n and The Unreliable were the shining
journalistic lights of the Comstock. Scarcely a week went by that some
apparently venomous squib or fling or long burlesque assault did not
appear either in the Union or the Enterprise, with one of those jokers
as its author and another as its target. In one of his "home" letters of
that year Mark Twain says:

I have just finished writing up my report for the morning paper and
giving The Unreliable a column of advice about how to conduct
himself in church.

The advice was such as to call for a reprisal, but it apparently made no
difference in personal relations, for a few weeks later he is with
The Unreliable in San Francisco, seeing life in the metropolis, fairly
swimming in its delights, unable to resist reporting them to his mother.

We fag ourselves completely out every day and go to sleep without
rocking every night. When I go down Montgomery Street shaking hands
with Tom, Dick, and Harry, it is just like being on Main Street in
Hannibal and meeting the old familiar faces. I do hate to go back
to Washoe. We take trips across the bay to Oakland, and down to San
Leandro and Alameda, and we go out to the Willows and Hayes Park and
Fort Point, and up to Benicia; and yesterday we were invited out on
a yachting excursion, and had a sail in the fastest yacht on the
Pacific coast. Rice says: "Oh no--we are not having any fun, Mark
--oh no--I reckon it's somebody else--it's probably the gentleman in
the wagon" (popular slang phrase), and when I invite Rice to the
Lick House to dinner the proprietor sends us champagne and claret,
and then we do put on the most disgusting airs. The Unreliable says
our caliber is too light--we can't stand it to be noticed.

Three days later he adds that he is going sorrowfully "to the snows and
the deserts of Washoe," but that he has "lived like a lord to make up
for two years of privation."

Twenty dollars is inclosed in each of these letters, probably as a
bribe to Jane Clemens to be lenient with his prodigalities, which in
his youthful love of display he could not bring himself to conceal. But
apparently the salve was futile, for in another letter, a month later,
he complains that his mother is "slinging insinuations" at him again,
such as "where did you get that money" and "the company I kept in San
Francisco." He explains:

Why, I sold Wild Cat mining ground that was given m