26 February 1863
Clemens published an obituary of the Unreliable in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise sometime in late February 1863. The original printing is not extant, but the Marysville (Calif.) Appeal for 28 February 1863 reprinted the concluding paragraphs of the piece, and it is the source of the present text. The Appeal editor noted: “The reporters for the Virginia Union and the Virginia Enterprise, over the mountains, have a lovely time ‘sparring’ at each other. The Enterprise reporter publishes an obituary notice of his cotem. winding up as follows.”
The sketch was not one of Clemens' local items, for it was signed “Mark Twain.” It was probably the second special article that he contributed to the Enterprise. (The first such article was “Ye Sentimental Law Student,” no. 44, published on 19 February 1863.) The Appeal did not give the date of the Enterprise printing. However, Mark Twain refers within the piece to the Unreliable's “abuse of me in the Virginia Union of last Saturday.” Since the obituary must have appeared after February 19 (the date of “Ye Sentimental Law Student”) and before February 28, “last Saturday” must refer to February 21. The obituary might therefore have been published anytime between Tuesday, February 24, and Friday, February 27. Since “The Unreliable” (no. 46) appeared on February 25 and made no allusion to that character's recent extraordinary demise and resurrection, our best conjecture is that the obituary appeared on Thursday, February 26, one week after Mark Twain's first special article. Presumably the Enterprise of February 26 left Virginia City at 8:00 that morning and arrived in Marysville by noon of the following day, in time to be reprinted by the Appeal on the morning of February 28.1
He became a newspaper reporter, and crushed Truth to earthⒺexplanatory note and kept her there; he bought and sold his own notes, and never paid his board; he pretended great friendship for Gillespie, in order to get to sleep with him; then he took advantage of his bed fellow and robbed him of his glass eye and his false teeth; of course he sold the articles, and Gillespie was obliged to issue more county scripⒺexplanatory note than the law allowed, in order to get them back again; the Unreliable broke into my trunkⒺexplanatory note at Washoe City, and took jewelry and fine clothes and things, worth thousands and thousands of dollars; he was present, without invitation, at every party and ball and wedding which transpired in CarsonⒶemendation during thirteen years. But the last act of his life was the crowning meanness of it: I refer to the abuse of me in the Virginia Union of last Saturday, and also to a list of Langton's stage passengersⒺexplanatory note sent to the same paper by him, wherein my name appears between those of “Sam Chung” and “Sam Lee.” This is his treatment of meⒶemendation, his benefactor. That malicious joke was his dying atrocity. During thirteen years he played himself for a white man: he fitly closed his vile career by trying to play me for a Chinaman.
He is dead and buried now, though: let him rest, let him rot. Let his vices be forgotten, but let his virtues be remembered: it will not infringe much upon any man's time.
Mark Twain.
P. S.—By private letters from Carson, since the above was in type, I am pained to learn that the Unreliable, true to his unnatural instincts, came to life again in the midst of his funeral sermon, and [begin page 228] remains so to this moment. He was always unreliable in life—he could not even be depended upon in death. The shrouded corpse shoved the coffin lid to one side, rose to a sitting posture, cocked his eye at the minister and smilingly said, “O let up, Dominie, this is played out, you know—loan me two bits!” The frightened congregation rushed from the house, and the Unreliable followed them, with his coffin on his shoulderⒶemendation. He sold it for two dollars and a half, and got drunk at a “bit house”Ⓔexplanatory note on the proceeds. He is still drunk.
M. T.
The first printing in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, probably on 26 February 1863, is not extant. The sketch survives, only in part, in the only known contemporary reprinting of the Enterprise, the Marysville (Calif.) Appeal for 28 February 1863 (p. 4), which is copy-text. Copy: PH from Bancroft. The Appeal evidently reproduced only the concluding portion of the original text. There are no textual notes.