ABSTRACT
We can fancy the reader of Mr. Clemens's book finding at the end of it (and its six hundred pages of fun arc none too many) that, while he has been merely enjoying himself, as he supposes, he has been surreptitiously acquiring a better idea of the flush times in Nevada, and of the adventurous life generally of the recent West, than he could possibly have got elsewhere. The grotesque exaggeration and broad irony with which the life is described arc conjecturably the truest colors that could have been used, for all existence there must have looked like an extravagant joke, the humor of which was only deepened by its nether-side of tragedy. The plan of the book is very simple indeed, for it is merely the personal history of Mr. Clemens during a certain number of years, in which he crossed the Plains in the overland stage to Carson City, to be private secretary to the Secretary of Nevada; took the silver-mining fever, and with a friend struck 'a blind lead' worth millions; lost it by failing to comply with the mining laws; became local reporter to a Virginia City newspaper; went to San Francisco and suffered extreme poverty in the cause of abstract literature and elegant leisure; was sent to the Sandwich Islands as newspaper correspondent; returned to California, and began lecturing and that career of humorist, which we should all be sorry to have ended. The 'moral' which the author draws from the whole is: 'If you are of any account, stay at home and make your way by faithful diligence; but if you are of "no account," go away from home, and then you will lwve to work, whether you want to or not.'
