mens walked one hundred and thirty
miles over very bad roads to take the job, and arrived way-worn and
travel-stained. He began on a salary of twenty-five dollars a week,
picking up news items here and there, and contributing occasional
sketches, burlesques, hoaxes, and the like. When the Legislature
convened at Carson City he was sent down to report it, and then, for the
first time, began signing his articles "Mark Twain," a river term, used
in making soundings, recalled from his piloting days. The name presently
became known up and down the Pacific coast. His articles were, copied
and commented upon. He was recognized as one of the foremost among a
little coterie of overland writers, two of whom, Mark Twain and Bret
Harte, were soon to acquire a world-wide fame.

He left Carson City one day, after becoming involved in a duel, the
result of an editorial squib written in Goodman's absence, and went
across the Sierras to San Francisco. The duel turned out farcically
enough, but the Nevada law, which regarded even a challenge or its
acceptance as a felony, was an inducement to his departure. Furthermore,
he had already aspired to a wider field of literary effort. He attached
himself to the Morning Call, and wrote occasionally for one or two
literary papers--the Golden Era and the Californian---prospering well
enough during the better part of the year. Bret Harte and the rest of
the little Pacific-slope group were also on the staff of these papers,
and for a time, at least, the new school of American humor mustered in
San Francisco.

The connection with the Call was not congenial. In due course it came
to a natural end, and Mark Twain arranged to do a daily San Francisco
letter for his old paper, the Enterprise. The Enterprise letters stirred
up trouble. They criticized the police of San Francisco so severely that
the officials found means of making the writer's life there difficult
and comfortless. With Jim Gillis, brother of a printer of whom he was
fond, and who had been the indirect cause of his troubles, he went
up into Calaveras County, to a cabin on jackass Hill. Jim Gillis, a
lovable, picturesque character (the Truthful James of Bret Harte),
owned mining claims. Mark Twain decided to spend his vacation in
pocket-mining, and soon added that science to his store of knowledge.
It was a halcyon, happy three months that he lingered there, but did not
make his fortune; he only laid the corner-stone.

They tried their