, unshaven, and
weather-beaten, and Samuel Clemens's life as a frontiersman began.
Carson City, the capital of Nevada, was a wooden town with an assorted
population of two thousand souls. The mining excitement was at its
height and had brought together the drift of every race.

The Clemens brothers took up lodgings with a genial Irishwoman, the Mrs.
O'Flannigan of "Roughing It," and Orion established himself in a modest
office, for there was no capitol building as yet, no government
headquarters. Orion could do all the work, and Samuel Clemens, finding
neither duties nor salary attached to his position, gave himself up to
the study of the life about him, and to the enjoyment of the freedom of
the frontier. Presently he had a following of friends who loved his
quaint manner of speech and his yarns. On cool nights they would collect
about Orion's office-stove, and he would tell stories in the wonderful
way that one day would delight the world. Within a brief time Sam
Clemens (he was always "Sam" to the pioneers) was the most notable figure
on the Carson streets. His great, bushy head of auburn hair, has
piercing, twinkling eyes, his loose, lounging walk, his careless disorder
of dress invited a second look, even from strangers. From a river dandy
he had become the roughest-clad of pioneers--rusty slouch hat, flannel
shirt, coarse trousers slopping half in and half out of heavy cowhide
boots, this was his make-up. Energetic citizens did not prophesy success
for him. Often they saw him leaning against an awning support, staring
drowsily at the motley human procession, for as much as an hour at a
time. Certainly that could not be profitable.

But they did like to hear him talk.

He did not catch the mining fever at once. He was interested first in
the riches that he could see. Among these was the timber-land around
Lake Bigler (now Tahoe)--splendid acres, to be had for the asking. The
lake itself was beautifully situated.

With an Ohio boy, John Kinney, he made an excursion afoot to Tahoe, a
trip described in one of the best chapters of "Roughing It." They staked
out a timber claim and pretended to fence it and to build a house, but
their chief employment was loafing in the quiet luxury of the great woods
or drifting in a boat on the transparent water. They did not sleep in
the house. In "Roughing It" he says:

"It never occurred to us, for one thing; and, besides, it was built
to hold the ground, and that was eno