[Ella Sterling Cummins, Writers of the Sagebrush School, from The story of the files; a review of Californian writers and literature (1893)]

 

WRITERS OF THE SAGEBRUSH SCHOOL.

1858-1903.

Joseph T. Goodman, Mark Twain, Fred H. Hart, Henry E. Mighels, Dan de Quille (William Wright) Sam Davis, John Franklin Swift, C. C. Goodwin, Joseph Wasson, Rollin M. Daggett and others.

            Sagebrush school ? Why not ? Nothing in all our Western literature so distinctly savors of the soil as the characteristic books written by the men of Nevada and that interior part of the State where the sagebrush grows.

            There is something in that region of high altitudes, grey alkali, grey sagebrush, grey rocks, spring freshets and glorious sunsets that has always precluded the possibility of taking up the pen to write of dukes, duchesses, heather-blooms and English uplands, or of scenes of New England, or anywhere else under the sun's shining save of that weird, fascinating, ugly land in which they dwelled.

            The inspiration of that literary movement began with the Virginia Territorial Enterprise, in the early sixties, under the management of Joseph T. Goodman, editor, literateur and poet, whose name is embroidered as with a golden thread all over the history of our Californian literature. The Enterprise was as a great success in its way twining itself about the hearts of the people as the Sacramento Union. These two journals represent a phase in public feeling and occupy a place in public affection that can never be repeated in our history.

            The files of the old Enterprise may be found at the Merchants' Exchange in this city, on California street, near Montgomery. It is rich with vivid picture and stirring editorial, odd stories and racy correspondence and delicate poems. Here are to be found Mark Twain's lucubrations before he became famous to the rest of the world, but was a welcome and familiar jester with cap and bells to the people of Nevada.

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            It was during this time that Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) laid away the experiences and pictures for his inimitable " Roughing It," which contains some of his cleverest work in the way of description. It will be remembered that he was a millionaire for ten days in the town of Aurora, Nevada, having, with a friend, located a mine, "The Wide West." His friend went off for a trip somewhere out of town, and he fell sick, each thinking the other could make the proper record of the location in the land-office. But the time expired, and as each appeared on the scene some ten days after, a horde of hungry miners was found in possession of the celebrated mine. Thus fell his hopes, and, instead of a mining millionaire, a humorist was spared to the world. Although no one need fear that he ran any chance of being a millionaire over the " Wide West " mine, for the writer, as a child, played over the historic spot and saw only a shut-down mill and desolate hole in the ground to mark the spot where over-hopeful men had sunk thousands and thousands that they never recovered. It was just the same old fraud that every other mine is.

            But his description of Mono Lake -- the Dead Sea of the West, a few miles from Aurora, is perfect in detail and picturing. His view of the coyote is based on the genuine prowler of those regions and you can almost smell the sagebrush and taste the alkali after reading " Roughing It.  '

            In his work upon the Enterprise was a bit of literary criticism which has passed into a familiar saying, to be handed down from father to son and mother to daughter. Upon the death of Lincoln many obituary poems sprang into print, among them, one which took the fancy of Mark Twain, who set it off thus :

                                                "Gone, gone, gone,

                                                Gone to his endeavor;

                                                Gone, gone, gone,

                                                Forever and forever."

            " This is a very nice refrain to this little poem. But if there is any criticism to make upon it, I should say that there was a little too much ' gone ' and not enough 'forever.'" And to this day it is used as a case in point relating to a superfluity of any kind.

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            In the correspondence of Joseph T. Goodman from Europe to the Enterprise, he gives a pen picture of the throne room of the Napoleons and the French kings, where by some strange chance he entered and found no one in keeping. He wandered about, and, finally, with the coolness that marks the Western American, he went up and tried the throne to see how it felt to occupy so distinguished a position. Suddenly the officials appeared on the scene with a procession of courtiers and ladies, and the cool man from Nevada was ignominously hustled out of the spot sacred to royalty. This story is told from memory, but the words of Mr. Goodman upon the situation are remembered distinctly:

            " Some people might have felt hurt at such an incident, but I reflected that I was not the first man to have been kicked off that throne ; in fact, that I was in royal company, and, further, I felt sustained by thinking it was very likely that I would not be the last one, either."

            It gives historic point to the story to add that before the year was out Mr. Goodman's prophecy was fulfilled, for Louis Napoleon entered upon the war with Prussia, and the French throne vanished into air.

