better convey the difficulties of piloting. That Samuel Clemens had the courage to continue as the best proof, not only of his great love of the river, but of that splendid gift of resolution that one rarely fails to find in men of the foremost rank. End of Chapter Thirteen This is Chapter Fourteen of the Boy's Life of Mark Twain. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. The Boy's Life of Mark Twain by Albert Bigelopane Chapter Fourteen, River Days Piloting was only part of Sam Clemens' education on the Mississippi. He learned as much of the reefs and shallows of human nature as of the river bed. In one place, he writes, in that brief, sharp schooling I got personally and familiarly acquainted with all the different types of human nature that are to be found in fiction, biography, or history. All the different types, but most of them in the rough. That Samuel Clemens kept the promise made to his mother as to drink and cards during those apprentice days is well worth remembering. Horace Bixby, answering a call for pilots from the Missouri River, consigned his pupil, as was customary, ton of the pilots of the John J. Rowe, a freight boat owned and conducted by some retired farmers, and in its hospitality reminding Sam of his Uncle John Quarles Farm. The Rowe was a very deliberate boat. It was said that she could beat an island to St. Louis, but never quite overtake the current going downstream. Sam loved the Rowe. She was not licensed to carry passengers, but she always had a family party of the owner's relations aboard, and there was a big deck for dancing and a piano in the cabin. The young pilot could play the chords and sing in his own fashion, about a grasshopper that sat on the sweet potato vine, and about an old, old horse whose name was Methuselum, took him down and sold him in Jerusalem a long time ago. The Rowe was a heavenly place, but Sam's stay there did not last. Bixby came down from the Missouri, and perhaps thought he was doing a fine thing for his pupil by transferring him to a pilot named Brown, then on a large passenger steamer, the Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania was new, and one of the finest boats on the river. Sam Clemens, by this time, was accounted a good steersman, so it seemed fortunate and a good arrangement for all parties. But Brown was a tyrant. He was illiterate and coarse, and took a dislike to Sam from the start. His first greeting was a question, armless enough in form but offensive in manner. Are you Horace Bixby's cub? Bixby, being usually pronounced Bixby in river parlance. Sam answered politely enough that he was, and Brown proceeded to comment on the style of his clothes and other personal matters. He had made an effort to please Brown, but it was no use. Brown was never satisfied. At a moment when Sam was steering, Brown, sitting on the bench, would shout, Here! Where are you going now? Pull her down! Pull her down! Don't you hear me? Blame my cat! The young pilot soon learned to detest his chief, and presently was putting in a good deal of his time inventing punishments for him. I could imagine myself killing Brown. There was no law against that, and that was the thing I always used to do the moment I was a bed. Instead of going over the river in my mind, as was my duty, I threw business aside for pleasure and killed Brown. He gave up trying to please Brown, and was even willing to stir him up upon occasion. One day, when the cub was at the wheel, his chief noticed that the course seemed peculiar. Here! Where are you heading for now? He yelled. What in the nation you steer in that anyway, Blame Numskull? Why, said Sam in his calm, slow way, I didn't see much else I could steer for, so I was heading for that white heifer on the bank. Get away from that wheel, and get out of this pilot house! yelled Brown. He ain't fit to become no pilot. An order that Sam found welcome enough. The other pilot, George Ealer, was a lovable soul who played the flute and chest during his off-watch, and read aloud to Sam from Goldsmith and Shakespeare, to be with George Ealer, was to forget the persecutions of Brown. Young Clemens had been on the river nearly a year at this time, and though he had learned a good deal and was really a fine steersman, he received no wages. He had no board to pay, but there were things he must buy, and his money supply had become limited. Each trip of the Pennsylvania she remained about two days and nights in New Orleans, during which time the young man was free. He found he could earn two-and-a-half to three dollars a night watching freight on the levee, and as this opportunity came around about once a month, the amount was useful. Nor was this the only return, many years afterwards, he said. It was a desolate experience, watching there in the dark, among those piles of freight, not a sound, not a living creature-ister, but it was not a profitless one. I used to have inspirations as I sat there alone those nights. I used to imagine all sorts of situations and possibilities. These things got into my books by and by, and furnished me with many a chapter. I can trace the effects of those nights through most of my books in one way and another. Piloting, even with Brown, had its pleasant side. In St. Louis, young Clemens stopped with his sister, and often friends were there from Hannibal. At both ends of the line he visited friendly boats, especially the row, where a grand welcome was always waiting. Once among the guests of that boat a young girl named Laura so attracted him that he forgot time and space until one of the row-pilots, Zeb Leavenworth, came flying out shouting, The Pennsylvania's back and out! A hasty goodbye, a wild flight across the decks of several boats, and a leap across several feet of open water closed the episode. He wrote to Laura, but there was no reply. He never saw her again, never heard from her for nearly fifty years, when both were widowed and old. She had not received his letter. Occasionally there were stirring adventures aboard the Pennsylvania. In a letter written in March, 1858, the young pilot tells of an exciting night search in the running ice for Hat Island soundings. Brown, the pilot, stood in the bow with an oar to keep her head out, and I took the tiller. We would start the men, and all would go well until the yaw would bring us on a heavy cake of ice, and then the men would drop like so many tenpins, while Brown assumed the horizontal in the bottom of the boat. After an hour's hard work, we got back with ice half an inch thick on the oars. The next day was colder still. I was out in the yaw twice, and then we got through, but the infernal steamboat came near running over us. The Maria Denning was aground at the head of the island. They hailed us, we ran alongside, and they hoisted us in and thought us out. We had been out in the yaw from four in the morning until half past nine without being near a fire. There was a thick coating of ice over men and yaw, ropes and everything, and we looked like rock candy statuary. He was at the right age to enjoy such adventures, and to feel a pride in them. In the same letter he tells how he found on the Pennsylvania a small clerkship for his brother Henry, who is now nearly twenty—a handsome, gentle boy of whom Sam was lavishly fond and proud. The young pilot was eager to have Henry with him, to see him started in life. How little he dreamed what sorrow would come of his well meant efforts in the lads' behalf. Yet he always believed later that he had a warning for one night at the end of May in St. Louis he had a vivid dream which time would presently fulfill. An incident now occurred on the Pennsylvania that closed Samuel Clemens' career on that boat. It was the downtrip, and the boat was in Eagle Bend when Henry Clemens appeared on the hurricane deck with an announcement from the captain of a landing a little lower down. Brown, who would never own that he was rather deaf, probably misunderstood the order. They were passing the landing when the captain appeared on the deck. Didn't Henry tell you to land here? he called to Brown. No, sir! Captain Kleinfelter turned to Sam. Didn't you hear him? Yes, sir. Brown said, Shut your mouth! You never heard anything of the kind! Henry appeared, not suspecting any trouble. Brown said fiercely, Here! Why did you tell me we got to land at that plantation? I did tell you, Mr. Brown, Henry said politely. It's a lie! Sam Clemens could stand Brown's abuse of himself, but not of Henry. He said, You lie yourself! He did tell you! For a cub pilot to defy his chief was unheard of. Brown was dazed. Then he shouted, I'll attend to your case in half a minute! And to Henry, Get out of here! Henry had started when Brown seized him by the collar and struck him in the face. An instant later Sam was upon Brown with a heavy stool and stretched him on the floor. Then all the repressed fury of months broke loose, and leaping upon Brown and holding him down with his knees, Samuel Clemens pounded the tyrant with his fists till his strength gave out. He let Brown go then, and the latter with pilot instinct sprang to the wheel, for the boat was drifting. Seeing she was safe, he seized a spy-glass as a weapon and ordered his chastiser out of the pilot house. But Sam lingered. He had become very calm, and he openly corrected Brown's English. Don't give me none of your heirs, yelled Brown. I ain't going to stand nothing more from you! You should say, Don't give me any of your heirs, Sam said sweetly. And the last half of your sentence almost defies correction. A group of passengers and white apron servants assembled on the deck forward applauded the victor. Sam went down to find Captain Kleinfelter. He expected to be put in irons, for it was thought to be mutiny to strike a pilot. The captain took Sam into his private room and made some inquiries. Mark Twain in the Mississippi Book remembers them as follows. Did you strike him first? Captain Kleinfelter asked. Yes, sir. What with? A stool, sir. Hard? Middling, sir. Did it knock him down? He fell, sir. Did you follow it up? Did you do anything further? Yes, sir. What did you do? Pounded him, sir. Pounded him? Yes, sir. Did you pound him much? That is, severely? One might call it that, sir, maybe. I am mighty glad of it. Hark! He never mentioned that I said that. You have been guilty of a great crime, and don't ever be guilty of it again on this boat. But lay for him ashore. Give him a good sound thrashing to hear. I'll pay the expenses. In a letter which Samuel Clemens wrote to Orion's wife immediately after this incident, he gives the details of the encounter with Brown and speaks of Captain Kleinfelter's approval. Footnote 4 In the Mississippi book the author says that Brown was about to strike Henry with a lump of coal, but in the letter above mentioned the details are as here given. End of Footnote 4 Brown declared he would leave the boat at New Orleans if Sam Clemens remained on it, and the Captain told him to go, offering to let Sam himself run the daylight watches back to St. Louis, thus showing his faith in the young steersmen. The Cub, however, had less confidence and advised that Brown be kept for the up-trip, saying he would follow by the next boat. It was a decision that probably saved his life. That night, watching on the levee, Henry joined him. When his own duties were finished and the brothers made the round together. It may have been some memory of his dream that made Samuel Clemens say, Henry, in case of accident, whatever you do, don't lose your head. The passengers will do that. Rush for the hurricane deck and to the lifeboat, and obey the mate's orders. When the boat is launched, help the women and children into it. Don't get in yourself. The river is only a mile wide. You can swim ashore easily enough. It was good, manly advice, but a long grief lay behind it. End of Chapter 14. This is Chapter 15 of The Boy's Life of Mark Twain. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. The Boy's Life of Mark Twain, by Albert Bigelow Payne. Chapter 15 The Wreck of the Pennsylvania The A.T. Lacey, that brought Samuel Clemens up the river, was two days behind the Pennsylvania. At Greenville, Mississippi, a voice from the landing shouted, The Pennsylvania's blown up! Just below Memphis, at Ship Island! 150 lives lost! It proved a true report. At six o'clock that warm mid-June morning, while loading wood, sixty miles below Memphis, four out of eight of the Pennsylvania's boilers had suddenly exploded, with fearful results. Henry Clemens had been one of the victims. He had started to swim for the shore only a few hundred yards away, but had turned back to assist in the rescue of others. What followed could not be clearly learned. He was terribly injured and died on the fourth night after the catastrophe. His brother was with him by that time and believed he recognized the exact fulfillment of his dream. The young pilot's grief was very great. In a letter home he spoke of the dying boy as, My darling, my pride, my glory, my all. His heavy sorrow and the fact that with unsparing self-blame he held himself in a measure responsible for his brother's tragic death, saddened his early life. His early gayet he came back, but his face had taken on the serious, pathetic look which from that time it all was war in repose. Less than twenty-three he had suddenly the look of thirty, and while Samuel Clemens in spirit, temperament, and features, never would become really old, neither would he ever look really young again. He returned to the river as Steersman for George Ealer whom he loved, and in September of that year obtained a full license as Mississippi River Pilot from St. Louis to New Orleans. In eighteen months he had packed away in his head all those weary some details and acquired that confidence that made him one of the elect. He knew every snag and bank and dead tree and depth in all those endless miles of shifting current every cut-off and crossing. He could read the surface of the water by day, he could smell danger in the dark. To the writer of these chapters Horace Bixby said, In a year and a half from the time he came to the river, Sam was not only a pilot but a good one. Sam was a fine pilot, and in a day when piloting on the Mississippi required a great deal more brains and skill and application than it does now. There were no signal lights along the shore in those days, and no search lights on the vessels. Everything was blind, and on a dark, misty night, in a river full of snags and shifting sandbars and changing shores, a pilot's judgment had to be founded on absolute certainty. Bixby had returned from the Missouri by the time his pupil's license was issued, and promptly took him as full partner on the Crescent City, and later on a fine new boat, the New Falls City. Still later they appear to have been together on a very large boat, the city of Memphis, and again on the Alonzo Child. CHAPTER XVI THE PILOT For Samuel Clemens these were happy days, the happiest in some respects he would ever know. He had plenty of money now, he could help his mother with a liberal hand, and could put away fully a hundred dollars a month for himself. He had few cares, and he loved the ease and romance and independence of his work as he would never quite love anything again. His popularity on the river was very great. His humorous stories and quaint speech made a crowd collect wherever he appeared. There were pilot association rooms in St. Louis and New Orleans, and his appearance at one of these places was a signal for the members to gather. A friend of those days writes, He was much given to spinning yarns so funny that his hearers were convulsed, and yet all the time his own face was perfectly sober. Occasionally some of his droll yarns got into the papers. He may have written them himself. Another old river man remembers how one day at the association they were talking of presence of mind in an accident when Pilot Clemens said, Boys, I had great presence of mind once. It was at a fire. An old man leaned out of a four-story building calling for help. Everybody in the crowd below looked up, but nobody did anything. The ladders weren't long enough. Nobody had any presence of mind. Nobody but me. I came to the rescue. I yelled for a rope. When it came I threw the old man the end of it. He caught it, and I told him to tie it around his waist. He did so, and I pulled him down. This was a story that found its way into print, probably his own contribution. Sam was always scribbling when not at the wheel, said Bixby, but the best thing he ever did was the burlesque of old Isaiah Sellars. He didn't write it for print, but only for his own amusement and to show to a few of the boys. Bart Bowen, who was with him on the Edward J. Gay at the time, got hold of it and gave it to one of the New Orleans papers. The burlesque on Captain Sellars would be of little importance, if it were not for its association with the origin, or at least with the originator of what is probably the best known of literary names, the name Mark Twain. This strong, happy title, a river term indicating a depth of two fathoms on the sounding line, was first used by the old pilot, Isaiah Sellars, who was a sort of oldest inhabitant of the river, with a passion for airing his ancient knowledge before the younger men. Sellars used to send paragraphs to the papers, quaint and rather egotistical in tone, usually beginning, My Opinion for the Citizens of New Orleans, etc., prophesying river conditions and recalling memories as far back as 1811, these he generally signed Mark Twain. Naturally the younger pilots amused themselves by imitating Sellars, and when Sam Clemens wrote a broad burlesque of the old man's contributions relating a perfectly impossible trip, supposed to have been made in 1763 with a Chinese captain and a Choctaw crew, it was regarded as a masterpiece of wit. It appeared in the true Delta in May, 1859, and broke Captain Sellars' literary heart. He never wrote another paragraph. Clemens always regretted the whole matter deeply, and his own revival of the name afterward was a sort of tribute to the old man he had thoughtlessly and unintentionally wounded. Old pilots of that day remembered Samuel Clemens as a slender, fine-looking man, well-dressed, even dandified, generally wearing blue surge with fancy shirts, white duck trousers, and patent leather shoes. A pilot could do that, for his surroundings were speckless. The pilots regarded him as a great reader, a student of history, travels, and the sciences. In the association rooms they often saw him pouring over serious books. He began the study of French one day in New Orleans when he had passed a school of languages where French, German, and Italian were taught, one in each of three rooms. The price was twenty-five dollars for one language, or three for fifty. The student was provided with a set of conversation cards for each, and was supposed to walk from one apartment to another, changing his nationality at each threshold. The young pilot, with his usual enthusiasm, invested in all three languages, but after a few round trips decided that French would do, he did not return to the school, but kept the cards and added textbooks. He studied faithfully when off-watch and in port, and his old River Notebook, still preserved, contains a number of advanced exercises neatly written out. Still more interesting are the River Notes themselves. They are not the timid, hesitating memoranda of the little book which, by Bixby's advice, he bought for his first trip. They are quick, vigorous records that show confidence and knowledge. Under the head of Second High Water Trip, January 1861, Alonzo Child, the Notes tell the story of a rising river with overflowing banks, blind passages and cut-offs, a new river, in fact, that must be judged by a perfect knowledge of the old, guessed, but guessed right. Good deal of water all over Coal's Creek chute, twelve or fifteen feet bank, could have gone up above General Taylor's, too much drift. Night didn't run either seventy-seven or seventy-six tow-heads, eight foot, bank on Main Shore, Ozark chute. To the reader today it means little enough, but one may imagine, perhaps, a mile-wide sweep of boiling water full of drift, shifting currents with newly forming bars, and a lone figure in the dark pilot house, peering into the night for blind and disappearing landmarks. But such nights were not all there was of piloting. There were glorious nights when the stars were blazing out, and the moon was on the water, and the young pilot could follow a clear channel and dream long dreams. He was very serious at such times. He reviewed the world's history, he had read, he speculated on the future, he considered philosophies. He lost himself in a study of the stars. Mark Twain's love of astronomy, which never waned until his last day, began with those lonely river-watches. Once a great comet blazed in the sky, a wonderful sheaf of light, and glorified his long hours at the wheel. Samuel Clemens was now twenty-five full of health and strong in his courage. In the old notebook there remains a well-worn clipping, the words of some unknown writer, which he may have kept as a sort of creed. How to Take Life Take it just as though it was, as it is, an earnest, vital, and important affair. Take it as though you were born to the task of performing a merry part in it, as though the world had awaited for your coming. Take it as though it was a grand opportunity to do and achieve, to carry forward great and good schemes, to help and cheer a suffering weary, it may be heartbroken, brother. Now and then a man stands aside from the crowd, labours earnestly, steadfastly, confidently, and straight away becomes famous for wisdom, intellect, skill, greatness of some sort. The world wonders, admires, idolizes, and it only illustrates what others may do if they take hold of life with a purpose. The miracle, or the power that elevates the few, is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the promptings of a brave, determined spirit. Bixby and Clemens were together that winter on the child, and were the closest friends. Once the young pilot invited his mother to make the trip to New Orleans, and the river journey in a long drive about the beautiful southern city filled Jane Clemens with wonder and delight. She no longer had any doubts of Sam. He had long since become the head of the family. She felt called upon to lecture him now and then, but down in her heart she believed that he could really do no wrong. They joked each other unmercifully, and her