THE STAGECOACH
By Mark Twain
Before the days of the railroad, the lumbering, horse-drawn stagecoach was the general vehicle used for cross-country passenger travel. Following the Civil War, the brother of Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) was appointed Territorial Secretary of Nevada. Samuel accompanied his brother as private secretary. The journey was made largely in a stagecoach, the inconveniences of which are whimsically set forth in the following extract from Twain's Roughing It.
As the sun went down and the evening chill came on,
we made preparation for bed. We stirred up the
hard leather letter sacks, and the knotty canvas bags of
printed matter (knotty and uneven because of projecting
ends and corners of magazines, boxes, and books). We 5
stirred them up and redisposed them in such a way as to
make our bed as level as possible. And we did improve
it, too, though after all our work it had an upheaved
and billowy look about it, like a little piece of a stormy
sea. Next we hunted up our boots from odd nooks among 10
the mail bags where they had settled, and put them on.
Then we got down our coats, vests, pantaloons, and heavy
woolen shirts, from the arm loops where they had been
swinging all day, and clothed ourselves in them—for,
there being no ladies either at the stations or in the coach, 15
and the weather being hot, we had looked to our comfort
by stripping to our underclothing at nine o'clock in the
morning. All things being now ready, we stowed the uneasy
Dictionary where it would lie as quiet as possible and
placed the water canteen and pistols where we could find 20
them in the dark. Then we smoked a final pipe and
swapped a final yarn; after which we put the pipes, tobacco,
and bag of coin in snug holes and caves among the mail
bags, and then fastened down the coach curtains all around,
and made the place as "dark as the inside of a cow," as 5
the conductor phrased it in his picturesque way. It was
certainly as dark as any place could be—nothing was even
dimly visible in it. And finally we rolled ourselves up like
silkworms, each person in his own blanket, and sank peacefully
to sleep. 10
Whenever the stage stopped to change horses we would
wake up, and try to recollect where we were—-and succeed—and
in a minute or two the stage would be off again,
and we likewise. We began to get into country now,
threaded here and there with little streams. These had 15
high, steep banks on each side, and every time we flew
down one bank and scrambled up the other, our party
inside got mixed somewhat. First we would all be down
in a pile at the forward end of the stage, nearly in a sitting
posture, and in a second we would shoot to the other end 20
and stand on our heads. And we would sprawl and kick,
too, and ward off ends and corners of mail bags that came
lumbering over us and about us; and as the dust rose
from the tumult, we would all sneeze in chorus, and the
majority of us would grumble, and probably say some hasty25
thing, like, "Take your elbow out of my ribs!—can't you
quit crowding?"
Every time we avalanched from one end of the stage to
the other, the Unabridged Dictionary would come too;
and every time it came it damaged somebody. One trip 30
it "barked" the Secretary's elbow; the next trip it hurt
me in the stomach; and the third it tilted Bemis's nose
up till he could look down his nostrils—he said. The
pistols and coin soon settled to the bottom, but the pipes,
pipestems, tobacco, and canteens clattered and floundered
after the Dictionary every time it made an assault on us,
and aided and abetted the book by spilling tobacco in 5
our eyes and water down our backs.
Still, all things considered, it was a very comfortable
night. It wore gradually away, and when at last a cold,
gray light was visible through the puckers and chinks in
the curtains, we yawned and stretched with satisfaction, 10
shed our cocoons, and felt that we had slept as much as was
necessary. By and by, as the sun rose up and warmed the
world, we pulled off our clothes and got ready for breakfast.
We were just pleasantly in time, for five minutes afterward
the driver sent the weird music of his bugle winding over15
the grassy solitudes, and presently we detected a low hut
or two in the distance. Then the rattling of the coach, the
clatter of our six horses' hoofs, and the driver's crisp commands,
awoke to a louder and stronger emphasis, and we
went sweeping down on the station at our smartest speed. 20
It was fascinating—that old Overland stagecoaching.
