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.