Mark Twain Classics

This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science.

Roughing It: Chapter 52
Freights to California—Silver Bricks—Under Ground Mines—Timber Supports—A Visit to the Mines—The Caved Mines—Total of Shipments in 1863
Since I desire, in this chapter, to say an instructive word or two about the silver mines, the reader may take this fair warning and skip, if he chooses. The year 1863 was perhaps the very [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 53
Jim Blaine and his Grandfather’s Ram—Filkin’s Mistake—Old Miss Wagner and her Glass Eye—Jacobs, the Coffin Dealer—Waiting for a Customer—His Bargain With Old Robbins—Robbins Sues for Damage and Collects—A New Use for Missionaries—The Effect—His Uncle Lem and the Use Providence Made of Him—Sad Fate of Wheeler—Devotion of His Wife—A Model Monument—What About the [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 51
The Weekly Occidental—A Ready Editor—A Novel—A Concentration of Talent—The Heroes and the Heroines—The Dissolute Author Engaged—Extraordinary Havoc With the Novel—A Highly Romantic Chapter—The Lovers Separated—Jonah Out-done—A Lost Poem—The Aged Pilot Man—Storm On the Erie Canal—Dollinger the Pilot Man—Terrific Gale—Danger Increases—A Crisis Arrived—Saved as if by a Miracle
Vice flourished luxuriantly during the hey-day [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 50
Captain Ned Blakely—Bill Nookes Receives Desired Information—Killing of Blakely’s Mate—A Walking Battery—Blakely Secures Nookes—Hang First and Be Tried Afterwards—Captain Blakely as a Chaplain—The First Chapter of Genesis Read at a Hanging—Nookes Hung—Blakely’s Regrets
These murder and jury statistics remind me of a certain very extraordinary trial and execution of twenty years ago; it [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 49
Fatal Shooting Affray—Robbery and Desperate Affray—A Specimen City Official—A Marked Man—A Street Fight—Punishment of Crime
An extract or two from the newspapers of the day will furnish a photograph that can need no embellishment:
FATAL SHOOTING AFFRAY.—An affray occurred, last evening, in a billiard saloon on C street, between Deputy Marshal Jack Williams and [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 48
The First Twenty-Six Graves in Nevada—The Prominent Men of the County—The Man Who Had Killed His Dozen—Trial by Jury—Specimen Jurors—A Private Grave Yard—The Desperadoes—Who They Killed—Waking up the Weary Passenger—Satisfaction Without Fighting
The first twenty-six graves in the Virginia cemetery were occupied by murdered men. So everybody said, so everybody believed, and so [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 47
Buck Fanshaw’s Death—The Cause Thereof—Preparations for His Burial—Scotty Briggs the Committee Man—He Visits the Minister—Scotty Can’t Play His Hand—The Minister Gets Mixed—Both Begin to See—”All Down Again But Nine”—Buck Fanshaw as a Citizen—How To “Shook Your Mother”—The Funeral—Scotty Briggs as a Sunday School Teacher
Somebody has said that in order to know a [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 46
The Nabobs of Those Days—John Smith as a Traveler—Sudden Wealth—A Sixty-Thousand-Dollar Horse—A Smart Telegraph Operator—A Nabob in New York City—Charters an Omnibus—”Walk in, It’s All Free”—”You Can’t Pay a Cent”—”Hold On, Driver, I Weaken”—Sociability of New Yorkers
There were nabobs in those days—in the “flush times,” I mean. Every rich strike in the [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 45
Flush Times Continue—Sanitary Commission Fund—Wild Enthusiasm of the People—Would not wait to Contribute—The Sanitary Flour Sack—It is Carried to Gold Hill and Dayton—Final Reception in Virginia—Results of the Sale—A Grand Total
The “flush times” held bravely on. Something over two years before, Mr. Goodman and another journeyman printer, had borrowed forty dollars and [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 44
Flush Times—Plenty of Stock—Editorial Puffing—Stocks Given Me—Salting Mines—A Tragedian In a New Role
My salary was increased to forty dollars a week. But I seldom drew it. I had plenty of other resources, and what were two broad twenty-dollar gold pieces to a man who had his pockets full of such and a [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 43
My Friend Boggs—The School Report—Boggs Pays Me An Old Debt—Virginia City
However, as I grew better acquainted with the business and learned the run of the sources of information I ceased to require the aid of fancy to any large extent, and became able to fill my columns without diverging noticeably from the [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 42
What to do Next?—Obstacles I Had Met With—”Jack of All Trades”—Mining Again—Target Shooting—I Turn City Editor—I Succeed Finely
What to do next?
