Mark Twain Was A Gold Digger!

I ain't sayin' he a gold digger...

Wait. Yeah, I am.

Mark wasn't always a famous writer.

First, he was a river captain (kinda badass), then lost his job.

Then he followed his brother out to Nevada in 1861 because his bro got a sweet job as secretary to the governor.

Mark was all, "I have nothing better to do, soooo I'm gonna be a stage 4 clinger and go with you. Is that ok?"

His brother was like, "Sure man."

But then Mark realized that he was broke as a joke.

Lucky for him, one day, he was reading the newspaper and he saw a headline that blew. his. mind.

People were finding gold fortunes every day all around in Nevada!

Hmm....gold rush 2.0?

I'm assuming he's a crazy cool impulsive, risk-taker because he immediately jumped on that metaphorical gold-digging bandwagon.

Oh, he jumped on a literal bandwagon to do it, though.

He traveled 40 miles with some other dudes looking for the infamous fortune in the Humboldt range.

It took them 2 weeks to go 40 miles, which makes me glad I wasn't born then because there's no way I would've been patient enough to go visit somewhere 40 miles away and my nomadic soul would probably just be a stagnant soul.

When they finally got to where they wanted to search for the good stuff, Mark pretended to go out for a smoke, but really he just ditched those guys so he could go look for his gold.

And could you believe that he immediately saw something shimmer in the sun?

He got closer to take a better look.

But...it was just mica.

Aka fools gold.

That area was a bust, so they went to Carson City on another long boring wagon journey.

That was a bust, too.

So he busted out this super memorable and probably accurate quote:

“A mine is a hole in the ground with a liar standing next to it.”

Then, his money runs out so he had to take a job in a silver mill for $10/ week that he hated.

So...what did he do?!?

What any normal person should do when they hate their job: Ask for a raise!!

He asked to get paid $400,000 per week instead...which obviously...yeah, that didn't work out.

His supervisor fired him on the spot because he prob thought Mark had some screws loose.

Gold dreams were still in the back of his mind.

He partnered with a prospector who was experienced at finding gold, Calvin Higbie.

They made some claims and found some ore!

But... a large company came and scaliwagged them out of their claims.

Totally sucked.

And that's the end of our tale.

I paraphrased all that from this article, incase you were wondering how I managed to sound so professional and historically accurate.

Mark Twain didn't have much luck with gold, but there's good news for you.

You don't have to travel for 2 weeks in a crappy bandwagon and then spend tons of man hours looking for gold only to end up with nothing.

You can do a couple of things!

You can go to mene.com and get some pretty dope investment jewelery at spot price (aka cheaper than any other place that sells jewelry, and higher quality because it's pure 24k).

You can also go to your local store and buy a Hershey's gold bar or ten and hope you win! It may be a bust, but at least you get candy out of it to comfort you.

So there's that.