第30章

I can't write a specimen letter--now, at any rate--I'd rather undertake to write a Greek poem.Tell 'em the mail and express leave three times a week, and it costs from 25 to 50 cents to send letters by the blasted express.If they want letters from here, who'll run from morning till night collecting materials cheaper.I'll write a short letter twice a week, for the present, for the "Age," for $5 per week.Now it has been a long time since I couldn't make my own living, and it shall be a long time before I loaf another year.....

If I get the other 25 feet in the Johnson ex., I shan't care a d---n.

I'll be willing to curse awhile and wait.And if I can't move the bowels of those hills this fall, I will come up and clerk for you until I get money enough to go over the mountains for the winter.

Yr.Bro.

SAM.

The Territorial Enterprise at Virginia City was at this time owned by Joseph T.Goodman, who had bought it on the eve of the great Comstock silver-mining boom, and from a struggling, starving sheet had converted it into one of the most important--certainly the most picturesque-papers on the coast.The sketches which the Esmeralda miner had written over the name of "Josh" fitted into it exactly, and when a young man named Barstow, in the business office, urged Goodman to invite "Josh" to join their staff, the Enterprise owner readily fell in with the idea.Among a lot of mining matters of no special interest, Clemens, July 3oth, wrote his brother: "Barstow has offered me the post as local reporter for the Enterprise at $25a week, and I have written him that I will let him know next mail, if possible."In Roughing It we are told that the miner eagerly accepted the proposition to come to Virginia City, but the letters tell a different story.Mark Twain was never one to abandon any undertaking easily.His unwillingness to surrender in a lost cause would cost him more than one fortune in the years to come.A week following the date of the foregoing he was still undecided.

To Orion Clemens, in Carson City:

ESMERALDA, Aug.7, 1862.

MY DEAR BRO,--Barstow wrote that if I wanted the place I could have it.

I wrote him that I guessed I would take it, and asked him how long before I must come up there.I have not heard from him since.

Now, I shall leave at mid-night tonight, alone and on foot for a walk of 60 or 70 miles through a totally uninhabited country, and it is barely possible that mail facilities may prove infernally "slow" during the few weeks I expect to spend out there.But do you write Barstow that I have left here for a week or so, and in case he should want me he must write me here, or let me know through you.

The Contractors say they will strike the Fresno next week.After fooling with those assayers a week, they concluded not to buy "Mr.Flower" at $50, although they would have given five times the sum for it four months ago.So I have made out a deed for one half of all Johnny's ground and acknowledged and left in judge F.K.Becktel's hands, and if judge Turner wants it he must write to Becktel and pay him his Notary fee of $1.50.

I would have paid that fee myself, but I want money now as I leave town tonight.However, if you think it isn't right, you can pay the fee to judge Turner yourself.

Hang to your money now.I may want some when I get back.....

See that you keep out of debt-to anybody.Bully for B.! Write him that I would write him myself, but I am to take a walk tonight and haven't time.Tell him to bring his family out with him.He can rely upon what I say--and I say the land has lost its ancient desolate appearance; the rose and the oleander have taken the place of the departed sage-bush; a rich black loam, garnished with moss, and flowers, and the greenest of grass, smiles to Heaven from the vanished sand-plains; the "endless snows" have all disappeared, and in their stead, or to repay us for their loss, the mountains rear their billowy heads aloft, crowned with a fadeless and eternal verdure; birds, and fountains, and trees-tropical bees--everywhere!--and the poet dreamt of Nevada when he wrote: