To Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett
11 and 12 April 1863 • Virginia City, Nev. Terr.
(MS: NPV and CU-MARK, UCCL 00063)

‸P. S. I have just heard five pistol shots down street—as such things are in my line, I will go and see about it.‸

‸P. S. No 2—5 A. M.—The pistol did its work well—one man—a [ Mi Jackson ]County [ m Missourian], shot two of my friends, (police officers,) through the heart—both died within three minutes. Murderer’s name is John Campbell.‸ 1

Virginia, April 11.

My Dear Mother & Sister

It is very late at night, & I am writing in my room, which is not quite as large or as nice as the one I had at home. My board, washing & lodging cost me seventy-five dollars a month.

I have just received your letter, Ma, from Carson—the one in which you doubt my veracity about the tape worm, and also about statements I made in a letter to [you. That’s ]right. I don’t recollect what the statements were, but I suppose they were mining statistics. [in margin: Ma, write on whole letter sheets—is paper scarce in St Louis?] I have just finished writing up my report for the morning paper, and giving the Unreliable a column of advice about how to conduct himself in church,2 and now I will tell you a few more lies, while my hand is in. For instance, some of the boys made me a present of fifty feet in the East India G & S. M. Company, ten days ago.3 I was offered ninety-five dollars a foot for it, yesterday, in gold. I refused it—not because I think the claim is worth a cent, ‸for I don’t,‸ but because I had a curiosity to see how high it would go, before people find out how worthless it is. Besides, what if one mining claim does fool me?—I have got plenty more. I am not in a particular hurry to get rich. I suppose I couldn’t well help getting rich here some time or other, [ if I whether ]I wanted to or not. You folks do not believe in Nevada, and I am glad you don’t. Just keep on thinking so.

I was at the Gould & Curry mine, the other day, and they had two or three tons of choice rock piled up, which was valued at $20,000 a [ton. I ]gathered up a hat-full, ‸of chunks,‸ on account of their beauty as specimens—they don’t let everybody supply themselves so liberally. I send Mr. Moffett a little specimen ‸of it‸ for his cabinet. If you don’t know what the white stuff on it is, I must inform you that [ is it ]is purer silver than [ y minted ]coin. There is about as [much ]gold in it as there is silver, [but ]it is not visible. I will explain to you some day how to detect it.4

I suppose we are on the verge of war now. [If ]Orion assumes jurisdiction over Esmeralda county, [California] 5

[two MS pages (about 800 words) missing]

of great, dark, timbered chambers, with a lot of shapeless devils flitting about in the distance, with dim candles flickering in the gloom; and then [ should she could ]look far above her head, to the top of the shaft, and see a faint [little ]square of [daylight], apparently no bigger than one of the spots on a chess-board; or if she found nothing cheerful in these things, she could go to the express offices and see them ship two or three thousand pounds of silver bullion away on the coaches every day. I would show her a hundred proofs that in the course of ten years we shall make that blowing California sing almighty small.6 How I hate everything that looks, or tastes, or smells like California!—and how I hate everybody that loves the cursed State! Californians hate Missourians,—consequently I take great pains to let them public know that “Mark Twain” hails from there. I never let an opportunity slip to blow my horn for Missouri—you bet—as these rotten, lop-eared, [whopper-joawed], jack-legged California abscesses say—[ blast ] them! But I have struck it now—I can show Pamela something cheerful, in reality, [ if s when ]she comes out: we hang one of these scabby, putrefied Californians every now and then—she shall see one of them get his neck stretched. I hate those fellows worse than I hate a Chinaman.7

O, say, Ma, who was that girl—that sweetheart of mine [ wh you ]say got married, and her father gave her husband $100 (so you said, but I suppose you meant $100,000,)? It was [ Emma Ro Rowe, ]Emma Roe, wasn’t it? What in thunder did I want with her? [ Espec I mean], since she wouldn’t have had [ as me ]if I had asked her to? Let her slide—I don’t suppose her life has ever been, is now, or ever will be, any happier than mine.8

Remember me to Zeb, and Uncle Jim, and Aunt Ella, and Cousin Bettie, and tell the whole party to stay in St. Louis—it is such a slow, old fogy, [easy-going ]humbug of a town. And don’t forget to remember [me] to Mrs. Sexton and Margaret—has Margaret recovered from her illness? And be sure to remember me [ kid kindly ]to our Margaret at home.9

Yrs aff

Sam.

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 In the early morning hours of 12 April 1863, John Campbell murdered two policemen, Dennis McMahon and Thomas Reed. Clemens mentioned the double murder in “Horrible Affair,” published in the Territorial Enterprise sometime between 16 and 18 April (see ET&S1, 244–47).

