There was no real organization, nobody obeyed orders, there was never a battle. They retreated, according to the tale of the humorist, at every sign of the enemy. In truth, this little band had plenty of stomach for fighting, despite its loose organization; and quite a number fought all through the war. Mark Twain is doubtless correct in the main, in his assertion that he has not given an unfair picture of the conditions prevailing in many of the militia camps in the first months of the war between the states. The men were raw and unseasoned, and even the leaders were lacking in the rudiments of military training and discipline. The situation was strange and unprecedented, the terrors were none the less real that they were imaginary. As Mark says, it took an actual collision with the enemy on the field of battle to change them from rabbits into soldiers. Young Clemens, according to his nephew's account, was first detailed to special duty on the river because of his knowledge acquired as a pilot; it was not long before he was captured and paroled. Again he was captured, this time sent to St. Louis, and imprisoned there in a tobacco warehouse. Fearing recognition and tragic consequences, perhaps courtmartial and death, should he, during the formalities of exchange, be recognized by the command in Grant's army which first captured him, he made his escape, abandoned the cause which he afterwards spoke of as “the rebellion,” and went west as secretary to his brother Orion, lately appointed Territorial Secretary of Nevada by the President.
A very credible and interesting biography of Mark Twain might be compiled from his own works; and Roughing it is full of autobiography of a coloured sort, though in the main correct. His joy in the prospect of that trip, the exciting details of the long journey, are all narrated with gusto and fine effect. In the “unique sinecure” of the office of private secretary, he found he had nothing to do and no salary; so after a short time—the fear of being recognized by Union soldiers and shot for breaking his parole still haunting him—he, and a companion, went off together on a fishing jaunt to Lake Tahoe. Everywhere he saw fortunes made in a moment. He fell a prey to the prevailing excitement and went mad like all the rest. Little wonder over the wild talk, when cartloads of solid silver bricks as large as pigs of lead were passing by every day before their very eyes. The wild talk grew more frenzied from day to day. And young Clemens yielded to no one in enthusiasm and excitement. For vividness or picturesqueness of expression none could vie with him. With three companions, he began “prospecting,” with the most indifferent success; and soon tiring of their situation, they moved on down to Esmeralda (now Aurora), on the other side of Carson City. Here new life seemed to inspire the party. What mattered it if they were in debt to the butcher—for did they not own thirty thousand feet apiece in the “richest mines on earth”! Who cared if their credit was not good with the grocer, so long as they revelled in mountains of fictitious wealth and raved in the frenzied cant of the hour over their immediate prospect of fabulous riches! But at last the practical necessities of living put a sudden damper on their enthusiasm. Clemens was forced at last to abandon mining, and go to work as a common labourer in a quartz mill, at ten dollars a week and board—after flour had soared to a dollar a pound and the rate on borrowed money had gone to eight per cent. a month. This work was very exhausting, and after a week Clemens asked his employer for an advance of wages. The employer replied that he was paying Clemens ten dollars a week, and thought that all he was worth. How much did he want? When Clemens replied that four hundred thousand dollars a month, and board, was all he could reasonably ask, considering the hard times, he was ordered off the premises! In after days, Mark only regretted that, in view of the arduous labours he had performed in that mill, he had not asked seven hundred thousand for his services!
After a time, Mark and his friend Higbie established their claim to a mine, became mad with excitement, and indulged in the wildest dreams for the future. Under the laws of the district, work of a certain character must be done upon the claim within ten days after location in order to establish the right of possession. Mark was called away to the bedside of a sick friend, Higbie failed to receive Mark's note, and the work was never done—each thinking it was being properly attended to by the other. On their return, they discovered that their claim was “re-located,” and that millions had slipped from their grasp! The very stars in their courses seemed to fight to force young Clemens into literature. Had Samuel Clemens become a millionaire at this time, it is virtually certain that there would have been no Mark Twain.
After one day more of heartless prospecting, Clemens “dropped in” at the wayside post-office. It was the hour of fate! A letter awaited him there. We cannot call it accident—it was the result of forces and events which had long been converging toward this end. Samuel Clemens began his career as an itinerant, tramping “jour” printer. He wrote for the papers on which he served as printer; and he actually read the matter he set up in type. By observation on his travels, by study of the writing of others, Clemens acquired information, knowledge of life, and ingenuity of expression. He hadn't served his ten—years' apprenticeship as a printer for nothing. In the process of setting up tons of good and bad literature, he had learned—half unconsciously—to appraise and to discriminate. In the same half-unconscious way, he was actually gaining some inkling of the niceties of style. After he began “learning the river,” Clemens once wrote a funny sketch about Captain Sellers which made a genuine “hit” with the officers on the boat. The sketch fell into the hands of the “river-editor” of the 'St. Louis Republican', found a place in that journal, and was widely copied throughout the West. On the strength of it, Clemens became a sort of river reporter, and from time to time published memoranda and comic squibs in the 'Republican'. That passion which a French critic has characterized as distinctively American, the passion for “seeing yourself in print,” still burned in Clemens, even during all the hardships of prospecting and milling. At intervals he sent from the mining regions of “Washoe,” as all that part of Nevada was then called, humorous letters signed “Josh” to the 'Daily Territorial Enterprise' of Virginia City, at that time one of the most progressive and wide—awake newspapers in the West.
The fateful letter which I have mentioned, contained an offer to Clemens from the proprietor of the 'Enterprise', of the position of city editor, at a salary of twenty-five dollars a week. To Clemens at this time, this offer came as a perfect godsend. Twenty-five dollars a week was nothing short of wealth, luxury. His enthusiasm oozed away when he reflected over his ignorance and incompetence; and he gloomily recalled his repeated failures. But necessity faced him; and opportunity knocks but once at every door. His doubts were speedily resolved; and he afterwards confessed that, had he been offered at that time a salary to translate the Talmud from the original Hebrew, he would unhesitatingly have accepted, despite some natural misgivings, and have tried to throw as much variety into it as he could for the money. It was to fill a vacancy, caused by the absence of Dan De Quille, the regular reporter, on a visit to “the States,” that Clemens was offered this position; but he retained it after De Quille returned. “Mark and I had our hands full,” relates De Quille, “and no grass grew under our feet. There was a constant rush of startling events; they came tumbling over one another as though playing at leap-frog. While a stage robbery was being written up, a shooting affray started; and perhaps before the pistol shots had ceased to echo among the surrounding hills, the firebells were banging out an alarm.” A record of the variegated duties of these two, found in an old copy of the Territorial Enterprise of 1863, bears the unmistakable hallmarks of Mark Twain. “Our duty is to keep the universe thoroughly posted concerning murders and street fights, and balls and theatres, and pack-trains, and churches, and lectures, and school-houses, and city military affairs, and highway robberies, and Bible societies, and hay wagons, and the thousand other things which it is within the province of local reporters to keep track of and magnify into undue importance for the instruction of the readers of a great daily newspaper. Beyond this revelation everything connected with these two experiments of Providence must for ever remain an impenetrable mystery.” An admirable picture of Mark Twain on his native heath, in the latter part of 1863, is given by Edward Peron Hingston, author of The Genial Showman, in the introduction to the English edition of The Innocents Abroad.
The fame of the Western humorist had already reached the ears of Hingston; and as soon as he reached Virginia City, he went to the office of the 'Territorial Enterprise' and asked to be presented to Mark Twain.
When he heard his name called by some one, Clemens called out:
“Pass the gentleman into my den. The noble animal is here.”
The noble animal proved to be “a young man, strongly built, ruddy in complexion, his hair of a sunny hue, his eyes light and twinkling, in manner hearty, and nothing of the student about him—one who looked as if he could take his own part in a quarrel, strike a smart blow as readily as he could say a telling thing, bluffly jolly, brusquely cordial, off-handedly good-natured.” The picture is detailed and vivid:
“Let it be borne in mind that from the windows of the newspaper office the American desert was visible; that within a radius of ten miles Indians were encamping amongst the sage—brush; that the whole city was populated with miners, adventurers, Jew traders, gamblers, and all the rough-and-tumble class which a mining town in a new territory collects together, and it will be readily understood that a reporter for a daily paper in such a place must neither go about his duties wearing light kid gloves, nor be fastidious about having gilt edges to his note-books. In Mark Twain I found the very man I had expected to see—a flower of the wilderness, tinged with the colour of the soil, the man of thought and the man of action rolled into one, humorist and hard-worker, Momus in a felt hat and jack-boots. In the reporter of the 'Territorial Enterprise' I became introduced to a Californian celebrity, rich in eccentricities of thought, lively in fancy, quaint in remark, whose residence upon the fringe of civilization had allowed his humour to develop without restraint, and his speech to be rarely idiomatic.”