Roughing It

“Even at this day it thrills me through and through to think of the life, the gladness and the wild sense of freedom that used to make the blood dance in my veins on those fine overland mornings!”

Twain is recalling the early days of his stage journey. He and his companions watch the country roll past them at what is considered a rapid pace for its day. His exhilaration in the experience of speed and novelty is apparent in this quote.

“The fleet messenger who sped across the continent from St. Joe to Sacramento, carrying letters nineteen hundred miles in eight days! Think of that for perishable horse and human flesh and blood to do!”

The author is discussing the Pony Express. These messengers only operated for a few years before the arrival of the transcontinental railroad. However, the record speeds they set in spanning the continent were the stuff of legend. This quote demonstrates how awestruck Twain is at the thought and sight of the express riders.

“I know we felt very complacent and conceited, and better satisfied with life after we had added it to our list of things which we had seen and some other people had not.”

The stagecoach is now passing through a region of Nebraska that Twain calls the alkali flats. These areas are the dried remains of a desert lake. Because they contain a high concentration of salt, they give the road a whitewashed appearance. Again, this phenomenon falls into the category of new and strange things that Twain hoped to see on his journey. In an ironic tone, Twain mocks himself and his fellow passengers for their smug sense of superiority to those who have not seen such wonders.

“It was comfort in those succeeding days to sit up and contemplate the majestic panorama of mountains and valleys spread out below us and eat ham and hard boiled eggs while our spiritual natures revelled alternately in rainbows, thunderstorms, and peerless sunsets.”

The author and his companions have finally provisioned themselves so that they don’t need to rely on the vile food at the stage stations. The above quote indicates Twain’s delight at satisfying both his physical and spiritual hunger during this phase of the trip: ham for the body and sunsets for the soul.

“The disgust which the Goshoots gave me, a disciple of Cooper and a worshipper of the Red Man—even of the scholarly savages in the ‘Last of the Mohicans’ […] set me to examining authorities, to see if perchance I had been over-estimating the Red Man while viewing him through the mellow moonshine of romance.”

Twain has just gotten his first glimpse of a real Indigenous tribe, and his reaction is far from positive. He juxtaposes these real Indigenous people (whose conditions of material hardship have much to do with their very recent eviction from their traditional lands by white settlers) against the romanticized image of the “Red Man” he has seen in the novels of James Fenimore Cooper. This quote illustrates a major tension in the novel between the author’s overblown expectations and life’s harsh realities.

“According to custom the daily ‘Washoe Zephyr’ set in; a soaring dust-drift about the size of the United States set up edgewise came with it, and the capital of Nevada Territory disappeared from view.”

Twain is being deliberately tongue-in-cheek in this quote. Zephyrs are defined as gentle breezes, which hardly qualifies as a description of the Washoe Zephyr. He is also being hyperbolic in saying that the breeze has the same dimensions as the country set on end. However, the quote does give an accurate sense of the shock a newcomer to the territory would feel upon first encountering this phenomenon.

“We were homeless wanderers again, without any property. Our fence was gone, our house burned down; no insurance. Our pine forest was well scorched, the dead trees all burned up, and our broad acres of manzanita swept away.”

Twain is describing the aftermath of the campfire that burned up his timber acreage near Lake Tahoe. At many points in the story, he finds himself destitute and bemoans his fate. However, he also seems surprised by it. Frequently, he exults in his potential good fortune without taking care to secure it. The same is true of a campfire that nobody bothered to tend. It is symbolic of the young Twain’s careless frame of mind throughout the novel.

“The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two.”

This quote relates to the secretary’s difficulty in getting reimbursed by the government for out-of-pocket expenses. Even though Twain’s brother is conscientious, the comptroller in the States repeatedly hamstrings him on technicalities. Thus, Twain’s quote is a specific complaint about his brother’s dilemma, but it also has wider applicability. The same criticism might justly be leveled at contemporary governmental bureaucracy.

“So I learned then, once for all, that gold in its native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and that only low-born metals excite the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the world, I still go on underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica. Commonplace human nature cannot rise above that.”

This quote offers an astute analogy between the quest for gold and the quest for an honest human being. Most things that glitter are overvalued, including people who are superficially charming. Twain implies that this attraction to the tawdry is a natural human failing. He demonstrates this tendency himself repeatedly in the novel by crediting stories of fabulous wealth without taking into account the effort required to get it.

“Although he left us a sumptuous legacy of pride in his fine Virginian stock and its national distinction, I presently found that I could not live on that alone without occasional bread to wash it down with.”

Twain is wryly contemplating his father’s illustrious family name as the only legacy he received. While it carries great social value, it is useless as a form of livelihood. The author himself left school after his father’s death and states in the novel that he was required to earn his living from the age of 13. The quote implies that reputation is a wonderful inheritance as long as one has money in one’s pockets.

“I cannot say which class we buried with most eclat in our ‘flush times,’ the distinguished public benefactor or the distinguished rough—possibly the two chief grades or grand divisions of society honored their illustrious dead about equally.”

During Virginia City’s silver boom, both the mine owners and the desperados occupied the same social stratum. Given the routine violence of a frontier boomtown, members of both groups would have died in roughly equal numbers. Twain’s quote implies that money was so readily available during the flush times that funerals became a form of public spectacle.

“The cheapest and easiest way to become an influential man and be looked up to by the community at large, was to stand behind a bar, wear a cluster-diamond pin, and sell whisky.”

