Already his name was known the whole length of the Pacific Coast; the Enterprise published many things from his pen which gave him local, and afterwards national, fame; such sketches as 'The Undertaker's Chat', 'The Petrified Man' and 'The Marvellous Bloody Massacre' had attracted favourable and wide notice east of the Rocky Mountains. But his career in Carson City came to a sudden close when he challenged the editor of the Virginia Union to a duel, the bloodless conclusion of which is narrated in the Autobiography. But even a challenge to a duel was against the new law of Nevada; and obeying the warning of Governor North, the duellists crossed the border without ceremony, and stood not upon the order of their going. While Mark Twain was still with the Enterprise, he was in the habit of reserving all his “sketches” for the San Francisco newspapers, the 'Golden Era' and the 'Morning Call'. He now turns his steps to that storied city of “Frisco,” and was not long in extending his fame on that coast. He was incorrigibly lazy, as George Barnes, the editor of the Call, soon discovered; and Kipling was told when he was in San Francisco that Mark was in the habit of coiling himself into a heap and meditating until the last minute, when he would produce copy having no relationship to the subject of his assignment--“which made the editor swear horribly, and the readers of 'The Call' ask for more.” His love for practical joking during the California days brought him unpopularity; and one reads in a San Francisco paper of the early days: “There have been moments in the lives of various kind-hearted and respectable citizens of California and Nevada, when, if Mark Twain were before them as members of a vigilance committee for any mild crime, such as mule-stealing or arson, it is to be feared his shrift would have been short. What a dramatic picture the idea conjures up, to be sure! Mark, before these honest men, infuriated by his practical jokes, trying to show them what an innocent creature he was when it came to mules, or how the only policy of fire insurance he held had lapsed, how void of guile he was in any direction, and all with that inimitable drawl, that perplexed countenance and peculiar scraping of the left foot, like a boy speaking his first piece at school.” If he just escaped disaster, he likewise just escaped millions; on one occasion, for the space of a few moments, he owned the famous Comstock Lode, which was, though he never suspected it, worth millions. His trunkful of securities, which were eminently saleable at one time, proved to be of fictitious value when “the bottom dropped out” of the Nevada boom; and that silver mine, which he was commissioned to sell in New York, was finally sold for three million dollars! It was, as Mark says, the blind lead over again. Mark Twain had the true Midas touch; but the mine of riches he was destined to discover was a mine, not of gold or silver, but the mine of intellect