[J. A. Yerington, Stories of Hank Monk, Sunset, November 1903]

STORIES OF HANK MONK

By J. A. YERINGTON

Commissioner from Nevada to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition

                OF all the stage drivers who have drawn the strings over cayuse and mustang, Hank Monk—Henry James Monk was his full name—immortalized by Mark Twain in "Roughing It," is probably the best known. Circumstances and his fund of humor made him famous, and he was well known even before the big drive in which Horace Greeley was so reluctant a participant.  Hank seldom spoke of this ride, and did not consider it really anything wonderful. Interest in the man, and his Sierra drives has been revived by the getting together of various relics, including the old stage coach in which Greeley rode, Monk's watch and many personal possessions, for exhibition at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Here are a few stories of Monk, most of them told by Judge Goodwin of Salt Lake City, ever a warm friend of the old stage driver:

            "IS it cold up at the Lake, now?" asked a British tourist of Hank Monk.

            "Awful," was the reply. "I've seen frost up there right in the middle of the day."

            "Where was that ?" asked the astounded tourist, as he looked aghast at his linen duster, and thin trousers.

            "At the Tallac house, on some of the dessert cake," responded Hank.

*  *  *

            Hank Monk was constantly perpetrating jokes on passengers, and in more than one instance has caused unpleasantnesses in families. One day a young man in the stage was paying great attention to a schoolmarm, and Hank having doubts as to whether the swain was a single man, kept his weather eye on him. The following day, on arriving from Carson, he saw the same man sitting close up to the lady in the hotel ; so close as to compel him to place his arm round her waist for mutual support. Hank went in, and, doffing his hat, said :

            "Morning, folks, I ha-ad to go to Virginia City last night, and I met your wife, young feller, and she told me if I see you to tell you to come home right-off—cause the little baby is mighty sick with delirium tremens !"

            All was said in Monk's peculiar drawling manner and not a smile appeared on his face. The denouement was of the emotional class; the girl flouncing off, and the cove, as Hank said, "just cussed like a darned fool."

            "I didn't mean any harm, you know," said Hank, "I only smelt a mice and wanted to save that there gal from suff'ring unrequited affection—I guess that's what they call humbugging a gal, ain't it ?"

            Hank Monk had a horse in his team which he drove to and from the Lake over five years. He had acquired a habit of rolling about in his harness and making two tracks along the road. Hank while applying the whip on the way down, shouted to the quadruped:

            "Get up, Conkling." A passenger on the stage inquired the reason for giving the horse such a name, when Monk drawled out :

            "Well, ye know he used to be called Jim Blaine, when he went straight ahead, but since he took to squirming I christened him Roscoe Conkling." The passenger who happened to be a stalwart administration man, told Hank that a horn of the best would be at his service on arriving at Carson.

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            Monk was born in the town of Waddington, St. Lawrence county, N. Y., March 24, 1826. He always had a fancy for horses, and once drove eight horses abreast in the city of Boston upon the occasion of a great celebration. This was in his younger days, and at that time he regarded it as a great achievement. He came to the Pacific coast in 1852, and first drove a stage in California between Sacramento and Auburn, a distance of forty miles, for the California Stage Company, of which Burch and Hayward were then the managers. He afterward drove on the Placerville road into Sacramento, and in 1857 went to Nevada. His first route there was between Genoa (at that time the metropolis of the state) and Placerville, in California. J. B. Crandall was the proprietor of this road, and sold out to Brady and Sundland, who in turn disposed of their interests to Wells, Fargo & Company.

            Monk was driving all this time and continued until the stages were hauled off. He drove for Billy Wilson between Carson and Virginia City—seventeen miles —and the fastest time made by him was one hour and eight minutes from the hotel in Virginia City to the Ormsby house in Carson. At different times he drove to Steamboat Springs and Reno, and when those lines were discontinued, he took the ribbons on the Lake Tahoe line for Doc Benton. Hank never seemed to be in much of a hurry, and some have gone so far as to say that he was not remarkable for his habits of industry, but, however that may be, no one ever yet rode with him who failed to get through "on time."

*  *  *

            Monk always took his passengers down the grade at the same rate of speed. Many amusing incidents are told of Hank, and the visitors who went to Carson used to be as curious to see Hank Monk, and have him drive them to Lake Tahoe as they were to see the Lake itself. The time Horace Greeley rode with him he made the distance of one hundred and nine miles in ten hours, but Hank says he could have gone it in a much shorter time if the horses had been faster.

            At the time of the Greeley ride Monk was in the employ of Dr. J. M. Benton, of Carson City. Monk and Benton were close friends, and when the stage driver died in 1883, his famous watch passed into the possession of Dr. Benton.

            Monk is buried in the cemetery at Carson. A plain sandstone slab marks the grave and in a niche in the stone is a portrait of the man who "got" Horace Greeley in "on time."

*  *  *

            Monk, as will be remembered by every one who has read Mark Twain's "Roughing It," was the driver who was in charge of the stage that carried Horace Greeley into Placerville one evening in the '60s. Mr. Greeley was booked to deliver an address in that mining village at seven o'clock. The trip was tedious, and the great editor began to fear that he would not reach Placerville in time to keep his engagement. He leaned out of the stage window and asked the driver, Hank Monk, if he could not entice a little more speed from the horses.

            The imperturbable driver leaned down and replied :

            "Keep your seat, Horace, I'll get you there on time."