wit, never at a loss, was quite as keen as his. When one remembers how much Samuel Clemens loved the river, and how perfectly he seemed suited to the ease and romance of the pilot life, one is almost tempted to regret that it should so soon have come to an end. Those trips of early sixty-one, which the old notebook records, were the last he would ever make. The golden days of Mississippi steamboating were growing few. Nobody, however, seemed to suspect it. Even a celebrated fortune-teller in New Orleans, whom the young pilot one day consulted as to his future, did not mention the great upheaval then close at hand. She told him quite remarkable things, and gave him some excellent advice. But though this was February 1861, she failed to make any mention of the Civil War. Yet a month later Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated, and trouble was in the air. Then in April Fort Sumter was fired upon, and the war had come. It was a feverish time among the pilots. Some were for the Union, others would go with the Confederacy. Horace Bixby stood for the North, and in time was Chief of the Union River Service. A pilot named Montgomery, Clemens had once steered for him, went with the South, and by and by commanded the Confederate Mississippi fleet. In the beginning a good many were not clear as to their opinions. Living both North and South as they did, they divided their sympathies. Samuel Clemens was thoughtful and far from bloodthirsty. A pilot house so fine and showy in times of peace seemed a poor place to be in when fighting was going on. He would consider the matter. I am not anxious to get up into a glass perch and be shahad by either side, he said. I'll go home and reflect. He went up the river as a passenger on a steamer named the Uncle Sam. Zeb Leavenworth, formerly of the John J. Rowe, was one of the pilots, and Clemens usually stood the watch with him. At Memphis they barely escaped the blockade. At Cairo they saw soldiers drilling, troops later commanded by Grant. The Uncle Sam came steaming up to St. Louis, glad to have slipped through safely. They were not quite through, however. A breast of Jefferson Barracks they heard the boom of a cannon and a great ring of smoke drifted in their direction. They did not recognize it as a thunderous halt and kept on. Less than a minute later a shell exploded directly in front of the pilot house, breaking a lot of glass and damaging the decoration. Zeb Leavenworth tumbled into a corner. Gee, mighty Sam! he said. What do they mean by that? Clemens stepped from the visitor's bench to the wheel and brought the boat around. I guess they want us to wait a minute, Zeb, he said. They were examined and passed. It was the last steamboat to make the trip through from New Orleans to St. Louis. Mark Twain's pilot days were over. He would have grieved had he known this fact. I loved the profession far better than any I have followed since, he long afterward declared, and I took a measureless pride in it. At the time, like many others, he expected the war to be brief, and his life to be only temporarily interrupted. Within a year, certainly, he would be back in the pilot house. Meantime, the war must be settled. He would go up to Hannibal and see about it. End of Chapter 17. This is the boy's life of Mark Twain, Chapter 18. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. The Boy's Life of Mark Twain, by Albert Bigelopane, Chapter 18, The Soldier. When he reached Hannibal, Samuel Clemens found a very mixed condition of affairs. The country was in an uproar of war preparation. In a border state there was a confusion of sympathies, with much ignorance as to what it was all about. Any number of young men were eager to enlist for a brief camping out expedition, and small private companies were formed, composed about half-and-half of Union and Confederate men, as it turned out later. Missouri, meantime, had allied herself with the South, and Samuel Clemens, on his arrival in Hannibal, decided that, like Lee, he would go with his state. Old friends, who were getting up a company to help Governor Clabe Jackson repel the invader, offered him a lieutenancy if he would join. It was not a big company. It had only about a dozen members, most of whom had been schoolmates, some of them fellow pilots, and Sam Clemens was needed to make it complete. It was just another Tom Sawyer band, and they met in a secret place above Bear Creek Hill and planned how they would sell their lives on the field of glory just as, years before, fierce raids had been arranged on peach orchards and melon patches. Secrecy was necessary, for the Union militia had a habit of coming over from Illinois and arresting suspicious armies on site. It would humiliate the finest army in the world to spend a night or two in the Calaboose. So they met secretly at night, and one mysterious evening they called on girls who either were their sweethearts or were pretending to be for the occasion, and when the time came for good-bye the girls were invited to walk through the pickets with them, though the girls didn't notice any pickets because the pickets were calling on their girls, too, and were a little late getting to their posts. That night they marched through brush and vines because the high-road was thought to be dangerous, and next morning arrived at the home of Colonel Rawls of Rawls County, who had the army form in dress parade, and made it a speech and gave it a hot breakfast in good southern style. Then he sent out to Colonel Bill Splawn and farmer Knuck Madsen a requisition for supplies that would convert this body of infantry into cavalry, rough riders of that early day. The community did not wish to keep an army on its hands, and were willing to send it along by such means as they could spare handily. When the outfitting was complete, Lieutenant Samuel Clemens, mounted on a small yellow mule whose tail had been trimmed in the paintbrush pattern, then much worn by mules, and surrounded by variously attached articles such as an extra pair of cow-hide boots, a pair of gray blankets, a homemade quilt, a frying-pan, a carpet sack, a small valise, an overcoat, an old-fashioned Kentucky rifle, twenty yards of rope, and an umbrella, was a fair sample of the brigade. An army like that, to enjoy itself, ought to go into camp, so it went over to Salt River near the town of Florida, and took up headquarters in a big log stable. Somebody suggested that an army ought to have its hair cut, so that in a hand-to-hand conflict the enemy could not get hold of it. There was a pair of sheep shears in the stable, and Private Tom Lyons acted as barber. They were not sharp shears, and a group of little darkies gathered from the farm to enjoy the torture. Regular elections were now held, all officers down to sergeants and orderlies being officially chosen. There were only three privates, and you couldn't tell them from officers. The discipline in that army was very bad. It became worse soon, pouring rain set in. Salt River rose and overflowed the bottoms. Men ordered on picket duty climbed up into the stable loft and went to bed. Twice, on black, drenching nights, word came from the farmhouse that the enemy, commanded by a certain Colonel Ulysses Grant, was in the neighborhood, and the Hannibal Division went hastily slopping through mud and brush in the other direction, dragging wearily back when the alarm was over. Military ardor was bound to cool under such treatment. Then Lieutenant Clemens developed a very severe boil, and was obliged to lie most of the day on some hay in a horse-trough, where he spent his time denouncing the war and the mistaken souls who had invented it. When word that General Tom Harris, Commander of the District, formerly Telegraph Operator in Hannibal, was at a nearby farmhouse, living on the fat of the land, the army broke camp without further ceremony. Halfway there they met General Harris, who ordered them back to quarters. They called him familiarly Tom, and told him they were through with that camp forever. He begged them, but it was no use. A little farther on they stopped at a farmhouse for supplies. A tall bony woman came into the door. �You're sickish, ain't you?� Lieutenant Clemens said. �We are, madam, defenders of the noble cause, and we should like to buy a few provisions.� The requests seemed to inflate her. �Provisions!� she screamed. �Provisions! For sickish! And my husband, a colonel in the Union Army, you get out of here!� She reached for a hickory hoop-pole. In an earlier day barrel hoops were made of small hickory trees, split and shaved. The hoop-pole was a very familiar article of commerce and of household defense. She reached for a hickory hoop-pole that stood by the door, and the army moved on. When they reached the home of Colonel Bill Splawn it was night and the family had gone to bed, so the hungry army camped in the barnyard and crept into the hayloft to sleep. Presently somebody yelled �Fire!� one of the boys had been smoking and had ignited the hay. Lieutenant Clemens, suddenly awakened, made a quick rotary movement away from the blaze and rolled out of the big hay window into the barnyard below. The rest of the brigade seized the burning hay and pitched it out of the same window. The lieutenant had sprained his ankle when he struck, and his boil was still painful. But the burning hay cured him for the moment. He made a spring from under it, then noticing that the rest of the army, now that the fire was out, seemed to think his performance amusing, he rose up and expressed himself concerning the war and military life and the human race in general. They helped him in, then, for his ankle was swelling badly. In the morning Colonel Splawn gave the army a good breakfast and it moved on. Lieutenant Clemens, however, did not get farther than farmer Nuck Mattsons. He was in a high fever by that time from his injured ankle, and Mrs. Mattson put him to bed. So the army left him and presently disbanded. Some enlisted in the regular service, north or south, according to preference. Properly officers and disciplined that Tom Sawyer Band would have made as good soldiers as any. Lieutenant Clemens did not enlist again. When he was able to walk he went to visit Orion in Kiyokak. Orion was a union abolitionist, but there would be no unpleasantness on that account. Samuel Clemens was beginning to have leanings in that direction himself. End of Chapter 18. This is Chapter 19 of The Boy's Life of Mark Twain. