20 June 1863 • San Francisco, Calif. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00068)
The Echo progresses! The terms of compromise were agreed on yesterday—I don’t know what they are, yet—only that they are rather severe on us. But every inch saved is bully, you bet. You can make money at trading Emma for Echo at 5 feet for one. But I don’t want to trade at that rate—nor any other, for that matter. Gould & Curry, it is conjectured, will advance to the neighborhood of a thousand dollars an inch within the next twelve months—and take my word for it, the Echo will make ’em hunt their holes within the next twenty-four. It is on the main Gold Hill lead, and the nastiest old ledge in Nevada Territory. I have h stores Ⓐemendation of information on hand, but is it Ⓐemendation is not for publication just yet. I have played my cards with a stiff upper lip since I my Ⓐemendation arrival here—sometimes flush, sometimes dead broke & in debt—have spent eight hundred dollars, & sent Mas Ⓐemendation two hundred—was strapped day before yesterday, but I’m on the upper side of the wheel again to-day, with twelve hundred dollars in the bank & out of debt—nine-tenths of it will be invested to-morrow, — & Ⓐemendationthen I’ll hold up & start home in a day or two. But through it all, I have kept strict watch over the Echo, & when money was to be spent in order to get into anybody’s good graces or gain a point in the way of information, I have spent it like a Lord, & trusted to luck to get even again. Oh, I tell you I’m on it. And mind, if you can’t sell your Echo at $3,000 a foot fifteen months from now, do you pack up your traps & go home—because then it will be proved that all promises fail in this country. As I told you before, let people imagine that you own about a thousand feet in it if they will. I’ve got Echo on my brain—that’s what’s the matter with me.1explanatory note
Mollie, my Dear, I enclose some more pictures for those girls, if they want them. All hearty—how are you?2explanatory note
The Echo Gold and Silver Mining Company had incorporated in San Francisco on 22 April 1863 (“Rush for Mining Claims Continued,” San Francisco Alta California, 23 Apr 63, 1). The mine was located a quarter mile north of Devil’s Gate near the road to Gold Hill, Nevada. Evidence that Clemens had at least a small share in the Echo is provided by the surviving fragment of a 16 April 1870 letter (CU-MARK) in which an unidentified correspondent in Grand Rapids, Michigan, reminded him: “Sometime in the latter part of April 1863. You and I were at the Boston Mine afterwards known as the Echo Mine situated and being in Gold Hill near the devil’s Gate. . . . it was on the occasion of my getting Fritz [J. S. Fretz, one of the Echo incorporators] to give you an order for ten (10) shares of the stock of that company. (The Echo).” Clemens’s 1863 letters to the San Francisco Morning Call suggest that he desired to puff the value of Echo stock, possibly because he was a shareholder. On 12 July he wrote that the dollar value of Echo’s “first-class ore goes clear out of sight into the thousands. The Echo is probably the richest mine in Gold Hill District” (SLC 1863, 1). One week later he again informed his readers of progress in the mine’s development and of its “very valuable stock” (SLC 1863, 1). Finally, on 8 August he reported of the Echo that “from five to seven tons of ore, ranging in value from $1,500 to $3,000 a ton, have been taken from it daily and shipped to the Bay, with occasionally a few hundred pounds of $10,000 rock. The yield now is in the neighborhood of ten tons a day” (SLC 1863, 1). This publicity may have helped inflate the market value of Echo stock, which in mid-July reached an asking price of $140 a share in San Francisco, with $100 bid. Within six months the stock was selling for $27 (“Stock Sales at the Bay Last Week,” Virginia City Evening Bulletin, 20 July 63, 2; “San Francisco Stock and Exchange Board, Jan. 11, 1864,” San Francisco Alta California, 12 Jan 64, 6). Clemens is not known to have made further mention of the Echo mine at this time. In May 1864, just prior to his departure from Virginia City for California, Echo miners uncovered a new “exceedingly rich streak” of gold-bearing rock, expected to assay “from $1,500 to $2,000 per ton” (“The Echo,” Virginia City Union, 31 May 64, 3). These potential riches were apparently never realized. Four years later, when writing to the Chicago Republican about Nevada claims that had proved to be “essentially and outrageously wildcat,” Clemens lamented: “Oh where is the wonderful Echo?” (SLC 1868, 2).
Neither Clemens’s enclosures nor “those girls” have been identified.
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK). For a facsimile of the MS, see Photographs and Manuscript Facsimilesclick to open letter. The MS consists of a half sheet of thin blue-lined off-white laid paper, 8¼ by 10⅝ inches (20.9 by 27 cm), inscribed on both sides in black ink, now faded to brown. At the top of the first page Paine wrote ‘1863’ in pencil.
L1 , 258–259.
probably Moffett Collection; see p. 462.