rial Enterprise' and asked to be presented to Mark Twain.

When he heard his name called by some one, Clemens called out:

"Pass the gentleman into my den. The noble animal is here."

The noble animal proved to be "a young man, strongly built, ruddy in
complexion, his hair of a sunny hue, his eyes light and twinkling, in
manner hearty, and nothing of the student about him--one who looked as
if he could take his own part in a quarrel, strike a smart blow as
readily as he could say a telling thing, bluffly jolly, brusquely
cordial, off-handedly good-natured." The picture is detailed and vivid:

"Let it be borne in mind that from the windows of the newspaper
office the American desert was visible; that within a radius of ten
miles Indians were encamping amongst the sage--brush; that the
whole city was populated with miners, adventurers, Jew traders,
gamblers, and all the rough-and-tumble class which a mining town in
a new territory collects together, and it will be readily
understood that a reporter for a daily paper in such a place must
neither go about his duties wearing light kid gloves, nor be
fastidious about having gilt edges to his note-books. In Mark
Twain I found the very man I had expected to see--a flower of the
wilderness, tinged with the colour of the soil, the man of thought
and the man of action rolled into one, humorist and hard-worker,
Momus in a felt hat and jack-boots. In the reporter of the
'Territorial Enterprise' I became introduced to a Californian
celebrity, rich in eccentricities of thought, lively in fancy,
quaint in remark, whose residence upon the fringe of civilization
had allowed his humour to develop without restraint, and his speech
to be rarely idiomatic."

Under the influence of the example of the proprietors of the
'Enterprise', strict stylistic disciplinarians of the Dana school of
journalism, Clemens learned the advantages of the crisp, direct style
which characterizes his writing. As a reporter, he was really
industrious in matters that met his fancy; but "cast-iron items"--for he
hated facts and figures requiring absolute accuracy--got from him only
"a lick and a promise." He was much interested in Tom Fitch's effort to
establish a literary journal, 'The Weekly Occidental'. Daggett's
opening chapters of a wonderful story, of which Fitch, Mrs Fitch, J. T.
Goodman, Dan De Quille, and Cle