The matter of my book is pushed and crowded upon me every day. All I have to do to make money if all else fails is to turn clown and publish a book. I can get all the money I want. Many men with their pockets overflowing would almost turn them wrong side out for the sake of having a paragraph in the book about themselves, when if I were sick and destitute and not likely to print a book would not give me a single dollar. I am beginning to receive short histories of what this man and what that man did on certain trying occasions, for it is thought that my book will give all that has ever happened on the Pacific Coast. Yesterday I received an account from the head man of Wells, Fargo & Co. and this Coast of how he crossed the mountains in some big storm. I have not read it yet, but I have no doubt I might make a hero of him and not half try. Before trying however I think I should get his check for about $500 worth of the books, which is a good way of securing the success of a “work of merit” in these desperate days. In case I start in on a book I shall go after the rich men of this Coast for enough to make me safe and then shall make them print the book and give me all of the profits of it. There is no use of doing things by halves. If they are bound to have a book I will give them a book—red-hot. I want to be in a position to snap my fingers at the critics who are sure to go after me and my book and to have money to hire newspapers to let me give the critics as good as they send.

I have written to Mark Twain about a publisher for my book and about the whole business. I expect an answer shortly. Meantime A. L. Bancroft & Co., of San Francisco are anxious to either publish the book or to have the management of its sale on this coast. I shall give them no answer till after hearing from Mark. . . . I have not yet finished a single sketch for the book, though I am getting the material together and doing what I can toward it when I can spare time from the book I am now engaged upon. Two books and the local columns of the paper is a big job to have on hand at one and the same time. . . . Although to be in paper covers, it is likely to be quite a book. I have finished the underground regions of the mines and am about done with the mills and processes by which the silver is extracted from the ores. I have yet to write a description of the “bonanza mines” and an account of the discovery and early history of the Comstock, with something of the present appearance of Virginia City, etc. We expect to print 10,000 the first edition. It will be a big help toward selling the second book—the sketches—as I put in a little something pleasant wherever I can, dry as is the subject. I think I should call it “The Big Bonanza.”