This quote describes the priorities of the citizens of Virginia City. A diamond pin is an indicator of personal wealth. The ability to sell whisky makes a saloon owner a public benefactor in the eyes of his patrons. Twain is inverting the usual set of values that inspire respect in “civilized” cities to the East. The golden West operates on a different value system.

“I desire to tamper with the jury law. I wish to so alter it as to put a premium on intelligence and character, and close the jury box against idiots, blacklegs, and people who do not read newspapers.”

This quote is taken from a long diatribe against Alfred the Great and his invention of the jury system in the ninth century. Twain makes a cogent observation about the pervasive presence of news in his nascent information age. Even 160 years ago, it would have been hard to find people who weren’t aware of current events. Twain implies that only the dull-witted and uninformed are left to sit on juries.

“Not less than a hundred men have been murdered in Nevada—perhaps I would be within bounds if I said three hundred—and as far as I can learn, only two persons have suffered the death penalty there.”

This quote relates to the preceding one. The astronomical murder rate in Virginia City would suggest an equally large number of executions. In fact, most of the murderers go free. Twain humorously attributes this to the dullards who serve as jurors. However, he is also making a serious point about the lax nature of justice in the territories.

“Nobody, except he has tried it, knows what it is to be an editor. It is easy to scribble local rubbish […] but it is unspeakable hardship to write editorials. Subjects are the trouble—the dreary lack of them, I mean.”

Twain briefly acts as managing editor for the Virginia City paper and makes an interesting distinction between the ease of churning out news articles and the difficulty of forming an opinion in an editorial. He considers the task to be extremely hard work and quits. This reaction fits a pattern that also holds true at many other points in the novel. He quits both mining and milling because of the effort involved.

“The idea of a man falling into raptures over grave and sombre California, when that man has seen New England’s meadow-expanses and her maples […] comes very near being funny—would be, in fact, but that it is so pathetic. No land with an unvarying climate can be very beautiful.”

Twain has just finished writing a description of the scenery in California as opposed to Nevada. Having come from the verdant areas to the East, he finds both locations desiccated by comparison. He will later contradict his observation about an unvarying climate when he writes rapturous descriptions of Hawaii’s landscape. The tropics are unvarying, but at least they are green.

“It was in this Sacramento Valley, just referred to, that a deal of the most lucrative of the early gold mining was done, and you may still see, in places, its grassy slopes and levels torn and guttered and disfigured by the avaricious spoilers of fifteen and twenty years ago.”

For the most part, Twain doesn’t comment on the rapacious activity in Virginia City as an act of environmental despoliation. He is too swept up in silver fever to notice. However, this quote reveals that he is acutely aware of the consequences of the California gold rush in destroying the environment and is highly critical of it.

“It was a splendid population—for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained sloths staid at home—you never find that sort of people among pioneers—you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of material.”

The author is reminiscing about the generation of young men who left their homes in the East to seek their fortunes on the frontier. He is right in pointing out that it takes a certain type of person to make such a move. Twain praises the bold adventurers who constitute the core of the mining community. The territories are no place for the timid or weak; great reward often carries great risk.

“I was out of work again. I would not mention these things but for the fact that they so aptly illustrate the ups and downs that characterize life on the Pacific coast. A man could hardly stumble into such a variety of queer vicissitudes in any other country.”

While life as a miner promises a rich payoff, it also involves instability. The novel is filled with boom-and-bust examples. Miners gain a fortune one day and spend it within a month. Twain himself experiences this uncomfortable cycle repeatedly. He believes that the gold and silver rush created an extreme set of conditions, unlike anything the world has ever seen.

“The people are so accustomed to nine-jointed titles and colossal magnates that a foreign prince makes very little more stir in Honolulu than a Western Congressman does in New York.”

Twain is talking about the honorifics that are distributed so freely among the Hawaiian population. Everyone has a grand title and no great responsibilities associated with it. The author also pokes fun at the elaborate court ceremonies where all these individuals assemble.

“After dark half a dozen of us set out, with lanterns and native guides, and climbed down a crazy, thousand-foot pathway in a crevice fractured in the crater wall, and reached the bottom in safety.”

This quote describes Twain’s journey into the lower depths of the Kilauea volcano. His words give a clear idea of the perilous nature of this excursion. Tourism at this time was an informal affair without the safety precautions that a contemporary visitor might expect. Such a descent would be dangerous at any time of day but even more so under the nighttime conditions that Twain describes.

“The natives are such thorough-going gossips that they never pass a house without stopping to swap news, and consequently their horses learn to regard that sort of thing as an essential part of the whole duty of man.”

This quote has less to do with Twain’s perception of the loquacious nature of islanders than it does with the intractability of his horse. At multiple points in the novel, he saddles a steed that has a mind of its own. In this instance, his horse has been conditioned to stop at every passing house whether his rider wants to do so or not. Twain, once again, is the hapless passenger while his horse takes the reins.

“I was in the middle of the stage, staring at a sea of faces, bewildered by the fierce glare of the lights, and quaking in every limb with a terror that seemed like to take my life away. The house was full, aisles and all!”

The author is describing his opening night jitters before his first San Franciso lecture. The quote gives insight into the frame of mind of a budding author who will one day be as famous for his lectures as for his books. The average reader might assume that Twain took to public speaking easily. His words in this passage suggest just how frightening the experience actually was.