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. The Boy's Life of Mark Twain by Albert Bigelopane. Chapter 19. The Pioneer. He arrived in Kiyokak at what seemed a lucky moment. Through Edward Bates, a member of Lincoln's cabinet, Orion Clemens had received an appointment as Territorial Secretary of Nevada, and only needed the money to carry him to the seat of his office at Carson City. Out of his pilot's salary, his brother had saved more than enough for the journey, and was willing to pay both their fares and go along as private secretary to Orion, whose position promised something in the way of adventure and a possible opportunity for making a fortune. The brothers went at once to St. Louis for final leave-taking, and there took boat for St. Joe, Missouri, terminus of the great Overland stage route. They paid one hundred and fifty dollars each for their passage, and about the end of July, 1861, set out on that long, delightful trip, behind sixteen galloping horses never stopping except for meals or to change teams, heading steadily into the sunset over the billowy plains and snow-clad rockies, covering the seventeen hundred miles between St. Joe and Carson City in nineteen glorious days. But one must read Mark Twain's roughing it for the story of that long ago trip, the joy and wonder of it, and the inspiration. Even at this day, he writes, it thrills me through and through to think of the life, the gladness, and the wild sense of freedom that used to make the blood dense in my face on those fine Overland mornings. It was a hot, dusty August day when they arrived, dusty, unshaven, and weather-beaten, and Samuel Clemens' life as a frontiersman began. Carson City, the capital of Nevada, was a wooden town with an assorted population of two thousand souls. The mining excitement was at its height, and had brought together the drift of every race. The Clemens' brothers took up lodgings with the genial Irish woman, the Mrs. O'Flanagan of roughing it, and Orion established himself in a modest office, for there was no capital building as yet, no government headquarters. Orion could do all the work, and Samuel Clemens, finding neither duties nor salary attached to his position, gave himself up to the study of the life about him, and to the enjoyment of the freedom of the frontier. Presently he had a following of friends who loved his quaint manner of speech and his yarns. On cool nights they would collect about Orion's office stove, and he would tell stories in the wonderful way that one day would delight the world. Within a brief time Sam Clemens—he was always Sam to the pioneers—was the most notable figure on the Carson streets. His great bushy head of auburn hair, his piercing, twinkling eyes, his loose, lounging walk, his careless disorder of dress invited a second look, even from strangers. From a river dandy he had become the roughest clad of pioneers, rusty slouch hat, flannel shirt, coarse trousers, slopping half in and half out of heavy cowhide boots. This was his makeup. Energetic citizens did not prophesy success for him. Often they saw him leaning against an awning support, staring drowsily at the motley human procession for as much as an hour at a time. Certainly that could not be profitable. But they did like to hear him talk. He did not catch the mining fever at once. He was interested first in the riches that he could see. Among these was the timberland around Lake Bigler, now Tahoe, splendid acres to be had for the asking. A lake itself was beautifully situated. With an Ohio boy, John Kinney, he made an excursion afoot to Tahoe, a trip described in one of the best chapters of Roughing It. They staked out a timber claim and pretended to fence it and to build a house, but their chief employment was loafing in the quiet luxury of the great woods, or drifting in a boat on the transparent water. They did not sleep in the house. In Roughing It he says, It never occurred to us, for one thing, and besides, it was built to hold the ground, and that was enough. We did not wish to strain it. They made their campfires on the borders of the lake, and one evening it got away from them, fired the forest, and destroyed their fences and habitation. In a letter home he describes this fire in a fine, vivid way. At one place he says, The level ranks of flame were relieved at intervals by the standard bearers, as we called the tall dead trees, wrapped in fire, and waving their blazing banners a hundred feet in the air. Then we could turn from the scene to the lake and see every branch and leaf and cataract of flame upon its banks perfectly reflected, as in a gleaming, fiery mirror. He was acquiring the literary vision and touch. The description of this same fire in Roughing It, written ten years later, is scarcely more vivid. Most of his letters home at this time tell of glowing prospects, the certainty of fortune ahead. The fever of the frontier is in them. Once to Pamlet Moffat he wrote, Orion and I have enough confidence in this country to think that, if the war lets us alone, we can make Mr. Moffat rich without its ever costing him a cent or a particle of trouble. From the same letter we gather that the brothers are now somewhat interested in mining claims. We have about sixteen hundred and fifty feet of mining ground, and if it proves good, Mr. Moffat's name will go in, and if not, I can get feet for him in the spring. This was written about the end of October. Two months later, in midwinter, the mining fever came upon him with full force. CHAPTER XX. The wonder is that Samuel Clemens, always speculative and visionary, had not fallen an earlier victim. Everywhere one heard stories of sudden fortune, of men who had gone to bed paupers and awakened millionaires. New and fabulous finds were reported daily. Cartloads of bricks, silver and gold bricks, drove through the Carson streets. Then suddenly from the newly opened Humboldt region came the wildest reports. The mountains there were said to be stuffed with gold. A correspondent of the Territorial Enterprise was unable to find words to picture the riches of the Humboldt mines. The air for Samuel Clemens began to shimmer. Fortune was waiting to be gathered in a basket. He joined the first expedition for Humboldt, in fact, helped to organize it. In roughing it he says, Hurry was the word. We wasted no time. Our party consisted of four persons—a blacksmith, sixty years of age, two young lawyers, and myself. We bought a wagon and two miserable old horses. We put eighteen hundred pounds of provisions and mining tools in the wagon, and drove out of Carson on a chilly December afternoon. The two young lawyers were W. H. Claggott, whom Clemens had known in Kierkhoek, and A. W. Oliver called Oliphant in roughing it. The blacksmith was named Toulou. Belou in roughing it, a sturdy honest man with a knowledge of mining and the repair of tools. There were also two dogs in the party—a curly-tailed mongrel and a young hound. The horses were the weak feature of the expedition. It was two hundred miles to Humboldt, mostly across sand. The miners rode only a little way, then got out to lighten the load. Later they pushed. Then it began to snow, also to blow. And the air became filled with whirling clouds of snow and sand. On and on they pushed and groaned, sustained by the knowledge that they must arrive some time, when right away they would be millionaires and all their troubles would be over. The nights were better. The wind went down and they made a campfire in the shelter of the wagon, cooked their bacon, crept under blankets with the dogs to warm them, and Sam Clemens spun yarns till they fell asleep. There had been an Indian war, and occasionally they passed the charred ruin of a cabin and new graves. By and by they came to that deadly waste known as the Alkalai Desert, strewn with the carcasses of dead beasts, and with the heavy articles discarded by immigrants in their eagerness to reach water. All day and night they pushed through that choking waterless plain to reach camp on the other side. When they arrived at three in the morning they dropped down exhausted. Judge Oliver, the last survivor of the party, in a letter to the writer of these chapters, said, The sun was high in the heavens when we were roused from our sleep by a yelling band of Paiute warriors. We were upon our feet in an instant. The picture of burning cabins and the lonely graves we had passed was in our minds. Our scalps were still our own, and not dangling from the belts of our visitors. Sam pulled himself together, put his hand on his head, as if to make sure he had not been scalped, and with his inimitable drawl said, Boys, they have left us our scalps. Let us give them all the flour and sugar they ask for. And we did give them a good supply, for we were grateful. The Indians left them unharmed, and the prospective millionaires moved on. Across that two hundred miles to the Humboldt country they pushed, arriving at the little camp of Unionville at the end of eleven weary days. In roughing it, Mark Twain has told us of Unionville and the mining experience there, their cabin was a three-sided affair with a cotton roof. Stones rolled down the mountainside on them. Also the author says, a mule and a cow. The author could not gather fortune in a basket, as he had dreamed. Masses of gold and silver were not lying about. He gathered a back load of yellow glittering specimens, but they proved worthless. Gold in the rough did not glitter, and was not yellow. Toulou instructed the others in prospecting, and they went to work with pick and shovel, then with drill and blasting powder. The prospect of immediately becoming millionaires vanished. One week of this satisfied me. I resigned, is Mark Twain's brief comment. The Humboldt reports had been exaggerated. The Clemens clagged Oliver Toulou-millionaire combination soon surrendered its claims. Clemens and Toulou set out for Carson City with a Prussian named Firsdorf, who nearly got them drowned and got them completely lost in the snow before they arrived there. Oliver and Claggett remained in Unionville, began law practice, and were elected to office. It is not known what became of the wagon and horses and the two dogs. It was the end of January when our miner returned to Carson. He was not discouraged, far from it. He believed he had learned something that would be useful to him in a camp where mines were a reality. Within a few weeks from his return we find him at Aurora in the Esmeralda region on the edge of California. It was here that the Clemens brothers owned the sixteen hundred and fifty feet formerly mentioned. He had come down to work it. It was the dead of winter, but he was full of enthusiasm, confident of a fortune by early summer. To Pamela he wrote, I expect to return to St. Louis in July per steamer. I don't say that I will return then or that I shall be able to do it, but I expect to, you bet. If nothing goes wrong, we'll strike the ledge in June. He was trying to be conservative and further along he cautions his sister not to get excited. Don't you know I have only talked as yet, but proved nothing? Don't you know I have never held in my hands a gold or silver bar that belonged to me? Don't you know that people who always feel jolly, no matter where they are or what happens to them, who have the organ of hope preposterously developed, who are endowed with an uncongelable sanguine temperament, who never feel concerned about the price of corn, and who cannot, by any possibility, discover any but the bright side of a picture, are very apt to go to extremes and exaggerate with a 40-horse microscopic power? But, but, in the bright lexicon of youth there is no such word as fail, and I'll prove it, whereupon he soars again adding page after page full of glowing expectations and plans such as belong only with speculation and treasures buried in the ground, a very difficult place indeed to find them. His money was about exhausted by this time, and funds to work the mining claims must come out of Orion's rather modest salary. The brothers owned all claims in partnership, and it was now the part of Brother Sam to