humorous letters signed "Josh" to the 'Daily Territorial Enterprise' of
Virginia City, at that time one of the most progressive and wide--awake
newspapers in the West.

The fateful letter which I have mentioned, contained an offer to Clemens
from the proprietor of the 'Enterprise', of the position of city editor,
at a salary of twenty-five dollars a week. To Clemens at this time,
this offer came as a perfect godsend. Twenty-five dollars a week was
nothing short of wealth, luxury. His enthusiasm oozed away when he
reflected over his ignorance and incompetence; and he gloomily recalled
his repeated failures. But necessity faced him; and opportunity knocks
but once at every door. His doubts were speedily resolved; and he
afterwards confessed that, had he been offered at that time a salary to
translate the Talmud from the original Hebrew, he would unhesitatingly
have accepted, despite some natural misgivings, and have tried to throw
as much variety into it as he could for the money. It was to fill a
vacancy, caused by the absence of Dan De Quille, the regular reporter,
on a visit to "the States," that Clemens was offered this position; but
he retained it after De Quille returned. "Mark and I had our hands
full," relates De Quille, "and no grass grew under our feet. There was
a constant rush of startling events; they came tumbling over one another
as though playing at leap-frog. While a stage robbery was being written
up, a shooting affray started; and perhaps before the pistol shots had
ceased to echo among the surrounding hills, the firebells were banging
out an alarm." A record of the variegated duties of these two, found in
an old copy of the Territorial Enterprise of 1863, bears the
unmistakable hallmarks of Mark Twain. "Our duty is to keep the universe
thoroughly posted concerning murders and street fights, and balls and
theatres, and pack-trains, and churches, and lectures, and
school-houses, and city military affairs, and highway robberies, and