Imperial Valley press., 1908-03-28
JOKE ON MARK TWAIN.
Bill Stewart Tells of Ills Early Days
 In Nevada.


 cences for the Saturday Evening Post, and in his latest installment he serves up Mark Twain on toast, grilled to a fare-you-well. Stewart says:
 When I first knew him he was a reporter on the Territorial Enterprise, which was otherwise a very reputable paper, published in Virginia City, and his brother, Orion Clemens, was a respectable young gentleman, and well liked.
 Sam Clemens was a busy person. He went around putting things in the paper about people, and stirring up trouble. Naturally, he was not popu- lar. I did not associate with him.
 Clemens had great habit of mak- ing fun of the young fellows and the girls, and wrote ridiculous pieces about parties and other social events, to which he was never invited. After a while he went over to Carson City and touched up the people over there, and got everybody down on him. thought he had faded from our midst forever, but he drifted back to Vir- ginia City in few weeks. The boys got together and said they would give a party and invite Clemens to it, and make him feel at home, and respect able, and decent, and kindly, and gen. erous, and loving, and considerate of the feelings of others. I could have warned them, but didn't.
 Clemens went to that party and danced with the prettiest girls, and monopolized them, and enjoyed him. self, and made good meal, and then showed over to the Enterprise office and wrote the whole thing up. He lambasted that party for all the En- glish language would allow, and if any of the guests were unfortunate enough to be awkward, or have big feet, or a wart on the nose, Clemens did not forget it. He fairly strained his memory.
 Of course, this made the boys angry, and they decided to get even. There was stage that ran from Carson to Virginia City, and Clemens was a pas senger on it one night. The boys laid in wait, and when the stage numbered by lonely spot they swooped out, and upset it, and turned it upside down, and dragged Clemens out, and threw him into canon, and broke up his portmanteau, and threw that in on top of him.
 He was the scardest man west of the Mississippi; but the next morning when he crawled back to town, and it was day, and light, and safe, he began to swell little, and pretty soon he was bragging about his nar- row escape. By and by he began to color it up, and add details that he had overlooked at first, until he made out that he had been in one of the most desperate stage robberies in the history of the West, and it was pretty poor story that he couldn't lug tba: one into, by the nape of the neck solC of casually.
 After that he drifted away, and I thought he had been hanged, or elected to Congress, or something like that, and I had forgotten him, until he slouched into my room in Washington and then, of course, remembered him. He accepted all of my invita- tions in the modest and unassuming manner for which he had been noted in Nevada, and became member of my family and my clerk.
 Clemens remained with me for some time. He wrote his book in my room, and named it The Innocents Abroad. I was confident that he would come to no good end, but have heard of him, from time to time, since then,