d and thirty miles from Virginia City. He had
walked that distance, carrying his heavy load. Editor Goodman was absent
at the moment, but the other proprietor, Dennis E. McCarthy, asked the
caller to 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'm 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!

XXI.

THE TERRITORIAL ENTERPRISE

In 1852 Virginia City, Nevada, was the most flourishing of mining towns.
A half-crazy miner, named Comstock, had discovered there a vein of such
richness that the "Comstock Lode" was presently glutting the mineral
markets of the world. Comstock himself got very little out of it, but
those who followed him made millions. Miners, speculators, adventurers
swarmed in. Every one seemed to have money. The streets seethed with an
eager, affluent, boisterous throng whose chief business seemed to be to
spend the wealth that the earth was yielding in such a mighty stream.

Business of every kind boomed. Less than two years earlier, J. T.
Goodman, a miner who was also a printer and a man of literary taste, had
joined with another printer, Dennis McCarthy, and the two had managed to
buy a struggling Virginia City paper, the "Territorial Enterprise." But
then came the hightide of fortune. A year later the "Enterprise," from a
starving sheet in a leaky shanty, had become a large, handsome paper in a
new building, and of such brilliant editorial management that it was the
most widely considered journal on the Pacific coast.

Goodman was a fine, forceful writer, and he surrounded himself with able
men. He was a young man, full of health and vigor, overflowing with the
fresh spirit and humor of the West. Comstockers would always laugh at a
joke, and Goodman was always willing to give it to them. The
"Enterprise" was a newspaper, but it was willing to furnish entertainment
even at the cost of news. William Wright, editorially next to Goodman,
was a humorist of ability. His articles, signed Dan de Quille, were
widely copied. R. M. Daggett (afterward United States Minister to
Hawaii) was also an "Enterprise" man, and there were others of their
sort.

Samuel Clemens fitted p