Mark Twain

Buffalo Express/January 8, 1870

Letter Number 6.

[These letters are written jointly by Professor D. R. Ford and Mark Twain. The former does the actual traveling, and such facts as escape his notice are supplied by the latter, who remains at home.]

Early Days In Nevada.

Silver Land Nabobs.

One of the curious features of Pacific Coast life is the startling uncertainty that marks a man’s career in the mines. He may spring from poverty to wealth so suddenly as to turn his hair white and then after a while he may become poor again so suddenly as to make all that white hair fall off and leave his head as clean as a billiard ball. The great Nevada silver excitement of ’58–’59 was prolific in this sort of vicissitude. Two brothers, teamsters, did some hauling for a man in Virginia City and had to take a small segregated portion of a silver mine in lieu of $300 cash. They gave an outsider a third to open the mine, and they went on teaming. But not long. Ten months afterward the mine was out of debt and paying each owner $8,000 to $10,000 a month—say $100,000 a year. They had that handsome income for just about two years, and they dressed in the loudest kind of costumes and wore mighty diamonds, and played poker for amusement, these men who had seldom had $20 at one time in all their lives before. One of them is tending bar for wages now, and the other is serving his country as Commander-in-Chief of a street car in San Francisco at $75 a month. He is very glad to get that employment, too.

One of the earliest nabobs that Nevada was delivered of wore $6,000 worth diamonds in his bosom, and swore he was unhappy because he couldn’t spend his money as fast as he made it. But let us learn from him that persistent effort is bound to achieve success at last. Within a year’s time, his happiness was secure; for he hadn’t a cent to spend.

Another Nevada nabob boasted an income that often reached $16,000 a month; and he used to love to tell how he had worked in the very mine that yielded it, for $5 a day when he first came to the country. Three years afterward, he attained to the far more exceeding grandeur of working in it again, at four dollars a day.

The silver and sage-brush State has knowledge of another of these pets of fortune—lifted from actual poverty to affluence almost in a single night—who was able to offer $100,000 for a position of high official distinction, shortly afterward, and did offer it—and a little over a year ago a friend saw him shoveling snow on the Pacific Railroad for a living, away up on the summit of the Sierras, some 7,000 feet above the level of comfort and the sea. The friend remarked that it must be pretty hard work, though, as the snow was twenty-five feet deep, it promised to be a steady job, at least. “Yes,” he said, “he didn’t mind it now, though a month or so ago when it was sixty-two feet deep and still a snowing, he wasn’t so much attached to it.” Such is life.

Then there was John Smith. That wasn’t his name, but we will call him that. He was a good, honest, kind-hearted fellow, born and reared in the lower ranks of life, and miraculously ignorant. He drove a team, and the team belonged to another man. By and by he married an excellent woman who owned a small ranch—a ranch that paid them a comfortable living, for although it yielded but little hay, what little it did yield was worth from $250 to $500 in gold per ton in the market. Presently, Smith traded a few acres of the ranch for a small undeveloped silver mine in Gold Hill. He opened the mine and built a little unpretending ten-stamp mill. Eighteen months afterward, he quit raising hay, for his mining income had reached a most comfortable figure. Some people said it was $30,000 a month, and others said it was $60,000. Smith was very rich anyhow. He built a house out in the desert—right in the most forbidding and otherwise howling desert—and it was currently reported that that house cost him a quarter of a million. Possibly that was exaggerated somewhat, though it certainly was a fine home and a costly one. The bedsteads cost $400 or $500 apiece.

And then the Smiths went to Europe and traveled. And when they came back, Smith was never tired of telling about the fine horses he had seen in England, and the gorgeous sheep he had seen in Spain, and the fine cattle he had noticed in the vicinity of Rome. He was full of the wonder of the old world and advised everybody to travel. He said a man never imagined what surprising things there were in the world till he had traveled.

One day, on board ship, the passengers made up a pool of $500, which was to be the property of the man who should come nearest to guessing the run of the vessel for the next twenty-four hours. Next day, toward noon, the figures were all in the purser’s hands in sealed envelopes. Smith was serene and happy, for he had been bribing the engineer. But another party won the prize! Smith said, 

“Here, that won’t do! He guessed two miles wider of the mark than I did.” 

