(Twain graphic by Roger McKay)

In 2010 I wrote, produced and directed a show I had long dreamed of, presenting favorite stories from my favorite Mark Twain book “Roughing It” in a theatrical setting. I managed to cast a remarkable actor (Mark Erickson) willing to personify Twain and memorize a script over 10,000 words long. Mark got himself a white suit and went to work inhabiting the oeuvre of perhaps America’s first stand-up comedian and certainly its best-known and best-loved writer. Five musicians (Ned Heavenrich, Randy Weese, Dinah Urell, Hobe Kytr, and Ray Raihala) provided appropriate musical interludes from the rich catalog of American frontier songs and ballads, as “Roughing It” is a somewhat embroidered account of Twain’s early years of adventuring out west in 1861-1867. In those years he managed to avoid the Civil War, dabble in gold and silver prospecting, get his first job in journalism as a reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, and launch his career as a public lecturer with the now-famous handbill which read: “Doors open at 7:30. The trouble will begin at 8.”

The script that follows, except for obvious asides and occasional references to modern times, is all extracted — and yes, heavily condensed by me — from “Roughing It”. Twain’s writing style tends to be verbose in the extreme, and on stage you simply do not have that kind of time to tell a story. My goal was to tell as many stories as possible in Twain’s authentic voice, and we managed about a dozen. I have appended 4 more of my favorites that didn’t make the cut but deserve to be heard. Occasional [bracketed] stage directions will remind you that you are reading a script.

Of course there is the book itself. If you haven’t read it, I hope that perusing some of this will spur you to sit down with “Roughing It” where you will find the whole glorious panorama, the dawn of Twain’s career as the rascal dean of American letters.

Our show ran for two weekends in October 2010 at the Netel Grange where I had produced six other shows in the 1990s, coinciding with both the Grange hall’s 100th birthday and the 100th anniversary of Twain’s death in 1910. This milestone made it legally possible to publish the last body of Twain’s writings that had been withheld at his request, referred to in the opening monologue delivered by our “Twain” as he stumbles onstage clutching a cigar and blinking at the bright lights.

ACT ONE

OPENING MONOLOGUE

My name is Sam Clemens — most of you know me as Mark Twain — and as of this April 21st, I have been dead for a hundred years. Some people are sad about this, some are happy, and for some I fear it has not been nearly long enough. Prominent among the happy are my publishers, who are now free to set before you certain writings of mine that I would not let them publish, not only in my lifetime but for one hundred years after my demise. In case this news might seem a little stale after a hundred years, they of course promise you a generous helpin’ of depravity and scandal in hopes that you will buy one of these over-priced volumes. 

I have in front of me one of the early press releases on the subject: [reads from a paper] “Some 400 pages are devoted to his relationship with Isabel Lyon, who became his secretary after the death of his wife in 1904, and who Twain calls a ‘slut,’ so close to Twain that she once bought him an electric vibrating sex toy.” The article goes on to promise “…things that he’d never said about anyone in print before. It really is 400 pages of bile.”

I am reliably informed that nowadays this is the very best kind of publicity you can get. Back in my time, this sort of attention was not the best. Not that people wouldn’t flock to read such things, don’t be ridiculous, but back then publishers were not permitted to print such material and would be jailed or driven out of business if they tried. 

You may not know it, but my wonderful wife Livvy was my only editor until her death. She went over every one of my manuscripts word by word, and if a word offended her sensibilities, I took it out. That she managed to do this without completely destroyin’ my efforts to write in the people’s voice, is a tribute to her intellect, her heart, and her sound judgment. She would not have allowed any tales of sluts and electric vibratin’ sex toys, and indeed I don’t think I had any to tell before she died. [reflects, then bitterly] By then I was old, lonely, angry with God, [pause, then brightens] but I was also always fascinated by the latest technology…  Anyway, if you’re interested in 400 pages of bile, the book is out this fall and might be just the thing to stimulate your digestion.

Now to the business at hand. Out here in the ether where I now reside, we float around at will, movin’ backwards and forwards in time, revisitin’ the best and worst times of our lives. We are now able to enjoy the brandy and cigars without the need to stick around for the hangovers and the hackin’ cough of tomorrow. It’s simply marvelous I tell you, what the Good Book promised and so much more. After a recent performance, a young gentleman with an alarming haircut came up to me and remarked, “Man, it’s like you can TIVO your life and fast-forward through the commercials!”  Now I don’t know what the hell he was talking about….but maybe you do.

So here’s what we have in mind for the evening. I’ve managed to round up a few of my pals from Virginia City, Nevada back in the 1860s. We’re gonna give you a taste of the adventures we had and the ruckus we made in one of the wildest boom towns ever in the history of mankind, and at the same time spare you the blazin’ heat, the chokin’ alkali dust, and the occasional bullet in the brisket. These folks know how to have a good time and turn a good tune, and I trust you will walk away from this hall tonight with a song in your heart, a smile on your face, and all your parts and organs in order and un-perforated.

[Song: “Home on the Range”] 

DEPARTURE

In 1861 I was 25 years old. I had been makin’ my own way since I was 14, most recently as a Mississippi river boat pilot until the Civil War erupted and shut down traffic on the river, Horace Greeley was tellin’ America “Go west young man, go west!” and my older brother Orion had just wrangled a political appointment as Secretary to the Governor of the Nevada Territory. With salary of eighteen hundred dollars a year and the title of “Mr. Secretary,” his new position had an air of imposin’ grandeur. I was young and ignorant, and I envied my brother. He was gonna travel! [speeds excitedly through the next] Soon he would be hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away, in the mountains and deserts of the Far West. He would see buffaloes and Indians and prairie dogs and antelopes and have all kinds of adventures, and maybe get hanged or scalped, and have ever such a fine time — and write home and tell us all about it and be a he-ro. In the afternoons, he would wander into the hills and pick up two or three buckets of gold and silver nuggets and become rich, and return home and talk matter-of-factly about San Francisco and rattlesnakes and shootouts on Main Street as if it was nothin’ of any consequence. [slower] Oh how I suffered in contemplatin’ his happiness! And so, when he offered me, the sublime position of “Private Secretary” under him, I had nothin’ more to desire, my contentment was complete. 

We purchased some sturdy clothing suitable for frontier wear, and I armed myself with a pitiful little Smith & Wesson seven-shooter that carried a ball the size of a homeopathic pill — it took the whole seven to make a proper dose for an adult. It had one important safety feature — I could not hit anything with it. We booked our passage in a stage coach and lit out for the territories!

A few days out we saw our first specimen of an animal known as the “jackass rabbit”. He is like any rabbit, exceptin’ he is twice as big, has longer legs, and the most preposterous ears that were ever mounted on any creature but a jackass. When he is sittin’ there quiet, thinkin’ about his sins, his ears can be seen pro-ject-ing above the vegetation, but any unusual noise will scare him nearly to death, and then he tilts his ears back, straightens himself out like a yardstick, and scatters the miles behind him with eeeeasy indifference. One day we startled one of these critters with our revolvers and he left for San Francisco at a speed which can only be described as a flash and a vanish!

Soon after this we encountered our first coyote. The coyote is always hungry, he is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest of creatures despise him, even the fleas would desert him if a tricycle became available. Like the jackass rabbit, his specialty is escape. Now if you send a fast dog after him, the coyote will go swingin’ gently off in that deceitful trot of his, and every little while he will cast a backward smile over his shoulder that will fill that dog entirely full of encouragement and hope. And all this time the dog is only about 20 feet behind the coyote and cannot understand why it is that he can not get any closer to save his life. Next he notices he is getting’ fagged out, and that the coyote actually has to slacken speed a little to keep from runnin’ away from him, and that makes him mad, and he begins to strain and weep and swear and kick up the dust higher than ever. Well this little spurt finds him now about six feet behind his enemy, and about 2 miles from his friends. And then — in the instant that a wild new hope is lightin’ up his face, the coyote turns, smiles blandly upon him one more time, and then there is a whoosh-ing sound like the sudden splittin’ of a long crack through the atmosphere, and behold — that dog is all at once solitary and alone in the midst of a vaaaast solitude. 