            One of the typical books of this school is that of the " Sazerac Lying Club." This was published by Fred H. Hart, editor of the Reese River Reveille, and contains many felicitous scraps and yarns from that journal. Humor, grotesque and characteristic, play over the pages. Local color is laid on unsparingly, well known individuals are here cartooned and immortalized. The atmosphere of Nevada, the glory of the sunsets, pictures of the mining town and its people, customs and manners, all are here so vividly portrayed that it is almost panoramic. To one who has ever lived in these climes the volume is a source of unfailing amusement.

            " Sagebrush Leaves " is a volume which was published in 1879, written by Henry R. Mighels under peculiar circumstances. He was editor and proprietor of the Carson Appeal from 1865, and occupied a position of great influence in the politics of the State, being a Republican.

            While often planning to write a book some day, it was not until his physician decided that the deadly foe of his life which

WRITERS OF THE SAGEBRUSH SCHOOL. 105

had reappeared despite the surgeon's knife -- could not be removed, that he began the work, and then it was as a legacy to his wife and children. He maintained this astonishing nerve to the end. Just before he passed away he seemed to be relapsing into unconsciousness, and his wife, rousing him a little, said : "Do you know me, Harry ? "

            He opened his eyes, and, looking up with a smile, replied : " I think we have met before."

            In a few moments he was dead.

            The following sketch is contributed by his son, Philip Verrill Mighels :

            " Henry Rust Mighels combined the chivalry of a soldier and the talent of a pure and simple artist, with a streak of lively humor and a vein of refined and sympathetic poetry which always permeated his journalistic utterances. He was a true lover of nature, finding in the mere rustle of the trees a sublime melody that often soothed him in the endless succession of days when agony made its fatal inroad to his soul. He was born at Norway, Me., November 5, 1830, and died at Carson, Nev., May 28, 1879.

            In the war of the rebellion Mr. Mighels served in his rank of assistant adjutant-general, with rank of captain, with the same ardor that characterized everything that he undertook. When honorably discharged, because of inability longer to serve, he laid aside epaulets and a well-worn sword for the quieter pursuits of a pen, with never a single display of what he had done for his country. He was bitterly opposed to ostentatious show, even of patriotism, and would never join the order of the Grand Army of the Republic because, he said, so many impostors paraded in its ranks. Whenever asked by his children how many rebels he had killed, his invariable answer was: ' I killed as many of them as they did of me.' At Petersburg, June 16, 1864, however, he was severely wounded through both thighs. ; Mr. Mighels never posed as an artist, but his many friends hung his pictures upon their walls whenever they got a chance. Once he painted a drop curtain. He enjoyed to tell the story that it was valued more for its avoirdupois than its merit as a gem of art. He delighted to paint from still life or from nature, and whether his subject was his childrens' lead soldiers, strewn about the ruins of dismantled

106 CALIFORNIAN WRITERS AND LITERATURE.

toy cannon and bursted firecrackers, or the calm majesty of Mount Tallac, mirrored in the transparent depths of Lake Tahoe, he worked with the same tireless enthusiasm.  Lake Tahoe possessed a picturesque and poetic charm for Mr. Mighels, which was reflected in some of his subsequent muses of pen and brush.

            " In his home life Harry Mighels was happy, bright and cheerful always. Engaged in "tinkering," in which he delighted, he always sang at his work While painting in his studio, which he built, he always insisted upon solitude, frequently calling in his wife, whom he regarded as his best critic, to note effects and make suggestions. The books that he loved most -- Thoreau, Macaulay, Ruskin and others -- still bear the marks of his repeated perusals, and indications at passages that he most keenly admired. His ''Sagebrush Leaves" is a collection of his quaint addresses to his dearest friends through the columns of the Appeal. It was compiled upon his death bed. He never even saw the proof-sheets.

            " Much as Mr. Mighels dreaded physical pain, he met a painful, lingering death with marvelous fortitude. To the last his bright smile and flashes of ready wit defied the approaching end. When death claimed him a brave, fearless soul went free. He rests as he could have wished under a green sod, beneath tall, whispering poplar trees."

            There is sweetness, crispness and shy humor in the sketches, some of which are exquisite in their tinting, especially one entitled " Mountain Lights and Shadows."