The purser said, “Mr. Smith, you missed it further than any man on board. We traveled two hundred and eight miles yesterday.” 

“Well sir,” said Smith, “that’s just where I’ve got you, for I guessed two hundred and nine. If you’ll look at my insert again, you’ll find a 2 and two naughts, which stands for 200, don’t it? and after ’em you’ll find a 9 (2009), which stands for two hundred and nine. I reckon I’ll take that money, if you please.”

Well, Smith is dead. And when he died, he wasn’t worth a cent. The lesson of all this is, that one must learn how to do everything he does—one must have experience in being rich before he can remain rich. The history of California will prove this to your entire satisfaction. Sudden wealth is an awful misfortune to the average run of men. It is wasting breath to instruct the reader after this fashion, though, for no man was ever convinced of it yet till he had tried it himself—and I am around now hunting for a man who is afraid to try it. I haven’t had any luck, so far. 

All the early pioneers of California acquired more or less wealth, but the enormous majority of them have not got any now. Those that have, got it slowly and by patient toil.

Annie Laurie

San Francisco Examiner/November 23, 1910

The picture card people have come back to town.

They’ve been away all summer—most of them—but now they’re here again all ready for the game—the game they take so much in earnest.

Who are the picture card people? 

Why, don’t you know? They’re the “workers,” the “earnest workers” who are so busy telling other people how to run their affairs that they never have any affairs of their own to run at all. There is a man in the pack once in a while, but most of the picture cards are women.

I met the Queen of Clubs the other day, and just as I met her we saw the Queen of Diamonds coming down the street. I was asking the Queen of Clubs about her mother—the mother is delicate and a little lonely, and she misses the Queen of Clubs dreadfully—and I was in hopes that the Queen of Clubs was going to stay at home with mother this winter; but, dear me, she’s never thought of such a thing. Her work is calling her, her earnest work.

The Queen of Diamonds was glad to see us—that is, she was glad to see the Queen of Clubs. She used to be rather fond of me, I think, before she became an earnest worker, but now she looks upon me as a frivolous butterfly because I never have time to go down into the slums and tell the laundress how to iron her clothes and the scrubwoman how to bring up her family. 

All I can do is my best to bring up my own family and help the laundress and the scrubwoman out once in a while with a dollar or so extra. So the Queen of Diamonds hasn’t much use for me and my kind, for that’s the joke about the playing card people. They think that no one is in earnest except those who are playing their fascinating and picturesque game.

“What will your work be this winter?” asked the Queen of Clubs of the Queen of Diamonds.
“Oh,” sighed the Queen of Diamonds, “the Russian Jews. I find them so interesting.”
“Ah,” said the Queen of Clubs, “I shall stick to my Italians.” And I slipped away and left them discussing the theory of “Freedom as It Is Found in the College Settlement.” 

I don’t think they even knew I had gone.

The Queen of Diamonds used to be a clever, warm-hearted, witty girl. She was the life of her whole family, but she caught the settlement fever, and now she never remembers that she has any family of her own at all. 

She worries over the Russian Jews, she’s concerned about the Italians, and, oh, the Huns—what shall we do to uplift them? And her own little sister is getting into very frivolous company, and her own brother smokes a good many more cigarettes than are good for him, and her own mother is slipping into neglected old age, and she never sees it. She’s so busy playing the game.

They’re good people, the picture card people; clever, too, most of them; but, oh, if they would only realize that one woman who earns her own living and takes care of her own children and cooks her own food—the very woman they are so anxious to uplift, as they call it—is worth any two dozen little picture card theorists in the world.

The Queen of Clubs visits the tenements, and the tenements laugh when they see her coming. Poor Queen of Clubs, and she so dead in earnest, too! But after all it is rather funny to see an unmarried woman roosting on the edge of wash-tubs trying to tell the mother of a family how to be a mother. 

Her theories are all very hygienic and very fine; but, dear me, there’s the rent to pay and the clothes to wash and the children to dress. Nobody but the picture card people have time enough to stop and theorize about hygiene. So the tenement mother listens as politely as she can and wonders and lets it go at that.

Poor picture card people! How seriously they take themselves and their well meant little game!