June 18, 2007

Nevada's Online State News Journal

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[From The History of Nevada, edited by Sam P. Davis, vol. I (1913), pp. 707-714]

Nevada History:

THE LITERATURE OF NEVADA   707

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE LITERATURE OF NEVADA.

BY SAM P. DAVIS.

Mark Twain, Joseph T. Goodman, C. C. Goodwin, Rollen Daggett,

Harry R. Mighels, Dan De Quille, Thomas Fitch, Dr. Galley,

Sam Davis, Adah Meechem Strobridge, Meriam Michelson,

Sam Dunham, Fred Hart, Philip Verill Mighels, The

Princess Winnemucca, Charles McClure Gottwaldt.

In discussing the impress which Nevada has made upon the world's literature the name of Mark Twain naturally heads the list. He began his literary career on the Comstock, and after blazing his name upon the scroll of the world's great authors, died in New York City covered with honors, and venerated by the literati of both continents.

To produce any of his writings here would be a waste of printers' ink. They are found in every library where the English language is spoken, and they have been translated into the tongues of many countries. They are the most universally read of any modern writer, are found in the cottage of the poor, by the side of the artizan in his, workshop, in the palaces of kings. They are appreciated in the Flowery Kingdom, they are standard in the fastness of the Himalayas and quoted from the desert sands of the tropics to the ice-bound regions of the Arctic where the midnight sun hugs the horizon for half the year.

Joseph T. Goodman, who was a sort of literary foster-father to Twain, and who gave him his first employment and sustained him when his heart was heavy and his courage flagged, contributes this close-range view of his characteristics.:

"I recall Mark Twain in so many different personal aspects at various periods of our long acquaintance that it is difficult to say in which particular one I remember him best. Of course, there were always the same slight figure, the same noble head, the same keen gray eyes, the same delicate hands and feet, and the same half-skipping, half-shambling gait;

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but I saw all these unchangeable traits undergo by slow gradation the inevitable change from the boyish look of the curled darling of 27 to the venerable appearance of the white-haired sage of 69. I think, however, I recall his personality most distinctly and like it best at that last stage—possibly because I am old myself. He had then taken on flesh, and his complexion, which formerly was sallow, had become ruddy, while age sat on him with a peculiar grace, as though it had only descended to rest sportively, lovingly and becomingly, without impairing him by a single blemishing touch. He made use of the purest English of any modern writer. The simplicity and beauty of his style is almost without parallel except in the common version of the Bible. He had an abhorrence of the use of foreign words, obscure terms and affected phrases in both writing and speech."

Joseph Thompson Goodman.—Had Joseph T. Goodman done nothing more than to discover Mark Twain, encourage and sustain him when he wanted to abandon the calling of a writer to try something else, the world would have owed him an everlasting debt of gratitude. But Goodman did not pause at this achievement. He wrote the immortal book known through the world as the "Biology of Central America." In this stupendous work he succeeded, where so many had failed, in deciphering the mysterious inscriptions on the ruined temples of Yucatan, which had for centuries baffled the archeologists of the world.

He, after years of patient research, translated the archaic calendars left in the temples by the ancient Mayas, inscriptions carved in imperishable stone before the pyramids were planned or the songs of the worshipers rose in the pillared temples of Karnak. He demonstrated that the inscriptions were the calendars of the extinct race whose chronological records went back over two hundred and forty thousand years. He showed beyond any dispute that these people kept records of years which were marked by the journey of the earth around the sun, that they allowed for the leap year and knew the science of optics.

This book is now recognized as standard throughout the world and regarded as one of the monumental works of the century.

Rollin M. Daggett.—The State never sheltered a more unique and original human being than Rollin Daggett. In personal appearance he

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was rough, uncouth and at times seemed almost brutal. There was a scar over one eye as if a knife had slashed it, and his face was forbidding and coarse-featured to a stranger; but after he had conversed two minutes, his sunny smile and his witty conversation won every one with whom he came in contact.

There is a story current in Placerville, Cal., of his first appearance on the Coast. One day a man drifted into town with a child in his arms driving a white bull. He was nearly dead with fatigue and hunger, and the emaciated waif he held in his arms was nearly unconscious. Those who saw the man's long hair and beard, ragged garments and incoherent talk pronounced him a lunatic. They turned the white bull where there was good grass, washed the man up and cared for the child. The man was Rollin Daggett. He had been with a train of emigrants crossing the plains. They had been attacked by Indians and wiped out. Daggett with the little child in his arms, got away and he carried the child hundreds of miles to civilization. The scar over his eye was a souvenir of that battle with the savages. He said that after he had traveled about a week and was in despair the white bull appeared on the scene and he felt that it was a guide sent by Providence to show him the way to safety.

