Mark Twain A Biography Part 25

"I don't know," he drawled. "I was just asking for information."

At another time, when a young man insisted on singing a song of eternal length, the chorus of which was, "I'm going home, I'm going home, I'm going home tomorrow," Mark Twain put his head in the window and said, pleadingly:

"For G.o.d's sake go to-night."

But he was also fond of quieter society. Sometimes, after the turmoil of a legislative morning, he would drop in to Miss Keziah Clapp's school and listen to the exercises, or would call on Colonel Curry--"old Curry, old Abe Curry"--and if the colonel happened to be away, he would talk with Mrs. Curry, a motherly soul (still alive at ninety-three, in 1910), and tell her of his Hannibal boyhood or his river and his mining adventures, and keep her laughing until the tears ran.

He was a great pedestrian in those days. Sometimes he walked from Virginia to Carson, stopping at Colonel Curry's as he came in for rest and refreshment.

"Mrs. Curry," he said once, "I have seen tireder men than I am, and lazier men, but they were dead men." He liked the home feeling there--the peace and motherly interest. Deep down, he was lonely and homesick; he was always so away from his own kindred.

Clemens returned now to Virginia City, and, like all other men who ever met her, became briefly fascinated by the charms of Adah Isaacs Menken, who was playing Mazeppa at the Virginia Opera House. All men--kings, poets, priests, prize-fighters--fell under Menken's spell. Dan de Quille and Mark Twain entered into a daily contest as to who could lavish the most fervid praise on her in the Enterprise. The latter carried her his literary work to criticize. He confesses this in one of his home letters, perhaps with a sort of pride.

I took it over to show to Miss Menken the actress, Orpheus C. Ken's wife. She is a literary cuss herself.

She has a beautiful white hand, but her handwriting is infamous; she writes fast and her chirography is of the door-plate order--her letters are immense. I gave her a conundrum, thus:

"My dear madam, why ought your hand to retain its present grace and beauty always? Because you fool away devilish little of it on your ma.n.u.script."

But Menken was gone presently, and when he saw her again, somewhat later, in San Francisco, his "madness" would have seemed to have been allayed.

XLV. A COMSTOCK DUEL. The success--such as it was--of his occasional contributions to the New York Sunday Mercury stirred Mark Twain's ambition for a wider field of labor. Circ.u.mstance, always ready to meet his wishes, offered a.s.sistance, though in an unexpected form.

Goodman, temporarily absent, had left Clemens in editorial charge. As in that earlier day, when Orion had visited Tennessee and returned to find his paper in a hot personal warfare with certain injured citizens, so the Enterprise, under the same management, had stirred up trouble. It was just at the time of the "Flour Sack Sanitary Fund," the story of which is related at length in 'Roughing It'. In the general hilarity of this occasion, certain Enterprise paragraphs of criticism or ridicule had incurred the displeasure of various individuals whose cause naturally enough had been espoused by a rival paper, the Chronicle. Very soon the original grievance, whatever it was, was lost sight of in the fireworks and vitriol-throwing of personal recrimination between Mark Twain and the Chronicle editor, then a Mr. Laird.

A point had been reached at length when only a call for bloodshed--a challenge--could satisfy either the staff or the readers of the two papers. Men were killed every week for milder things than the editors had spoken each of the other. Joe Goodman himself, not so long before, had fought a duel with a Union editor--Tom Fitch--and shot him in the leg, so making of him a friend, and a lame man, for life. In Joe's absence the prestige of the paper must be maintained.

Mark Twain himself has told in burlesque the story of his duel, keeping somewhat nearer to the fact than was his custom in such writing, as may be seen by comparing it with the account of his abettor and second--of course, Steve Gillis. The account is from Mr. Gillis's own hand:

When Joe went away, he left Sam in editorial charge of the paper.

That was a dangerous thing to do. n.o.body could ever tell what Sam was going to write. Something he said stirred up Mr. Laird, of the Chronicle, who wrote a reply of a very severe kind. He said some things that we told Mark could only be wiped out with blood. Those were the days when almost every man in Virginia City had fought with pistols either impromptu or premeditated duels. I had been in several, but then mine didn't count. Most of them were of the impromptu kind. Mark hadn't had any yet, and we thought it about time that his baptism took place.

He was not eager for it; he was averse to violence, but we finally prevailed upon him to send Laird a challenge, and when Laird did not send a reply at once we insisted on Mark sending him another challenge, by which time he had made himself believe that he really wanted to fight, as much as we wanted him to do. Laird concluded to fight, at last. I helped Mark get up some of the letters, and a man who would not fight after such letters did not belong in Virginia City--in those days.

Laird's acceptance of Mark's challenge came along about midnight, I think, after the papers had gone to press. The meeting was to take place next morning at sunrise.

Of course I was selected as Mark's second, and at daybreak I had him up and out for some lessons in pistol practice before meeting Laird.

I didn't have to wake him. He had not been asleep. We had been talking since midnight over the duel that was coming. I had been telling him of the different duels in which I had taken part, either as princ.i.p.al or second, and how many men I had helped to kill and bury, and how it was a good plan to make a will, even if one had not much to leave. It always looked well, I told him, and seemed to be a proper thing to do before going into a duel. So Mark made a will with a sort of gloomy satisfaction, and as soon as it was light enough to see, we went out to a little ravine near the meeting- place, and I set up a board for him to shoot at. He would step out, raise that big pistol, and when I would count three he would shut his eyes and pull the trigger. Of course he didn't hit anything; he did not come anywhere near hitting anything. Just then we heard somebody shooting over in the next ravine. Sam said:

"What's that, Steve?"

