"Our duty is to keep the universe
thoroughly posted concerning murders and street fights, and balls and
theatres, and pack-trains, and churches, and lectures, and
school-houses, and city military affairs, and highway robberies, and
Bible societies, and hay wagons, and the thousand other things which it
is within the province of local reporters to keep track of and magnify
into undue importance for the instruction of the readers of a great daily
newspaper. Beyond this revelation everything connected with these two
experiments of Providence must for ever remain an impenetrable mystery."
An admirable picture of Mark Twain on his native heath, in the latter
part of 1863, is given by Edward Peron Hingston, author of "The Genial
Showman," in the introduction to the English edition of "The Innocents
Abroad."
The fame of the Western humorist had already reached the ears of
Hingston; and as soon as he reached Virginia City, he went to the office
of the 'Territorial Enterprise' and asked to be presented to Mark Twain.
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