CHAPTER 42 | The Writings of Mark Twain (beta)

Explanatory Notes Ⓔ
See Headnote

Apparatus Notes Ⓐ
See Headnotes

CHAPTER 42

[begin page 271]

CHAPTER 42

What to do next?

It was a momentous question. I had gone out into the world to shift for myself, at the age of thirteen (for my father had endorsed for friendsⒺexplanatory note; and although he left us a sumptuous legacy of pride in his fine Virginian stock and its national distinction, I presently found that I could not live on that alone without occasional bread to wash it down with). I had gained a livelihood in various vocations, but had not dazzled anybody with my successes; still the list was before me, and the amplest liberty in the matter of choosing, provided I wanted to work—which I did not, after being so wealthy. I had once been a grocery clerk, for one day, but had consumed so much sugar in that time that I was relieved from further duty by the proprietor; said he wanted me outside, so that he could have my custom. I had studied law an entire week, and then given it up because it was so prosy and tiresome. I had engaged briefly in the study of blacksmithing, but wasted so much time trying to fix the bellows so that it would blow itself, that the master turned me adrift in disgrace, and told me I would come to no good. I had been a bookseller’s clerk for a whileⒶemendation, but the customers bothered me so much I could not read with any comfort, and so the proprietor gave me a furlough and forgot to put a limit to it. I had clerked in a drug store part of a summer, but my prescriptions were unlucky, and we appeared to sell more stomach pumps than soda water. So I had to go. I had made of myself a tolerable printer, under the impression that I would be another Franklin some day, but somehow had missed the connection thus far. There was no berth open in the Esmeralda Union Ⓔexplanatory note, and besides I had always been such a slow compositor that I looked with envy upon the achievements of apprentices of two years’ standing; and when I took a “take,” foremen were in the habit of suggesting that it would be wanted “some time during [begin page 272] the year.” I was a good average St. Louis and New Orleans pilotⒺexplanatory note and by no means ashamed of my abilities in that line; wages were two hundred and fifty dollars a month and no board to pay, and I did long to stand behind a wheel againⒺexplanatory note and never roam any more—but I had been making such an ass of myself lately in grandiloquent letters home about my blind lead and my European excursionⒺexplanatory note that I did what many and many a poor disappointed miner had done before; said “It is all over with me now, and I will never go back home to be pitied—and snubbed.” I had been a private secretary, a silver miner and a silver mill operative, and amounted to less than nothing in each, and now—

What to do next?

one of my failures.

I yielded to Higbie’s appeals and consented to try the mining once more. We climbed far up on the mountain side and went to work on a little rubbishy claim of ours that had a shaft on it eight feet deep. Higbie descended into it and worked bravely with his pick till he had loosened up a deal of rock and dirt and then I went down with a long-handled shovel (the most awkward invention yet contrived by man) to throw it out. You must brace the shovel forward [begin page 273] with the side of your knee till it is full, and then, with a skilful toss, throw it backwardsⒶemendation over your left shoulder. I made the toss and landed the mess just on the edge of the shaft and it all came back on my head and down the back of my neck. I never said a word, but climbed out and walked home. I inwardly resolved that I would starve before I would make a target of myself and shoot rubbish at it with a long-handled shovel. I sat down, in the cabin, and

target shooting.

gave myself up to solid misery— so to speak. Now in pleasanter days I had amused myself with writing letters to the chief paper of the Territory, the Virginia Daily Territorial Enterprise Ⓔ, and had always been surprised when they appeared in print. My good opinion of the editors had steadily declined; for it seemed to me that they might have found something better to fill up with than my literature. I had found a letter in the post office as I came home from the hillsideⒶ, and finally I opened it. Eureka! [I never did know what Eureka meant, but it seems to be as proper a word to heave in as any when no other that sounds pretty offers.] It was a deliberate offer to me of Twenty-Five Dollars a week to come up to Virginia and be city editor of the Enterprise.

I would have challenged the publisher in the “blind lead” days—I wanted to fall down and worship him, now. Twenty-Five Dollars a week—it looked like bloated luxury—a fortune—a sinful and lavish waste of money. But my transports cooled when I thought of my inexperience and consequent unfitness for the position—and straightway, on top of this, my long array of failures rose up before me. Yet if I refused this place I must presently become dependent upon somebody for my bread, a thing necessarily distasteful to a man who had never experienced such a humiliation since he was thirteen years old. Not much to be proud of, since it is so [begin page 274] common—but then it was all I had to be proud of. So I was scared into being a city editor. I would have declined, otherwise. Necessity is the mother of “taking chances.” I do not doubt that if, at that time, I had been offered a salary to translate the Talmud from the original Hebrew, I would have accepted—albeit with diffidence and some misgivings—and thrown as much variety into it as I could for the money.

as city editor.