The dog’s tail will hang at half-mast for a week after that, and when future opportunities for coyote pursuit present themselves, he is likely to turn away and remark to himself, “I do not want a piece of that pie.”

[Song: “The Skedaddler”]

TARANTULAS

When at last we rolled into Carson City, capitol of the Nevada Territory, we disembarked and the stage went on. Orion and I took quarters in the boarding house of a worthy French lady by the name of Bridget O’Flannigan, a camp follower of his Excellency the Governor. She had known him in his prosperity as Chief of the Metropolitan Police of New York, and she would not desert him in his adversity as Governor of Nevada. Our room was big enough for bed, a small table, two chairs, and an unabridged dictionary, but a visitor or two put a strain on the rather fragile walls. 

Eventually I moved upstairs and took up quarters with the Irish Brigade, fourteen of us in white pine cots, two long rows in the one room of the second story. It was a jolly company, the Irish Brigade. These vague acquaintances of the Guv’nor from either New York or San Francisco had come along believing that in the scuffle for little territorial crumbs they could not make their condition any more precarious than it already was, and they might reasonably expect to make it better. Mrs. O’Flannigan called them the “Irish Brigade,” even though there were only four or five Irishmen among ’em. She was boardin’  them at ten dollars a week apiece, and she began to harry the Guv’nor to find actual employment for the men. At last he summoned the Brigade to the presence and said: [with great flourish] 

“Gentlemen, I have planned a lucrative and useful service for you, a service which will provide you with recreation amid noble landscapes, and afford you never-ceasing opportunities for enriching your minds by observation and study. [pause] I want you to survey a railroad from Carson City westward to — a certain point! When the legislature meets I will have the necessary bills passed and remuneration arranged for you.” He hereby converted them one and all into surveyors and turned ’em loose in the desert. It was “recreation” with a vengeance! Recreation on foot, lugging chains through sand and sage-brush under a hot sun, amongst cattle bones, coyotes and….tarantulas. They surveyed very slowly, very deliberately, very carefully. They returned home every night during the first week, dusty, footsore, tired, and hungry, but very jolly, and bringing with them a great number of prodigious hairy spiders — tarantulas — which they imprisoned in covered tumblers upstairs.

After the first week they had to camp on the field, for they were getting’ well out there. When they finally returned to the boarding house they brought back more tarantulas with them, and so we had quite a menagerie arranged along the shelves of our room. Some of these spiders could straddle a common saucer with their big hairy legs, and when their feelin’s were hurt, or their dignity offended, they were the wickedest-looking desperadoes  in the animal world. If their glass houses were touched ever so lightly, well they were up and spoilin’ for a fight, so starchy and proud, I swear they would take up a straw and pick their teeth like a member of Congress. 

There was as usual a furious Washoe zephyr blown’ the first night after the brigade’s return, and about midnight the roof of an adjoinin’ stable blew off, and a corner of it came crashin’ right through the walls of our room. In this midst of this turmoil, Turnip Tom sprung up out of a sound sleep and knocked down a shelf with his head. Instantly he shouted: “Boys….the tarantulas is loose!” 

No warnin’ ever sounded so dreadful. Nobody tried to leave the room lest he might step on a tarantula. Every man groped for a trunk or a bed, and jumped on it. Then….the strangest silence….full of expectancy and fear. It was as dark as pitch, [voice rises and becomes more conversational] and you’ll just have to imagine the spectacle of those fourteen scantily-clad men, roosting gingerly on beds and boxes, for not a thing could be seen. You would hear sudden gasps, or groans….or crashes and  you knew that somebody was gettin’ away from somethin’ he took for a tarantula, and not losin’ any time about it. A voice in the corner rang out: “I’ve got him! I’ve got him!” [pause] “No, he’s got me! Oh, ain’t they never gonna fetch a lantern??!” 

The lantern arrived at that moment in the hands of Mrs. O’Flannigan, whose anxiety to know the amount of damage done had not prevented her waitin’ a judicious interval to see if the wind was done with its business. The tableau on display when the lantern entered was [long pause] picturesque — and might have been funny to some people, but not to us. We were all perched so strangely upon boxes, trunks and beds around the room in various stages of undress, but we were too earnestly frightened and too genuinely miserable to see any fun about it. I know I am not capable of suffering more than I did during those few minutes of suspense in the dark, surrounded by those creeping, bloody-minded tarantulas. I would rather go to war than live that episode over again. 

Nobody was actually hurt. The man who thought a tarantula had “got him” was mistaken, and not one of those escaped tarantulas was ever seen again. But did we go back to bed then? We did nothing of the kind. Money could not have persuaded us to do it. We sat up the rest of that night playing cribbage and keeping a sharp lookout for the enemy.

[Song: “Hungry Hash House”]

SILVER FEVER

I had gotten accustomed to wearin’ an old slouch hat, blue woolen shirt, and pants crammed into boot-tops — it seemed to me that no costume could be so fine and romantic. I was officially an officer of the government, but I had nothin’ to do and no salary.

By and by I was smitten with the silver minin’ fever. In those times you could hardly avoid it. All a man had to do was drive a few stakes in the ground, dig a 6-foot hole, file a claim and print up stock certificates. Folks talked of nothin’ else: [excited gossip voice] “Did you hear — the Widow Brewster just sold her shares in the ‘Last Chance’ mine for eighteen thousand dollars, and y’know she din’t have enough money last Spring to buy herself a crepe bonnet after Sing Sing Tommy killed her husband at Baldy Johnson’s funeral”…and so on and so on… This kinda talk pelted our ears day in and day out — of course I went as mad as all the rest.

Every few days there’d be a newly discovered minin’ region, and the newspapers full of accounts of its richness, and any surplus population would scamper off to take possession. I was about to start for the Esmerelda when suddenly “Humboldt!” was the new cry, the richest of the rich, most marvelous of the marvelous, so I turned with the tide, and four of us bought a wagon and two miserable old horses and set off.

I confess that I expected, once we got to the Humboldt, to find silver and gold lyin’ on the ground. I was so sure that I was going to gather up enough in a few days, at most a week, to make me so wealthy that already my mind was busy with plans for spendin’ this money. 

True knowledge of the nature of silver minin’ came soon enough, but meanwhile we climbed the mountain sides and through the sage-brush, rocks and snow until we were ready to drop, but we found no silver, and even less gold. We staked one claim, gave it the imposin’ title “Monarch of the Mountains”, and tried to feel that our fortunes were made. For a week we climbed that mountain from our camp below armed with picks, drills, crowbars, shovels, cans of blasting powder and coils of fuse, and tried to make a dent in that rock. The deeper we went the harder the rock, until nothing’ would make an impression but dynamite.

Meanwhile the camp was fillin’ up with more prospectors, all full of high hopes. We staked new claims and gave ’em wonderful names. We traded some of our shares for shares in other people’s claims. Soon we owned part of the Gray Eagle, the Columbiana, the Samson and Delilah, the Boomerang, the Root Hog or Die, and fifty other claims, most of which had never been molested by a shovel or scratched with a pick. It was the strangest life you can imagine. There was nothin’ doin’ really, no minin’, no millin’, no productive effort, no income, and not enough money in the entire camp to buy a small house in Carson, and yet a stranger would have supposed he was walkin’ amongst bloated millionaires. Prospectin’ parties swarmed out of town with the first flush of dawn and swarmed in again at night laden with….rocks. Nothin’ but rocks. 