As an editorial writer Daggett was for years a power in Nevada and he was also elected to Congress on the Republican ticket. He was a poet of the first rank, and wrote many splendid pieces of forceful and delightful verse and had his fugitive poems been collected and published in book form, it would have earned for him a lasting name in literature.

He was also the author of "Braxton's Bar," a novel founded in his experiences in crossing the plains, but as a novelist his work was not on a level with the high standard of his poetry.

Henry R. Mighels.—Was born November 3rd at Norway, Maine, and died in Carson City, May 28th, 1879. He was commissioned by President Lincoln in 1862, as an Assistant Adjutant General and assigned to the staff of General Sturgis. He participated in many battles of the Civil War and in the battle of Petersburg was shot through both thighs. After being mustered out of service because of his wounds, he engaged in journalism in California, being connected with the Marys-

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ville Appeal, Butte Record, and Sacramento Bee. He started the Carson Appeal and edited it until his death. As an editorial writer he commanded the highest salary ever paid for such a service on the coast. During one of the great political campaigns in California he was called away from the Appeal tripod to receive a salary of $500 a week as political editor of a San Francisco newspaper. After his death a collection was made of his poems and sketches and published under the title of "Sagebrush Leaves," a book replete with quaint humor and odd fancies of an educated man of letters.

Dan De Quille.—Dan De Quille, whose real name was George Wright, was the earliest of the sagebrush writers to attract attention. He spent more than a quarter of a century on the Enterprise. He was a gentle, lovable man and one of the few men ever heard of who had no enemies and yet was a man who amounted to a great deal. He had a boundless imagination and was a many-sided writer. He was a humorist, philosopher and the keenest of observers. His pen alone gave the public the true vernacular of the mining-camp together with the dialect of the Indian and the Chinese. He painted street scenes and the ways of the sports and promoters, and for years kept the Comstock laughing with his odd fancies.

Few men understood the "lanes and alleys" of the great ledge as he knew them. He could sketch a map of almost any mine-level at a moment's notice and his reports of mining developments were never questioned. He had the full confidence of the public. No amount of money could induce him to color a mining article or leave out a line that was true. A big operator once said of him: "I could make an everlasting fortune if I could only buy up Dan De Quille."

He wrote the "Big Bonanza," a remarkable book on the Comstock. He died poor, as he seemed to lack the ability of commercializing his genius.

Philip Verrill Mighels.—Was one of the native Nevadans who established himself in the literary world.

On the 12th of October, he met his death at Winnemucca from the accidental discharge of a shot-gun at the Bliss ranch in Humboldt County. He was the second son of Harry R. Mighels, for years the

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editor of the Carson Appeal. He was born at Carson City, April 19, 1869. When twenty-one he was admitted to the bar, but not finding the law con-genial drifted into literature. He began writing on the San Francisco Chronicle as a reporter, but two years later made his home in New York. His first venture was a book of poems, "Out of a Silver Flute." His published books were as follows : "Nella, the Heart of the Army," "When a Witch Was, Young," "Dunny," "Chatwitch, the Man-Talk Bird," "Bruvver Jim's Baby," "Sunnyside Tad," "The Inevitable," "The Ultimate Passion," "The Crystal Scepter," "A Husband by Proxy," "The Furnace of Gold," "The Pillars of Eden," "Thurley Paxton."

"The House of Iron Men" was published under the name of "Jack Steel." The book which met with the largest sale was "The Furnace of Gold," with the plot laid in Goldfield.

Several of his works were re-published in England and met with heavy sales. He was also a steady contributor of short stories and descriptive articles for Harper's and other magazines.

At the time of his death he had established a firm foothold with the book-loving public and his stories were regarded as true portrayals of Western life. His second wife, who was with him at the time of his death, now resides in New York City.

His death was a shock to the community where he had made his home in boyhood, and removed a notable figure in Western literature. He was of sterling integrity and gentle breeding, and was cut down on the threshold of a splendid career.

Sam Dunham.—This writer made his first mark in the Klondike, and after coming to Nevada he published the Tonopah Miner which soon be-came a mining authority in the State. He was known as "The Goldsmith of Nome," because the many stirring poems he wrote of the North. Recently he published a delightful book of verses entitled. "The Men who Blazed the Trail" which is a true portrayal of the characteristics of the pioneers who lived in the frozen North above that parallel of latitude above which there is "no law of God or man." The preface of the book was penned by Dunham's friend Joaquin Miller to whom the publication was affectionately dedicated.