do the active work. He hated the hard picking and prying and blasting into the flinty ledges, but the fever drove him on. He camped with a young man named Philips at first, and later on, with an experienced miner, Calvin H. Higbee, to whom roughing it would one day be dedicated. They lived in a tiny cabin with a cotton roof, and around their rusty stove they would paw over their specimens and figure the fortune that their minds would be worth in the spring. Food ran low, money gave out almost entirely, but they did not give up. When it was stormy and they could not dig, and the ex-pilot was in a talkative vein, he would sit astride the bunk and distribute to his hearers riches more valuable than any they would dig from the Esmeralda Hills. At other times he did not talk at all, but sat in a corner and wrote. They thought he was writing home. They did not know that he was literary. Some of his home letters had found their way into a Kea Cook paper and had come back to Orion who had shown them to an assistant on the territorial enterprise of Virginia City. The enterprise man had caused one of them to be reprinted, and this had encouraged its author to send something to the paper direct. He signed these contributions, Josh, and one told of, An old, old horse whose name was Methuselum, took him down and sold him in Jerusalem a long time ago. He received no pay for these offerings and expected none. He considered them of no value. If any one had told him that he was knocking at the door of the house of fame, however feebly, he would have doubted that person's judgment or sincerity. His letters to Orion in Carson City were hasty compositions, reporting progress and progress, or calling for remittances to keep the work going. On April 13 he wrote, Work not begun on the Horatio and Derby haven't seen it yet. It is still in the snow. Shall begin on it within three or four weeks. Strike the ledge in July. Again later in the month, I have been at work all day, blasting and digging in one of our new claims, Dashaway, which I don't think a great deal of, but which I am willing to try. We are down now ten or twelve feet. It must have been disheartening work picking away at the flinty ledges. There is no further mention of the Dashaway, but we hear of the Flyaway, the Anipolitan, the live Yankee and of many another, each of which holds out a beacon of hope for a brief moment, then passes from notice for ever. Still he was not discouraged. Once he wrote, I am a citizen here, and I am satisfied, though ratio and I are strapped, and we haven't three days rations in the house, I shall work the monitor, and the other claims with my own hands. The pick and shovel are the only claims I have confidence in now, he wrote later. My back is sore and my hands are blistered with handling them to-day. His letters began to take on a weary tone. Once in mid-summer he wrote that it was still snowing up there in the hills, and added, It always snows here, I expect. If we strike it rich, I've lost my guess, that's all. And the final heart-sick line. Don't you suppose they have pretty much quit writing at home? In time he went to work in a court's mill, at ten dollars a week, though it was not entirely for the money, as in roughing it he would have us believe. Samuel Clemens learned thoroughly what he undertook, and he proposed to master the science of mining. From Phillips and Higby he had learned what there was to know about prospecting. He went on to the mill to learn refining, so that, when his claims developed, he could establish a mill and personally superintend the work. His stay was brief. He contracted a severe cold and came near getting poisoned by the chemicals. Recovering he went with Higby for an outing to Mono Lake, a ghastly lifeless alkali sea among the hills, vividly described in roughing it. At another time he went with Higby on a walking trip to the Yosemite, where they camped and fished undisturbed, for in those days few human beings came to that far isolation. Discouragement did not reach them there, amid that vast grandeur and quiet the quest for gold hardly seemed worthwhile. Now and again that summer he went alone into the wilderness to find his balance and to get entirely away from humankind. In roughing it Mark Twain tells the story of how he and Higby finally located a blind lead, which made them really millionaires until they forfeited their claim through the sharp practice of some rival miners and their own neglect. It is true that the Wide West claim was forfeited in some such manner, but the size of the loss was magnified in roughing it to make a good story. There was never a fortune in Wide West except the one sunk in it by its final owners. The story is told in roughing it is a tale of what might have happened, and ends the author's days in the mines with a good story-book touch. The mining career of Samuel Clemens really came to a close gradually, and with no showy climax. He fought hard and surrendered little by little, without owning, even to the end, that he was surrendering at all. It was the gift of resolution that all his life would make his defeats long and costly, his victories supreme. By the end of July the money situation in the Aurora camp was getting desperate. Orion's depleted salary would no longer pay for food, tools, and blasting powder, and the miner began to cast about for means to earn an additional sum, however small. The Josh letters to the enterprise had awakened interest as to their author, and Orion had not failed to let Josh's identity be known. The result had been that here and there a coast paper had invited contributions and even suggested payment. A letter written by the Aurora miner at the end of July tells this part of the story. My debts are greater than I thought for. The fact is, I must have something to do, and that shortly too. Now write to the Sacramento Union folks, or to Marsh, and tell them that I will write as many letters a week as they want for ten dollars a week. My board must be paid. Tell them I have corresponded with the New Orleans Crescent and other papers and the enterprise. If they want letters from here, who will run from morning till night collecting material cheaper? I'll write a short letter twice a week for the present, for the age, for five dollars per week. Now it has been a long time since I couldn't make my own living, and it shall be a long time before I loathe another year. This all led to nothing. But about the same time the enterprise assistant already mentioned spoke to Joseph T. Goodman, owner and editor of the paper, about adding Josh to their regular staff. Joe Goodman, a man of keen humor and literary perception, agreed that the author of the Josh letters might be useful to them. One of the sketches particularly appealed to him, a burlesque report of a Fourth of July oration. That is the kind of thing we want, he said, right to him Barstow, and ask him if he wants to come up here. Barstow wrote, offering twenty-five dollars a week, attempting some. This was at the end of July, 1862. Yet the hard-pressed minor made no haste to accept the offer. To leave Aurora meant the surrender of all hope in the mines, the confession of another failure. He wrote Barstow, asking when he thought he might be needed, and at the same time, in a letter to Orion, he said, I shall leave at midnight to-night, alone and on foot, for a walk of sixty or seventy miles through a totally uninhabited country. But do you write Barstow that I have left here for a week or so, and in case he should want me, he must write me here, or let me know through you? He had gone into the wilderness to fight out his battle alone, postponing the final moment of surrender, that, had he known, only meant the beginning of victory. He was still undecided when he returned, eight days later, and wrote to his sister Pamela, a letter in which there is no mention of newspaper prospects. Just how and when the end came at last cannot be known. But one hot, dusty August afternoon in Virginia City, a worn, travel-stained pilgrim dragged himself into the office of the Territorial Enterprise, then in its new building on Seastreet, and, loosening a heavy roll of blankets from his shoulder, dropped wearily into a chair. He wore a rusty slouch hat, no coat, a faded blue flannel shirt, a navy revolver. His trousers were tucked into his boot-tops, a tangle of reddish brown hair fell on his shoulders. A mass of tawny beard, dingy with alkali dust, dropped halfway to his waist. Aurora lay 130 miles from Virginia City. He had walked that distance, carrying his heavy load. Editor Goodman was absent at the moment, but the other proprietor, Dennis E. McCarthy, asked the caller to state his errand. The wanderer regarded him with a faraway look and said absently and with deliberation, "'My starboard leg seems to be unshipped. I'd like about one hundred yards of line. I think I'm falling to pieces.' Then he added, "'I want to see Mr. Barstow or Mr. Goodman. My name is Clemens, and I've come to write for the paper.' It was the master of the world's widest estate. Come to claim his kingdom!" In 1852 Virginia City, Nevada, was the most flourishing of mining towns. A half-crazy miner named Comstock had discovered there a vein of such richness that the Comstock load was presently glutting the mineral markets of the world. Comstock himself got very little out of it, but those who followed him made millions. Miners, speculators, adventurers swarmed in. Everyone seemed to have money. The streets seized with an eager, affluent, boisterous throng, whose chief business seemed to be to spend the wealth that the earth was yielding in such a mighty stream. Business of every kind boomed. Less than two years earlier, J. T. Goodman, a miner who was also a printer and a man of literary taste, had joined with another printer, Dennis McCarthy, and the two had managed to buy a struggling Virginia City paper, the Territorial Enterprise, but then came the high tide of fortune. A year later the Enterprise, from a starving sheet and a leaky shanty, had become a large, handsome paper in a new building, and of such brilliant editorial management that it was the most widely considered journal on the Pacific Coast. Goodman was a fine, forceful writer, and he surrounded himself with able men. He was a young man, full of health and vigor, overflowing with a fresh spirit and humor of the West. Comstockers would always laugh at a joke, and Goodman was always willing to give it to them. The Enterprise was a newspaper, but it was willing to furnish entertainment even at the cost of news. William Wright, editorially next to Goodman, was a humorist of ability. His articles, signed Dan DeQuil, were widely copied. R. M. Daggett, afterward, United States Minister to Hawaii, was also an Enterprise man, and there were others of their sort. Samuel Clemens fitted precisely into this group. He brought with him a new turn of thought and expression. He saw things with open eyes and wrote of them in a fresh, wild way that Comstockers loved. He was allowed full freedom. Goodman suppressed nothing. His men could write as they chose. They were all young together. If they pleased themselves, they were pretty sure to please their readers. Often they wrote of one another, squibs and burlesques, which gratified