I met men at every turn who owned from a thousand to thirty thousand feet in undeveloped silver mines, every foot of which he believed would shortly be worth from fifty to a thousand dollars — and usually they were men who hadn’t twenty-five dollars in the world. He would back you into a corner and fish a piece of rock out of his pocket. “Look at that! See the specks of gold? And the streak of silver? That’s from the “Uncle Abe” mine — there’s a hundred thousand tons just like that, right in sight mind you! When we get down to it and the ledge comes in solid it’ll be the richest thing in the world!” Then he would get out a worn and greasy sheet of paper which showed that a piece of rock assayed had shown evidence of silver or gold in the proportion of so many hundreds or thousands of dollars to the ton. By then I knew that the custom was to hunt out the richest piece of ore you could find and then pretend that it represented the average value of the ton of rubbish it came from. 

We never touched our shaft again. We figggered we had learned the real secret of success in silver minin’, which was not to mine the ore yourself by the sweat of your brow, but to sell the claims to the dull slaves of hard toil and let them do the minin’.

[Song: “Seeing the Elephant”]

DEATH IN THE SNOW

Probably the worst fix I ever got myself into as a prospector happened when three of us would-be miners set out from Carson City bound for the Esmerelda territory. First we got trapped by a flash flood in a makeshift saloon on the banks of the Carson River, with nothing to do but drink, cuss, play cards and fight for an entire week. 

When the waters finally receded enough for us to cross the river on our horses, it began to snow. Soon we had lost track of the road and were wandering through a featureless desert. Finally we encountered some tracks in the snow and decided to follow them. After several hours of this, a genius among us — it might have been me — suddenly realized, “Boys….I think we’ve been following our own tracks around in a circle.”

This was a grim moment I can tell you, the more so because as we had circled, night had fallen, and we were now hopelessly lost with no hope of shelter. We all agreed that only a camp fire could save us now. Without matches we tried to make shift with our pistols. Every man in the party had read about it in books many a time and had naturally come to believe this to be possible. We broke twigs from a sage bush and piled them on a little cleared place in the shelter of our bodies. Mr Ollendorf was given the honors, and when all was ready, he applied his revolver, pulled the trigger, and blew the pile of twigs clear into the next county! This was distressin’ enough, but worse, we noticed that the horses, not havin’ the intellect to discern our intentions, had left the scene for parts unknown. 

No one said a word for several minutes. Finally a conversation began, and it was soon apparent that in each of our hearts lay the conviction that this was to be our last night with the living. Ollendorf said, [German accent?] “Brothers, let us die together in peace. Let us forgive and forget. I acknowledge that I have had hard feelings against Mr Ballou for abusing me and calling me a logarithm, which is a thing I do not know but must be disgraceful and unbecoming and has hurt me a great deal — but let it go; I forgive Mr Ballou with all my heart.” Poor Ollendordf broke down in tears, then I began to cry, and Mr Ballou as well. Ollendorf pulled out his bottle of whiskey and declared that whether he lived or died he would never touch another drop, but dedicate himself to helpin’ the poor, nursin’ the sick, and makin’ his life a shining example to the young….and with that he threw away the bottle of whiskey.

Mr Ballou then made a similar speech, and began the reform he could unfortunately not live to continue, by castin’ away the ancient pack of cards that had kept us good company during the flood a few days before. My own remarks were of the same flavor as my comrades. We were all sincere, all deeply moved and earnest, for we were in the presence of death and without hope. I threw away my pipe, and in doin’ it felt that at last I was free of a hated vice, and one that had ridden me like a tyrant all of my days. While I talked, the thought of the good I might have done in the world and the still greater good I might do now with these higher and better aims, if only I could be spared a few years longer, overcame me and the tears came again. We put our arms around each other and awaited the drowsiness that precedes death by freezing as the snowflakes wove a winding sheet around us. It came stealing over us presently and we bade each other a last farewell.  [pause]

After a spell, a vague consciousness grew upon me by degrees, and then came a white upheaval at my side. It was Ballou, or at least it had his voice. On my other side a snow-drift broke up and Ollendorf emerged from it. We sat up, and there in the grey dawn, not fifteen steps from us, lay the frame buildings of a staging station, and under a shed stood our still saddled and bridled horses! We really had nothin’ to say. The whole situation was so painfully ridiculous and humiliatin’ that we didn’t know where to begin. It was now plain enough why the horses had deserted us; without a doubt they were under that shed roof within moments of leavin’ us, and they must have overheard and enjoyed all our confessions and lamentations.

After breakfast we felt better, and the zest of life soon returned, but presently an uneasiness came over me. I wanted to smoke! I recalled my promises of reform and wrestled with my conscience for nearly an hour, but it was all in vain. I found my pipe in a snow drift and hid behind the barn to have a smoke. No human being can feel meaner and baser than I did then, I was ashamed of being in my own pitiful company. Still dreading discovery, I felt that the further side of the barn would be somewhat safer, and so I turned the corner. As I turned the one corner, smoking, Ollendorf turned the other with his bottle to his lips, and between us sat Ballou deep in a game of solitaire with his old greasy cards. Absurdity could go no further. We shook hands and agreed to say no more about “reform” and “examples to the rising generation.”

[Song: “Other Side of Jordan”]

THE GENUINE MEXICAN PLUG

I had not been in Nevada long when I resolved to purchase a horse. I had already learned to tell a horse from a cow and I was anxious to learn more. One day the auctioneer came through the plaza with a beast that had as many humps on him as a dromedary. “Going, going, going at $22 — horse, saddle and bridle at only $22…” 

A nearby loafer (who I later found out was the auctioneer’s brother) noticed my considerable interest. He said that this was a very remarkable horse to be goin’ at such a price, and added that the saddle alone was worth the money. Then lookin’ around as if to ensure that he was not bein’ seen di-vulgin’ such confidential information, he leaned closer and confided: “Mistah, I take it you’re a stranger in these parts, and so you might assume this was an American horse, but I assure you he is nothin’ of the kind. He is, without a doubt, a Genuine – Mexican – Plug!”

Well I didn’t know what a Genuine Mexican Plug was, but there was somethin’ about the way he said it that made me swear inwardly that I would own a Genuine Mexican Plug or die. I asked, “Has he any other — uhh — advantages?” Hookin’ his finger in my shirt pocket and pullin’ me closer still he revealed, “I tell you he can [looks around quickly and drops to a stage whisper] out-buck   any   horse   in   America!” 

“Going, going, going at $24…only 24 US dollars…” “Twenty-seven!” I shouted. “And sold!” said the auctioneer, and handed over the Genuine Mexican Plug to me.