We jumped out in undress uniform. The driver tossed
his gathered reins out on the ground, gaped and stretched
complacently, drew off his heavy buckskin gloves with
great deliberation and insufferable dignity—taking not 25
the slightest notice of a dozen solicitous inquiries after his
health, and humbly facetious and flattering accostings, and
obsequious tenders of service, from five or six hairy and
half-civilized station keepers and hostlers who were nimbly
unhitching our steeds and bringing the fresh team out of the 30
stables—for in the eyes of the stage driver of that day,
station keepers and hostlers were a sort of good-enough low
creatures, useful in their place and helping to make up a
world, but not the kind of beings which a person of distinction
could afford to concern himself with; while on the
contrary, in the eyes of the station keeper and the hostler,
the stage driver was a hero—a great and shining dignitary; 5
the world's favorite son, the envy of the people, the observed
of the nations.
When they spoke to him they received his insolent
silence meekly and as being the natural and proper
conduct of so great a man; when he opened his lips 10
they all hung on his words with admiration (he never
honored a particular individual with a remark, but addressed
it with a broad generality to the horses, the stables,
the surrounding country, and the human underlings); when
he discharged a facetious insulting personality at a hostler, 15
that hostler was happy for the day; when he uttered his
one jest—old as the hills, coarse, profane, witless, and inflicted
on the same audience, in that same language, every
time his coach drove up there—the varlets roared, and
slapped their thighs, and swore it was the best thing they'd 20
ever heard in all their lives. And how they would fly
around when he wanted a basin of water, a gourd of the same,
or a light for his pipe!—but they would instantly insult
a passenger if he so far forgot himself as to crave a favor
at their hands. They could do that sort of insolence as 25
well as the driver they copied it from—for, let it be borne
in mind, the Overland driver had but little less contempt
for his passengers than he had for his hostlers.
The hostlers and station keepers treated the really
powerful conductor of the coach merely with the best 30
of what was their idea of civility, but the driver was the
only being they bowed down to and worshiped. How
admiringly they would gaze up at him in his high seat as
he gloved himself with lingering deliberation, while some
happy hostler held the bunch of reins aloft and waited
patiently for him to take it! And how they would bombard
him with glorifying ejaculations as he cracked his long whip 5
and went careering away.
The station buildings were long, low huts, made of sun-dried,
mud-colored bricks, laid up without mortar (adobes,
the Spaniards call these bricks, and Americans shorten it
to 'dobies). The roofs, which had no slant to them worth 10
speaking of, were thatched and then sodded, or covered
with a thick layer of earth, and from this sprang a pretty
rank growth of weeds and grass. It was the first time we
had ever seen a man's front yard on top of his house. The
buildings consisted of barns, stable room for twelve or 15
fifteen horses, and a hut for an eating room for passengers.
This latter had bunks in it for the station keeper and a hostler
or two. You could rest your elbow on its eaves, and
you had to bend in order to get in at the door. In place
of a window there was a square hole about large enough 20
for a man to crawl through, but this had no glass in it.
There was no flooring, but the ground was packed hard.
There were no shelves, no cupboards, no closets. In a
corner stood an open sack of flour, and nestling against its
base were a couple of black and venerable tin coffeepots,25
a tin teapot, a little bag of salt, and a side of bacon.