the Comstock far more than mere news. It was just the school to produce Mark Twain. The new arrival found acquaintance easy. The whole Enterprise force was like one family. Puprioters, editor, and printers were social equals. Samuel Clemens immediately became Sam, to his associates, just as DeQuil was Dan and Goodman Joe. Clemens was supposed to report city items, and did, in fact, do such work, which he found easy, for his pilot memory made notes unnecessary. He could gather items all day, and at night, put down the day's budget well enough, at least to delight his readers. When he was tired of facts, he would write amusing paragraphs, as often as not something about Dan or a reporter on a rival paper. Dan and the others would reply, and the Comstock would laugh. Those were good old days. Sometimes he wrote hoaxes. Once he told with great circumstance and detail of a petrified prehistoric man that had been found embedded in a rock in the desert, and how the coroner from Humboldt had traveled more than a hundred miles to hold an inquest over a man dead for centuries, and had refused to allow miners to blast the discovery from its position. The sketch was really intended as a joke on the Humboldt coroner, but it was so convincingly written that most of the coast papers took it seriously and reprinted it as the story of a genuine discovery. In time they awoke, and began to inquire as to who was the smart writer on the enterprise. Mark Twain did a number of such things, some of which are famous on the coast to this day. Clemens himself did not escape. Lamps were used in the enterprise office, but he hated the care of a lamp and worked evenings by the light of a candle. It was considered a great joke in the office to hide Sam's candle and hear him fume and rage walking in a circle meantime, a habit acquired in the pilot-house, and scathingly denouncing the culprits. Eventually the office boy, supposedly innocent, would bring another candle and quiet would follow. Once the office force, including Quill, McCarthy, and a printer named Stephen Gillis, of whom Clemens was very fond, bought a large imitation Mierscham pipe, had a German silver plate set on it, properly engraved, and presented it to Samuel Clemens as genuine in testimony of their great esteem. His reply to the presentation speech was so fine and full of feeling that the jokers felt ashamed of their trick. A few days later when he discovered the deception he was ready to destroy the lot of them. Then, in atonement, they gave him a real Mierscham. Such things kept the Comstock entertained. There was a side to Samuel Clemens that, in those days, few of his associates saw. This was the poetic, the reflective side. Joseph Goodman, like McFarlane in Cincinnati several years earlier, recognized this phase of his character and developed it. Often these two, dining or walking together, discussed the books and history they had read, quoted from poems that gave them pleasure. Clemens sometimes recited with great power the burial of Moses, whose noble phrasing and majestic imagery seemed to move him deeply. With eyes half closed and chin lifted, a lighted cigar between his fingers he would lose himself in the music of the stately lines. By Nebo's lonely mountain hung this side Jordan's wave, in a veil in the land of Moab there lies a lonely grave. And no man knows that sepulcher, and no man saw it ere. For the angels of God upturned the sod, and laid the dead man there. That his own writing would be influenced by the simple grandeur of this poem we can hardly doubt. Indeed it may have been to him a sort of literary touchstone, that in time would lead him to produce, as has been said, some of the purest English written by any modern author. CHAPTER XXII It was once when Goodman and Clemens were dining together that the latter asked to be allowed to report the proceedings of the coming legislature at Carson City. He knew nothing of such work, and Goodman hesitated. Then, remembering that Clemens would at least make his reports readable, whether they were parliamentary or not, he consented. So at the beginning of the year, 1863, Samuel Clemens undertook a new and interesting course in the study of human nature, the political human nature of the frontier. There could have been no better school for him. His wit, his satire, his phrasing had full swing. His letters, almost from the beginning, were copied as choice-reading up and down the coast. He made curious blunders at first as to the proceedings, but his open confession of ignorance in the early letters made these blunders their chief charm. A young man named Gillespie, clerk of the house, coached him, and in return was christened Young Jefferson's Manual, a title which he bore for many years. A reporter named Rice on a rival Virginia City paper, the Union, also earned for himself a title through those early letters. Rice concluded to poke fun at the enterprise reports pointing out their mistakes. But this was not wise. Clemens, in his next contribution, admitted that Rice's reports might be parliamentary enough, but declared his glittering technicalities were only to cover misstatements of fact. He vowed they were wholly untrustworthy, dubbed the author of them the unreliable, and never thereafter referred to him by any other term. Carson and the Comstock papers delighted in this foolery, and Rice became the unreliable for life. There was no real feeling between Rice and Clemens, they were always the best of friends. But now we arrive at the story of still another name, one of vastly greater importance than either of those mentioned, for it is the name chosen by Samuel Clemens for himself. In those days it was the fashion for a writer to have a pen name, especially for his journalistic and humorous work. Clemens felt that his enterprise letters, copied up and down the coast, needed a mark of identity. He gave the matter a good deal of thought. He wanted something brief and strong, something that would stick in the mind. It was just at this time that news came of the death of Captain Isaiah Sellers, the old pilot who had signed himself Mark Twain. Mark Twain. That was the name he wanted. It was not trivial. It had all the desired qualities. Captain Sellers would never need it again. They would do no harm to keep it alive, to give it a new meaning in a new land. Clemens took a trip from Carson up to Virginia City. Joe, he said to Goodman, I want to sign my articles. I want to be identified to a wider audience. All right, Sam. What name do you want to use? Josh? No. I want to sign them Mark Twain. It is an old river-term, a Ledzman's call, signifying two fathoms, twelve feet. It has a richness about it. It was always a pleasant sound for a pilot to hear on a dark night. It meant safe waters. He did not mention that Captain Sellers had used and dropped the name. He was not proud of his part in that episode. And it was too recent for confession. Goodman considered a moment. Very well, Sam, he said. That sounds like a good name. A good name, indeed. Probably if he had considered every combination of words in the language he could not have found a better one. Today we recognize it as the greatest known de plume ever chosen, and somehow we cannot believe that the writer of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and Ruffing it could have selected any other had he tried. The name Mark Twain was first signed to a Carson letter, February 2, 1863, and after that to all of Samuel Clemens' work. The letters that had mused so many readers had taken on a new interest, the interest that goes with the name. It became immediately more than a pen name. Clemens found he had attached a name to himself as well as to his letters. Everybody began to address him as Mark. Within a few weeks he was no longer Sam or Clemens, but Mark, Mark Twain. The coast papers, like the sound of it, it began to mean something to their readers. By the end of that legislative session Samuel Clemens, as Mark Twain, had acquired out there on that breezy western slope something resembling fame. Curiously he fails to mention any of this success in his letters home of that period. Indeed he seldom refers to his work, but more often speaks of mining shares which he has accumulated and their possible values. His letters are airy, full of the joy of life and of the wild doings of the frontier. Closing one of them he says, I have just heard five pistol shots down the street. As such things are in my line I will go and see about it. And in a post-script later he adds, Five a.m. The pistol shots did their work well. One man, a Jackson County, Missouri, and shot two of my friends, police officers, through the heart. Both died within three minutes. The murderer's name is John Campbell. Comstock was a great school from Mark Twain, and in roughing it he has left us a faithful picture of its long vanished glory. More than one national character came out of the Comstock School. Senator James G. Fair was one of them, and John McKay, both miners with pick and shovel at first, though McKay presently became a superintendent. Mark Twain one day laughingly offered to trade jobs with McKay. No, McKay said, I can't trade. My business is not worth as much as yours. I have never swindled anybody, and I don't intend to begin now. For both these men the future held splendid gifts. For McKay, vast wealth. For Mark Twain the world's applause, and neither would have long to wait. CHAPTER XXIII. ARTIMUS WARD AND LITERARY SAN FRANCISCO. It was about the end of 1863 that a new literary impulse came into Mark Twain's life. The gentle and lovable humorist Artemus Ward, Charles F. Brown, was that year lecturing in the West, and came to Virginia City. Ward had intended to stay only a few days, but the world of the Comstock fascinated him. He made the enterprise office his headquarters, and remained three weeks. He and Mark Twain became boon-companions. Their humor was not unlike. They were kindred spirits, together almost constantly. Ward was then at the summit of his fame and gave the younger man the highest encouragement, prophesying great things for his work. Clemens on his side was stirred, perhaps for the first time, with a real literary ambition, and the thought that he too might win a place of honor. He promised Ward that he would send work to the Eastern Papers. On Christmas Eve Ward gave a dinner to the enterprise staff at Chomol's, a fine French restaurant of that day. When refreshments came, Artemus lifted his glass and said, I give you Upper Canada. The company rose and drank the toast in serious silence. Then Mr. Goodman said, Of course, Artemus, it's all right, but why did you give us Upper Canada? Because I don't want it myself, said Ward gravely. What would one not give to have listened to the talk of that evening? Mark Twain's power had awakened. Artemus Ward was in his prime. They were giants of a race that became extinct when Mark Twain died. Goodman remained rather quiet during the evening. Ward had appointed him to order the dinner, and he had attended to this duty without mingling much in the conversation. When Ward asked him why he did not join the banter, he said, I am preparing a joke, Artemus, but I am keeping it for the present. At a late hour Ward finally called for the bill. It was two hundred and