rritorial Enterprise was one of the most remarkable frontier papers
ever published. Its editor-in-chief, Joseph Goodman, was a man with rare
appreciation, wide human understanding, and a comprehensive newspaper
policy. Being a young man, he had no policy, in fact, beyond the general
purpose that his paper should be a forum for absolutely free speech,
provided any serious statement it contained was based upon knowledge. His
instructions to the new reporter were about as follows:

"Never say we learn so and so, or it is rumored, or we understand so and
so; but go to headquarters and get the absolute facts; then speak out and
say it is so and so. In the one case you are likely to be shot, and in
the other you are pretty certain to be; but you will preserve the public
confidence."

Goodman was not new to the West. He had come to California as a boy and
had been a miner, explorer, printer, and contributor by turns. Early in
'61, when the Comstock Lode--[Named for its discoverer, Henry T. P.
Comstock, a half-crazy miner, who realized very little from his
stupendous find.]--was new and Virginia in the first flush of its monster
boom, he and Denis McCarthy had scraped together a few dollars and bought
the paper. It had been a hand-to-hand struggle for a while, but in a
brief two years, from a starving sheet in a shanty the Enterprise, with
new building, new presses, and a corps of swift compositors brought up
from San Francisco, had become altogether metropolitan, as well as the
most widely considered paper on the Coast. It had been borne upward by
the Comstock tide, though its fearless, picturesque utterance would have
given it distinction anywhere. Goodman himself was a fine, forceful
writer, and Dan de Quille and R. M. Daggett (afterward United States
minister to Hawaii) were representative of Enterprise men.--[The Comstock
of that day became famous for its journalism. Associated with the
Virginia papers then or soon afterward were such men as Tom Fitch (the
silver-tongued orator), Alf Doten, W. J. Forbes, C. C. Goodwin, H. R.
Mighels, Clement T. Rice, Arthur McEwen, and Sam Davis--a great array
indeed for a new Territory.]--Samuel Clemens fitted precisely into this
group. He added the fresh, rugged vigor of thought and expression that
was the very essence of the Comstock, which was like every other frontier
mining-camp, only on a more lavish, more overwhelming scale.

There was no uncertainty about the Comstock; the silver