            In 1876 was published the " Big Bonanza " by Wm. Wright, better known as Dan de Quille, one of the most consecutive writers, year in and out, from the early days to the present time.

            He carried the manuscript East and it was published by his old friend, Mark Twain, and sold by subscription. Possibly this excellent introduction of the book is the reason it is to be found in all the libraries.

            The history of the "Big Bonanza" includes an account of the discovery, history and working of the world-renowned Comstock silver-lode of Nevada, and also incidents and adventures, and an exposition of the production of pure silver and copious illustrations of the scenes presented. There is no doubt that this is a work of historical value and at the same time a vivid picture of that wonderful epoch. It is all presented with such sincerity and simplicity that it makes an interesting story from beginning to end.

            In the light of the next forty years, over in the Twentieth Century, these pages will read more like the portraiture of some strange people of some other star than our own, and eyes not now

WRITERS OF THE SAGEBRUSH SCHOOL. 107

in existence will open with wonder over these Indian wars, silver discoveries, strange happenings and pictures of the dark underground world in which the miners lived. It is too soon for us to appreciate the exactness and faithfulness with which this story has been told. Dan de Quille has an able pen, a correct eye, a lucid style, and in his short stories from time to time, have always presented scenes of local color and given them a quality of sincerity.

            Another writer of considerable fame at home is Sam Davis, editor of the Carson Appeal and contributor to several publications in San Francisco of clever short stories. A number of these were published in 1885 by the Golden Era Publishing Company, and revealed some work as fine as a cameo.

            Notably graphic is the story of the " Pocket Miner," the man who is sent to the Insane Asylum at Stockton. One day, suddenly, he mounts a table and begins to sell imaginary shares of familiar mining-stock, as if in the Stock Exchange. All at once at the familiar sounds the other harmless lunatics cease their wanderings, look up, become interested, and then suddenly awaken to their old-time fascination and one and all bid against the other for the possession of the maddening treasure-trove. It is told so deftly and yet in such simple style that the picture becomes real and the heart is touched and the tears spring for the poor wrecks who have filled the asylums because of this awful fascination of the past.

            In this story Mr. Davis achieves the desire of his heart for he prefers to be known as a pathetic writer rather than as a humorist. For, as he says, " I would rather bring a tear to the eye than make the whole world laugh." Among the treasures found in the usual net cast at Christmas time for Christmas stories by the many literary journals for their holiday numbers, the story

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contributed by Mr. Davis for the occasion is generally based on some deep feeling that touches the heart. And yet he is considered to be a humorist, and is smiled at among the fraternity regarding his claims as a pathetic writer. He unites the two qualities, however, and can be jocose or serious and sincere, just as he chooses.

            Of all the books written about the sagebrush country, there has been none to play such an important part in California politics as John Franklin Swift's novel of "Robert Greathouse." And none has so insisted on being preserved to fame, against the desire of the author, as this one volume for it is well known that Swift endeavored to call in and destroy the copies ; but like all such efforts, it only resulted in giving the novel renewed vitality, so that it still lives, though the author has passed away.

            Indeed, the story of " Robert Greathouse " is remarkable for more reasons than one. It has a certain value in presenting types of character, historically correct, of that time and place. In spite of a certain degree of exaggeration that encompasses the entire idea, yet the relative distinctions are nicely adjusted. Jack Gowdy, the stage-driver, who always refers to himself as " a gentleman," is the real hero of the book, and would be called "a creation " only that it is the crystalization of the Nevada stage-driver himself, and was merely transferred from, actual existence into the covers of a book. A similar transference is the type drawn under the name of Robert Greathouse, the Southerner, who is celebrated for having killed five or six men;

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and yet, whose every word rings out with genuine feeling and caustic humor.

            The women of the book are merely types of what men most admire -- sweetness and refinement of manner. In this later day we should call them very weak, but that they exist there is no doubt. There is not a figure in the play of the drama that does not bear marks of having been copied from real personages. The fact of the matter is, that these characters recognized themselves and resented the pictures drawn. This resentment came to be a real force years after, when the author, John F. Swift, came up for political honors. Chapters from his novel were reprinted and quotations used in speeches and open letters against him. And this was why, when Swift was consumed with ambitious fires, he tried to recall and destroy the book he had written in all the honesty of his heart in more youthful days in the youthful days when he did not fear to tell the truth. For this book is historically true, in the main, and the writer does not fear to say that, as a whole, it is more vivid and stirring in its play upon the nobler feelings of the heart than any other novel written by a Californian.