I went up to Virginia and entered upon my new vocation. I was a rusty looking city editorⒺexplanatory note, I am free to confess—coatless, slouch hat, blue woolen shirt, pantaloons stuffed into boot-tops, whiskered half down to the waist, and the universal navy revolver slung to my belt. But I secured a more Christian costume and discarded the revolver. I had never had occasion to kill anybody, nor ever felt a desire to do so, but had worn the thing in deference to popular sentiment, and in order that I might not, by its absence, be offensively conspicuous, and a subject of remark. But the other editors, and all the printers, carried revolvers. I asked the chief editor and proprietor (Mr. GoodmanⒺexplanatory note, I will call him, since it describes him as well as any name could do) for some instructions with regard to my duties, and he told me to go all over town and ask all sorts of people all sorts of questions, make notes of the information gained, and write them out for publication. And he added:

“Never say ‘We learn’ so-and-so, or ‘It is reported,’Ⓐemendation or ‘It is rumored,’ or ‘We understand’ so-and-so, but go to headquartersⒶemendation and get the absolute facts, and then speak out and say ‘It is so-and-so.’ Otherwise, people will not put confidence in your news. Unassailable certainty is the thing that gives a newspaper the firmest and most valuable reputation.”

It was the whole thing in a nut-shell; and to this day when I find a reporter commencing his article with “We understand,” I gather [begin page 275] a suspicion that he has not taken as much pains to inform himself as he ought to have done. I moralize well, but I did not always practiceⒶemendation well when I was a city editor; I let fancy get the upper hand of fact too often when there was a dearth of news. I can never forget my first day’s experience as a reporter. I wandered about town questioning everybody, boring everybody, and finding out that nobody knew anything. At the end of five hours my note-bookⒶemendation was still barren. I spoke to Mr. Goodman. He said:

“DanⒺexplanatory note used to make a good thing out of the hay wagons in a dry time when there were no fires or inquests. Are there no hay wagons in from the Truckee? If there are, you might speak of the renewed activity and all that sort of thing, in the hay business, you know. It isn’t sensational or exciting, but it fills up and looks business-likeⒶemendation.”

I canvassed the city again and found one wretched old hay truck dragging in from the country. But I made affluent use of it. I multiplied it by sixteen, brought it into town from sixteen different directions, made sixteen separate items out of it, and got up such another sweat about hay as Virginia City had never seen in the world before.

the entire market.

This was encouraging. Two nonpareil columnsⒺexplanatory note had to be filled, and I was getting along. Presently, when things began to look dismal again, a desperado killed a man in a saloon and joy returned once more. I never was so glad over any mere trifle before in my life. I said to the murderer:

[begin page 276] “Sir, you are a stranger to me, but you have done me a kindness this day which I can never forget. If whole years of gratitude can be to you any slight compensation, they shall be yours. I was in trouble and you have relieved me nobly and at a time when all seemed dark and drear. Count me your friend from this time forth, for I am not a man to forget a favor.”

a friend indeed.

If I did not really say that to him I at least felt a sort of itching desire to do it. I wrote up the murder with a hungry attention to details, and when it was finished experienced but one regret—namely, that they had not hanged my benefactor on the spot, so that I could work him up too.

Next I discovered some emigrant wagons going into camp on the plaza and found that they had lately come through the hostile Indian country and had fared rather roughly. I made the best of the item that the circumstances permitted, and felt that if I were not confined within rigid limits by the presence of the reporters of the other papers I could add particulars that would make the article much more interesting. However, I found one wagon that was going on to California, and made some judicious inquiries of the proprietor. When I learned, through his short and surly answers to my cross-questioning, that he was certainly going on and would not be in the city next day to make trouble, I got ahead of the other papers, for I took down his list of names and added his party to the killed and wounded. Having more scope here, I put this wagon through an Indian fight that to this day has no parallel in historyⒺexplanatory note.

My two columns were filled. When I read them over in the morning I felt that I had found my legitimate occupation at last. I reasoned within myself that news, and stirring news, too, was [begin page 277] what a paper needed, and I felt that I was peculiarly endowed with the ability to furnish it. Mr. Goodman said that I was as good a reporter as DanⒺexplanatory note. I desired no higher commendation. With encouragement like that, I felt that I could take my pen and murder all the immigrants on the plains if need be and the interests of the paper demanded it.

