recisely into this group. He brought with him a
new turn of thought and expression; he saw things with open eyes, and
wrote of them in a fresh, wild way that Comstockers loved. He was
allowed full freedom. Goodman suppressed nothing; his men could write as
they chose. They were all young together--if they pleased themselves,
they were pretty sure to please their readers. Often they wrote of one
another--squibs and burlesques, which gratified the Comstock far more
than mere news. It was just the school to produce Mark Twain.

The new arrival found acquaintance easy. The whole "Enterprise" force
was like one family; proprietors, editor, and printers were social
equals. Samuel Clemens immediately became "Sam" to his associates, just
as De Quille was "Dan," and Goodman "Joe." Clemens was supposed to
report city items, and did, in fact, do such work, which he found easy,
for his pilot-memory made notes unnecessary.

He could gather items all day, and at night put down the day's budget
well enough, at least, to delight his readers. When he was tired of
facts, he would write amusing paragraphs, as often as not something about
Dan, or a reporter on a rival paper. Dan and the others would reply, and
the Comstock would laugh. Those were good old days.

Sometimes he wrote hoaxes. Once he told with great circumstance and
detail of a petrified prehistoric man that had been found embedded in a
rock in the desert, and how the coroner from Humboldt had traveled more
than a hundred miles to hold an inquest over a man dead for centuries,
and had refused to allow miners to blast the discovery from its position.

The sketch was really intended as a joke on the Humboldt coroner, but it
was so convincingly written that most of the Coast papers took it
seriously and reprinted it as the story of a genuine discovery. In time
they awoke, and began to inquire as to who was the smart writer on the
"Enterprise."

Mark Twain did a number of such things, some of which are famous on the
Coast to this day.

Clemens himself did not escape. Lamps were used in the "Enterprise"
office, but he hated the care of a lamp, and worked evenings by the light
of a candle. It was considered a great joke in the office to "hide Sam's
candle" and hear him fume and rage, walking in a circle meantime--a habit
acquired in the pilothouse--and scathingly denouncing the culprits.
Eventually the office-boy, supposedly innocent, would bring another
candle, and quiet woul