“Joe,” he said, to Goodman, “I want to sign my articles.  I want to be identified to a wider audience.”

“All right, Sam.  What name do you want to use ’Josh’?”

“No, I want to sign them ‘Mark Twain.’  It is an old river term, a leads-man’s call, signifying two fathoms—­twelve feet.  It has a richness about it; it was always a pleasant sound for a pilot to hear on a dark night; it meant safe water.”

He did not then mention that Captain Isaiah Sellers had used and dropped the name.  He was ashamed of his part in that episode, and the offense was still too recent for confession.  Goodman considered a moment: 

“Very well, Sam,” he said, “that sounds like a good name.”

It was indeed a good name.  In all the nomenclature of the world no more forceful combination of words could have been selected to express the man for whom they stood.  The name Mark Twain is as infinite, as fundamental as that of John Smith, without the latter’s wasting distribution of strength.  If all the prestige in the name of John Smith were combined in a single individual, its dynamic energy might give it the carrying power of Mark Twain.  Let this be as it may, it has proven the greatest ’nom de plume’ ever chosen—­a name exactly in accord with the man, his work, and his career.

It is not surprising that Goodman did not recognize this at the moment.  We should not guess the force that lies in a twelve-inch shell if we had never seen one before or heard of its seismic destruction.  We should have to wait and see it fired, and take account of the result.

It was first signed to a Carson letter bearing date of February 2, 1863, and from that time was attached to all Samuel Clemens’s work.  The work was neither better nor worse than before, but it had suddenly acquired identification and special interest.  Members of the legislature and friends in Virginia and Carson immediately began to address him as “Mark.”  The papers of the Coast took it up, and within a period to be measured by weeks he was no longer “Sam” or “Clemens” or “that bright chap on the Enterprise,” but “Mark”—­“Mark Twain.”  No ‘nom de plume’ was ever so quickly and generally accepted as that.  De Quille, returning from the East after an absence of several months, found his room and deskmate with the distinction of a new name and fame.

It is curious that in the letters to the home folks preserved from that period there is no mention of his new title and its success.  In fact, the writer rarely speaks of his work at all, and is more inclined to tell of the mining shares he has accumulated, their present and prospective values.  However, many of the letters are undoubtedly missing.  Such as have been preserved are rather airy epistles full of his abounding joy of life and good nature.  Also they bear evidence of the renewal of his old river habit of sending money home—­twenty dollars in each letter, with intervals of a week or so between.