1 Henry Goode Blasdel (1825–1900), originally from Indiana, had come to Virginia City in 1860, after eight years as a miner, farmer, and merchant in California. His Nevada mining interests extended as far as Aurora and included, in the Virginia district, the construction of the Empire and Hoosier State mills and the superintendency of the Potosi and the Hale and Norcross mines. On 8 November 1864, eight days after Nevada was admitted to the Union, Blasdel was elected its first state governor. He was reelected in 1866, serving through 1870. Clemens’s designation of him here as “Capt” has not been explained; the title may have been a relic of Blasdel’s former connection with the steamboat business in Aurora, Indiana (DAB, 2:358).

2 Orion Clemens never became a candidate for senatorial office. It was generally assumed that he would be chosen secretary of state in the election of 8 November 1864, particularly since he had won that office in the voided election of 19 January 1864 (see 2? Jan 64 to JLC, n. 4). Unfortunately, as Samuel Clemens later recalled, Orion

The Republican candidate for secretary of state, elected in November 1864, was Chauncey N. Noteware. Orion was elected to the state assembly in November 1865 and served from 1 January to 1 March 1866 (Andrew J. Marsh, 694 n. 296; Angel, 87, 529; Journal of the Assembly, passim).

3 Clemens had lost the security of his weekly salary from the San Francisco Morning Call, having left that paper’s employ on or about 10 October (see CofC, 23). He later explained: “I neglected my duties and became about worthless, as a reporter for a brisk newspaper. And at last one of the proprietors took me aside, with a charity I still remember with considerable respect, and gave me an opportunity to resign my berth and so save myself the disgrace of a dismissal” (Roughing It, chapter 58). George E. Barnes, an editor as well as one of the proprietors of the Call, remembered that Clemens, “although at the time a good general writer and correspondent, . . . made but an indifferent reporter. He only played at itemizing.” He “parted from THE CALL people on the most friendly terms, when it was found necessary to make the local department more efficient, admitting his reportorial shortcomings and expressing surprise they were not sooner discovered” (Barnes, 1). Clemens’s only source of income now was the Californian, which, according to the previous two letters, paid him either $12.00 or $12.50 per article.

4 Samuel G. Martin was the foreman at the printing office of the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise and the first president of the Washoe Typographical Union, organized in May 1863 (Kelly 1863, 256; Doten 1973, 3:2251). The mine he was watching for Clemens was the Hale and Norcross.