d
underpinned by the gigantic mining construction of that opulent lode
whose treasures were actually glutting the mineral markets of the world.
The streets overhead seethed and swarmed with miners, mine owners, and
adventurers--riotous, rollicking children of fortune, always ready to
drink and make merry, as eager in their pursuit of pleasure as of gold.
Comstockers would always laugh at a joke; the rougher the better. The
town of Virginia itself was just a huge joke to most of them. Everybody
had, money; everybody wanted to laugh and have a good time. The
Enterprise, "Comstock to the backbone," did what it could to help things
along.
It was a sort of free ring, with every one for himself. Goodman let the
boys write and print in accordance with their own ideas and upon any
subject. Often they wrote of each other--squibs and burlesques, which
gratified the Comstock far more than mere news.--[The indifference
to 'news' was noble--none the less so because it was so blissfully
unconscious. Editors Mark or Dan would dismiss a murder with a couple
of inches and sit down and fill up a column with a fancy sketch: "Arthur
McEwen"]--It was the proper class-room for Mark Twain, an encouraging
audience and free utterance: fortune could have devised nothing better
for him than that.
He was peculiarly fitted for the position. Unspoiled humanity appealed
to him, and the Comstock presented human nature in its earliest
landscape forms. Furthermore, the Comstock was essentially
optimistic--so was he; any hole in the ground to him held a possible,
even a probable, fortune.
His pilot memory became a valuable asset in news-gathering. Remembering
marks, banks, sounding, and other river detail belonged apparently in
the same category of attainments as remembering items and localities of
news. He could travel all day without a note-book and at night reproduce
the day's budget or at least the picturesqueness of it, without
error. He was presently accounted a good reporter, except where
statistics--measurements and figures--were concerned. These he gave
"a lick and a promise," according to De Quille, who wrote afterward of
their associations. De Quille says further:
Mark and I agreed well in our work, which we divided when there was
a rush of events; but we often cruised in company, he taking the
items of news he could handle best, and I such as I felt competent
to work up. However, we wrote at the same table and frequen
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