8 February 1863
This sketch survives in an undated clipping from the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise in one of Mark Twain's scrapbooks. It is the last of three letters that Mark Twain sent from Carson City before returning to his post as the Enterprise local editor. Clemens headed his letter “Thursday Morning” (5 February 1863) and said that the Wayman-Ormsby wedding took place “last night.” There is a good possibility that Clemens mistook the day of the week. A contemporary account said that the wedding took place on Thursday evening (not Wednesday, as Clemens had it). If this report is accurate, then Clemens probably wrote his letter on Friday morning and published it slightly later, say on February 7 or 8.1 The latter date seems somewhat more plausible, for on February 9 one “Isreal Putnam” wrote Clemens from Virginia City that John Nugent, an intimate friend of the late John Phoenix (George H. Derby), had inquired of him “who Mark Twain was, and added that he had not seen so amusing a thing in newspaper literature in a long while as your letter in the Enterprise this morning.”2 This must refer to “Letter from Carson,” but since “Putnam” wrote on a Monday, the day the Enterprise did not publish, the piece must have appeared the previous day, Sunday, February 8, instead of “this morning.”
The activities of the Unreliable described in this sketch dovetail with those of his last appearance in the previous piece, and this time Clemens uses them as a vehicle for reporting the wedding festivities: a small but significant advance in technique.
[begin page 206]The second half of the letter—a long, half-facetious argument about calling the Territorial Legislature into special session—is not reprinted here,3 nor is a perfunctory list of recent certificates of incorporation issued by the secretary of the territory, Orion Clemens.
Carson, Thursday Morning.
Eds. Enterprise:—The community were taken by surprise last night, by the marriage of Dr. J. H. WaymanⒺexplanatory note and Mrs. M. A. OrmsbyⒺexplanatory note. Strategy did it. John K. TrumboⒺexplanatory note lured the people to a party at his house, and corraled them, and in the meantime Acting Governor ClemensⒺexplanatory note proceeded to the bride's dwelling and consolidated the happy couple under the name and style of Mr. and Mrs. Wayman, with a life charter, perpetual succession, unlimited marital privileges, principal place of business at ho—blast those gold and silver mining incorporations! I have compiled a long list of them from the Territorial Secretary's booksⒺexplanatory note this morning, and Ⓐemendationtheir infernal technicalities keep slipping from my pen when I ought to be writing Ⓐemendationgraceful poetical thingsⒶemendation. After the marriage, the high contracting parties and the witnesses there assembled, adjourned to Mr. Trumbo's house. The ways of the Unreliable are past finding out. His instincts always prompt him to go where he is not wanted, particularly if anything of an unusual nature is on foot. Therefore, he was present and saw those wedding ceremonies through the parlor windows. He climbed up behind Dr. Wayman's coach and rode up to Trumbo's—this shows that his faculties were not affected by his recent illness. When the bride and groom entered the parlor he went in with them, bowing and scraping and smiling in his imbecile way, Ⓐemendationand attempting to pass himself off for the principal groomsman. I never saw such an awkward, ungainly lout in my life. He had on a pair of Jack Wilde'sⒺexplanatory note pantaloons, and a [begin page 208] swallow-tail coat belonging to Lytle (“Schemerhorn's Boy”)Ⓔexplanatory note, and Ⓐemendationthey fitted him as neatly as an elephant's hide would fit a poodle dog. I would be ashamed to appear in any parlor in such a costume. It never enters his head to be ashamed of anything, though. It would have killed me with mortification to parade around there as he did, and have people stepping on my coat tail every moment. As soon as the guests found out who he was, they kept out of his way as well as they could, but there were so many gentlemen and ladies present that he was never at a loss for somebody to pester with his disgusting familiarity. He worried them from the parlor to the sitting-room, and from thence to the dancing-hall, and then proceeded up stairs to see if he could find any more people to stampede. He found Fred. Turner, and stayed with him until he was informed that he could have nothing more to eat or drink in that part of the house. He went back to the dancing-hall then, but he carried away a codfish under one arm, and Mr. Curry's plug hat full of sour-krout under the other. He posted himself right where he could be most in the way, and fell to eating as comfortably Ⓐemendationas if he were boarding with Trumbo by the week. They bothered him some, Ⓐemendationthough, because every time the order came to “all promenade,” the dancers would sweep past him and knock his codfish out of his hands and spill his sour-krout. He was the most loathsome sight I ever saw; he turned everybody's stomach but his own. It makes no difference to him, either, what he eats when hungry. I believe he would have eaten a corpse last night, if he had one. Finally, Curry came and took his hat away from him and tore one of his coat tails off and threatened to thresh him with it, and that checked his appetite for a moment. Instead of sneaking out of the house, then, as anybody would have done who had any self-respect, he shoved his codfish into the pocket of his solitary Ⓐemendationcoat tail (leaving at least eight inches of it sticking out), and crowded himself into a double quadrille. He had it all to himself pretty soon; because the order “gentlemen to the right” came, and he passed from one lady to another, around the room, and wilted each and every one of them with the horrible fragrance of his breath. Even Trumbo, himself, fainted. Then the Unreliable, with a placid expression of satisfaction upon his countenance, marched forth and swept the Ⓐemendationparlors like a pestilence. When the guests had been persecuted as long as they could stand it, though, they got him to drink some kerosene oil, which neutralized the sour- [begin page 209] krout and codfish, and restored his breath to about its usual state, or even improved it, perhaps, for it generally smells like a hospital.
The Unreliable interfered with Col. Musser when he was singing the pea-nut songⒺexplanatory note; he bothered William PattersonⒺexplanatory note, Esq., when that baritone Ⓐemendationwas singing, “Ever of thee I'm fondly dreaming;”Ⓔexplanatory note he interrupted EpsteinⒺexplanatory note when he was playing on the piano; he followed the bride and bridegroom from place to place, like an evil spirit, and he managed to keep himself and his coat-tail eternally in the way. I did hope that he would stay away from the supper-table, but I hoped against an impossibility. He was the first one there, and had choice of seats also, because he told Mr. Trumbo he was a groomsmanⒶemendation; and not only that, but he made him believe, also, that Dr. Wayman was his uncle. Then he sailed into the ice cream and champagne, Ⓐemendationand cakes and things, at his usual starvation gait, and he would infallibly have created a famine, if Trumbo had not been particularly well fortified with provisions. There is one circumstance connected with the Unreliable's career last night which it pains me to mention, but I feel that it is my duty to do it. I shall cut the melancholy fact as short as possible, however: seventeen silver spoons, a New Testament and a gridiron were missed after supper. They were found upon the Unreliable's person when he was in the act of going out at the back door.
Singing and dancing commenced at seven o'clock in the evening, and were kept up with unabated fury until half-past one in the morning, when the jolly company put on each other's hats and bonnets and wandered home, mighty well satisfied with Trumbo's “corn shucking,” as he called it.Ⓐemendation
Mark Twain. Ⓐemendation
the pea-nut song] An anonymous student song, driving home the moral contained in its first stanza:
| The man who has plenty of good peanuts,And giveth his neighbor none,
He shan't have any of my peanuts,
When his peanuts are gone.
(Albert E. Wier, ed., The Book of a Thousand Songs [New York: World Syndicate Company, 1918], p. 383)
The first printing appeared in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, probably on 8 February 1863. The only known copy of this printing, in a clipping in Scrapbook 20, pp. 46–48, MTP, is copy-text. The whole letter is not reprinted here; for the omitted section, see MTEnt , pp. 60–61. There are no textual notes.