Where is Beack Jolly?--[a pilot]--and Bixby?
Your Brother
SAM.




IV

LETTERS 1863-64. "MARK TWAIN." COMSTOCK JOURNALISM. ARTEMUS WARD

There is a long hiatus in the correspondence here. For a space of many
months there is but one letter to continue the story. Others were
written, of course, but for some reason they have not survived. It was
about the end of August (1862) when the miner finally abandoned the
struggle, and with his pack on his shoulders walked the one and thirty
miles over the mountains to Virginia City, arriving dusty, lame, and
travel-stained to claim at last his rightful inheritance. At the
Enterprise office he was welcomed, and in a brief time entered into his
own. Goodman, the proprietor, himself a man of great ability, had
surrounded himself with a group of gay-hearted fellows, whose fresh, wild
way of writing delighted the Comstock pioneers far more than any sober
presentation of mere news. Samuel Clemens fitted exactly into this
group. By the end of the year he had become a leader of it. When he
asked to be allowed to report the coming Carson legislature, Goodman
consented, realizing that while Clemens knew nothing of parliamentary
procedure, he would at least make the letters picturesque.

It was in the midst of this work that he adopted the name which he was to