[excitedly] Well I could scarcely contain my excitement. I paid the money and put the animal in a nearby livery stable to dine and rest himself. Later that day I brought the horse into the plaza, and several bystanders held him by the head, others by the tail, while I climbed aboard. As soon as they let go, he placed all his feet in a bunch, lowered his back, and suddenly launched me straight up in the air a matter of 3 or 4 feet. I came down in the saddle and instantly went up again, this time comin’ down on the high pommel, which was too much variety for me. I went up again and this time came down on the horse’s neck — all this mind you in the space of 3 or 4 seconds. Then he reared up and stood on his hind legs, allowin’ me to slide back into the saddle momentarily until he hoisted his heels into the air and delivered a vicious kick to the sky! [brief pause] When he came down the whole process repeated itself from the beginning. The third time I went up I heard a stranger remark “Oh don’t he buck though!” While I was up in the air this time somebody whacked the horse with a leather strap, and when I came down….the genuine Mexican plug was gone… That horse sped away like a telegram, soared over three fences and disappeared down the valley. [long pause]

I sat down on a nearby stone and took inventory. I can-not tell you how disjointed I was — how internally, externally, and universally I was unsettled, mixed up, and ruptured. I had one hand on my head, one on my groin, and I needed several other hands to place elsewhere. There was a sympathetic crowd gathered around me. One old gentleman consoled me by sayin’, [geezer voice] “Stranger you’ve been taken in. Any child could have told you that horse is the worst devil to buck on the American continent. Why that beast is nothin’ more than a simon-pure, out-and-out, genuine goddammed Mexican plug, and an uncommon mean one too!” [long pause]

I had a number of other adventures with that beast before I finally managed to give him away to an unsuspectin’ emigrant about to leave town, but I resolved in my mind that if the auctioneer’s brothers’ funeral ever took place while I was still in the Nevada territory, I would postpone all other recreations and attend it.

[Song: “Goodbye Old Paint”]

THE CAMEL [Act 1 closer]

The tale of the Mexican Plug reminds me of another malicious creature I met a few years later, in Syria, at the headwaters of the Jordan River. One day a camel took charge of my overcoat while our tents were being pitched, and examined it with a critical eye all over, as if he had an idea of gettin’ one made for himself. Then he put his foot on it and lifted the sleeves out with his teeth, chewin’ and chewin’ and gradually takin’ it in, all the while openin’ and closin’ his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had never tasted anythin’ as good before in his life. Then he smacked his lips once or twice and tried the velvet collar, and smiled a smile of such contentment that it was plain to see that he regarded this as the daintiest thing about an overcoat. The tails went next, along with some percussion caps, cough drops, and fig paste from Constantinople. 

And then my newspaper correspondence dropped out, manuscript letters written for the papers back in San Francisco, and he took a chance on that. But now he was treadin’ on daaaaangerous ground. He began to come across solid wisdom in those documents that was rather weighty on his stomach, and occasionally he would take a joke that would shake him up fit to loosen his teeth. At last he began to stumble on statements that not even a camel could swallow with impunity. He began to gag and gasp, his eyes bugged out, and in about a quarter of a minute he fell over dead, as stiff as a carpenter’s bench.

I strolled over and picked up the manuscript out of his mouth, and discovered that the sensitive creature had choked to death on one of the mildest and gentlest statements of fact that I ever laid before a trusting public! [pause]

And with that, I am reminded to tell you that the ladies upstairs have prepared some delicious morsels for your enjoyment, that may be yours for a few whispered words and a pittance of silver. Do not wander off — my friends and I will be back in a few minutes. Thank you.

[exits]

ACT TWO

JOURNALISM

My friend Higbe talked me into one more minin’ adventure. We climbed far up the mountain and went to work on a rubbishy little claim that already had a shaft on it about eight feet deep. Higbe descended into it and worked with his pick till he had loosened up a good deal of rock and dirt, and then I went down with a long-handled shovel to throw it out. I made the first toss and landed the mess just on the edge of the shaft…and it all came back on my head and down the back of my neck. I never said a word, I just climbed out and walked home. I resolved that I would starve to death before I would make a target of myself and shoot rubbish at it with a long-handled shovel.

I was done with silver minin’ [pause] but what to do next? I had gone out in the world to shift for myself at the  age of 14. I had been a grocery boy, a blacksmith’s apprentice, a student of the law, a bookseller’s clerk, filled prescriptions at a drug store, set type for a printer — I had made a livelihood but had not dazzled anybody with my successes. I was a good average St Louis to New Orleans river pilot until the Civil War intervened. Out west I had been a private secretary, a silver miner and a millworker, and had amounted to less than nothing in each. So what next?

Well, before poverty had forced me into hard labor I had amused myself with writin’ letters to Virginia City’s daily newspaper, the Territorial Enterprise, and had always been surprised when they appeared in print. My good opinion of the editors had steadily declined for it seemed to me that they might have found something better to fill out the paper than my attempts at literature.

But just then when everythin’ seemed to be at a dead end, there was a letter offerin’ me twenty-five dollars a week to be the City Editor of the Territorial Enterprise! Twenty-five dollars a week — well it seemed like bloated luxury!

I was a rusty-lookin’ City Editor I confess — coatless, slouch hat, blue woolen shirt, pants stuffed into boot-tops, whiskered halfway to the waist, with the universal navy revolver stuck into my belt, but I secured a more Christian costume and discarded the revolver. I asked the Editor in Chief for some instruction with regard to my duties, and he told me to go all over town and ask all sorts of people all sorts of questions, make notes, and write them up for publication. Well I wandered about town questionin’ everybody and findin’ out that nobody knew anythin’ about anythin’. I went back to the chief and he said, “Sometimes we make a good thing out of hay wagons on a day when there’s no fires or murders. Are there any hay wagons in from the Truckee? If there are, you might write about ‘renewed activity in the feed industry’ and such as that.” Well I canvassed the city again and found one wretched old hay wagon, and I made affluent use of it. I multiplied it by sixteen, brought it into town from 16 different directions, and got up such a sweat about hay as Virginia City had never seen before. 

I was encouraged, but presently things began to look dismal again, until one day a desperado killed a man in a saloon and joy returned once more. I said to the murderer, “Sir, you have done me a kindness this day which I can never forget. I was in trouble and you have relieved me nobly and at a time when all seemed dark and drear. Count me your friend from this time forth, for I am not a man to forget a favor.” If I didn’t really say that to him I at least felt an itchin’ desire to do it. I wrote up the murder with a hungry attention to details, and when it was finished experienced but one regret–namely, that they had not hanged my benefactor on the spot, so that I could work him up too. 

Next I discovered some emigrant wagons campin’ on the plaza that had lately come through hostile country and had fared rather roughly in an Indian attack. I made the best of the story that the facts would allow, but when I found one wagon goin’ on to California was leavin’ that day and would not be in the city to make trouble, I quickly took down their names and added the whole party to the list of killed and wounded. Havin’ more creative latitude now, I put this wagon through an Indian fight that to this day has no parallel in history, and my two columns were filled. When I read them over in the morning I felt that I had found my legitimate callin’ at last. I reckoned that news, and stirring news too, was what a paper needed, and I felt that I was peculiarly endowed with the ability to furnish it. My employer told me that I was as good a reporter as my senior colleague Dan De Quille. I was e-lated. With encouragement like that, I felt that I could take my pen and murder all the immigrants on the plains if need be, if the interests of the paper and the reading public demanded it. Years later the owner confessed to an interviewer that if he’d been asked at the time to predict which of us, me or Dan, would achieve fame and fortune, he would surely have said….”Dan De Quille.” Dan De Quille….you’ve heard of him, the famous reporter?

[Song: “Big Balls in Town”]

VIRGINIA CITY

The city of Virginia — you call it Virginia City now — perched midway up the steep side of Mt Davidson, seven thousand feet above sea level, and in the clear desert air you could see it from 50 miles away! In it’s heyday it claimed a population of fifteen thousand, and every day half this little army swarmed the streets and the other half swarmed the tunnels of the Comstock mines hundreds of feet below those same streets. We often felt our chairs jump and heard the faint boom of a blast down in the bowels of the earth right under our rooms. 

