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The prequel to Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad was Roughing It:

Roughing It illustrates many of Twain's early adventures, including a visit to Salt Lake City, gold and silver prospecting, real-estate speculation, a journey to the Kingdom of Hawaii, and his beginnings as a writer. This memoir provides examples of Twain's rough-hewn humor, which would become a staple of his writing in such later books

-Wikipedia

In Chapter XVI of Roughing It, he claims he was almost a millionaire twice, but he sold his shares before the mines hit it rich.

The news was all over town. The former excitement was great—this one was greater still. I walked the streets serene and happy. Higbie said the foreman had been offered two hundred thousand dollars for his third of the mine. I said I would like to see myself selling for any such price. My ideas were lofty. My figure was a million. Still, I honestly believe that if I had been offered it, it would have had no other effect than to make me hold off for more.

And then he went on to say;

It reads like a wild fancy sketch, but the evidence of many witnesses, and likewise that of the official records of Esmeralda District, is easily obtainable in proof that it is a true history. I can always have it to say that I was absolutely and unquestionably worth a million dollars, once, for ten days.

[Emphasis mine]

Did this really happen, or is it another case of him being an unreliable narrator?

Zizouz212
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  • http://twainhartevisitor.com/marktwain/story.php?author=marktwain&story=gillis - possibly of interest – Valorum Jan 26 '17 at 20:40
  • @Valorum Thanks for the link. Yes, he did not actually engage in mining very much, but he did take as payment "shares", or I think they called it "feet", in mines. –  Jan 26 '17 at 20:43
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    I suspect the problem is that your question basically boils down to "Did x happen to this person". That would be fine if this was MarkTwain:SE – Valorum Jan 26 '17 at 23:09
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    Please don't leave just because of a few negative comments! :-) We're still in the process of deciding on site scope, and there's no guarantee your question will end up being off-topic. You can always post about it on [meta]. – Rand al'Thor Jan 27 '17 at 00:58
  • @Cascabel I agree there have been quite a few "mass produced" questions, but they're not really a large proportion of the site's output so far. And downvotes on questions are free - go ahead and discourage that if it's not what you want to see here. Let's make sure we're only rewarding good questions and answers. Want to come into chat and talk more about this? I'd hate to think people are being driven away from Lit already! – Rand al'Thor Jan 27 '17 at 01:22
  • If I do any more work on this question, I will end up answering it on my own. –  Jan 27 '17 at 02:02
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    Wikipedia does say that he had a "promising claim...that later proved valuable" on a silver mine that they lost. It also says he wouldn't necessarily have become a millionaire, but it could have been exaggeration? – Lianne Caranthir Jan 27 '17 at 02:29
  • Please cite the sources of the quotes... and possibly add "(emphasis mine)" if applicable –  Jan 27 '17 at 03:38
  • Keep in mind that Twain was often (almost always) more interested in being interesting than in sticking to the boring facts. He wrote "autobiographical fiction" and "fictional autobiography." So you might find more "truth" about what he experienced in life in "Tom Sawyer" and "Huck Finn" than you will in his 5 "nonfiction" travel books. – B. Clay Shannon-B. Crow Raven Feb 06 '17 at 22:53

2 Answers2

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He really did engage in silver mine prospecting while he lived in Nevada, though he wasn't one to really pick up a shovel and pick and do much actual work.

Almost a millionaire twice. In the first instance, he and two partners put a claim on a blind lead of silver in a public mine. You had to put some reasonable amount of work into the mine within 10 days, or your claim became forfeit and was available to the public again. In this case, neither he nor his partners did any work on the claim and they lost it. So when he says he was a millionaire for 10 days, it was with this very promising vein of silver, which he lost. This takes place at the end of ROUGHING IT, Part 4 and the beginning of Part 5.

The second time was, he owned a bunch of shares in prospective mines, and the prices were going up and up, like the dot com boom. He had several opportunities to sell but didn't, because he wanted to hold out for the best price. Then it was revealed that none of the mines were ever going to produce at the level people thought (there was some issue of mis-computing the yield coming from the mines). Since he didn't sell any shares, their value dropped to zero.

Jack B Nimble
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Keep in mind that Twain was often (almost always) more interested in being interesting than in sticking to the sometimes less colorful facts of the matter. He has been described as writing "autobiographical fiction" and "fictional autobiography." So you might find more "truth" about what he experienced in life in "Tom Sawyer" and "Huck Finn" than you will in his 5 "nonfiction" travel books.

Also note that there were other occasions where he "missed it by that much," such as when he stopped working at a gold mining claim in Calaveras county - near Angels Camp, I think, where he heard the "Jumping Frog" story - just before they were about to strike it rich there (others supposedly took up the claim as soon as they could and did just that).

If true, we can all be glad he didn't (strike it rich), because in that instance he may not have left us with his great literary works (had he struck it rich via mining or some other way).

He also "could have" gotten rich by investing in telephone stock, which was supposedly offered him at a very low cost by A.G. Bell - an entire "hatful" of it, which he turned down.

B. Clay Shannon-B. Crow Raven
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