Ada Meacham Strobridge.—No pen ever painted the beauties,

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mysteries and grandeur of the Nevada desert with such deft touch and fidelity to nature as Ada Meacham Strobridge. She wrote "The Miners' Mirage Land," describing scenes in which she had spent her childhood. It is a fascinating work to those who have breathed the same and slept under the same sky in the land which she describes so faithfully and with the touch of a true artist. She is now living in California, but her Nevada sketches are universally recognized as reproductions of sagebrush life which have the realism of a photograph.

Meriarm Michelsan.—A girl born and raised in Virginia City and sister of Albert Michelson, who received first prize from the French Academy of Sciences for the discovery of a method for measuring the velocity of light, wrote "The Bishop's Carriage" a book that was the best seller for the year and afterwards dramatized into a play that still holds the boards.

There are many other writers of note who became famous in Nevada, but whose published works the compiler of this History has been unable to secure. Among these are Thomas Fitch, author of "The Wedge of Gold" and his talented wife, Anna Fitch, who wrote a great deal of good poetry in the early seventies.

Dr. Gaily was the author of many very original short stories and sketches. His most notable effort was "Big Jack Small." The amusing situation in the narrative was where a clergyman rode over the country with Jack Small on his freight-wagon and remonstrated with him for his lavish use of profanity, when addressing his mule-team. Presently the wagon turned over on a steep grade pinning Small under it, and throwing the parson some yards into the sagebrush unhurt. Small, pinned under the wagon, gave directions to the parson how to utilize the mules in pulling the wagon to an upright position. When they were turned at right angles with the wagon and everything was in readiness, the parson attempted to move the string of mules, but not one would budge, from the simple fact that they were waiting for the profanity of the driver before settling down to the pull. Small finally persuaded the preacher that his life depended on his using profanity when dealing with mules and taught him some picturesque blasphemy from under the wagon. The preacher proved an at scholar and when he turned loose Jack Small's lesson on the ani-

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mals, they pulled the wagon off the prostrate man and a life was saved. It is related that the hero of the story resigned from the ministry and went into the freighting business.

Fred Hart gained considerable fame with his book "The Sazarac Lying Club" published at Austin. It was in this little town that Emma Nevada, who became a world famous opera singer, took her first lessons in vocal music.

R. E. L. Gibson, a brother of Dr. Gibson of Reno, published a very commendable volume of Sonnets and Lyric, in 1901.

Mrs. Lou Spencer, of Carson City, issued a small book of very readable poems which was not put on sale but merely published for private distribution among friends.

Mrs. Emmett Boyle, the wife of the late Senator Boyle published a number of poems in the magazines, but no published collection of them can be found to-day.

T. De Witt Turner, of Reno, has given to the press many striking poems as has also William McClure Gottwaldt who still writes verse for the magazines.

Princess Sarah Winnemucca, daughter of the Piute Chief, went east to a seminary where she was highly educated and published a book which had a wide circulation.

The most enjoyable book to old Nevadans that was ever published was "The Comstock Club" from the pen of Judge C. C. Goodwin. It simply overflowed with quaint scenes, fine writing, and clever stories which made the old characters of the Ledge live again.

The most pretentious book in the shape of a Nevada novel was published in the early days entitled "Robert Greathouse" from the pen of Congressman Swift. It laid the lash of satire on the backs of many well known men. It was a masterly story but it made a crop of enemies for Swift that he never lost while life lasted.

Sam Davis, the editor of this history, has found time occasionally to turn from his calling as a journalist and write for the eastern magazines. He contributes poetry and prose to these publications.

His only published book is entitled "Short Stories and Poems" of which there was but a limited edition.

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THE LURE OF THE SAGE-BUSH

Have you ever scented the sage-bush

That mantles Nevada's plain?

If not, you have lived but half your life,

And that half lived in vain.

No matter where the place or clime

That your wandering footsteps stray,

You will sigh as you think of her velvet fields

And their fragrance of leveled hay.

You will loiter a while in other lands,

When something seems to call,

And the lure of the sage-bush brings you back

And holds you within its thrall.

You may tread the halls of pleasure,

Where the lamps of folly shine,

'Mid the sobbing of sensuous music

And the flow of forbidden wine.

But when the revel is over,

And the dancers turn to go,

You will long for a draught of her crystal streams

That spring from her peaks of snow.

You will sigh for a sight of the beetling crags,

Where the Storm King holds his sway,

Where the sinking sun with its brush of gold

Tells the tale of the dying day.

And when you die you will want a grave

Where the Washoe zephyr blows,

With the green of the sage-bush above your head,

What need to plant the rose !