1 October 1864
Like two earlier sketches published in 1864—“The Evidence in the Case of Smith vs. Jones” and “Early Rising, As Regards Excursions to the Cliff House” (nos. 78 and 79)—the present sketch grew out of Clemens' reporting for the San Francisco Morning Call. During the month of September 1864 he was on continuing assignment to cover the Fourth Industrial Fair of the Mechanics' Institute, an organization interested in promoting technology and industrial prosperity in California. The institute's fair, housed in a spacious pavilion erected in Union Square, was crammed with exhibits. There the Call “local” regularly found an item or two, usually about novel or ingenious exhibits—too often a lackluster chore that required making a lot from a little.1
“A Notable Conundrum” is a bold, although not wholly successful, miscellany of anecdotes and observations about the fair. Its initial incident looks back to the love notes and scrambled vocabularies of “Territorial Sweets” (no. 39) and “Ye Sentimental Law Student” (no. 44). The miscellaneous character of the sketch is deliberately countenanced by the title, which is of course a complete misnomer: Clemens gives his impossible conundrum only in the penultimate paragraph, and concludes by saying that the young man who posed the conundrum “did not state what the answer was.” Clemens continued to exploit this device in the two sketches that follow (nos. 92 and 93).
The sketch, despite its faults, marks an important point in Clemens' literary career, for it is the first of some twenty contributions that he wrote in 1864 and 1865 for the Californian. This distinguished literary journal had been founded the preceding May by Charles Henry Webb. But [begin page 67] it was Bret Harte, the Californian's editor between 10 September and 19 November 1864, who presumably accepted the first nine of Clemens' sketches (nos. 91–99). Harte's presence on the staff was probably one reason Clemens regarded the Californian as a step upward. One week before his first sketch appeared, he wrote his family:
I have engaged to write for the new literary paper—the “Californian”— same pay I used to receive on the “Golden Era”—one article a week, fifty dollars a month. I quit the “Era,” long ago. It wasn't high-toned enough. I thought that whether I was a literary “jackleg” or not, I wouldn't class myself with that style of people, anyhow. The “Californian” circulates among the highest class of the community, & is the best weekly literary paper in the United States—& I suppose I ought to know.2
Consistent with this view, Clemens made his Californian sketches more ambitiously literary than those he had published in the San Francisco Golden Era in September and October 1863.
Clemens included a clipping of this sketch in the Yale Scrapbook, which contained most of the western sketches he thought “worth republishing.”3 But when he helped prepare the printer's copy for the Jumping Frog book in January and February 1867, he struck through this clipping. The sketch was not reprinted in his lifetime.
The Fair continues, just the same. It is a nice place to hunt for people in. I have hunted for a friend there for as much as two hours of an evening, and at the end of that time found the hunting just as good as it was when I commenced.
If the projectors of this noble Fair never receive a dollar or even a kindly word of thanks for the labor of their hands, the sweat of their brows and the wear and tear of brain it has cost them to plan their work and perfect it, a consciousness of the incalculable good they have conferred upon the community must still give them a placid satisfaction more precious than money or sounding compliments. They have been the means of bringing many a pair of loving hearts together that could not get together anywhere else on account of parents and other obstructions. When you see a young lady standing by the sanitary scarecrowⒺexplanatory note which mutely appeals to the public for quarters and swallows them, you may know by the expectant look upon her face that a young man is going to happen along there presently; and, if you have my luck, you will notice by that look still remaining upon her face that you are not the young man she is expecting. They court a good deal at the Fair, and the young fellows are always exchanging notes with the girls. For this purpose the business cards scattered about the place are found very convenient. I picked up one last night which was printed on both sides, but had been interlined in pencil, by somebody's Arabella, until one could not read it without feeling [begin page 69] dizzy. It ran about in this wise—though the interlineations were not in parentheses in the original:
“John Smith, (My Dearest and Sweetest:) Soap Boiler and Candle Factor; (If you love me, if you love) Bar Soap, Castile Soap and Soft Soap, peculiarly suitable for (your Arabella, fly to the) Pacific coast, because of its non-liability to be affected by the climate. Those who may have kitchen refuse to sell, can leave orders, and our soap-fat carts will visit the (Art GalleryⒺexplanatory note. I will be in front of the big mirror in an hour from now, and will go with you to the) corner designated. For the very best Soap and Candles the market affords, apply at the (Academy of Music. And from there, O joy! how my heart thrills with rapture at the prospect! with souls sur-chargedⒶemendation with bliss, we will wander forth to the) Soap Factory, or to the office, which is located on the (moon-lit beach,) corner of Jackson street, near the milk ranchⒺexplanatory note. (From Arabella, who sends kisses to her darling) John Smith, Pioneer Soap Boiler and Candle FactorⒺexplanatory note.”