To show you what a wild spirit possessed the minin’ community, claims were actually staked out in excavations for cellars, where the pick had exposed what seemed to be quartz veins — and not cellars in the suburbs either, but in the very heart of the city — and then stock would be issued and thrown on the market. It was small matter who the cellar belonged to, the claim belonged to the finder, and it was considered to be his privilege to work it.

Imagine a stranger stakin’ out a mining claim right in the shrubbery in your front yard and calmly proceedin’ to lay waste to the ground with pick and shovel and blasting powder! It has happened often in the Old West. In the middle of one of the principal business streets of Virginia, a man located a minin’ claim and began a shaft on it. He gave me a hundred feet of the stock and I sold it for a fine suit of clothes because I was afraid somebody was gonna fall down that shaft and sue for damages. 

The atmosphere in Virginia City was so rarified, on account of the great altitude, that it’s citizen proclaimed it’s healing powers, especially for gunshot wounds, and therefore to simply shoot your adversary through both lungs was not likely to afford you any permanent satisfaction, for he would be nearly certain to be up and about and looking for you within a month. 

From this lofty height you could survey a vast panorama of mountain ranges and deserts, and the spectacle was always impressive. [waxes lyrical] Over your head Mt Davidson lifted its gray dome, and below you a rugged canyon split the battlement hills, making a somber gateway through which a soft-tinted desert was glimpsed, with the silver thread of a river wiiiiinding through it, bordered with trees which many miles of distance diminished to a delicate fringe. And still further away the snowy mountains rose up and stretched their long barrier to the horizon beyond a lake that burned in the desert like a fallen sun. At rare intervals there would be actual clouds in the sky, and then the setting sun would gild and glorify this mighty expanse of scenery with a bewildering pomp that held the eye like a spell  and moved the spirit like music.

[Song: “50 Miles of Elbow Room”]

HORACE GREELEY’S RIDE

On my very first stage coach ride I was sitting up having a smoke with the driver when he said to me: “I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the buttons all off of Horace’s coat, and finally shot his head clean through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to go easier–said he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. But Hank Monk said, ‘Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get you there on time’–and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!” 

Later we picked up a Denver man at a cross roads, and he told us a good deal about the countryside. He was a very entertaining person and a man well posted in the affairs of the West. By and by he remarked: “I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the buttons all off of Horace’s coat, and finally shot his head clean through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to go easier–said he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. But Hank Monk said, ‘Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get you there on time!’–and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!” 

Next we picked up a Mormon preacher at a way station–a gentle, soft-spoken, kindly man, and one whom any stranger would warm to at first sight. One matter after another was pleasantly discussed, and at length the stranger said: “I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an engagement to lecture in Placerville, and was very anxious to go through quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the buttons all off of Horace’s coat, and finally shot his head clean through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to go easier–said he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. But Hank Monk said, ‘Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get you there on time!’–and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!” 

Then ten miles out of Ragtown we came upon a poor wanderer who had lain himself down to die by the side of the road. It would have been inhuman to leave him there, so we paid his fare  and lifted him into the coach. It was some little time before he showed any signs of life; but by pouring a bit of brandy between his lips we finally brought him around, and a grateful light softened his eyes. We made his mail-sack bed as comfortable as possible, and constructed a pillow for him with our coats. He seemed very thankful. 

Then he looked up in our faces, and said in a feeble voice: “Gentlemen, I know not who you are, but you have saved my life; and although I can never repay you for it, I feel that I can at least make one hour of your long journey lighter. I take it you are strangers to this country, but I am entirely familiar with it. In this connection I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to listen to it. Horace Greeley—-” 

I stopped him right there. “Suffering stranger, proceed at your peril. You see in me the melancholy wreck of a once stalwart and magnificent manhood. What has brought me to this? That thing which you are about to tell. Slowly but surely that bald-headed anecdote has sapped my strength, undermined my constitution, and withered my life. Pity me and spare me only just this once, and tell me about….oh, young George Washington and his little hatchet for a change.” We were saved, but not so the invalid. In trying to retain the anecdote in his system he exhausted himself and died in our arms. [pause]

After many years’ residence on the Pacific coast, I know now that no passenger or driver on the Overland ever held that anecdote in and survived. Within a period of six years I crossed and recrossed the Sierras between Nevada and California thirteen times by stage and listened to that tiresome old story four hundred and eighty-one or eighty-two times. I have the list somewhere. I have had the same driver tell it to me two or three times in the same afternoon. I do not think that such things are right.

I’m sure that many a tourist has gone home to Poughkeepsie convinced that the real grandeurs of the Pacific coast are not Yosemite and the Redwoods, but Hank Monk and his adventure with Horace Greeley.

[Song: “Horace Greeley”]

FLUSH TIMES

About six months after my entry into Virginia City journalism the flush times commenced and I had no further  problems finding things to write about. The sleepy little town had become the liveliest boom town in America. The sidewalks swarmed with people and the streets were just as crowded. Money was as plentiful as wind and dust, every man considered himself wealthy, and melancholy of any kind was never seen. There were military companies, brass bands, banks, hotels, hurdy-gurdy houses, wide-open gambling casinos, parades, street fights, murders, riots, a whiskey mill every fifteen steps, a dozen breweries, half a dozen jails, and some talk of building a church.

Not every fortune-seeker was as unlucky as myself. For some, the trouble was not how to get money, but how to spend it. Why I remember one time that Virginia City got the news that money was needed for the relief of the wounded soldiers and sailors of the Union Army in the hospitals back east, and the town actually auctioned off a 50-pound sack of flour for forty thousand dollars. It’s a long story and we don’t have time for it tonight, but you can read it, and hundreds more in my book “Roughing It”. It’s a fine book. I recommend it. 

Of course in flush times you know where a great deal of the money ends up? In the banks of course. Once the lucky prospector has squandered his fortune, he returns to his donkey, his blanket and his shovel, while the banker totals up his balance and sends it off to San Francisco or New York. I am famous for saying that a banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella while the sun is shining but wants it back the minute it starts to rain. Now I don’t remember actually saying that, but it’s true. I do know that there’s actually a Mark Twain Bank in St. Louis today. They never asked me about putting my name on their bank. I don’t know that bankers have changed all that much in the course of history.

[Song: “I’m a Jolly Banker”]

DESPERADOS & BARMAIDS

I should probably tell you something’ about the desperados that thrived in the flush times of Nevada. Now every man carried a gun, even a peaceable character like myself carried a weapon, but the outlaw walked the streets with a swagger graded accordin’ to the number of his homicides, and a nod of recognition from him was sufficient to make a humble citizen happy for the rest of the day. The deference that was paid to a desperado of wide reputation was markéd, and cheerfully accorded. Of course they did their killin’ principally among themselves, and seldom molested peaceable citizens, for they considered it small credit to kill a man who was “on the shoot,” as they put it. They killed each other on slight provocation, and hoped and expected to be killed themselves — for they held it shameful to die other than “with their boots on”. 

Actually it was mostly barmaids that were always gettin’ people into trouble — I think it’s always been that way. In Virginia City they were all called “ladies” and they took it as an insult if you called them anythin’ else. It was one of these charmin’ ladies that got shot at one day by some ass of a lover in the Thunderbolt Saloon. This fellow was so carried away with the charms of this French Mary that he hung around around her night after night, buyin’ bottle after bottle of cheap champagne for which she got a handsome commission. In the saloon her company used to cost him 5 or 10 dollars an hour, and upstairs…who knows.