It was a momentous question. I had gone out into the world to shift for myself, at the age of thirteen (for my father had endorsed for friends; and although he left [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 41
A Rheumatic Patient—Day Dreams—An Unfortunate Stumble—I Leave Suddenly—Another Patient—Higbie in the Cabin—Our Balloon Bursted—Worth Nothing—Regrets and Explanations—Our Third Partner
Captain Nye was very ill indeed, with spasmodic rheumatism. But the old gentleman was himself—which is to say, he was kind-hearted and agreeable when comfortable, but a singularly violent wild-cat when things did not [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 40
The “Wide West” Mine—It is “Interviewed” by Higbie—A Blind Lead—Worth a Million—We are Rich At Last—Plans for the Future
I now come to a curious episode—the most curious, I think, that had yet accented my slothful, valueless, heedless career. Out of a hillside toward the upper end of the town, projected a wall [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 39
Visit to the Islands in Lake Mono—Ashes and Desolation—Life Amid Death Our Boat Adrift—A Jump For Life—A Storm On the Lake—A Mass of Soap Suds—Geological Curiosities—A Week On the Sierras—A Narrow Escape From a Funny Explosion—”Stove Heap Gone”
About seven o’clock one blistering hot morning—for it was now dead summer time—Higbie and I [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 38
Mono Lake—Shampooing Made Easy—Thoughtless Act of Our Dog and the Results—Lye Water—Curiosities of the Lake—Free Hotel—Some Funny Incidents a Little Overdrawn
Mono Lake lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert, eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, and is guarded by mountains two thousand feet higher, whose summits are always clothed [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 37
Mono Lake—Shampooing Made Easy—Thoughtless Act of Our Dog and the Results—Lye Water—Curiosities of the Lake—Free Hotel—Some Funny Incidents a Little Overdrawn
It was somewhere in the neighborhood of Mono Lake that the marvellous Whiteman cement mine was supposed to lie. Every now and then it would be reported that Mr. W. had passed [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 36
A Quartz Mill—Amalgamation—”Screening Tailings”—First Quartz Mill in Nevada—Fire Assay—A Smart Assayer—I stake for an advance
I had already learned how hard and long and dismal a task it is to burrow down into the bowels of the earth and get out the coveted ore; and now I learned that the burrowing was only [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 35
A New Travelling Companion—All Full and No Accommodations—How Captain Nye found Room—and Caused Our Leaving to be Lamented—The Uses of Tunnelling—A Notable Example—We Go into the “Claim” Business and Fail—At the Bottom
When we finally left for Esmeralda, horseback, we had an addition to the company in the person of Capt. John Nye, [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 34
About Carson—General Buncombe—Hyde vs. Morgan—How Hyde Lost His Ranch—The Great Landslide Case—The Trial—General Buncombe in Court—A Wonderful Decision—A Serious Afterthought
The mountains are very high and steep about Carson, Eagle and Washoe Valleys—very high and very steep, and so when the snow gets to melting off fast in the Spring and the warm [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 33
Return of Consciousness—Ridiculous Developments—A Station House—Bitter Feelings—Fruits of Repentance—Resurrected Vices
I do not know how long I was in a state of forgetfulness, but it seemed an age. A vague consciousness grew upon me by degrees, and then came a gathering anguish of pain in my limbs and through all my body. I [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 32
Desperate Situation—Attempts to Make a Fire—Our Horses leave us—We Find Matches—One, Two, Three and the Last—No Fire—Death Seems Inevitable—We Mourn Over Our Evil Lives—Discarded Vices—We Forgive Each Other—An Affectionate Farewell—The Sleep of Oblivion
We seemed to be in a road, but that was no proof. We tested this by walking off in various [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 31
The Guests at “Honey Lake Smith’s”—”Bully Old Arkansas”—”Our Landlord”—Determined to Fight—The Landlord’s Wife—The Bully Conquered by Her—Another Start—Crossing the Carson—A Narrow Escape—Following Our Own Track—A New Guide—Lost in the Snow
There were two men in the company who caused me particular discomfort. One was a little Swede, about twenty-five years old, who knew [...]

Roughing It: Chapter 30
Disinterested Friends—How “Feet” Were Sold—We Quit Tunnelling—A Trip to Esmeralda—My Companions—An Indian Prophesy—A Flood—Our Quarters During It
I met men at every turn who owned from one thousand to thirty thousand “feet” in undeveloped silver mines, every single foot of which they believed would shortly be worth from fifty to a thousand dollars—and [...]