AN EXTRACT.

            " ' The damned redskins have killed me,' he shouted, 'but they did not get the woman and her blue-eyed babies this trip, by G-d.'

            " Then there was a fall, and the driver was seen stretched in the road in front of the coach wheels. They picked him up and bore him into the station. The little blue-eyed girl followed her friend inside and looked in his face. For a minute she thought she saw a smile of recognition dwell for a moment upon the weather-beaten visage of the stage- driver, and then all was fixed and vacant. * * * The bullets of the Apaches had plunged through his body in half a score of places. The rude skill of the backwoodsmen knew no balsam that could heal such injuries. All the science known to the sons of men could not have produced one single pulsation in the brave heart that now was stilled. The number of gentlemen in the world was reduced by one. Jack Gowdy was dead."

            "Going to Jerico " is the title of a volume containing the account of Swift's trip to Palestine, which account is very readable and enjoyable. John Franklin Swift was known better as a politician than an author, and filled many positions of prominence. He died in Japan March 16, 1891, while representing the United

110 CALIFORNIAN WRITERS AND LITERATURE.

States as Minister to that country, and was buried with military honors in the cemetery of Lone Mountain, San Francisco.

            Well known to journalists and pioneers, but not so well to the later generation, is Judge C. C. Goodwin. He was formerly connected with Joseph T. Goodman in the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, but is now, and has been for many years, proprietor and editor of the Salt Lake Tribune. In this position it is said that he has done more than any other one man in successfully combating and limiting the power of the Mormons in Utah, Hated and feared by them, yet as a brave man he has never quailed when duty and justice pointed the way though his life was at stake. Some of his editorials have glistened with epigram and then revealed that strange power that brings the tears. Some of these have made an indelible impression upon men's minds.  One of these has come to the writer merely by word of mouth , having passed into history. It was iipon the occasion of fighting the bill in Congress against polygamy, and a certain editorial appeared with the following :

            " The apostles of the Mormon Church still claim and assert that the women of Utah are in favor of polygamy that they believe it ordained of God. Against this assertion and claim put this bit of conversation, overheard between one Mormon woman and another:

            " ' Brother Taylor has taken a new wife.'

            " ' You don't say who told you ? '

            " ' No one.'

            " ' How, then, do you know ?'

            " ' I saw it in the first wife's eyes.'

            " And they both sighed."

            Judge Goodwin has added to the literature of the coast by a book entitled "The Comstock Club." Upon the title page appears the sentence, " Neither radiant angels nor magnified monsters, but just plain, true men" which is the key-note to the story of seven miners of the Comstock lode who keep house together, with Yap Sing for a cook. This is the slender thread upon which is hung a number of stories, incidents, bits of humor, epigrams and odd experiences. The description of the mirage, by one of their number, is a wonderful piece of word-painting, and the story of Sister Celeste a pearl upon the string. Through-

WRITERS OF THE SAGEBRUSH SCHOOL. 111

out the entire book the spirit of magnanimity and genuine right feeling so prevails that its tone is uplifting and heroic, while, at the same time, the spirit of sweet humor so pervades the whole that it never becomes sententious or heavy.

            Perhaps the ending of the book is rather anti-climax in its impression, amid the solemnity of the burial of the dead miner. But as the author has entrusted the thread of the story to women at the close, he probably thought it had to be told trivially. The cost of the mourning dresses and the fine quality of the material and its becomingness to the young lady mourners at the funeral, as told by their aunt, strikes rather unpleasantly after all the grandeur of the thoughts expressed by the Comstock Club in the presence of death. As they are Eastern women, it is all right. The author evidently did not care to deviate from the custom of the sagebrush writers in depicting the ideal woman as a race separate and distinct from man, differentiated solely by her mere beauty and weakness of mind. But we all know, we who have lived in that land, that there were women there as well as men -- brave Parthenias of the sagebrush as well as Ingomars – women whose charms were not impaired by the fact that they developed courage and fortitude and helped to redeem those Ingomars and make judges and statesmen of them, even though they remained in the shadows of the mighty figures that they themselves exalted. Some day there will come a writer bold enough and keen enough to portray the lives of both, and then will the true history be written. With this exception, Judge Goodwin's book is admirable. Among the stories told by the Comstock Club are several of Harry Mighels', which not even repetition can cause to lose their flavor and crispness of humor.