He was always insistin’ that she marry him, threatenin’ to leave and go back to Arizona if she didn’t. Well she couldn’t afford to let the goose go until he was completely plucked, and so she would consent and set the date, and he would celebrate the happy news with a heavy outlay of cash and drinks for the house. This little drama was played out over and over again until the man’s patience was plum worn out and his purse empty. Then, to nobody’s surprise, French Mary deserted him for customers with ready cash. She told him she would not marry him or have anythin’ more to do with him, and he took offense and tried to blow her brains out, but at this he failed as well, and ended up killin’ himself instead. And we were left to hope that it was the wisest thing he could have done, and that he is better off now, poor fellow. 

However, sometimes the shoe was on the other foot as it were, and it was the lady who started shooting. Here’s a song about that.

[Song: “Frankie and Johnny”]

JACKASS HILL

Now at some point it became clear that I had written about six too many editorials for the Territorial Enterprise because six different citizens had challenged me to a duel. I had to depart town in a hurry, so I skedaddled across the line to California and got a job as the one and only reporter for the Morning Call, a tabloid newspaper in San Francisco. One day I wrote a story about a mob of Irishmen attackin’ an inoffensive Chinaman deliverin’ the laundry, and the paper wouldn’t print it because most of their readers were Irish. 

Now I was a lofty fellow in those days….if I had been a trifle loftier I would have thrown up that job and gone out and starved like any other hero. But I had already come near to starvin’ once or twice already in my short life and I got no real enjoyment out of it. Honest poverty is a gem that even a king might feel proud to call his own — but a gem that I now wished to hock. I had sported that kind of jewelry long enough, I wanted some variety. I wanted to become … well, rich. Then I could instruct the people and glorify honest poverty like those good, kind-hearted, fat, benevolent people do. Therefore I swallowed my humiliation and stayed where I was. I continued writin’ my dispatches but, well, my heart wasn’t in it, and eventually I timed my retirement from the Morning Call to coincide with my dismissal.

  So I left San Francisco and took refuge in the California mother lode country, living with the pocket miners up on Jackass Hill in Tuolumne. Among the prospectors, Jim Gillis was a famous storyteller, and I sat around many an evenin’ in the cabin he shared with Dick Stoker swappin’ windies with the aid of a jug of whatever we could afford. Later on I put some of those stories on paper, and finally got one published. It was called “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”. 

And I wasn’t the only aspirin’ writer to come down that road either. Jim told me about Bret Harte come walkin’ down Slumgullion Road past Jackass Hill with a roll of blankets on his back lookin’ for a job teachin’ school. Harte looked like a bit of a dude with his fancy shoes and all, but Jim put him up for the night, fed him, and loaned him $20 when he left the next day. 

So come to find out, some years later Jim runs into Bret Harte again, in San Francisco. By then Harte has published his book “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” and was famous, and made much of everywhere. Now Jim knows nothin’ about all this, but he recognizes the man and goes over to him with outstretched hand. “Hello Bret,” he says, “how are ya?” Well, Harte adjusts his eyeglasses, looks Jim up and down, and says “Really my dear fellow, you must be mistaken I’m sure!” Maybe Jim’s taken aback, but he don’t show it — he looks Harte over and says, “Maybe I am..… But if you’ll just fork over the $20 I loaned you up on Jackass Hill, I’ll be plenty glad to forget you too.” 

[Song: “Days of 49”]

REFLECTIONS

The days of 49, hmmmm…. I was 14 years old in 1849, and you better believe I saw fortune-hunters passin’ through Hannibal, Missouri headed west, and every boy wanted to follow them. Well I got my chance eventually, but instead of gold and silver I found my own path to riches and fame — as a writer, an honest-to-goodness American writer…well as honest as a good writer can reasonably be. The truth is our most precious commodity, and that’s why I try to use it as economically as possible. That’s the difference between me and George Washington. George Washington couldn’t tell a lie. I can, but I won’t.

So now here I am, sittin’ in your fine old Grange hall, built 100 years ago, the same year they lowered me into the ground. Myself, I lasted only 75 years, just long enough to see Halley’s Comet twice, and when I turned 70 my friends invited me to explain by what delicate arts and deep moralities I had survived that long. I was glad for the opportunity. I explained the process and dwelt on the particulars with senile rapture.

I told them, and I’m telling you now: You cannot reach old age by another man’s road. I achieved my advanced age in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life that would kill anybody else. Since the age of forty I have been regular about going to bed and gettin’ up. I have made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn’t anybody left to sit up with, and made it a rule to get up when I had to. This regime has served me well, but it could very well injure another person. You may tell me that “the early bird gets the worm”, but I have no use for the worm. If I did I would certainly adopt your plan.

In the matter of diet: I have been strict in stickin’ to the things which didn’t agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of it. I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction as regards smokin’. As for drinken’, I have no rule about that. When the others drink I like to help; otherwise I remain dry. This dryness does not hurt me, but it could easily hurt you, because you are different. I have never taken any exercise, except sleepin’ and restin’, and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome. But let another person try my way, and see where he will come out.

We can’t reach old age by another man’s road. My habits protect my life, but they would assassinate you. Let’s leave it at this: if you find you can’t make it to threescore and ten by any but an uncomfortable road — I say don’t go! I have no other advice.

[paces, scrutinizes audience] Here we are, squirming’ in our seats, listenin’ to some old stories, some old songs, [pause, at a loss] it’s a blessing I suppose… [pause, more pacing] I remember when I was just a little boy, maybe the best part of it was at the end of the day when I would sneak down to the slave cabins on my Uncle John’s farm and listen to the singin’ and the stories. There was an old woman there called Aunt Hannah — the children told me she was 1000 years old and had known Moses personally. I had no idea at the time who these black people in the cabins were or how they got there, but I knew they was different… Another man whose face I can still see as if it was yesterday is Uncle Dan’l. Dan’l always told the ghost story of the corpse with the goooolden arm, and I spent the rest of my life tellin’ it to any child that would listen, at night, when the lights were low.

[He begins to wander closer to the piano, first laying a hand on it, eventually moving around and sitting as he concludes the speech and begins to play “Swing Low Sweet Chariot”] 

And then there was the music… They used to sing the old spirituals, and the sound they made, the rich harmony, the passion of it….it moved me in a way no other music ever did. I don’t really like the piano, but my sister Paméla taught me how to play when I was still a boy, and that’s how so many evenin’s in my life have ended…….with me thinkin’ back to those evenin’s in the cabin as night fell around us, singin’….to let the burdens of the world slide off our shoulders and be washed down that mighty river, down to the ocean far far away.

[Can start playing at any point during the last sentence. Sings — band gradually joins in, with few or no instruments (harmonica?), just voices in rich harmony.]

CURTAIN

ADDITIONAL STORIES:

THE JUSTICE SYSTEM

The first twenty-six graves in the Virginia City cemetery were occupied by murdered men. So everybody said, so everybody believed, and so they will always say and believe. The reason why there was so much slaughtering done was that in a new minin’ district the rough element predominates, and a person is not respected until he has “killed his man.” That was the very expression used. If an unknown individual arrived, they did not inquire if he was capable, honest, industrious, but — had he killed his man? If he had not, he gravitated to his natural and proper position, that of a man of small consequence; if he had, the cordiality of his reception was graduated according to the number of his victims. 

In Nevada at that time, the lawyer, the editor, the banker, the desperado, the gambler, and the saloon keeper occupied about the same level in society, that is to say, the highest. The cheapest and easiest way to become an influential man and be looked up to by the community at large, was to stand behind a bar, wear a cluster-diamond pin, and sell whisky. I am not sure but that the saloon-keeper held a shade higher rank than any other member of society. His opinion had weight. It was his privilege to say how the elections should go. No great movement could succeed without the countenance and direction of the saloon-keepers. To be a saloon-keeper and kill a man was to be truly illustrious. 

