II
NEWS-GATHERING WITH MARK TWAIN.
Alfred Doten's son gives the following account of a reporting trip made by his father and Mark Twain, when the two were on Comstock papers:
My father and Mark Twain were once detailed to go over to Como and write up some new mines that had been discovered over there. My father was on the Gold Hill News. He and Mark had not met before, but became promptly acquainted, and were soon calling each other by their first names.
They went to a little hotel at Carson, agreeing to do their work there together next morning. When morning came they set out, and suddenly on a corner Mark stopped and turned to my father, saying:
"By gracious, Alf! Isn't that a brewery?"
"It is, Mark. Let's go in."
They did so, and remained there all day, swapping yarns, sipping beer, and lunching, going back to the hotel that night.
The next morning precisely the same thing occurred. When they were on the same corner, Mark stopped as if he had never been there before, and sand:
"Good gracious, Alf! Isn't that a brewery?"
"It is, Mark. Let's go in."
So again they went in, and again stayed all day.
This happened again the next morning, and the next. Then my father became uneasy. A letter had come from Gold Hill, asking him where his report of the mines was. They agreed that next morning they would really begin the story; that they would climb to the top of a hill that overlooked the mines, and write it from there.
But the next morning, as before, Mark was surprised to discover the brewery, and once more they went in. A few moments later, however, a man who knew all about the mines—a mining engineer connected with them—came in. He was a godsend. My father set down a valuable, informing story, while Mark got a lot of entertaining mining yarns out of him.
Next day Virginia City and Gold Hill were gaining information from my father's article, and entertainment from Mark's story of the mines.