thirty-seven dollars. What! exclaimed Artemus. That's my joke, said Goodman. But I was only exclaiming because it was not twice as much, laughed Ward, laying the money on the table. Ward remained through the holidays, and later wrote back an affectionate letter to Mark Twain. I shall always remember Virginia as a bright spot in my existence, he said, as all others must or rather cannot be, as it were. With Artemus Ward's encouragement, Mark Twain now began sending work eastward. The New York Sunday Mercury published one, possibly more, of his sketches, but they were not in his best vein and made little impression. He may have been too busy for outside work for the legislative session of 1864 was just beginning. Furthermore, he had been chosen Governor of the Third House, a mock legislature, organized for one session to be held as a church benefit. The Governor was to deliver a message, which meant that he was to burlesque from the platform all public officials and personages from the real Governor down. With the exception of a short talk he had once given at a printer's dinner in Kiukuk, it was Mark Twain's first appearance as a speaker and the beginning of a lifelong series of triumphs on the platform. The building was packed, the aisles full, the audience was ready for fun, and he gave it to them. Nobody escaped ridicule. From the beginning to end the house was a storm of laughter and applause. Not a word of this first address of Mark Twain's has been preserved, but those who heard it always spoke of it as the greatest effort of his life, as to them it seemed, no doubt. For his Third House address Clemens was presented with a gold watch inscribed to Governor Mark Twain. Everywhere now he was pointed out as a distinguished figure, and his quaint remarks were quoted. Few of these sayings I remember today, though occasionally one is still unforgotten. At a party one night, being urged to make a conundrum, he said, Well, why am I like the Pacific Ocean? Several guesses were made, but he shook his head. Someone said, We give it up. Tell us, Mark, why are you like the Pacific Ocean? I don't know, he drawled. I was just asking for information. The Governor of Nevada was generally absent, and Orion Clemens was executive head of the territory. His wife, who had joined him in Carson City, was social head of the little capital, and Brother Sam, with his new distinction, and now once more something of a dandy in dress, was aside his chief ornament, a great change certainly from the early months of his arrival less than three years before. It was near the end of May, 1864, when Mark Twain left Nevada for San Francisco. The immediate cause of his going was a duel, a duel elaborately arranged between Mark Twain and the editor of a rival paper, but never fought. In fact, it was mainly a burlesque affair throughout, chiefly concocted by that inveterate joker, Steve Gillis, already mentioned in connection with the Pipe Incident. The new dueling law, however, did not distinguish between real and mock-a-phrase, and the prospect of being served with a summons made a good excuse for Clemens and Gillis to go to San Francisco, which had long attracted them. They were great friends, these two, and presently were living together and working on the same paper, the Morning Call, Clemens as a reporter and Gillis as a compositor. Gillis, with his tendency to mischief, was a constant exasperation to his roommate, who, goaded by some new torture, would sometimes denounce him in feverish terms. Yet they were never anything but the closest to friends. Mark Twain did not find happiness in his new position on the call. There was less freedom and more drudgery than he had known on the Enterprise. His day was spent around the police court, attending fires, weddings, and funerals, with brief glimpses of the theatres at night. Once he wrote, It was fearful drudgery, soulless drudgery, and almost destitute of interest. It was an awful slavery for a lazy man. It must have been so. There was little chance for original work. He had become just a part of a news machine. He saw many public abuses that he wished to expose, but the policy of the paper opposed him. Once, however, he found a policeman asleep on his beat. Going to a nearby vegetable stall, he borrowed a large cabbage leaf, came back, and stood over the sleeper, gently fanning him. He knew the paper would not publish the policeman's negligence, but he could advertise it in his own way. A large crowd soon collected, much amused. When he thought the audience large enough, he went away. Next day the joke was all over the city. He grew indifferent to the call work, and when an assistant was allowed him to do part of the running for items, it was clear to everybody that presently the assistant would be able to do it all. But there was a pleasant and profitable side to the San Francisco life. There were real literary people there, among them a young man with rooms upstairs in the call office, Francis Brett Hart, editor of the Californian, a new literary weekly which Charles Henry Webb had recently founded. Brett Hart was not yet famous, but his gifts were recognized on the Pacific Slope, especially by the era group of writers, the golden era being a literary monthly of considerable distinction. Joaquin Miller recalls, from his diary of that period, having seen Prentice Mulford, Brett Hart, Charles Warren Stoddart, Mark Twain, Artemis Ward, and others, all assembled there at one time, a remarkable group, certainly, to be dropped down behind the Sierras so long ago. They were a hopeful happy lot, and sometimes received five dollars for an article, which of course seemed a good deal more precious than a much larger some earned in another way. Mark Twain had contributed to the era while still in Virginia City, and now with Brett Hart was ranked as a leader of the group. The two were much together, and when Hart became editor of the Californian he engaged Clemens as a regular contributor at the very fancy rate of twelve dollars an article. Some of the brief chapters included today in sketches new and old were done at that time. They have humor, but are not equal to his later work, and beyond the Pacific slope they seem to have attracted little attention. In roughing it the author tells us how he finally was dismissed from the call for general incompetency, and presently found himself in the depths of hard luck, debt, and poverty. But this is only his old habit of making a story on himself sound as uncomplementary as possible. The true version is that the call publisher and Mark Twain had a friendly talk and decided that it was better for both to break off the connection. Almost immediately he arranged to write a daily San Francisco letter for the enterprise for which he received thirty dollars a week. This, with his earnings from the Californian, made his total return larger than before. Very likely he was hard up from time to time, literary men are often that, but that he was ever in abject poverty as he would have us believe is just a good story and not history. End of CHAPTER XXXIV. This is the boy's life of Mark Twain, CHAPTER XXIV. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. The Boy's Life of Mark Twain by Albert Bigelow Payne, CHAPTER XXIV. THE DISCOVERY OF THE JUMPING FROG. Mark Twain's daily letters to the enterprise stirred up trouble for him in San Francisco. He was free now to write what he chose, and he attacked the corrupt police management with such fierceness that when copies of the enterprise got back to San Francisco, they started a commotion at the city hall. Then Mark Twain let himself go more vigorously than ever. He sent letters to the enterprise that made even the printers afraid. Goodman, however, was fearless and let them go in word for word. The libel suit which the San Francisco chief of police brought against the enterprise advertised the paper amazingly. But now came what at the time seemed an unfortunate circumstance. Steve Gillis, always a fearless defender of the weak, one night rushed to the assistance of two young fellows who had been set upon by three ruffs. Gillis, though small of stature, was a terrific combatant, and he presently put two of the assailants to flight and had the other ready for the hospital. Next day it turned out that the ruffs were henchmen of the police, and Gillis was arrested. Clemens went his bale and advised Steve to go down to Virginia City until the storm blew over. But it did not blow over for Mark Twain. The police department was only too glad to have a chance at the author of the fierce enterprise letters and promptly issued a summons for him with an execution against his personal effects. If James N. Gillis, brother of Steve, had not happened along just then and spirited Mark Twain away to his mining camp in the Tuolumne Hills, the beautiful gold watch given to the Governor of the Third House might have been sacrificed in the cause of friendship. As it was, he found himself presently in the far and peaceful seclusion of that land which Bret Hart would one day make famous with his tales of Roaring Camp and Sandy Bar. Jim Gillis was, in fact, the truthful James of Bret Hart, and his cabin on Jackass Hill, had been the retreat of Hart and many another literary wafer who had wandered there for rest and refreshment and peace. It was said the sick were made well, and the well made better, in Jim Gillis' cabin. There were plenty of books and a variety of out-of-door recreation. One could mine there if he chose. Jim would furnish the visiting author with a promising claim and teach him to follow the little fan-like drift of gold specks to the pocket of treasure somewhere up the hillside. Gillis himself had literary ability, though he never wrote. He told his stories, and with his back to the open fire would weave the most amazing tales invented as he went along. His stories were generally wonderful adventures that had happened to his faithful companion Stoker, and Stoker never denied them, but would smoke and look into the fire, smiling a little sometimes, but never saying a word. A number of the tales, later used by Mark Twain, were first told by Jim Gillis in the cabin on Jackass Hill. Dick Baker's Cat was one of these. The J. Bird and Acorn story in A Tramp Abroad was another. Mark Twain had little to add to these stories. They are not mine. They are Jim's, he said once. But I never could get them to sound like Jim. They were never as good as his. It was early in December 1864 when Mark Twain arrived at the humble retreat built of logs under a great live oak tree and surrounded by a stretch of blue grass. A younger Gillis boy was there at the time, and also, of course, Dick Stoker and his cat Tom Quartz, which every reader of Roughing It Knows. It was the rainy season, but on pleasant days they all went pocket-mining, and in January Mark Twain, Gillis, and Stoker crossed over into Calaveras County and began work near Angels Camp, a place well known to readers of Bret Hart. They put up at a poor hotel in Angels, and on good days worked pretty faithfully, but it was generally raining, and the food was poor. In his notebook still preserved Mark Twain wrote, January 27, 1865, same old diet, same old weather, went out to the pocket-claim, had to rush back. So they spent a good