"Why," I said, "that's Laud. His seconds are practising him over there."

It didn't make my princ.i.p.al any more cheerful to hear that pistol go off every few seconds over there. Just then I saw a little mud-hen light on some sage-brush about thirty yards away.

"Mark," I said, "let me have that pistol. I'll show you how to shoot."

He handed it to me, and I let go at the bird and shot its head off, clean. About that time Laird and his second came over the ridge to meet us. I saw them coming and handed Mark back the pistol. We were looking at the bird when they came up.

"Who did that?" asked Laird's second.

"Sam," I said.

"How far off was it?"

"Oh, about thirty yards."

"Can he do it again?"

"Of course," I said; "every time. He could do it twice that far."

Laud's second turned to his princ.i.p.al.

"Laird," he said, "you don't want to fight that man. It's just like suicide. You'd better settle this thing, now."

So there was a settlement. Laird took back all he had said; Mark said he really had nothing against Laird--the discussion had been purely journalistic and did not need to be settled in blood. He said that both he and Laird were probably the victims of their friends. I remember one of the things Laird said when his second told him he had better not fight.

"Fight! H--l, no! I am not going to be murdered by that d--d desperado."

Sam had sent another challenge to a man named Cutler, who had been somehow mixed up with the muss and had written Sam an insulting letter; but Cutler was out of town at the time, and before he got back we had received word from Jerry Driscoll, foreman of the Grand jury, that the law just pa.s.sed, making a duel a penitentiary offense for both princ.i.p.al and second, was to be strictly enforced, and unless we got out of town in a limited number of hours we would be the first examples to test the new law.

We concluded to go, and when the stage left next morning for San Francisco we were on the outside seat. Joe Goodman had returned by this time and agreed to accompany us as far as Henness Pa.s.s. We were all in good spirits and glad we were alive, so Joe did not stop when he got to Henness Pa.s.s, but kept on. Now and then he would say, "Well, I had better be going back pretty soon," but he didn't go, and in the end he did not go back at all, but went with us clear to San Francisco, and we had a royal good time all the way. I never knew any series of duels to close so happily.

So ended Mark Twain's career on the Comstock. He had come to it a weary pilgrim, discouraged and unknown; he was leaving it with a new name and fame--elate, triumphant, even if a fugitive.

XLVI. GETTING SETTLED IN SAN FRANCISCO

This was near the end of May, 1864. The intention of both Gillis and Clemens was to return to the States; but once in San Francis...o...b..th presently accepted places, Clemens as reporter and Gillis as compositor, on the 'Morning Call'.

From 'Roughing It' the reader gathers that Mark Twain now entered into a life of b.u.t.terfly idleness on the strength of prospective riches to be derived from the "half a trunkful of mining stocks," and that presently, when the mining bubble exploded, he was a pauper. But a good many liberties have been taken with the history of this period. Undoubtedly he expected opulent returns from his mining stocks, and was disappointed, particularly in an investment in Hale and Norcross shares, held too long for the large profit which could have been made by selling at the proper time.

The fact is, he spent not more than a few days--a fortnight at most--in "b.u.t.terfly idleness," at the Lick House before he was hard at work on the 'Call', living modestly with Steve Gillis in the quietest place they could find, never quiet enough, but as far as possible from dogs and cats and chickens and pianos, which seemed determined to make the mornings hideous, when a weary night reporter and compositor wanted to rest. They went out socially, on occasion, arrayed in considerable elegance; but their recreations were more likely to consist of private midnight orgies, after the paper had gone to press--mild dissipations in whatever they could find to eat at that hour, with a few gla.s.ses of beer, and perhaps a game of billiards or pool in some all-night resort.

A printer by the name of Ward--"Little Ward,"--[L. P. Ward; well known as an athlete in San Francisco. He lost his mind and fatally shot himself in 1903.]--they called him--often went with them for these refreshments. Ward and Gillis were both bantam game-c.o.c.ks, and sometimes would stir up trouble for the very joy of combat. Clemens never cared for that sort of thing and discouraged it, but Ward and Gillis were for war. "They never a.s.sisted each other. If one had offered to a.s.sist the other against some overgrown person, it would have been an affront, and a battle would have followed between that pair of little friends."--[S.

L. C., 1906.]--Steve Gillis in particular, was fond of incidental encounters, a characteristic which would prove an important factor somewhat later in shaping Mark Twain's career. Of course, the more strenuous nights were not frequent. Their home-going was usually tame enough and they were glad enough to get there.

Clemens, however, was never quite ready for sleep. Then, as ever, he would prop himself up in bed, light his pipe, and lose himself in English or French history until sleep conquered. His room-mate did not approve of this habit; it interfered with his own rest, and with his fiendish tendency to mischief he found reprisal in his own fas.h.i.+on.

Knowing his companion's highly organized nervous system he devised means of torture which would induce him to put out the light. Once he tied a nail to a string; an arrangement which he kept on the floor behind the bed. Pretending to be asleep, he would hold the end of the string, and lift it gently up and down, making a slight ticking sound on the floor, maddening to a nervous man. Clemens would listen a moment and say:

"What in the nation is that noise"

Gillis's pretended sleep and the ticking would continue.