To
William Wright (Dan De Quille)
15 July 1864 • San Francisco, Calif.
(MS, damage emended: CU-BANC, UCCL 00084)
Occidental,1 S F, 15th.
Dear Dan:
Tell Dawson2 to stir his old stumps & send me that money now if he possibly can. I have almost got that old debt of mine cleared up, & with his assistance & my wages, I can finish the job now. Don’t you fail to tell him.
Steve & I have moved our lodgings. The Steve did not tell his folks he had moved, & the other day his father3 went to our room, & finding it locked, he hunted up the old landlady ([Frenchwoman],) & asked her where those young men were. She [in bottom margin: (over] didn’t know who he was, & she got her gun off without mincing matters. Said she—“They are gone, thank God—& I hope I may never see them again. I did not know anything about them, or they never should have entered this house. Do you know, Sir, ([dropper ]her voice to a ghastly confidential tone,) they were a couple of [desperate ]characters from Washoe—gamblers & murd[er]ers of the very worst description! I never saw such a countenance as the smallest one4 had on him. They just took the premises, & lorded it over everything—they didn’t care a snap for the rules of the house. One night when they were carrying on in their room with some more roughs, my husband went up to remonstrate with them, & that small man told him to take his head out of the door (pointing a revolver,) because he wanted to shoot in that direction. O, I never saw such creatures. Their room was never vacant long enough to be cleaned up—one of them always went to bed at dark & got up at sunrise, & the other went to bed at [sunrise ]& got up at dark—& if the chamber-man disturbed them they would just set up in bed & level a pistol at him & tell him to get scarce! They used to bring loads of beer bottles up at midnight, & get drunk, & shout & fire off their pistols in the room, & [ thei throw ]their empty bottles out of the window at the Chinamen below. You’d hear them count ‘One—two—three—fire!’ & then you’d [hear ]the [bottles ]crash on the China roofs & see the poor Chinamen scatter like flies. O, it was dreadful! They kept a nasty foreign sword & any number of revolvers & bowie [knives ]in their room, & I know that small one must have murdered [ los lots ]of people. They always had women run[n]ing to their room—sometimes in broad daylight—bless you, they didn’t care. They had no respect for God, man, or the devil. Yes, Sir, they are gone, & the good [ g God ]was kind to me when He sent them away!”
There, now—what in the hell is the use of wearing away a [lifetime ]in building up a good name, if it is to be blown away at a breath by an ignorant foreigner who is ignorant of the pleasant little customs that adorn & beautify a state of high [ s civilization]?
The old man told Steve all about it in his dry, unsmiling way, & Steve laughed himself sick over it.
Walter Leman sails for the Sandwich Islands tomorrow—just going for recreation.5
Give my great love to Joe & Put6 & all the boys—& write, you bilk.
But don’t I want to go ‸to‸ Asia, or somewhere—Oh no, I guess not. I have got the “Gypsy” only in a mild form. It will kill me yet, though.
Yr old friend
Sam
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
One day some imp induced Mark Twain to put on a
pair of boxing gloves, and with them all the airs of a knight of the
prize ring. He had no thought of boxing with any one. Having seen
more or less sparring on the stage, a good deal of amateur boxing,
and probably one or two prize fights, Mark had got some of the
motions. No sooner had he the gloves on than he began capering about
the hall. Dawson observed his antics with astonishment not unmixed
with awe. He evidently considered that they were made for his
special benefit and intimidation. Perhaps he may have thought that
he detected Mark regarding him interrogatively from beneath his
bushy brows at the end of each series of cabezal rotations. At all
events, in view of Mark’s movements of a supposed warlike
import, Dawson kept a wary eye on him; never once suspecting that
the ex-Mississippi pilot was merely making a bid for his admiration. Presently Mark squared off directly in front of
Dawson and began working his right like the piston of a steam
engine, at the same time stretching out his neck and gyrating his
curly pate in a very astonishing manner. Dawson took this to be a direct act of
defiance—a challenge to a trial of skill that could not
be ignored. Desperately, therefore—and probably not
without a secret chill of fear at his heart—Dawson drew
off and with full force planted a heavy blow squarely upon
Mark’s offered nose, the latter not making the least
movement toward a guard. The result was a “plentiful flow of claret” and a
nose “like an egg-plant,” which supposedly so
embarrassed Clemens that he accepted a reportorial assignment outside
Virginia City just “to get his nose out of town”
(William Wright 1893,
13–14). See also ET&S1, 357–58.
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L1, 302–305; Fender, 752, excerpts.
Provenance:see the previous commentary.
Emendations and textual notes:
Frenchwoman • French-|woman
dropper • [sic]
desperate • desper-|rate [hyphen over ‘r’]
sunrise • sun-|rise
thei throw • theirow [‘ro’ over ‘ei’]
hear • [he]ar [torn]
bottles • bo[t]tles [torn]
knives • knieves [‘v’ over ‘e’]
los lots • losts [‘t’ over ‘s’]
g God • [‘G’ over ‘g’]
lifetime •
l[
]fetime [torn]
s civilization • [‘c’ over ‘s’]
