Barb Schmidt and I have exchanged several messages on our progress (mostly
Barb's) in fleshing out the probability of a meeting between Twain and
Ludlow, without success. But Twain was in SF for three months in 1863,
partly overlapping the time Ludlow spent there visiting, and Ludlow
published his praise of Twain in November, which may have prompted Twain's
letter home to Jane shortly after mentioning that Ludlow had suggested he
aspire to something more than mere journalism. Brooks THE TIMES OF MELVILLE
AND WHITMAN, and Franklin Walker's SAN FRANCISCO'S LITERARY FRONTIER both
allude to this Twain/Ludlow connection, as does a bio of Ludlow, but so far
as we could determine, nothing pointed clearly to their ever having met face
to face. But they clearly shared many mutual friends and were well aware of
each other. It's not too big a leap to suppose they probably met briefly,
but based on the evidence, it would just be supposition. There is even a
reference to Twain owning a copy of Ludlow's HASHEESH EATER, but the
reference to the provenance is vague and although I have contacted the
supposed owner he has not yet confirmed that the book even exists.

If the newspaper note about the hasheesh episode can be taken at face value
(and not a typcial jab, woven from whole cloth, by one journalist taking aim
at another ---or simply a case of booziness being mistaken for reefer
madness), that would show Twain with hasheesh in hand two years after the
time when he may have encountered Ludlow. Keep in mind that by 1863 when
Ludlow visited SF he was not quite the drug-crazed libertine proto-hippy
that some like to imagine.

BTW, this rooting around after Twain connections with weed, led to my
searching out the origin of a quote sometimes attributed to Twain: "I
cultivate my flowers, and burn my weed"  The reference is to tobacco (of
course) and the person who said it was a widely popular Baptist minister in
England, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and it's not even the frist Spurgeon quote
to be falsely credited to Twain (who once attended one of Spurgeon's sermons
in 1879).

Kevin Mac Donnell
Austin TX