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2 “Advice to the Unreliable on Church-Going” probably appeared in the Enterprise on 12 April (see ET&S1, 241–43). It was the latest installment in a continuing mock feud between Mark Twain and the Unreliable, Clement T. Rice, who was the local reporter for the Virginia City Union and a good friend. For Mark Twain’s other contributions to this feud, see ET&S1, passim.

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3 The East India Gold and Silver Mining Company was incorporated on 31 March 1863, claiming a capital stock of $550,000 divided into 1,100 shares. Among the incorporators were Clemens’s friends William M. Gillespie and Clement T. Rice, each of whom originally owned 100 shares. Company records indicate that Gillespie contributed 40 shares and Rice 10 shares to make up the gift to Clemens (East India Gold and Silver Mining Company documents, PH in CU-MARK, courtesy of Michael H. Marleau: certificate of incorporation, 31 Mar 63; trust deed, 31 Mar 63; power of attorney to Leonard M. Ferris, 4 Apr 63). The East India mine, located in the middle of C Street in Virginia City, turned out to be a “wildcat” claim—that is, a claim of dubious value (SLC 1868, 2). In chapter 44 of Roughing It Clemens acknowledged that the owners of such claims often gave reporters stock in exchange for publicity. East India stock, he recalled, “sold briskly although there was an ancient tunnel running directly under the claim and any man could go into it and see that it did not cut a quartz ledge or anything that remotely resembled one.” No Enterprise notice of the East India claim is extant, although Clemens may well have published one in return for his gift. Clement T. Rice probably wrote the following puff, which appeared in the Virginia City Union, the paper he worked for, on 2 April: “The East India Company (Waterloo ledge) yesterday produced some very rich gold-bearing rock. The gold stuck out in big flakes in many places” (Rice 1863, 4).

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4 Clemens apparently wrote the similar description of rich Gould and Curry ore which appeared in the Enterprise on 3 April (see ET&S1, 312).

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5 The Nevada-California boundary-line dispute (see 24 and 25 Apr 62 to OC, n. 8) had erupted into violence in February 1863, when officials of Roop (formerly Lake) County, Nevada, and Plumas County, California, took up arms over the issue of their respective jurisdictions along the disputed line. The war in Roop County brought the whole boundary matter to a crisis, with the primary issue being not the Roop County line, but whether Aurora was in Mono County, California, or Esmeralda County, Nevada. (There was no “Esmeralda county, California.”) In March 1863 Orion Clemens, acting governor while James W. Nye was in the East, announced that he would begin to organize Esmeralda County (including Aurora), appointing Nevada officials to replace the incumbent Mono County officers, immediately after the California legislature adjourned on 8 April. He hoped that the legislature would act to resolve the dispute in Nevada’s favor before that date. Governor Leland Stanford of California warned that if Nevada attempted “to include within its limits the thriving and important town of Aurora . . . together with some of the richest and most valuable mining localities,” the action would “pave the way for serious difficulties” (Stanford, 2:35). To this challenge the Enterprise responded on 3 April with a long editorial, which said in part:

California has shown an ungraciousness throughout, regarding this boundary question, which is not calculated to beget a very conciliatory spirit on our part. . . . If the California Legislature, through neglect or obstinacy, fail to make a satisfactory settlement, and invite a collision of jurisdiction, let us accept the issue. We have used quite enough supplication and conciliatory means. If we have any rights—which we begin to doubt—let us claim for them a decent respect. California would engorge our whole Territory if she could. We have submitted to enough insolence. Our people are tired of this aggression, and before yielding another foot of ground will raise the standard of The Summit Boundary or Blood. (“The Boundary Question Again,” Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, 3 Apr 63, clipping in Scrapbook 2:36, CU-MARK)

By 9 April Orion Clemens had decided to defer organizing Esmeralda County until sometime after 20 April, the rescheduled adjournment date of the California legislature. Although feelings remained high, in May a joint commission of California and Nevada surveyors was appointed to run a final boundary line. Partisans for both sides in Aurora remained in doubt until September, when the surveyors reached that area and determined, still amid some controversy, that it was in fact part of Nevada Territory. The boundary findings were formally accepted by the California legislature in April 1864 and by the Nevada state legislature in February 1865 (Angel 100–102, 401–3; Mack 1936, 398–406; Mack 1961 [bib00651], 33; Mack 1961 [bib00652], 85; Virginia City Territorial Enterprise: “Further of the Boundary Question,” 9 Apr 63, clipping in Scrapbook 2:37, CU-MARK; “The Boundary Line between California and Washoe,” 17 Sept 63, clipping in Scrapbook 2:78, CU-MARK).