Sweethearts usually treasure up these little affectionate billets, and that this one was lost in the Pavilion, seemed proof to me that its contents were rather distracting to the mind of the young man who received it. He never would have lost it if he had not felt unsettled about something. I think it is likely he got mixed, so to speak, as to whether he was the lucky party, or whether it was the soap-boiler. However, I have possession of her extraordinary document now, and this is to inform Arabella that, in the hope that I may answer for the other young man, and do to fill a void or so in her aching heart, I am drifting about, in an unsettled way, on the look-out for her—sometimes on the Pacific Coast, sometimes at the Art Gallery, sometimes at the soap factory, and occasionally at the moonlit beach and the milk ranch. If she happen to visit either of those places shortly, and will have the goodness to wait a little while, she can calculate on my drifting around in the course of an hour or so.
I cannot say that all visitors to the Fair go there to make love, though I have my suspicions that a good many of them do. Numbers go there to look at the machinery and misunderstand it, and still greater numbers, perhaps, go to criticise the pictures. There is a handsome portrait in the Art Gallery of a pensive young girl. [begin page 70] Last night it fell under the critical eye of a connoisseur from Arkansas. She examined it in silence for many minutes, and then she blew her nose calmly, and, says she, “I like it—it is so sad and thinkful.”
Somebody knocked Weller's bustⒺexplanatory note down from its shelf at the Fair, the other night, and destroyed it. It was wrong to do it, but it gave rise to a very able pun by a young person who has had much experience in such things, and was only indifferently proud of it. He said it was Weller enough when it was a bust, but just the reverse when it was busted. Explanation: He meant that it looked like Weller in the first place, but it did not after it was smashed to pieces. He also meant that it was well enough to leave it alone and not destroy it. The Author of this fine joke is among us yet, and I can bring him around if you would like to look at him. One would expect him to be haughty and ostentatious, but you would be surprised to see how simple and unpretending he is and how willing to take a drink.
But I have been playing the noble game of “Muggins.” In that game, if you make a mistake of any kind, however trivial it may be, you are pronounced a muggins by the whole company, with great unanimity and enthusiasm. If you play the right card in the wrong place, you are a muggins; no matter how you play, in nine cases out of ten you are a muggins. They inform you of it with a shout which has no expression in it of regret. I have played this fine game all the evening, and although I knew little about it at first, I got to be quite a muggins at last. I played it very successfully on a policeman as I went home. I had forgotten my night-key and was climbing in at the window. When he clapped his hand on my shoulder, I smiled upon him and, says I, “Muggins!” with much vivacity. Says he, “How so?” and I said, “Because I live here, and you play the wrong card when you arrest me for entering my own house.” I thought it was rather neat. But then there was nobody at home to identify me, and I had to go all the way to the station-house with him and give bail to appear and answer to a charge of burglary. As I turned to depart says he “Muggins!” I thought that was rather neat also.
But the conundrum I have alluded to in the heading of this article, was the best thing of the kind that has ever fallen under [begin page 71] my notice. It was projected by a young man who has hardly any education at all, and whose opportunities have been very meagre, even from his childhood up. It was this: “Why was Napoleon when he crossed the Alps, like the Sanitary cheeseⒺexplanatory note at the Mechanics' Fair?”
It was very good for a young man just starting in life; don't you think so? He has gone away now to Sacramento. Probably we shall never see him more. He did not state what the answer was.Ⓐemendation
The first printing in the Californian 1 (1 October 1864): 9 is copy-text. Copies: Bancroft; PH of the Yale Scrapbook, pp. 29–29A. Since Mark Twain preserved a clipping of the sketch in the Yale Scrapbook, he may have considered reprinting it in JF1. Probably sometime in January or early February 1867, however, he struck through the clipping, and the sketch was not reprinted during his lifetime. There are no textual notes.