            One of the cleverest of our early writers, one whose literary work speaks for itself, is Rollin Mallory Daggett, the editor of the old Golden Era. He never ceases producing something of literary value, articles, poems or volumes, even though he has time to stop and play at politics meanwhile.

            He was born at Richville, New York, February 22, 1831. Coming to California, when but a boy, he had many strange experiences. A legend connected with Mr. Daggett's name runs as follows :

112  CALIFORNIAN WRITERS AND LITERATURE

            " While crossing the plains he found a deserted camp in which the dead were lying unburied, and a cow and two living little children in the midst of them. He took pity on them, rigged up a kind of a cart, hitched the cow to it, and carried the children with him on his way to California. He kept the children alive upon the milk of the cow until he fell in with a party crossing the plains who gave them something to help them along. One morning he found the cow dead but in its place, strangely convenient, stood a magnificent bull. Nothing loth he hitched it to the cart and took his children on to California. After many other remarkable experiences he arrived in Placerville. They were almost without clothing and penniless. He put his children to bed and went out to find a purchaser for the bull. With the money in hand he provided the things necessary but when the purchaser went into the stable to lead home his fine animal he had vanished into air. The point of the story is that Mr. Daggett insists that he does not believe it was a real bull at all, but a mysterious guardian of the plains who came to his assistance. The addition is made to the tale that the children were soon after shipped back East to relatives who claimed them."

            I present this tale merely as a legend which I obtained from Joseph T. Goodman.

            Mr. Daggett has always been known in connection with Californian literature. His stories and poems brighten the pages of many of the files. His best known volume is entitled ' ' Legends and Myths of Hawaii," written while filling the position of Minister to that interesting little kingdom. His novel, "Braxton's Bar," has had a large circulation. As an example of his literary style is here presented one of the very best local poems of California that has yet come to light. Notice is particularly drawn to the line ' 'And hewed from a mighty ashlar the form of a sovereign State ":

MY NEW YEAR'S GUESTS.

[SCENE -- A chamber in Virginia City, one of the pictures on the wall being the reduced photographs of over five hundred California pioneers of 1849.

TIME -- Midnight, December 31, 1881.

The winds come cold from the southward, with incense of fir and pine,

And the flying clouds grow darker as they halt and fall in line.

The valleys that reach the deserts, mountains that greet the clouds,

Lie bare in the arms of winter, which the prudish night enshrouds.

The leaflets sage on the hillside, the willows low down the stream,

And the sentry rocks above us, have faded all as a dream.

The fall of the stamp grows fainter; the voices of night sink low;

And, spelled from labor, the miner toils home through the drifting snow. .

As I sit alone in my chamber this last of the dying year,

Dim shades of the past surround me, and faint through the storm I hear

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Old tales of the castles builded, under shelving rock and pine,

Of the bearded men and stalwart I greeted in forty-nine ;

The giants with hopes audacious ; the giants of iron limb ;

The giants who journeyed westward when the trails were new and dim ;

The giants who felled the forests, made pathways o'er the snows,

And planted the vine and fig tree where the manzanita grows;

Who swept down the mountain gorges, and painted their endless night

With their cabins, rudely fashioned, and their camp-fires' ruddy light ;

Who builded great towns and cities, who swung back the Golden Gate,

And hewed from the mighty ashlar the form of a sovereign State ;

Who came like a flood of waters to a thirsty desert plain,

And where there had been no reapers grew valleys of golden grain.

 

Nor wonder that this strange music sweeps in from the silent past,

And comes with the storm this evening, and blends its strains with the blast

Nor wonder that through the darkness should enter a spectral throng,

And gather around my table with the old-time smile and song;

 

For there on the wall before me, in a frame of gilt and brown,

With a chain of years suspended, old faces are looking down ;

Five hundred all grouped together -- five hundred old pioneers --

Now list as I raise the taper and trace the steps of the years:

 

Behold this face near the center; we met ere his locks were gray;

His purse like his heart was open; he struggles for bread to-day.

 

To this one the fates were cruel ; but he bore his burden well,

And the willow bends in sorrow by the wayside where he fell.

