In 1865 Sam seems to have had a reputation that was less than  flattering. 
In November of that year he was writing for the San  Francisco Chronicle.

 
Some miles away, in Sacramento, there is a story in the November 17, 1865,  
Sacramento Daily Union (p.2, col. 4) telling a confusing tale of an  
incident in a boarding house in which ". . . a tall but distinguished looking 
gentleman entered  the office, holding a carpet sack in his left hand, and two 
junk bottles and a  Westphalian ham in his right, and approached the 
[boarding house  manager] in a confidential manner. "
 
For some reason, unclear to this reader, things went weird and the stranger 
 ends up fleeing. Then the last bit of the Sacramento article gives  us a 
humorous hint at Mark Twain's reputation in Sacramento in  1865:

 
" The police are on the track of the  stranger, but he has not yet been 
found, and all surmises as to who he is  fall idly to the ground. The 
hypothesis that it was only Mark Twain stepping up  to pay his board bill is scouted 
as too monstrously  improbable to be  worthy of a moment's consideration."
 
Bob Stewart
Carson City
 
The article is on cdnc.ucr.edu/, but unfortunately they are having a  
problem at the moment with newspaper images, so for the time being you can  read 
the OCR text, which is somewhat clean, but you cannot at  this time see the 
image of the actual newspaper article or the  illustration accompanying the 
article.