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6 That is, Californians would be humbled, made to qualify or retract their boasts, or even be forced “to be silent or dumb” (OED, 9:529 [second page sequence]).

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7 Clemens’s distaste for California was not long-lived: in less than a month he and Clement T. Rice were to leave Virginia City to spend two months in San Francisco. His momentary antipathy is probably explained by the border dispute with California. Since this passage occurs in one manuscript fragment, while the allusion to being “on the verge of war” with California occurs in the other, it seems plausible, if not certain, that the two fragments belong to the same letter (see the textual apparatus for details). Clemens’s efforts to identify Mark Twain as a Missourian cannot now be documented, probably because so little of what he wrote for the Enterprise between February (when he first signed the name) and April 1863 survives.

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8 Emma Comfort Roe (1844–1904) was the daughter of John J. Roe (1809–70), long identified with St. Louis commerce as commission merchant, steamboat owner, meat packer, railroad magnate, banker, insurance executive, and one of the city’s wealthiest citizens. Clemens served on several boats—including the John J. Roe—in which Roe held an interest. On 26 August 1862 Emma Roe married John G. Copelin, who became her father’s business partner. For decades she took an active role in the social life of the city’s wealthiest class (“Death of a Prominent Citizen,” St. Louis Missouri Republican, 15 Feb 70, 2; Walter B. Stevens, 2:453–54; “Deaths,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 27 Mar 1904, sec. 5:2; Roe-Copelin marriage record, PH in CU-MARK).

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9 Among those to whom Clemens sends regards are Zeb Leavenworth, James and Ella Lampton, and the Moffett servant, Margaret. “Cousin Bettie” may be Elizabeth Ann Lampton (1823–1906), Jane Clemens’s first cousin (Selby, 106). Clemens’s ironic suggestion that “the whole party . . . stay in St. Louis—it is such a slow, old fogy, easy-going humbug of a town” echoes a note he had struck in the second paragraph (“You folks do not believe in Nevada, and I am glad you don’t. Just keep on thinking so”). The compatibility of these statements, which occur in separate manuscript fragments, strongly suggests that the fragments are from a single letter. The statements reinforce Clemens’s ironic argument, most of which is missing, that Pamela would find nothing of interest if she were to visit Nevada, except the inside of a mine shaft and the daily transporting of “two or three thousand pounds of silver bullion.”

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV) and Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK). The surviving MS is demonstrably incomplete. It consists of two folders of onionskin paper, both inscribed on the first and fourth sides only. Since the second of these folders begins with a page numbered ‘5’, a third (middle) folder containing pages 3 and 4 is presumed missing. The first extant folder, through the first two syllables of ‘California’ (247.32), is at Vassar; the second, ‘of great’ (247.34) to the end, is in the Mark Twain Papers.

Previous publication: L1, 246–250; MTB, 1:227–28, 229, 232, brief excerpts; MTL, 1:88–89, excerpt mistakenly combined with a paragraph from 18 Mar 64 to PAM; MTBus, 66, brief excerpt. All these excerpts are taken from the first folder; no publication is known of the missing middle folder or of the last one.

Provenance:see McKinney Family Papers, pp. 459–61. The MS in CU-MARK was probably acquired in the Moffett Collection; see p. 462.

Emendations and textual notes:

Mi Jackson • [‘Jac’ over doubtful ‘Mi’]

m Missourian • [‘M’ over ‘m’]

you. That’s • you.— |That’s

if I whether • [‘wh’ over ‘if I’]

ton. I • ton.— |I

is it • it s [‘t’ over ‘s’]

y minted • [‘m’ over partly formed ‘y’]

much • muhch [‘c’ over partly formed ‘h’]

but • but |but [first ‘but’ wiped out, possibly miswritten]

If • ◇◇ If [‘If’ over one or two characters, probably ‘If’ miswritten, possibly ‘O’]

California • Cali‐‖ [next page missing]

should she could • [‘she c’ over ‘should’]

little • littele [‘le’ over ‘e’]

daylight • day-|light

whopper-joawed • whopper-jo◇wed [‘aw’ over ‘o’ and a partly formed character]

blast • [underscore heavily traced over]

if s when • [‘wh’ over ‘if s’]

wh you • [‘y’ over ‘w’ and partly formed ‘h’]

Emma Ro Rowe, • [‘Row’ over ‘Ro’]

Espec I mean • [‘I mea’ over ‘Espec’]

as me • [‘m’ over ‘as’]

easy-going • easy-|going

kid kindly • kidndly [‘n’ over ‘d’]