Complete Letters of Mark Twain | Page 5

out to
his family that he was going to St. Louis, but he kept on to New York,
where a World's Fair was then going on. In New York he found
employment at his trade, and during the hot months of 1853 worked in
a printing- office in Cliff Street. By and by he went to Philadelphia,
where he worked a brief time; made a trip to Washington, and presently
set out for the West again, after an absence of more than a year.
Onion, meanwhile, had established himself at Muscatine, Iowa, but
soon after removed to Keokuk, where the brothers were once more
together, till following their trade. Young Sam Clemens remained in
Keokuk until the winter of 1856-57, when he caught a touch of the
South-American fever then prevalent; and decided to go to Brazil. He
left Keokuk for Cincinnati, worked that winter in a printing-office there,
and in April took the little steamer, Paul Jones, for New Orleans, where
he expected to find a South-American vessel. In Life on the Mississippi
we have his story of how he met Horace Bixby and decided to become
a pilot instead of a South American adventurer--jauntily setting himself
the stupendous task of learning the twelve hundred miles of the
Mississippi River between St. Louis and New Orleans--of knowing it
as exactly and as unfailingly, even in the dark, as one knows the way to
his own features. It seems incredible to those who knew Mark Twain in
his later years--dreamy, unpractical, and indifferent to details--that he
could have acquired so vast a store of minute facts as were required by
that task. Yet within eighteen months he had become not only a pilot,
but one of the best and most careful pilots on the river, intrusted with
some of the largest and most valuable steamers. He continued in that
profession for two and a half years longer, and during that time met
with no disaster that cost his owners a single dollar for damage.
Then the war broke out. South Carolina seceded in December, 1860
and other States followed. Clemens was in New Orleans in January,

1861, when Louisiana seceded, and his boat was put into the
Confederate service and sent up the Red River. His occupation gone, he
took steamer for the North--the last one before the blockade closed. A
blank cartridge was fired at them from Jefferson Barracks when they
reached St. Louis, but they did not understand the signal, and kept on.
Presently a shell carried away part of the pilot-house and considerably
disturbed its inmates. They realized, then, that war had really begun.
In those days Clemens's sympathies were with the South. He hurried up
to Hannibal and enlisted with a company of young fellows who were
recruiting with the avowed purpose of "throwing off the yoke of the
invader." They were ready for the field, presently, and set out in good
order, a sort of nondescript cavalry detachment, mounted on animals
more picturesque than beautiful. Still, it was a resolute band, and might
have done very well, only it rained a good deal, which made soldiering
disagreeable and hard. Lieutenant Clemens resigned at the end of two
weeks, and decided to go to Nevada with Orion, who was a Union
abolitionist and had received an appointment from Lincoln as Secretary
of the new Territory.
In 'Roughing It' Mark Twain gives us the story of the overland journey
made by the two brothers, and a picture of experiences at the other end
--true in aspect, even if here and there elaborated in detail. He was
Orion's private secretary, but there was no private-secretary work to do,
and no salary attached to the position. The incumbent presently went to
mining, adding that to his other trades.
He became a professional miner, but not a rich one. He was at Aurora,
California, in the Esmeralda district, skimping along, with not much to
eat and less to wear, when he was summoned by Joe Goodman, owner
and editor of the Virginia City Enterprise, to come up and take the local
editorship of that paper. He had been contributing sketches to it now
and then, under the pen, name of "Josh," and Goodman, a man of fine
literary instincts, recognized a talent full of possibilities. This was in
the late summer of 1862. Clemens walked one hundred and thirty miles
over very bad roads to take the job, and arrived way-worn and travel-
stained. He began on a salary of twenty-five dollars a week, picking up
news items here and there, and contributing occasional sketches,
burlesques, hoaxes, and the like. When the Legislature convened at
Carson City he was sent down to report it, and then, for the first time,

began signing his articles "Mark Twain," a river term, used in making