deal of their time around the rusty stove in the dilapidated tavern at Angels Camp. It seemed a profitless thing to do, but few experiences were profitless to Mark Twain, and certainly this one was not. At this barren, mining hotel there happened to be a former Illinois River pilot named Ben Coon, a solemn, sleepy person who dozed by the stove or told slow, pointless stories to anyone who would listen. Not many would stay to hear him, but Jim Gillis and Mark Twain found him a delight. They would let him wander on in his doll-way for hours, and saw a vast humor in a man to whom all tales, however trivial or absurd, were serious history. At last one dreary afternoon he told them about a frog, a frog that had belonged to a man named Coleman, who had trained it to jump, and how the trained frog had failed to win a wager because the owner of the rival frog had slyly loaded the train-jumper with shot. It was not a new story in the camps, but Ben Coon made a long tale of it, and it happened that neither Clemens nor Gillis had heard it before. They thought it amusing, and his solemn way of telling it still more so. I don't see no pints about that frog that's better than any other frog, became a catchphrase among the mining partners, and I ain't got no frog, but if I had a frog, I'd bet you. Out on the claim, Clemens, watching Gillis and Stoker anxiously washing, would say, I don't see no pints about that pan of dirt that's any better than any other pan of dirt. And so they kept the tale going. In his notebook Mark Twain made a brief memorandum of the story for possible use. The mining was rather hopeless work. The constant and heavy rains were disheartening. Clemens hated it, and even when one afternoon traces of a pocket began to appear, he rebelled as the usual chill downpour set in. "'Jim,' he said, "'let's go home. We'll freeze here.'" Gillis as usual was washing, and Clemens carrying the water. Gillis, seeing the gold color improving with every pan, wanted to go on washing and climbing toward the precious pocket, regardless of wet and cold. Clemens, shivering and disgusted, vowed that each pail of water would be his last. His teeth were chattering, and he was wet through. Finally he said, "'Jim, I won't carry any more water. This work is too disagreeable.'" Gillis had just taken out a pan full of dirt. "'Bring one more pail, Sam,' he begged. "'Jim, I won't do it. I'm freezing. Just one more pail, Sam.'" Jim pleaded. "'No, sir. Not a drop. Not if I knew there was a million dollars in that pan.'" Gillis tore out a page of his notebook, and hastily posted a 30-day claim notice by the pan of dirt. Then they set out for Angel's Camp, never to return. Kept on raining, and a letter came from Steve Gillis, saying he had settled all the trouble in San Francisco. Clemens decided to return, and the miners left Angel's without visiting their claim again. Meantime the rain had washed away the top of the pan of dirt they had left standing on the hillside, exposing a handful of nuggets, pure gold. Two strangers, Austrians, happening along, gattered it up, and seeing the claim notice posted by Jim Gillis, sat down to wait until it expired. They did not mind the rain, not under the circumstances, and the moment the thirty days were up they followed the lead a few pans farther and took out some say ten, some say twenty thousand dollars. In either case it was a good pocket that Mark Twain missed by one pail of water. Still, without knowing it, he had carried away in his notebook a single nugget of far greater value, the story of the jumping frog. He did not write it, however, immediately upon his return to San Francisco, he went back to his enterprise letters and contributed some sketches to the Californian. Perhaps he thought the frog's story too mild and humor for the slope. By and by he wrote it, and by request sent it to Artemis Ward to be used in a book that Ward was about to issue. It arrived too late, and the publisher handed it to the editor of the Saturday Press, Henry Clap, saying, Here, Clap, there's something you can use in your paper. The Press was struggling, and was glad to get a story so easily. Jim Smiley and his jumping frog appeared in the issue of November 18, 1865, and was at once copied and quoted far and near. It carried the name of Mark Twain across the mountains and the prairies of the Middle West. It bore it up and down the Atlantic slope. Someone said, then or later, that Mark Twain leapt into fame on the back of a jumping frog. Curiously, this did not at first please the author. He thought the tale poor. To his mother he wrote, I do not know what to write. My life is so uneventful. I wish I was back there piloting up and down the river again. Verily, all is vanity and little worth. Save piloting. To think that, after writing many an article, a man might be excused for thinking tolerably good. Those New York people should single out a villainous backward sketch to compliment me on. Jim Smiley and his jumping frog. A squib, which would never have been written but to please Artemis Ward. However, somewhat later he changed his mind considerably. Especially when he heard that James Russell Lowell had pronounced the story the finest piece of humorous writing yet produced in America. Mark Twain remained about a year in San Francisco after his return from the Gillis Cabin and Angels Camp, adding to his prestige along the coast rather than to his national reputation. Then, in the spring of 1866, he was commissioned by the Sacramento Union to write a series of letters that would report the life, trade, agriculture, and general aspects of the Hawaiian group. He sailed in March, and his four months in those delectable islands remained always to him a golden memory, an experience which he hoped some day to repeat. He was young and eager for adventure then, and he went everywhere, horse back and a foot, saw everything, did everything, and wrote of it all for his paper. His letters to the Union were widely read and quoted and, though not especially literary, added much to his journalistic standing. He was a great sightseer in those days and a persevering one. No discomfort or risk discouraged him. Once with a single daring companion he crossed the burning floor of the mighty crater of Kilauea, racing across the burning lava, leaping wide and bottomless crevices where a misstep would have meant death. His open-air life on the river and in the mining camps had nerved and hardened him for adventure. He was thirty years old and in his physical prime. His mental growth had been slower, but it was sure, and it would seem always to have had the right guidance at the right time. Clemens had been in the islands three months when one day Anson Burling Game arrived there en route to his post as minister to China. With him was his son Edward, a boy of eighteen, and General Van Valkenburg, minister to Japan. Young Burling Game had read about Jim Smiley's jumping frog and learning that the author was in Honolulu, but ill after a long trip inland, sent word that the party would call on him next morning. But Mark Twain felt that he could not accept this honor and, crawling out of bed, shaved himself and drove to the home of the American minister where the party was staying. He made a great impression with the diplomats. It was an occasion of good stories and much laughter. On leaving, General Van Valkenburg said to him, �California is proud of Mark Twain, and some day the American people will be too, no doubt�, which was certainly a good prophecy. It was only a few days later that the diplomats rendered him a great service. Report had come of the arrival at Sanpaho of an open boat containing fifteen starving men who had been buffeting a stormy sea for forty-three days, sailors from the missing ship Hornet of New York, which it appeared had been burned at sea. Presently eleven of the rescued men were brought to Honolulu and placed in the hospital. Mark Twain recognized the great importance as news of this event. It would be a splendid beat if he could interview the castaways and be the first to get their story in his paper. There was no cable, but a vessel was sailing for San Francisco next morning. It seemed the opportunity of a lifetime, but he was now bed-written and could scarcely move. Then suddenly appeared in his room Anson Burlingame and his party, and almost before Mark Twain realized what was happening he was on a cot, and escorted by the heads of two legations was on his way to the hospital to get the precious interview. Once there Anson Burlingame with his gentle manner and courtly presence drew from those enfeebled castaways all the story of the burning of the vessel, followed by the long privation and struggle that had lasted through forty-three fearful days and across four thousand miles of stormy sea. All that Mark Twain had to do was to listen and make notes. That night he rode against time, and next morning just as the vessel was drifting from the dock a strong hand flung his bulky manuscript aboard, and his great beat was sure. The three-column story published in the Sacramento Union of July 9 gave the public the first detailed history of the great disaster. The telegraph carried it everywhere, and it was featured as a sensation. Mark Twain and the Burlingame party were much together during the rest of their stay in Hawaii, and Samuel Clemens never ceased to love and honor the memory of Anson Burlingame. It was proper that he should do so, for he owed him much, far more than has already been told. Anson Burlingame one day said to him, You have great ability! I believe you have genius. What you need now is the refinement of association. Seek companionship among men of superior intellect and character. Refine yourself and your work. Never affiliate with inferiors. Always climb. This, coming to him from a man of Burlingame's character and position, was like a gospel from some divine source. Clemens never forgot the advice. It gave him courage, new hope, new resolve, new ideals. Burlingame came often to the hotel and they discussed plans for Mark Twain's future. The diplomat invited the journalist to visit him in China. Come to pay king, he said, and make my house your home. Young Burlingame also came when the patient became convalescent and suggested walks. Once when Clemens hesitated the young man said, But there is a scriptural command for you to go. If you can quote one, I'll obey, said Clemens. Very well, the Bible says. If any man require thee to walk a mile, go with him, Twain. The walk was taken. Mark Twain returned to California at the end of July and went down to Sacramento. It was agreed that a special bill should be made for the Hornet Report. How much do you think it ought to be, Mark? asked one of the proprietors. Clemens said, Oh, I'm an honest man. I don't want the whole Union office. Call it a hundred dollars a column. There was a general laugh. The bill was made out at that figure and he took it to the office for payment. The cashier didn't faint, he wrote many years later, but he came rather near it. He sent for the proprietors, and they only laughed in their jolly fashion and said it was robbery, but no matter, pay it. It's all right. The best men that ever owned a paper. Footnote number six. My debut as a literary person. End of footnote.