Given all this, you should not be surprised to learn that more than one man was killed in Nevada under hardly the pretext of provocation, so impatient was the slayer to achieve reputation and throw off the galling sense of being held in indifferent repute by his associates. I knew two youths who tried to “kill their men” for no other reason–and got killed themselves for their pains. 

The men who murdered Virginia’s original twenty-six cemetery occupants were never punished. Why? Because Alfred the Great, when he invented trial by jury, was not aware that in the nineteenth century the condition of things would be so entirely changed that unless he rose from the grave and altered the jury plan to meet the emergency, it would prove the most ingenious and infallible agency for defeatin’ justice that human wisdom could ever contrive. Back in the day news did not travel fast, and hence you could easily find a jury of honest, intelligent men who had not heard of the case they were called to try — but in our day of telegraphs and newspapers his plan compels us to swear in juries composed of fools and rascals, because the system rigidly excludes honest men and men of brains. 

I remember one of those sorrowful farces, in Virginia City. A noted desperado killed Mr. B., a good citizen, in the most wanton and cold-blooded way. Of course the papers were full of it, and all men capable of readin’, read about it. And of course all men not deaf and dumb and idiotic, talked about it. A jury-list was made out, and Mr. L., a prominent banker and a valued citizen, was questioned precisely as he would have been questioned in any court in America: “Have you heard of this homicide?” “Yes.” “Have you held conversations upon the subject?” “Yes.” “Have you formed or expressed opinions about it?” “Yes.” “Have you read the newspaper accounts of it?” “Yes.” “We do not want you.” A minister greatly respected; a merchant of high character; a minin’ superintendent of unblemished reputation; a quartz mill owner of excellent standin’, were all questioned in the same way, and all set aside. Each said the public talk and the newspaper reports had not so biased his mind but that sworn testimony would overturn his previously formed opinions and enable him to render a verdict without prejudice and in accordance with the facts. But of course such men could not be trusted with the case. Ignoramuses alone could mete out unsullied justice. 

When the peremptory challenges were all exhausted, a jury of twelve men was impaneled — a jury who swore an oath they had neither heard, read, or talked about a murder which the very cattle in the corrals and the stones in the streets were familiar! It was a jury composed of two desperadoes, two low beer-house politicians, three bar-keepers, two ranchmen who could not read, and three dull, stupid, human donkeys! The verdict rendered by this jury was, Not Guilty. What else could one expect? 

The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty, and a premium upon ignorance, stupidity and perjury. It is a shame that we must continue to use a worthless system because it was good a thousand years ago. Why can’t the jury law be so altered as to give men of brains and honesty and equal chance with fools and miscreants? 

Some say that trial by jury is the palladium of our liberties. [pause] I do not know what a palladium is, but it is a good thing no doubt. I wish to tamper with the jury law. I would like to alter it to put a premium on intelligence and character, and close the jury box against idiots, liars, and people who do not read newspapers. But no doubt I shall be defeated — seems like every effort I make to save the country misses fire.

MILL WORK

When the price of flour hit a dollar a pound and money could not be borrowed on the best security for less than 8% a month, I finally abandoned mining and went to milling — that is to say I went to work as a common laborer in a quartz mill for ten dollars a week and board. I had already learned how hard and long and dismal a task it is to burrow down into the earth, and now I learned that the burrowin’ was only half the work, and that to get the silver out of the ore was the dreary and laborious other half. We turned out at six in the morning and kept at it till dark. 

This mill was a six-stamp affair, driven by steam. Six tall, upright rods of iron, as large as a man’s ankle were framed together like a gate, and these rose and fell, one after the other, in a ponderous dance, in an iron box called a battery. Each one of these rods or stamps weighed six hundred pounds. One of us stood by the battery all day long, breaking up masses of silver-bearing rock with a sledge and shoveling it into the battery. The stamps pulverized the rock to powder, and a stream of water turned it to a creamy paste and washed it into steam-heated amalgamating pans. A quantity of quicksilver was shaken into the pans about every half hour through a buckskin sack. (Quicksilver — I think you call it “mercury”, and don’t care for it in your tuna fish…)  Coarse salt and sulphate of copper were added to assist the amalgamation by destroyin’ base metals which coated the gold and silver and would not let it unite with the quicksilver. All these tiresome things we had to attend to constantly. 

Streams of dirty water flowed through the pans and were carried off in broad wooden troughs, and in order to catch the gold and silver amalgam, coarse blankets were laid in the troughs. These blankets had to be washed out every evening to extract their precious accumulations — and after all this eternity of trouble a third of the silver and gold in a ton of rock would end up in the ravine and have to be worked over again some day. 

There is nothing so aggravatin’ as silver millin’. There never was any idle time in that mill. There was always something to do. It is a pity that Adam could not have gone straight out of Eden into a quartz mill, in order to understand the full force of his sentence to ‘earn his bread by the sweat of his brow.’ I only remained in the millin’ business one week. I told my employer I could not stay longer without an advance in my wages; that I liked quartz millin’, indeed I was infatuated with it, I had never before grown so tenderly attached to an occupation in so short a time; that nothin’, it seemed to me, gave such scope to intellectual activity as feeding a battery and screenin’ tailin’s, and nothin’ so stimulated the moral attributes as washing blankets–still, I felt constrained to ask an increase of salary. He said he was paying me ten dollars a week, and thought it a good round sum. How much did I want? I said about four hundred thousand dollars a month was about all I could reasonably ask, considerin’ the hard times. He ordered me off the premises! But to tell you the truth, when I look back to those days and call to mind the hard labor I performed in that mill, I only regret that I didn’t ask for seven.

MORGAN’S RANCH

The mountains are very high and steep about the Washoe Valley, and so when the snow gets to meltin’ off in the Spring and the warm surface earth begins to moisten and soften, disastrous land-slides occur. You cannot know what a land-slide is unless you have lived in that country and seen the whole side of a mountain take off some fine mornin’ and end up down in the valley.  

Now Dick Hyde had a ranch situated just on the edge of the valley, and Tom Morgan owned a ranch immediately above it on the mountain side. And the trouble was that one of those dreaded land-slides had come and slid Morgan’s ranch — fences, cabins, cattle, barns and everything — down on top of Hyde’s ranch, and covered up every single bit of his property to a depth of about thirty-eight feet. Morgan was in now possession and refused to vacate the premises, said he was occupying his own cabin and his cabin was standing on the same dirt and same ranch it had always stood on, and he would like to see anybody make him vacate. So when Hyde reminded him that he was on top of his ranch and that he was trespassing, Morgan had the infernal meanness to ask why didn’t he stay on his ranch and hold possession when he see him a-coming! 

[excited, incredulous] “Why didn’t I stay on it???” says Hyde,  “By Jove, when I heard that racket and looked up the hill it was just like the whole world was a-rippin’ and a-tearin’ down that mountain side — trees goin’ end over end in the air, rocks as big as a house, cattle turned inside out and a-comin’ head on with their tails hangin’ out their mouth! Why I didn’t stay and hold possession?!! Law bless me, I just took one look and lit outta there in three jumps eg-zzzactly.” 

Now you need to know that the newly arrived United States Attorney at the time was a retired general, General Buncombe, a political appointee from back East. He considered himself a lawyer of sorts, and he very much wanted to be one — partly for the pure gratification of it and partly because his Territorial salary was so meager. Now the older citizens of a new territory look down upon the rest of the world with a calm, benevolent compassion as long — as it keeps out of their way — but when it comes a-knockin’, the response can take the shape of a practical joke. And that’s exactly what this story was, and everybody in town knew — it except General Buncombe. 

