daily in Virginia--"The Territorial Enterprise." Artemus
detected in the writings of Mark Twain the indications of
great humorous power, and strongly advised the writer to
seek a better field for his talents. Since then he has
become a well-known lecturer and author. With Mark Twain,
Artemus made a descent into the Gould and Curry Silver Mine
at Virginia, the largest mine of the kind, I believe in the
world. The account of the descent formed a long and very
amusing article in the next morning's "Enterprise." To
wander about the town and note its strange developments
occupied Artemus incessantly. I was sitting writing letters
at the hotel when he came in hurriedly, and requested me to
go out with him. "Come and see some joking much better than
mine," said he. He led me to where one of Wells, Fargo &
Co's express wagons was being rapidly filled with silver
bricks. Ingots of the precious metal, each almost as large
as an ordinary brick, were being thrown from one man to
another to load the wagon, just as bricks or cheeses are
transferred from hand to hand by carters in England. "Good
old jokes those, Hingston. Good, solid Babes in the Wood,"
observed Artemus. Yet that evening he lectured in
"Maguire's Opera House," Virginia City, to an audience
composed chiefly of miners, and the receipts were not far
short of eight hundred dollars.)

A wonderful little city--right in the heart of the famous
Washoe silver regions--the mines of which annually produce
over twenty-five millions of solid silver. This silver is
melted into solid bricks--about the size of ordinary
house-bricks--and carted off to San Francisco with mules.