第58章

.....Mr.Langdon is just as good as bound for $25,000 for me, and has already advanced half of it in cash.I wrote and asked whether I had better send him my note, or a due-bill, or how he would prefer to have the indebtedness made of record and he answered every other topic in the letter pleasantly but never replied to that at all.Still, I shall give my note into the hands of his business agent here, and pay him the interest as it falls due.We must "go slow." We are not in the Cleveland Herald.We are a hundred thousand times better off, but there isn't so much money in it.

(Remainder missing.)

In spite of the immediate success of his book--a success the like of which had scarcely been known in America-Mark Twain held himself to be, not a literary man, but a journalist: He had no plans for another book; as a newspaper owner and editor he expected, with his marriage, to settle down and devote the rest of his life to journalism.The paper was the Buffalo Express; his interest in it was one-third--the purchase price, twenty-five thousand dollars, of which he had paid a part, Jervis Langdon, his future father-in-law, having furnished cash and security for the remainder.He was already in possession in August, but he was not regularly in Buffalo that autumn, for he had agreed with Redpath to deliver his Quaker City lecture, and the tour would not end until a short time before his wedding-day, February 2, 1870.

Our next letter hardly belongs in this collection; as it was doubtless written with at least the possibility of publication in view.But it is too amusing, too characteristic of Mark Twain, to be omitted.It was sent in response to an invitation from the New York Society of California Pioneers to attend a banquet given in New York City, October 13, 1869, and was, of course, read to the assembled diners.

To the New York Society of California Pioneers, in New York City:

ELMIRA, October 11, 1869.

GENTLEMEN,--Circumstances render it out of my power to take advantage of the invitation extended to me through Mr.Simonton, and be present at your dinner at New York.I regret this very much, for there are several among you whom I would have a right to join hands with on the score of old friendship, and I suppose I would have a sublime general right to shake hands with the rest of you on the score of kinship in California ups and downs in search of fortune.

If I were to tell some of my experience, you would recognize California blood in me; I fancy the old, old story would sound familiar, no doubt.

I have the usual stock of reminiscences.For instance: I went to Esmeralda early.I purchased largely in the "Wide West," "Winnemucca,"and other fine claims, and was very wealthy.I fared sumptuously on bread when flour was $200 a barrel and had beans for dinner every Sunday, when none but bloated aristocrats could afford such grandeur.But Ifinished by feeding batteries in a quartz mill at $15 a week, and wishing I was a battery myself and had somebody to feed me.My claims in Esmeralda are there yet.I suppose I could be persuaded to sell.

I went to Humboldt District when it was new; I became largely interested in the "Alba Nueva" and other claims with gorgeous names, and was rich again--in prospect.I owned a vast mining property there.I would not have sold out for less than $400,000 at that time.But I will now.

Finally I walked home--200 miles partly for exercise, and partly because stage fare was expensive.Next I entered upon an affluent career in Virginia City, and by a judicious investment of labor and the capital of friends, became the owner of about all the worthless wild cat mines there were in that part of the country.Assessments did the business for me there.There were a hundred and seventeen assessments to one dividend, and the proportion of income to outlay was a little against me.My financial barometer went down to 32 Fahrenheit, and the subscriber was frozen out.

I took up extensions on the main lead-extensions that reached to British America, in one direction, and to the Isthmus of Panama in the other--and I verily believe I would have been a rich man if I had ever found those infernal extensions.But I didn't.I ran tunnels till I tapped the Arctic Ocean, and I sunk shafts till I broke through the roof of perdition; but those extensions turned up missing every time.I am willing to sell all that property and throw in the improvements.

Perhaps you remember that celebrated "North Ophir?" I bought that mine.

It was very rich in pure silver.You could take it out in lumps as large as a filbert.But when it was discovered that those lumps were melted half dollars, and hardly melted at that, a painful case of "salting" was apparent, and the undersigned adjourned to the poorhouse again.

I paid assessments on "Hale and Norcross" until they sold me out, and Ihad to take in washing for a living--and the next month that infamous stock went up to $7,000 a foot.

I own millions and millions of feet of affluent silver leads in Nevada--in fact the entire undercrust of that country nearly, and if Congress would move that State off my property so that I could get at it, I would be wealthy yet.But no, there she squats--and here am I.Failing health persuades me to sell.If you know of any one desiring a permanent investment, I can furnish one that will have the virtue of being eternal.

I have been through the California mill, with all its "dips, spurs and angles, variations and sinuosities." I have worked there at all the different trades and professions known to the catalogues.I have been everything, from a newspaper editor down to a cow-catcher on a locomotive, and I am encouraged to believe that if there had been a few more occupations to experiment on, I might have made a dazzling success at last, and found out what mysterious designs Providence had in creating me.