Editorial Emendations CHAPTER 42

Ⓐ a while (C) • awhile (A)

Ⓐ backwards (C) • backward (A)

Ⓐ hillside (C) • hill side (A)

Ⓐ reported,’ (C) • reported,⁁ (A)

Ⓐ headquarters (C) • head- | quarters (A)

Ⓐ practice (C) • practise (A)

Ⓐ note-book (C) • note- | book (A)

Ⓐ business-like (C) • business like (A)

Explanatory Notes CHAPTER 42

Ⓔ I had gone out into the world . . . my father had endorsed for friends] Clemens’s father, Virginia-born John Marshall Clemens, died on 24 March 1847 virtually bankrupt. His financial collapse—the inevitable result of years of unremunerative mercantile enterprises and real-estate investments—was apparently hastened by his dealings with Hannibal land speculator Ira Stout. Clemens later asserted that Stout got his father “to go security for a large sum, ‘took the benefit of the bankrupt law’ and ruined him—in fact made a pauper of him,” condemning the Clemens family to years of “grinding poverty and privation” (SLC 1897, 31; AD, 28 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA , 2:274). When his father died, Clemens, aged eleven, became an apprentice (probably part time) at Henry La Cossitt’s Hannibal Gazette, but he may be dating his entry “into the world” from his employment as a printer’s devil, for board but no wages, at Joseph P. Ament’s Hannibal Missouri Courier in the spring of 1848 (Wecter 1952, 122–23, 202; Inds , 314).

Ⓔ [begin page 649] grocery clerk . . . studied law . . . blacksmithing . . . printer . . . pilot] Although it is possible that in his early years Clemens tried his hand as a clerk, law student, and blacksmith, these experiences have not been documented. His work as a printer and pilot is discussed in the note at 1.7–11.

Ⓔ Esmeralda Union] In 1862 Aurora’s only newspaper was the Esmeralda Star. The Esmeralda Union did not begin publication until March 1864 (Angel, 295–97).

Ⓔ I did long to stand behind a wheel again] The frustration of his mining hopes may have caused Clemens privately to regret his piloting days, but in August 1862 he dashed off an emphatic disclaimer to his family: “What in thunder are pilot’s wages to me? . . . I never have once thought of returning home to go on the river again, and I never expect to do any more piloting at any price. . . . Do not tell any one that I had any idea of piloting again at present—for it is all a mistake” ( L1 , 235–36). In early 1866, however, twenty months after leaving Nevada for San Francisco, he wrote his mother and sister, “I wish I was back there piloting up & down the river again. Verily, all is vanity and little worth—except piloting” ( L1 , 327).

Ⓔ grandiloquent letters home about my blind lead and my European excursion] On the whole Clemens seems to have kept his expectations to himself: “You must do all the writing home,” he advised Orion in a letter of 9 June 1862 from Aurora, “I haven’t written a word home since I left Carson. I am afraid the folks will not hear from me again while I remain in this part of California” ( L1 , 219). In fact, there are no letters extant from Clemens to his St. Louis family between early April 1862, when he left Carson City for Aurora, and mid-August, well after the blind-lead excitement of late June and early July.

Ⓔ I had amused myself with writing letters . . . city editor of the Enterprise] In the spring of 1862 Clemens began sending correspondence from Aurora to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise under the pen name “Josh.” These letters—now lost—were apparently humorous or satirical in tone, and met with the enthusiastic approval of the Enterprise staff. Joseph Goodman, the newspaper’s proprietor and editor-in-chief, later recalled these “voluntary contributions”: “They struck us as so funny that we sent him word to come to Virginia City and take a job on the paper” (“Jos. Goodman’s Memories of Humorist’s Early Days,” San Francisco Examiner, 22 Apr 1910, 3; see also the note at 220.2). Goodman was particularly struck by one item, a burlesque Fourth of July oration that commenced “Fellow Citizens:—I was sired by the great American eagle, and borne by a continental dam!” (This item has been identified as a lampoon of the platform style of Nevada Chief Justice George Turner, whom the Enterprise was then attacking for official corruption. It has also sometimes been conflated with another [begin page 650] Clemens piece apparently entitled “Lecture of Mr. Personal Pronoun.” Clemens himself later recalled that his place on the Enterprise was secured by a burlesque of a Turner speech.) At the end of July Clemens received a letter from William H. Barstow, who worked in the business office of the Enterprise, offering him the “post of local reporter . . . at $25 a week,” which he accepted in early August ( L1 , 201 n. 8, 231, 233; Putnam, 3; Daggett, 15; Sam P. Davis, 1:393–94; Johnson, 266; AD, 2 Oct 1906, CU-MARK, in MTE , 390–91; ET&S1 , 13–17).

