24 February–31 March 1863
This sketch was part of a letter that Mark Twain sent to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise from Carson City. The text survives only in Kate Milnor Rabb's The Wit and Humor of America. It was written on an undetermined Sunday, the day Clemens arrived in Carson for a brief visit, probably in late February or March 1863.
Internal evidence establishes that Clemens could not have written the letter in January. On 23 January 1863, H. F. Swayze, whom Clemens pictured busily writing in jail, was arrested for murdering George W. Derickson, the editor of the Washoe City Times, who had criticized him in print.1 Clemens was not in Carson on the Sunday after Swayze's arrest (January 25, the last Sunday in the month). And although he did visit Carson for the week from January 29 to February 6, he could not have written “A Sunday in Carson” on that visit because he arrived on a Thursday, not a Sunday.2 In a letter to his mother and sister dated February 16, Clemens referred to his Carson visit in early February and made it clear that he had been nowhere since then. He also indicated that he was eager for a change: “I am not in a very good humor, to-night. I wanted to rush down and take some comfort for a few days, in San Francisco, but there is no one here now, to take my place.”3
It seems likely that Clemens' frustration on Wednesday, February 16, was relieved on the following Sunday, February 22, and that “A Sunday in Carson” was written then. Since the Enterprise did not publish on Mondays, he had [begin page 221] Sunday and part of Monday to “take some comfort” before he had to be back in Virginia City. Moreover, in “Reportorial” (no. 47), published later that week on Thursday or Friday (February 26 or 27), Clemens said that “last Saturday” (presumably February 21) the Unreliable had abused him in the Virginia City Union, and that he had also recently published “a list of Langton's stage passengers” wherein Clemens' name appeared “between those of ‘Sam Chung’ and ‘Sam Lee.’ “Clemens did in fact take “Langton's express” to Carson, as he wrote in the first sentence of “A Sunday in Carson,” and the list in the Union may have recorded his departure on Sunday, February 22. If the sketch was written on that day, it could not have appeared in the Enterprise before Tuesday, February 24.
On the other hand, we cannot exclude the possibility that Clemens took a stagecoach to Carson and wrote the letter on some Sunday in March, although no trip of his to Carson in that month can now be documented. A still later date, say in April, seems unlikely: the allusion to Swayze, who was arrested on January 23, implies that his crime was a fairly recent event.
I arrived in this noisy and bustling town of Carson at noon to-day, per Langton's Ⓐemendation Ⓐtextual noteexpress. We made pretty good time from Virginia, and might have made much better, but for Horace Smith, Esq., who rode on the box seat and kept the stage so much by the head she wouldn't steer. I went to church, of course,—I always go to church when I—when I go to church—as it were. I got there just in time to hear the closing hymn, and also to hear the Rev. Mr. WhiteⒺexplanatory note give out a long-metre doxology, which the choir tried to sing to a short-metre tune. But there wasn't music enough to go around: consequently, the effect was rather singular, than otherwise. They sang the most interesting parts of each line, though, and charged the balance to “profit and loss;” this rendered the general intent and meaning of the doxology considerably mixed, as far as the congregation were concerned, but inasmuch as it was not addressed to them, anyhow, I thought it made no particular difference.
By an easy and pleasant transition, I went from church to jail. It was only just down stairs—for they save men eternally in the second story of the new court house, and damn them for life in the first. Sheriff GasherieⒺexplanatory note has a handsome double office fronting on the street, and its walls are gorgeously decorated with iron convict-jewelry. In the rear are two rows of cells, built of bomb-proof masonry and furnished with strong iron doors and resistlessⒶtextual note locks and bolts. There was but one prisoner— SwayzeⒶemendation, the murderer of DericksonⒶemendation Ⓐtextual note—and he was writing; I do not know what his subject was, but he appeared to be handling it in a way which gave him great satisfaction. . . .Ⓐtextual note
The first printing in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, probably on 24 February 1863, but possibly as late as March 31, is not extant. The sketch survives in the only known reprinting of the Enterprise in Kate Milnor Rabb, ed., The Wit and Humor of America, 5 vols. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1907), 5:1813–1814, which is copy-text. Copy: PH from Library of Congress. The source of Rabb's text and the nature of her printer's copy are not known; see the textual commentary to “Ye Sentimental Law Student”(no. 44).