By the door of the station keeper's den, outside, was a
tin washbasin, on the ground. Near it was a pail of water
and a piece of yellow bar soap, and from the eaves hung a
hoary blue-woolen shirt, significantly—but this latter was 30
the station keeper's private towel, and only two persons
in all the party might venture to use it—the stage driver
and the conductor. The latter would not, from a sense of
decency; the former would not, because he did not choose
to encourage the advances of a station keeper. We had
towels—in the valise; they might as well have been in
Sodom and Gomorrah. 5
We (and the conductor) used our handkerchiefs, and
the driver his pantaloons and sleeves. By the door, inside,
was fastened a small old-fashioned looking-glass
frame, with two little fragments of the original mirror
lodged down in one corner of it. This arrangement afforded 10
a pleasant double-barreled portrait of you when you
looked into it, with one half of your head set up a couple
of inches above the other half. From the glass frame hung
the half a comb by a string—but if I had to describe that
patriarch or die, I believe I would order some sample 15
coffins. It had come down from Esau and Samson, and
had been accumulating hair ever since—along with
certain impurities. In one corner of the room stood three
or four rifles and muskets, together with horns and pouches
of ammunition. 20
The station men wore pantaloons of coarse country-woven
stuff, and into the seat and the inside of the
legs were sewed ample additions of buckskin to do duty
in place of leggings when the man rode horseback—so
the pants were half dull blue and half yellow, and 25
unspeakably picturesque. The pants were stuffed into
the tops of high boots, the heels whereof were armed with
great Spanish spurs whose little iron clogs and chains
jingled with every step. The man wore a huge beard and
mustachios, an old slouch hat, a blue-woolen shirt, no 30
suspenders, no vest, no coat; in a leathern sheath in his
belt, a great long "navy" revolver (slung on right side,
hammer to the front), and projecting from his boot a horn-handled
bowie knife. The furniture of the hut was neither
gorgeous nor much in the way. The rocking-chairs and
sofas were not present and never had been, but they were
represented by two three-legged stools, a pine-board bench5
four feet long, and two empty candle boxes. The table
was a greasy board on stilts, and the tablecloth and napkins
had not come—and they were not looking for them, either.
A battered tin platter, a knife and fork, and a tin pint cup,
were at each man's place, and the driver had a queen's-ware 10
saucer that had seen better days. Of course this
duke sat at the head of the table.
There was one isolated piece of table furniture that bore
about it a touching air of grandeur in misfortune. This was
the caster. It was German silver and crippled and rusty, 15
but it was so preposterously out of place there that it
was suggestive of a tattered exiled king among barbarians,
and the majesty of its native position compelled respect
even in its degradation. There was only one cruet left,
and that was a stopperless, fly-specked, broken-necked 20
thing, with two inches of vinegar in it and a dozen preserved
flies with their heels up and looking sorry they
had invested there.
The station keeper upended a disk of last week's bread,
of the shape and size of an old-time cheese, and carved some 25
slabs from it which were as good as Nicholson pavement,
and tenderer.
He sliced off a piece of bacon for each man, but only the
experienced old hands made out to eat it, for it was condemned
army bacon which the United States would not feed 30
to its soldiers in the forts, and the stage company had
bought it cheap for the sustenance of their passengers and
employees. We may have found this condemned army
bacon further out on the plains than the section I am locating
it in, but we found it—there is no gainsaying that.
Then he poured for us a beverage which he called slumgullion
and it is hard to think he was not inspired when 5
he named it. It really pretended to be tea, but there was
too much dishrag, and sand, and old bacon rind in it to
deceive the intelligent traveler. He had no sugar and no
milk—not even a spoon to stir the ingredients with.
We could not eat the bread or the meat, or drink the 10
"slumgullion." And when I looked at that melancholy
vinegar cruet, I thought of the anecdote (a very, very old
one, even at that day) of the traveler who sat down at a
table which had nothing on it but a mackerel and a pot
of mustard. He asked the landlord if this was all. The 15
landlord said:
"All! Why, thunder and lightning, I should think
there was mackerel enough there for six."
"But I don't like mackerel."
"Oh—then help yourself to the mustard." 20
—Roughing It.
1. How much of this selection is given over to a description of actual travel inside a stagecoach? To what is the remainder devoted?
2. Re-read only the description of the night's traveling and decide which parts of it are most humorous. Why are they funny?
3. Describe the driver. Make a sketch of him.
4. How much of the central paragraph, page 257, is serious description? What parts of it are humorous? Test your answer by reading the paragraph with the humor omitted.
5. Much of Twain's humor depends on an occasional single sentence or a startling word. Prove or disprove this statement.
6. Report fully on Samuel L. Clemens's life. If possible, read his Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.