And so one mornin’ Dick Hyde comes burstin’ into his office, and with violent gestures and a world of profanity pours out the whole cock ‘n bull story, [rapidly, out of breath] “General Sir I been so mad for the past two days I couldn’t find my way into town — been wandering around in the brush in a starvin’ condition — you got anythin’ to drink here General? But I’m here now and I’m a goin’ to law!” and he asks the General to sue Morgan on his behalf and promises to pay him five hundred dollars if he wins the case. Well the General thought his ship had finally docked.  He said it was an open and shut case, that Morgan had no shadow of right to remain where he was, that nobody in the whole wide world would uphold him in it, no lawyer would take the case and no judge listen to it. 

[still rapid] But Hyde says right there was where he was mistaken, that everybody in town supported Morgan, that Hal Brayton, a smart lawyer, had taken the case and the courts being in vacation, it was to be tried before a referee, ex-Governor Roop had been appointed to that office and would open his court in a large public hall near the hotel at 2 PM the next afternoon.

At two o’clock sharp Governor Roop appeared in the hall, enthroned among his sheriffs, the witnesses and spectators, and displayin’ a face so solemn that some in the crowd began to wonder if maybe he had forgotten that all this was merely a joke. Presently the General elbowed his way through the crowd with his arms full of law-books.  “Make way for the United States Attorney!” bellowed the judge, which was the first respectful recognition of Buncombe’s high official dignity that he’d ever heard, and it trickled pleasantly through his whole system. 

Well the witnesses were called — most of them called by the defendant Morgan, but no matter, their testimony invariably went in favor of the plaintiff Hyde. Each new witness only added fresh testimony to the absurdity of a man’s claiming’ to own another man’s property because his farm had slid down on top of it. Then the Morgan lawyers made their speeches, but they did really nothin’ to help the Morgan cause. And now the General stood up and made an impassioned speech; he pounded the table, he banged the law-books, he shouted and roared, he quoted from everything and everybody, and wound up with a grand war-whoop for free speech, freedom of the press, free schools, the Glorious Bird of America and the principles of Eternal Justice! 

Then the Ex-Governor leaned his head upon his hands for some minutes, thinking, and then he got up and stood with bowed head, and thought some more. Then he paced the floor with long, deliberate strides, and still the audience waited. At last he returned to his throne, seated himself, and began impressively: [impressively] “Gentlemen, this is no ordinary case. On the contrary it is plain that it is the most solemn and awful that ever man was called upon to decide. I have listened attentively to the evidence, and have perceived that the weight of it, the overwhelming weight of it, is in favor of the plaintiff Hyde. And I have listened also to the eloquent remarks of his counsellor, and commend his masterly and irrefutable logic. 

“But Gentlemen, let us beware how we allow mere human testimony to influence us at a moment so solemn as this. It ill becomes us, worms as we are, to meddle with the decrees of Heaven. It is plain to me that Heaven, in its inscrutable wisdom, has seen fit to move this defendant’s ranch for a purpose. If Heaven has chosen to favor the defendant Morgan in this marked and wonderful manner; and if Heaven, dissatisfied with the position of the Morgan ranch upon the mountain side, has chosen to remove it to a position more eligible and more advantageous for its owner, it ill becomes us, insects as we are, to question the legality of the act or inquire into the reasons that prompted it. No — Heaven created the ranches and it is Heaven’s prerogative to rearrange them, to move them around at its pleasure. There is nothing for us to do but submit. Gentlemen, it is the verdict of this court that the plaintiff, Richard Hyde, has been deprived of his ranch by an act of God! And from this decision there is no appeal.” 

[back to conversational, amused tone] Well General Buncombe seized his cargo of law-books and departed the court-room beside himself with indignation. He was always an impatient and irascible man that way, [more slowly, with more emphasis] and the fact that he had been the victim of an elaborate practical joke took a good two months to penetrate the solid granite of his understanding.

THE $150,000 SACK OF FLOUR

Now understand that by no means was every fortune-seeker as unlucky as myself — in those flush times there was money aplenty. For some, the trouble was not how to get it, but how to spend it. And so it was a happy thing that just at this juncture, over the telegraph wires came the news that a great United States Sanitary Commission had been formed and money was wanted for the relief of the wounded sailors and soldiers of the Union Army languishin’ in the Eastern hospitals. Right on the heels of this came word that San Francisco had responded superbly before this news was half a day old. 

Well, Virginia City rose as one man! A Sanitary Committee was hurriedly organized, and its chairman mounted a vacant cart in C street and tried to make the citizenry understand that if the town would only wait one hour, an office would be ready, books opened, and the Commission prepared to receive contributions, but his voice was drowned out in a ceaseless roar of cheers, and demands that the money be received now — they swore they would not wait. Men plowed their way through the throng and rained gold coins into the cart and scurried away for more. Hands clutching money were thrust aloft out of the jam by men who hoped this eloquent appeal would cleave a road their strugglings could not open. Women plunged into the crowd neatly attired, fought their way to the cart with their coins, and emerged again, by and by, with their apparel in a state of hopeless dilapidation. It was the wildest mob Virginia had ever seen and the most determined and ungovernable — until the famous “Sanitary Flour Sack” came our way. Its history is peculiar and interestin’. 

Well, a former schoolmate of mine, by the name of Reuel Gridley, was livin’ at this time in the little city of Austin in the Reese River country, and was the Democratic candidate for mayor. He and the Republican candidate made an agreement that the defeated man should be publicly presented with a fifty-pound sack of flour by the successful one, and should carry it home on his shoulders. Gridley was defeated, and the new mayor gave him the sack of flour, and he shouldered it and carried it a mile or two, attended by a band of music and the whole population of Austin. 

Arriving there, he said he didn’t need the flour, and asked what to do with it. A voice said: “Sell it to the highest bidder, for the benefit of the Sanitary fund.” So Gridley mounted a dry-goods box and assumed the role of auctioneer. The bids went higher and higher till at last the sack went to a mill man at two hundred and fifty dollars, and his check taken. He was asked where he would have the flour delivered, and he said: “Nowhere — sell it again.” Now the cheers went up again, and the multitude were fairly into the spirit of the thing. So Gridley stood there and shouted and perspired till the sun went down, and when the crowd dispersed he had sold the sack to three hundred different people, and had taken in eight thousand dollars in gold. 

When this news came to Virginia City, a telegram went back: “Fetch along your flour sack!” Meanwhile telegrams had also gone to Gold Hill, Silver City and Dayton, and those communities were ready to defend their civic honor as well. By the time Gridley and the flour sack reached Virginia City, they had taken the other towns by storm and the totals of money raised at each stop had been telegraphed ahead and bulletined. As the procession entered Virginia and filed down C street at eight o’clock in the evening the whole town was afoot in the streets, torches were glowin’, flags flyin’, bands playin’, cheer after cheer fillin’ the air, and the city ready to surrender all discretion. So the auction began, and at the end of three hours, a population of fifteen thousand souls had paid in coin for a fifty-pound sack of flour a sum equal to forty thousand dollars in greenbacks! — in the neighborhood of three dollars for each man, woman and child in town. 

Gridley sold the sack in Carson City and several California towns; also in San Francisco. Then he took it east and sold it in one or two Atlantic cities I think. I am not sure of that, but I do know that he finally carried it to St. Louis, where a monster Sanitary Fair was being held, and after sellin’ it there for a large sum, he had the flour baked up into small cakes and retailed at high prices. It was estimated that when the flour sack’s mission was ended it had been sold for a grand total of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars! This is probably the only instance on record where a sack of ordinary flour brought three thousand dollars a pound in the public market.

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