Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/415

 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

observed the distance, and learned from Gillis, the humorist s second, that the feat had been performed by Mark Twain, for whom such an exploit was nothing remarkable. They withdrew for consulta tion, and then offered a formal apology, after which peace was restored, leaving Mark Twain with the honors of war.

However, this incident was the means of effecting another change in his life. There was a new law which prescribed two years imprisonment for any one who should send, carry, or accept a challenge. The fame of the proposed duel had reached the capital, eighteen miles away, and the governor wrathfully gave orders for the arrest of all concerned, announcing his intention of making an example that would be remembered. A friend of the duelists heard of their danger, outrode the officers of the law, and hurried the parties over the border into California.

Mark Twain found a berth as city editor of the San Francisco Morning Call, but he was not adapted to routine newspaper work, and in a couple of years he made another bid for fortune in the mines. He tried the &quot;pocket-mines&quot; of California, this time, at Jack ass Gulch, in Calaveras County, but was fortunate enough to find no pockets. Thus he escaped the hypnotic fascination that has kept some intermittent ly successful pocket-miners willing prisoners in Sierra cabins for life, and in three months he was back in San Francisco, penniless, but in the line of literary promotion. He wrote letters for the Virginia Enter prise for a time, but, tiring of that, welcomed an as-

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