To William Bowen
7 May 1866 • Island of Maui, Sandwich Islands
(MS facsimile: TxU, UCCL 00100)

Wailuku [ Pl Sugar ]Plantation 1866
Island of Maui, Sandwich Islands, May 7.

Dear Bill—

I have been mad at you so long that the old anger has about spent itself & I begin to feel friendly again. But you ought to have your d—d neck broken anyhow, my boy.1

I expected to be in the States long before this, but things fell out otherwise. I contracted with the Sacramento Union to go wherever they chose & correspond for a few months, & I had a sneaking notion that they would start me east—but behold how fallible is human judgment!—they sent me to the Sandwich Islands. I look for a recall by the next mail, though, because I have written them that I cannot go all over the eight inhabited islands of the group in less than five months & do credit to myself & them, & I don’t want to spend so much time. I have been here two months, & yet have only “done” the island of Oahu & part of this island of Maui, & by it is going to take me two weeks more to finish this one & at least a month to “do” the island of Hawaii & the great volcanoes—& by that time, surely, I can hear from them.

But I have had a gorgeous time of it so far. I wish you & Sam2 were here. We would sail from Island to island for a year & have a merry hell of a time. We would get more invitations from sea captains. Honolulu is a great stopping point for ships, & during the month I was there I was invited to go to every blamed place on the habitable globe, I think. The last was from the captain of a [ nic fine ]ship,—he was going round the world—& if either of you bilks had been here I would have thrown up my berth & gone with him.

I have seen a fellow here that you & I knew in Hannibal in childhood—named Martin—he was a carpenter; here he came here busted a year ago & called himself the Wizard of the East & gave a sleight of hand entertainment,—& it was the d—dest [ sli sleight ]of hand entertainment you ever heard of. He tried to shoot a pocket handkerchief into an a closed oyster-can, & he pretty nearly shot the d—d head off of a Kanaka spectator. None of his apparatus would work. He had a learned pig, ‸which he gave out could speak 7 languages,‸ too—a striped learned pig. He told me he caught that hog in the extinct crater of Haleakala, 10,000 feet above the level of the sea, where the son of a sea horse had been running wild for three generations; he brought him down here into the valley, shaved him close, painted stripes on him with [ id iodine], ‸& then greased him,‸ & advertised that he would give any person in the audience ten dollars ‸who‸ would come into the ring & catch the pig & hold him two minutes. A big brawny Kanaka & a gigantic Missourian each got the hog by a hind leg, & the brute held on, notwithstanding the grease, but the hog turned & bit a square meal out of the Kanaka & made him let go, & then started, & took the bold Missourian straight through the audience, squealing, & upsetting people & benches, & raising more hell, & scaring women to death, & broke for high ground on Haleakala, & neither he nor the Missourian were ever heard of afterwards—& Martin wasn’t for some time, for in the melee he took his little cash-box & “shoved.” He says he likes to live here, “because,” says he, “when I’m busted I can go through a Kanaka lord of the soil; & when I can’t do that, I can always rig a purchase to swindle one of them d—d Missionaries.” I am of the opinion that Mr Martin [ a is ]a brick.3

I wouldn’t write you so much about Martin, only I haven’t anything else to write about—except the islands, & that is cash, you know, & goes in the [“Union.”]

Give my regards to my Christian friends, ‸Sam & Bart especially‸ & drop me a line to San Francisco, “Care of Occidental Hotel.”4

Yr old friend

Sam L. Clemens.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 Bowen, who had served as a Union pilot during the Civil War, currently was a steamboat captain. He remained a captain until 1868, when he left the Mississippi and soon after went into the insurance business (Bowen data, captains’ file, MoSHi, PH in CU-MARK). Clemens’s anger may have been the residue of a disagreement he and Bowen had in early 1861, while they were piloting the Alonzo Child (see 11 and 12 May 62 to OC, n. 22). Possibly, however, his irritation was part of the “misunderstanding all around” concerning his 1861 loan to Bowen (see 25 Aug 66 to Bowen).

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2 Bowen’s younger brother.

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3 Daniel Martin’s stage name was “Martin the Wizard.” No details of his residence in Hannibal have been recovered: he does not appear in the censuses for 1840–60. In the early and mid-1860s, however, Martin lived and owned a saloon in Como, Nevada (near Carson City), performing there and also on the road. Clemens had visited Como, purpose unknown, from 4 to 7 March 1864, but there is no evidence that he saw Martin then. Following their encounter in the Sandwich Islands, the two men may have met in Virginia City in the second week of November 1866, while Clemens was staying there during his lecture tour of the area and Martin arrived en route to San Francisco (Doten 1973, 1:718–70 passim, esp. 763, 767, 2:849, 871–72, 903–4; “Martin the Wizard,” Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, 9 Nov 66, 3). Martin performed in Virginia City, but not until 13 November, the day after Clemens left. The Territorial Enterprise called his show—which featured “magic cups, rings and queer arrangements, performing pigeons, rabbits, and all that sort of thing”—“meritorious in the highest degree” and “unequaled” for “startling novelty and brilliant effect” (“Martin the Wizard,” 14 Nov 66, 3; “The Great Wizard,” 16 Nov 66, 3).

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4 Barton S. Bowen (b. 1829 or 1830, d. 1868 or 1869), elder brother of William (1836–93) and Samuel (1838?–78). He had preceded them as a Mississippi steamboat pilot and captain and was widely known for his heroism in preventing loss of life when the Garden City burned on 14 January 1855 (Lytle, 244; Way 1983, 177). Sobieski Jolly called him “that Prince of good Fellows . . . splendid Master and a No. 1 Pilot” (Jolly, no page). Bowen had assisted Clemens financially at the time of Henry Clemens’s fatal injury, and Clemens afterward served on boats piloted and captained by Bowen (see 18 June 58 to MEC, n. 3, and the Steamboat Calendar). Remarking in 1907 that Bowen had “stepped down a grade” from pilot when he became a captain, Clemens noted, “I never lost any part of my respect & affection for him on account of that retrogression; no, he was a high-minded, large-hearted man, & I hold him in undiminished honor to this day” (25–28 Feb 1907 to John B. Downing, CU-MARK).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

Photographic facsimile of MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin (TxU).

Previous publication: L1, 338–341; MTLBowen, 11–12.

Provenance:The University of Texas acquired the facsimile from Royden Burwell Bowen, son of William Bowen, about 1940 (MTLBowen, 10).

Emendations and textual notes:

Pl Sugar • [‘Su’ over ‘Pl’]

nic fine • [‘fine’ over doubtful ‘nic’]

sli sleight • slieight [‘e’ over ‘i’]

id iodine • idodine [‘o’ over ‘d’]

a is • [‘i’ over ‘a’]

“Union.” • [possibly italicized, but what might be an underscore appears more likely to be a crossbar mistakenly written by Clemens across ‘h’ in ‘Christian’ (340.7) in the line below, presumably under the momentary impression that it was a ‘t’]