 

Great losses and grief crazed this one ; great riches turned this one's head ;

And a faithless wife wrecked this one -- he lives, but were better dead.

 

Now closer the light on this face; 'twas wrinkled when we were young;

His torch drew our footsteps westward; his name is on every tongue.

 

Rich was he in lands and kindness, but the human deluge came

And left him at last with nothing but death and a deathless fame.

 

'Twas a kindly hand that grouped them -- these faces of other years --

The rich and the poor together -- the hopes, and the smiles, and the tears

Of some of the fearless hundreds, who went like the knights of old,

The banner of empire bearing to the land of blue and gold.

 

For years have I watched these shadows, as others I know have done;

As death touched their lips with silence, I have draped them one by one,

Till, seen where the dark-plumed Angel has mingled them here and there,

The brows I have flecked with sable the living cloud everywhere.

114 CALIFORNIAN WRITERS AND LITERATURE.

Darker and darker and darker these shadows will yearly grow,

As, changing, the seasons bring us the bud and the falling snow;

And soon -- let me not invoke it! -- the final prayer will be said,

And strangers will write the record :

" The last of the group is dead."

 

And then -- but why stand here gazing? A gathering storm in my eyes

Is mocking the weeping tempest that billows the midnight skies;

And, stranger still -- is it fancy? -- are my senses dazed and weak?

The shadowy lips are moving as if they would ope and speak ;

And I seem to hear low whispers, and catch the echo of strains

That rose from the golden gulches and followed the moving trains.

 

The scent of the sage and desert, the path o'er the rocky height,

The shallow graves by the roadside -- all, all have come back to-night;

And the mildewed years, like stubble, I trample under my feet,

And drink again at the fountain when the wine of life was sweet;

 

And I stand once more exalted where the white pine frets the skies,

And dream in the winding canyon where early the twilight dies.

Now the eyes look down in sadness. The pulse of the year beats low;

The storm has been awed to silence; the muffled hands of the snow,

Like the noiseless feet of mourners, are spreading a pallid sheet

O'er the breast of dead December and glazing the shroud with sleet.

 

Hark ! the bells are chiming midnight ; the storm bends its list'ning ear,

While the moon looks through the cloud-rifts and blesses the new-born year.

 

And now the faces are smiling. What augury can it be?

No matter; the hours in passing will fashion the years for me.

 

Bar closely the curtained windows; shut the light from every pane,

While, free from the world' s intrusion and curious eyes profane,

I take from its leathern casket, a dinted old cup of tin,

More precious to me than silver, and blessing the draught within,

I drink alone in silence to the Builders of the West –

"Long life to the hearts still beating, and peace to the hearts at rest."

-- R. M. Daggett.

            Joseph Wasson's great work has been in the establishing of the State Mining and Mineral Bureau of San Francisco while in the Legislature from Mono County. In recognition of his great services a handsome oil-painting hangs in the place of honor in that department, and it is as " Father of the Mining Bureau" that he will be known to posterity. But it is as a journalist that he is best known to the people who are now passing away.

WRITERS OF THE SAGEBRUSH SCHOOL.         115

            He was born in Worcester, O. , coming to California when but 19 years of age. He was a printer by trade, and was always connected with some journal as editor or proprietor, in Nevada and Arizona, founding the Winnemucca Argent and the Arizona Citizen. After the seventies he went to Europe several times and became a special correspondent for many papers East and West. He was in the Custer war and corresponded for the San Francisco Chronicle. Forney, editor of the Philadelphia Press, wrote of Joseph Wasson that he was one of the best newspaper correspondents he had ever known. Among other things he studied up Creole lite in Louisiana for the New York papers. He then returned to Mono County, Cal., and was sent to the Legislature, where he passed the bill referred to. Afterward, being in ill-health, he was offered and accepted the position of Consul to Mexico, and a year or so after, died in April, 1883, at San Bias.

            He was a man of the oddest mixture of qualities, being quiet and yet full of dry humor, being cynical and yet full of good-heartedness at the same time. A quaint kind of crisp humor pervaded all his writings, a few brief extracts being given, merely as indicative of his style :

            " There never was on the face of the earth so much salvation and so little soap in one place as at Rome."

            "When coming up the river Lee, from Queenstown to Cork, I thought I would like to buy up the whole country, send the people to America to help out the Democratic ticket, and live on the Emerald Isle forever."