Ⓔ I went up to Virginia . . . rusty looking city editor] Clemens postponed his journey to Virginia City for several weeks, taking up his new position in late September. According to Dennis Driscoll, one of the Enterprise proprietors, Clemens walked “all the way from Aurora, packing his blankets on his back,” and announced his arrival with the remark, “Dang my buttons, if I don’t believe I’m lousy”; among “all the compositors turning at the uncouth figure presented to them, . . . there was not a man to dispute Mark’s assertion” (“The Pioneer Journal Dead,” Virginia City Evening Chronicle, 16 Jan 93, 2; L1 , 241 n. 5).

Ⓔ the chief editor and proprietor (Mr. Goodman] At this time the Enterprise had three proprietors: Joseph Thompson Goodman (1838–1917), editor-in-chief; Denis E. McCarthy, print-shop supervisor (see the note at 537.4); and Dennis Driscoll (1823–76), business manager. Goodman went to California from New York in 1854 and learned the printer’s trade in San Francisco, working along with McCarthy at the San Francisco Mirror and the Golden Era. In March 1861 he and McCarthy purchased the Enterprise, transforming it from a weekly to a daily and greatly enlarging its circulation. From early 1862 until October 1863 Driscoll joined Goodman and McCarthy in ownership of the paper. After McCarthy sold out in September 1865, Goodman stayed on as sole proprietor until 1874, when he sold his interest (reportedly for half a million dollars) and became a San Francisco stockbroker and speculator, first gaining and then losing a fortune. From 1880 to 1891 he operated a raisin vineyard in Fresno County, California. During his retirement he devoted most of his time to deciphering the Maya inscriptions of Central America and Yucatan, about which he published a monograph, entitled The Archaic Maya Inscriptions, in London in 1897 (William Wright 1893a; “Death of D.E. McCarthy,” Virginia City Evening Chronicle, 17 Dec 85, 2; L1 , 242 n. 2; Lingenfelter and Gash, 253–54; Rawls, 8; Goodman to Alfred B. Nye, 6 Nov 1905 and 17 Nov 1905, Alfred B. Nye Papers, CU-BANC; “Joseph T. Goodman Comes into His Own,” San Francisco Chronicle, 21 Sept 1930, F5; for a fuller history of the Enterprise, see the note at 292.1–7).

Ⓔ Dan] William Wright (1829–98), who wrote under the pseudonym “Dan De Quille,” was widely known throughout the West as a mining reporter and humorist. Born in Ohio, he moved with his family to West [begin page 651] Liberty, Iowa, in 1847, and in 1857 emigrated to California. For five years he prospected and mined in California and Nevada, publishing occasional pieces of humorous journalism, notably in the San Francisco Golden Era. Since May 1862 he had been the local editor of the Enterprise, continuing his connection with the newspaper until it suspended publication in 1893. In 1897, in failing health and reduced circumstances, he retired to the home of his daughter in Iowa. His major work was The History of the Big Bonanza (1876), completed at Clemens’s Hartford home and issued by Clemens’s own publisher, the American Publishing Company (William Wright 1876, vii–ix, xv–xxv; Berkove 1988b; L1 , 265–66; ET&S1 , 171–72). Despite the impression given here that Clemens immediately assumed full duties as the Enterprise’s city editor, he actually shared the post with Wright for several weeks, until Wright departed on 27 December 1862 to visit his family in Iowa. When Wright returned in September 1863 he resumed his place on the Enterprise, sharing reportorial duties, as well as lodgings, with Clemens.

Ⓔ Two nonpareil columns] Nonpareil was one of the smallest type sizes, equivalent to modern six-point type; it was “extensively used, though mostly on newspapers” (A. A. Stewart, 163; MacKellar, 56). In later years Clemens recalled that his obligation to the Enterprise was “to furnish one column of leaded nonpareil every day, and as much more as I could get on paper before the paper should go to press at two o’clock in the morning” (AD, 9 Jan 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA , 1:271).

Ⓔ I discovered some emigrant wagons . . . no parallel in history] Clemens’s sensational accounts of the beleaguered wagon trains have been identified as two Enterprise items of 1 October 1862, extant only as reprinted in the Marysville (Calif.) Appeal of 5 October (SLC 1862e–f).

Ⓔ

Mr. Goodman said that I was as good a reporter as Dan] Goodman, in later years, reportedly had this to say about the relative abilities of his two local reporters:

Isn’t it so singular that Mark Twain should live and Dan De Quille fade out? If anyone had asked me in 1863 which was to be an immortal name, I should unhesitatingly have said Dan De Quille. They had about equal talent and sense of humor, but the difference was the way in which they used their gifts. One shrank from the world; the other braved it, and it recognized his audacity. (Drury, 216)

Top