            How Hank Monk kept his word is graphically recorded by Mr. Clemens. Probably no trip over the mountains was ever made at such break-neck speed.

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            The distinguished passenger was tossed around in the bounding stage coach like corn in a popper, and there were those who declared that Mr. Greeley's head was forced through the roof.

            The trip was the topic of the entire coast country, and some admirers of the celebrated driver bought him a handsome gold watch. Inside the case appears this inscription:

            He did not look like a jehu, this Hank Monk. One to sit and watch his face would have said that his soul was so lost in melancholia that he didn't care two cents whether the sun set at noon or staid up until midnight. Once he entered the ladies' sitting room at Cobb's hotel at Glenbrook, and walked up to a woman whose husband had left the room about ten minutes previously, and calmly enquired:

            "Madam, your husband went out to see the Lake, didn't he?"

            "Yes, why ?" she asked, turning pale, in an instant.

            "He was a tall man, wasn't he?"

            "He was," she replied, rising up, and turning still paler.

            "He had red hair ?"

            "He had. Oh ! what has happened ?"

            "Weighed about one hundred and eighty pounds ?"

            "Yes, yes, where is he ? Where is my husband ?" she exclaimed.

            "Couldn't swim, could he ?"

            "He's drowned ! he's drowned, my husband is drowned !" she wailed.

            "Had a silver chain ?" continued Hank.

            "Where is my husband—where is the body ?" she gasped.

            "Do not get excited, madam. Did your husband have on a gray suit?"

            "Yes. Oh, my Thomas! my Thomas !"

            "And boots ?"

            "Let me see him! let me see him !" she cried.

            "Come this way, madam, but do not get excited. There, is that your husband across the street, at the skating rink ?"

            "Why, yes, that's him; that's my husband!" she exclaimed, joyfully. "I thought you said he was drowned."

            "No, madam, I only kinder thought that for so old and dilapidated a cuss as him to go after those gals and leave a nice old lady like you all alone was just a little too rough !"

            Hank went slouching out of that wait- 

STORIES OF HANK MONK                        27

ing room and, clambering on to Benton's stage, drawled out, "All aboard for Carson !"

*  *  *

            Generally, Monk was reserved of speech, sententious in his ways, but often, while battling with a high-strung team, would pronounce an epigram worthy of Ingersoll or Emerson. After his episode with Greeley, distinguished men passing over the Sierra, where Monk drove, would plan to ride outside with him. Many a one has ridden twenty miles, trying in vain to call him out, and at last has settled back with the belief that he was but a stolid idiot, when half a dozen words from Monk, spoken with his peculiar drawl; showed that when he drove Greeley's coach over the mountains there was, perhaps, as big a man outside the vehicle as there was inside. As he was not like any other man, so he was not like any other stage driver.

            In his prime Monk would turn a six-horse coach in the street with the team at full speed, and with every rein apparently loose. But the coach would always bring up in exactly the spot that the most careful driver would have tried to bring it. His eye never deceived him, and his estimation of distances was absolute; the result which must be when the leaders, swing and wheelers all were playing their roles, was with him an exact science. His driving was such a perfection of art that it did not seem art at all, and many an envious whip, watching him, has turned away saying, "He is the luckiest man that ever climbed on top of a box." It was not luck at all, it was simply an intuitive, exact calculation from cause to effect, and his whole duty ended when he fixed the cause. The effect had to be. He has often driven from the summit of the Sierra down into the valley, ten miles, in forty-five minutes. Other drivers have done as well, the only difference being with the others it was a constant strain upon eye and hand and arm and foot; with Monk it was a matter of course. He was to stage driving what the German papers said of Edwin Booth's Hamlet : "It was not played, but lived." Of course, we speak of him as of old, when the railroad was yet east of the Sierra, and when staging over the Sierra was finer than staging ever was before, or ever will be again. In later years Monk was but a ghost of himself. His physical strength had been so wasted that no wild horses were given him ; the grades up the mountains were no longer sprinkled; the locomotive took away the glory of staging, and bad whisky sapped the finer springs of the old driver's life. A year before his death a coach capsized under him, for the first time, and while the accident was trivial in itself, it was a notice to him that his hand had lost its cunning, that his lamps were going out, that a dark canyon was before him, and there was no moon to rise. He died simply a dissipated old stage driver; but if in the long ago, when life was bright and hope was exultant, his heart did not receive a wound which changed his whole life, and all its purposes, then a man's face, and acts, and moods, and modes of thought are no indications of what he has done and suffered.

*  *  *

            The old stage coach in which Greeley took the famous ride will be taken to St. Louis and will be used as the coach of state by the Nevada officials. When

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distinguished guests reach St. Louis the old coach, with a driver of the pioneer day in typical costume, will be at Union station to convey them to the official Nevada home at the World's Fair grounds. Then every day the old coach will be seen dashing down the steep hill from the plateau of states to the mining gulch, where will be constructed a typical California mining camp of the '49 days. This trip will be made just as it was many years ago when the gold dust was daily taken from the mines to a place of safety.

*  *  *

            In its obituary of Monk a Carson paper said :

            "His friend Horace ought to do the fair thing by him and be on hand at the pearly gates with a blazing chariot and a spanking team of angels, and send Hank spinning over the golden pavements at a speed that would remind the old Jehu of other days."