            As this form of the volume goes to press the announcement is made of the suspension of the old Territorial Enterprise. Founded in 1858, it continued in existence until January, 1893. In the columns of the San Francisco Examiner appears a timely symposium on the subject, including personal sketches from Dan De Quille, Rollin M. Dagget, Sam Davis and others. Nothing

116 CALIFORNIAN WRITERS AND LITERATURE.

can be better as a picture of the old Enterprise than the part contributed by Arthur McEwen, which is here quoted :

IN THE HEROIC DAYS.

__________

ARTHUR MCEWEN PAINTS THE COMSTOCK WHEN THE "ENTERPRISE" WAS YOUNG.

            "The life of the Comstock in the old days never has been written so that those who did not share it can understand ; it never can be so written, for to be like all would have to be set down, and that's a feat beyond mortal pen. Many have tried, and all have failed. Mark Twain has come nearest the reality not so much in what he has told, but in the spirit of his work. It was there that Mark got his point of view that shrewd, graceless, good-humored, cynical way of looking at things as they in fact are unbullied by authority and indifferent to traditions which has made the world laugh.

            " You have heard a stranger telling a story to friends of his who were strangers to you of some drunken freak of a person known to them, and wondered why they roared. To you the story was simply that of a blackguard performance, eccentric, perhaps, but shameful. But you see these strangers were in possession of knowledge of the drunkard's sober, decorous life, and that served as a background against which the inebriate folly showed grotesquely and made mirth irresistible.

            " I think the illustration helps to explain why only a Comstocker can thoroughly understand and enjoy stories about the Comstock.

            " There was a deal of drinking in Virginia when the Enterprise and the town were new, but it wasn't all drinking. Some of the brightest men of the country were working as well as having fun there. Lawyers, I understand, admit that the bar was about the brainiest ever gathered together in one town of the size, or ten times the size. Adventurers, with keen wits and empty pockets, were drawn there as naturally as gamblers seek a faro room. Rolling stones of every kind obeyed the moral law of gravitation by rolling up Mount Davidson. It was a city of men. If any of them were poor, that troubled them not at all, for they expected to be rich next week, and had good ground for the expectation. Those who were rich had so recently been poor that they had not forgotten it, and the circumstance was not so unusual as to be deemed a title to others' deference. Everybody was rated for what he was, not for what he had. There were no classes, only individuals. Pretension was out of order. Not to be a man of sense, frank, free-handed and without prejudices, was to find one's self a second or third grader. The men most distinguished for ability were the best fellows, the heartiest roysterers, the most democratic. Money was no object. There were oceans of it underground. Writing, years later, when a proportion of the lucky had set up their carriages and become respectable, Henry Mighels -- that man of talent, whose life was wasted on the frontier -- said, in his "Sagebrush Leaves ":

            " 'Somehow we are all of us too well known to one another -- we fortune hunters and soldiers of fortune of the earlier days -- to be safe is the assumption of any very superior virtues. It is not so many years since we were strangers to all banks and bank accounts, all the pretentiousness and all the glamour of

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" society," all the assumptions and requirements of polished intercourse ; it is only too well within the memory of your castaway when he was the open-handed Robin Goodfellow, and the now more fortunate Sir Kassimere Broadcloth served him his bacon and potatoes, and was not too high-spirited to render him the nimble obsequiousness of his very humble servant -- though the sycophancy never was asked. We are all of the same household, as it were, and are known to one another for what we are worth, and stand upon our merits and not our pretensions. Moreover, your " flint mill " is not without its value as a school. It has great virtue in that it shakes the snob out of a man and makes the manners of the parvenu sit awkwardly upon him.'

            " But if any one had the native disposition to be a snob while the Cornstock was roaring in its fiery young vigor he took care not to show it. That was no time for airs ; there was no one who would stand them, no one who wasn't as good as his neighbor and had his right acknowledged. It was a republic in which the ablest were first. If a man lost his money he set about making more in the stock market. Between times he attended to whatever other business he might have, played poker and things and joined any other of the boys who were having a good time in their simple, sinful way.

