ough
letter, but the note of discouragement creeps in:

I did think for a while of going home this fall--but when I found
that that was, and had been, the cherished intention and the darling
aspiration every year of these old care-worn Californians for twelve
weary years, I felt a little uncomfortable, so I stole a march on
Disappointment and said I would not go home this fall. This country
suits me, and it shall suit me whether or no.

He was dying hard, desperately hard; how could he know, to paraphrase the
old form of Christian comfort, that his end as a miner would mean, in
another sphere, "a brighter resurrection" than even his rainbow
imagination could paint?

XXXVII

THE NEW ESTATE

It was the afternoon of a hot, dusty August day when a worn,
travel-stained pilgrim drifted laggingly into the office of the Virginia
City Enterprise, then in its new building on C Street, and, loosening a
heavy roll of blankets from his shoulders, dropped wearily into a chair.
He wore a rusty slouch hat, no coat, a faded blue flannel shirt, a Navy
revolver; his trousers were hanging on his boot tops. A tangle of
reddish-brown hair fell on his shoulders, and a mass of tawny beard,
dingy with alkali dust, dropped half-way to his waist.

Aurora lay one hundred and thirty miles from Virginia. He had walked
that distance, carrying his heavy load. Editor Goodman was absent at the
moment, but the other proprietor, Denis E. McCarthy, signified that the
caller might state his errand. The wanderer regarded him with a far-away
look and said, absently and with deliberation:

"My starboard leg seems to be unshipped. I'd like about one hundred
yards of line; I think I am falling to pieces." Then he added: "I want
to see Mr. Barstow, or Mr. Goodman. My name is Clemens, and I've come to
write for the paper."

It was the master of the world's widest estate come to claim his kingdom:

William Wright, who had won a wide celebrity on the Coast as Dan de
Quille, was in the editorial chair and took charge of the new arrival. He
was going on a trip to the States soon; it was mainly on this account
that the new man had been engaged. The "Josh" letters were very good, in
Dan's opinion; he gave their author a cordial welcome, and took him
around to his boarding-place. It was the beginning of an association
that continued during Samuel Clemens's stay in Virginia City and of a
friendship that lasted many years.

The Te