Knowing that today I would be Super Bowling, I took my wife to the  
bar/restaurant in the St. Charles Hotel yesterday, in honor and memory of the  
first known application of the name Mark Twain. The hotel and  restaurant 
("Firkin & Fox") is one of the few Carson City remaining  watering holes that was 
open when Sam Clemens was writing his dreamy letter in  January 1863, and 
remains open today. Sadly, the hotel has none of the early  desk books to know 
if Sam was ever a guest there. His friend Col. Samuel  Youngs was a St. 
Charles Hotel guest during the Legislative Session, as noted in  his journal. 
There is a windowed cabinet in the restaurant with artifacts found  in and 
around the hotel, one being a condiment dish which dates to the 1860s.  
Like the fledgling Mark Twain, we can dreamily wonder if he might have  
picked a pickle off that very piece of crockery.  Yours, dreamily, Bob  Stewart.