            "Of this life of audacious gayety and gambling the Enterprise was the mirror, and a participant. It was a Comstocker to the backbone. Money poured into its safe, and the owners of that safe were gentlemen who knew how to spend its contents for their own delectation and the good of the town. Joseph T. Goodman, the principal proprietor and controlling editor, was a young man of distinct gifts. A poet of imagination, a scholar, a dramatic critic, a playwright and a writer of leaders that had the charm of entire freedom from every restriction save his own judgment of what ought not to be said. Everything from his pen possessed the literary quality. Original, forcible, confident, mocking and alive with the impulses of an abounding and generous youth, the Enterprise was to Goodman a safety-valve for his ideas rather than a daily burden of responsibility.  He hired Rollin M. Daggett to do the editorial drudgery -- Daggett, famous then for scissors and seven-up, and since Congressman and Minister to Hawaii. To Daggett was left the solemn duty of writing or stealing the necessary, the perfunctory editorials, while Editor Goodman was off criticising the show, and banqueting the actors afterward, or constructing a poem, or sharing in the easy converse of the Washoe Club. But if Editor Goodman became seized of an idea that needed expression, if somebody must be roasted, a corrupt judge driven from the bench, the Republican party ordered to adopt or abandon a policy, Editor Goodman attended to the agreeable function himself. There never has been a paper like the Enterprise on the Coast since and never can be again -- never one so entirely human, so completely the reflex of a splendid personality and a mining camp's buoyant life.

            "An unknown nobody of a miner over at Aurora sent in items occasionally. He had humor in him, and Goodman offered him a salary to come over and assist Dan de Quille as a reporter. He came. It was Clemens -- Mark Twain.

            " Than Goodman and Twain no men could be more unlike outwardly. The first was handsome, gallant, self-reliant, but not self-conscious, vehement of

118 CALIFORNIAN WRITERS AND LITERATURE.

speech and swift in action. (He called out the silver-tongued Tom Fitch, then an editor, and shattered his knee with a pistol ball, for instance, in return for an unpleasant article that appeared in the course of a controversy.) Clemens was sloth-like in movement, had an intolerable drawl, and punished those who offended him by long-drawn sneering speech. But the two were alike at bottom in one thing both were genuine, and had the quality of brain that enables one man to understand another of opposite temperament and manner. They soon became friends.

            "Not many people liked Mark Twain, if one may judge by the tone of deprecation in which he is spoken of on the Comstock to this day. But go to any small place from which a celebrated man has sprung and the same phenomenon appears. It is the villager's way of impressing upon the stranger the villager's superior, intimate knowledge of the great man. They say that Mark was mean that he would join in revels and not pay his share, and so on. Those who knew him well, who had the requisite intelligence to be more than surface companions, tell a different story. His salary was not large, and he sent a good part of it back to Missouri, where it was needed, instead of "spending it like a man" on his own pleasures. In brief, Mr. Clemens, while he enjoyed the rough-and-tumble, devil-may-care Comstock life, wasn't carried away by it. He knew there was a world outside. The first work that showed the stuff of which he was made was done on the Enterprise.

            " The local department of the Enterprise, for which Mark Twain and Dan de Quille were responsible, was as unlike the local department of a city newspaper of the present as the town and time were unlike the San Francisco of to-day. The indifference to " news" was noble none the less so because it was so blissfully unconscious. Editor Mark or Dan would dismiss a murder with a couple of inches, and sit down and fill up a column with a fancy sketch. They were about equally good in the sort of invention required for such efforts, and Dan very often did the better work. But the one had reach and ambition ; the other lived for the moment. Dan de Quille remains still on the old lode, outlasting the Enterprise. He is not soured at his fate, and no man has heard him utter a word of envy of his more fortunate worker of the past. Indeed, no man ever knew Dan de Quille to say or do a mean thing. A bright-minded, sweet-spirited, loyal and unaffected old philosopher he, with a love for the lode and a faith in it that neither years or disappointment can quench.

            " But I didn't set out to write of all the men who made the Enterprise the unique paper that it was a paper with a soul in it. That soul departed when in 1874 Mr. Goodman sold it to Senator Sharon and came away to be a Californian, with other than journalistic ambitions. For some years its prestige and the talents of Judge Goodwin kept it up, but in 1880 he, too, departed, and since then the fate of the Enterprise has been the fate of the camp to dwindle.

            "Not for what it has been during recent years, but for what it was when the paper and they were young does the death of the Enterprise give old Comstockers a shock. It revives memories. The belated tragedy brings it home to them that they are growing old and that's the deuce."

-- Arthur McEwen.