The Complete Letters. Mark Twain

we can’t stand it to be noticed!

      I rode down with a gentleman to the Ocean House, the other day, to see the sea horses, and also to listen to the roar of the surf, and watch the ships drifting about, here, and there, and far away at sea. When I stood on the beach and let the surf wet my feet, I recollected doing the same thing on the shores of the Atlantic — and then I had a proper appreciation of the vastness of this country — for I had traveled from ocean to ocean across it. (Remainder missing.)

      Not far from Virginia City there are some warm springs that constantly send up jets of steam through fissures in the mountainside. The place was a health resort, and Clemens, always subject to bronchial colds, now and again retired there for a cure.

      A letter written in the late summer — a gay, youthful document — belongs to one of these periods of convalescence.

      To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

      No. 12 — $20 enclosed.

      STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, August 19, ‘63. MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER, — Ma, you have given my vanity a deadly thrust. Behold, I am prone to boast of having the widest reputation, as a local editor, of any man on the Pacific coast, and you gravely come forward and tell me “if I work hard and attend closely to my business, I may aspire to a place on a big San Francisco daily, some day.” There’s a comment on human vanity for you! Why, blast it, I was under the impression that I could get such a situation as that any time I asked for it. But I don’t want it. No paper in the United States can afford to pay me what my place on the “Enterprise” is worth. If I were not naturally a lazy, idle, good-for-nothing vagabond, I could make it pay me $20,000 a year. But I don’t suppose I shall ever be any account. I lead an easy life, though, and I don’t care a cent whether school keeps or not. Everybody knows me, and I fare like a prince wherever I go, be it on this side of the mountains or the other. And I am proud to say I am the most conceited ass in the Territory.

      You think that picture looks old? Well, I can’t help it — in reality I am not as old as I was when I was eighteen.

      I took a desperate cold more than a week ago, and I seduced Wilson (a Missouri boy, reporter of the Daily Union,) from his labors, and we went over to Lake Bigler. But I failed to cure my cold. I found the “Lake House” crowded with the wealth and fashion of Virginia, and I could not resist the temptation to take a hand in all the fun going. Those Virginians — men and women both — are a stirring set, and I found if I went with them on all their eternal excursions, I should bring the consumption home with me — so I left, day before yesterday, and came back into the Territory again. A lot of them had purchased a site for a town on the Lake shore, and they gave me a lot. When you come out, I’ll build you a house on it. The Lake seems more supernaturally beautiful now, than ever. It is the masterpiece of the Creation.

      The hotel here at the Springs is not so much crowded as usual, and I am having a very comfortable time of it. The hot, white steam puffs up out of fissures in the earth like the jets that come from a steamboat’s ‘scape pipes, and it makes a boiling, surging noise like a steamboat, too-hence the name. We put eggs in a handkerchief and dip them in the springs — they “soft boil” in 2 Minutes, and boil as hard as a rock in 4 minutes. These fissures extend more than a quarter of a mile, and the long line of steam columns looks very pretty. A large bath house is built over one of the springs, and we go in it and steam ourselves as long as we can stand it, and then come out and take a cold shower bath. You get baths, board and lodging, all for $25 a week — cheaper than living in Virginia without baths…..

      Yrs aft MARK. It was now the autumn of 1863. Mark Twain was twenty-eight years old. On the Coast he had established a reputation as a gaily original newspaper writer. Thus far, however, he had absolutely no literary standing, nor is there any evidence that he had literary ambitions; his work was unformed, uncultivated — all of which seems strange, now, when we realize that somewhere behind lay the substance of immortality. Rudyard Kipling at twenty-eight had done his greatest work.

      Even Joseph Goodman, who had a fine literary perception and a deep knowledge of men, intimately associated with Mark Twain as he was, received at this time no hint of his greater powers. Another man on the staff of the Enterprise, William Wright, who called himself “Dan de Quille,” a graceful humorist, gave far more promise, Goodman thought, of future distinction.

      It was Artemus Ward who first suspected the value of Mark Twain’s gifts, and urged him to some more important use of them. Artemus in the course of a transcontinental lecture tour, stopped in Virginia City, and naturally found congenial society on the Enterprise staff. He had intended remaining but a few days, but lingered three weeks, a period of continuous celebration, closing only with the holiday season. During one night of final festivities, Ward slipped away and gave a performance on his own account. His letter to Mark Twain, from Austin, Nevada, written a day or two later, is most characteristic. Artemus Ward’s letter to Mark Twain:

      AUSTIN, Jan. 1, ‘64. MY DEAREST LOVE, — I arrived here yesterday a.m. at 2 o’clock. It is a wild, untamable place, full of lionhearted boys. I speak tonight. See small bills.

      Why did you not go with me and save me that night? — I mean the night I left you after that dinner party. I went and got drunker, beating, I may say, Alexander the Great, in his most drinkinist days, and I blackened my face at the Melodeon, and made a gibbering, idiotic speech. God-dam it! I suppose the Union will have it. But let it go. I shall always remember Virginia as a bright spot in my existence, as all others must or rather cannot be, as it were.

      Love to Jo. Goodman and Dan. I shall write soon, a powerfully convincing note to my friends of “The Mercury.” Your notice, by the way, did much good here, as it doubtlessly will elsewhere. The miscreants of the Union will be batted in the snout if they ever dare pollute this rapidly rising city with their loathsome presence.

      Some of the finest intellects in the world have been blunted by liquor.

      Do not, sir — do not flatter yourself that you are the only chastely-humorous writer onto the Pacific slopes.

      Goodbye, old boy — and God bless you! The matter of which I spoke to you so earnestly shall be just as earnestly attended to — and again with very many warm regards for Jo. and Dan., and regards to many of the good friends we met.

      I am Faithfully, gratefully yours, ARTEMUS WARD. The Union which Ward mentions was the rival Virginia. City paper; the Mercury was the New York Sunday Mercury, to which he had urged Mark Twain to contribute. Ward wrote a second letter, after a siege of illness at Salt Lake City. He was a frail creature, and three years later, in London, died of consumption. His genius and encouragement undoubtedly exerted an influence upon Mark Twain. Ward’s second letter here follows. Artemus Ward to S. L. Clemens:

      SALT LAKE CITY, Jan. 21, ‘64. MY DEAR MARK, — I have been dangerously ill for the past two weeks here, of congestive fever. Very grave fears were for a time entertained of my recovery, but happily the malady is gone, though leaving me very, very weak. I hope to be able to resume my journey in a week or so. I think I shall speak in the Theater here, which is one of the finest establishments of the kind in America.

      The Saints have been wonderfully kind to me, I could not have been better or more tenderly nursed at home — God bless them!

      I am still exceedingly weak — can’t write any more. Love to Jo and Dan, and all the rest. Write me at St. Louis.

      Always yours, ARTEMUS WARD. If one could only have Mark Twain’s letters in reply to these! but they have vanished and are probably long since dust. A letter which he wrote to his mother assures us that he undertook to follow Ward’s advice. He was not ready, however, for serious literary effort. The article, sent to the Mercury, was distinctly of the Comstock variety; it was accepted, but it apparently made no impression, and he did not follow it up.

      For one thing, he was just then too busy reporting the Legislature at Carson City and responding to social demands. From having been a scarcely considered unit during the early days of his arrival in Carson Mark Twain had attained a high degree of importance in the little Nevada capital. In the Legislature he was a power; as correspondent for the Enterprise