# Mr. Ballou — Roughing It character guide

> Mr. Ballou in Roughing It by Mark Twain.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** old Mr. Ballou, old Ballou, Ballou

**First appearance:** 0001-roughing-it

## Snapshot

A gentle sixty-year-old miner who does a young man's share of the work and loves grand, sonorous words for their own sake, meaning be hanged.

## Who they are

Ballou holds no rank in the narrator's four-man cabin beyond age, yet he never claims exemption from cold ground, hard labor, or the communal blanket pile. His one vanity is vocabulary: he calls the exhausted horses 'bituminous from long deprivation' and the bed-hogging pup 'meretricious in his movements and so organic in his emotions,' and no sarcasm can pierce his ironclad earnestness. He anchors the desert journey's comedy and its warmth, the proof that a humble sphere can be graced.

## Relationships

### [The Narrator](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/characters/narrator)

_friendship_

Mr. Ballou is a fellow miner and companion who shares the Narrator's early, unsuccessful mining experiences.

### [The Narrator](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/characters/narrator)

_friendship_

Mr. Ballou is a fellow miner and companion who shares the Narrator's early, unsuccessful mining experiences.

### [The Narrator](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/characters/narrator)

_friendship_

Mr. Ballou is a fellow miner and companion who shares the Narrator's early, unsuccessful mining experiences.

## In the story

### [Roughing It](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/chapters/roughing-it)

An older, experienced miner who provides wisdom and comic relief.

### [XXVII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/chapters/xxvii)

The blacksmith, aged sixty, does the cooking, uses long words humorously (e.g., 'bituminous,' 'meretricious,' 'organic'), and is described as gentle, simple, and unselfish.

### [XXVIII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/chapters/xxviii)

An old miner who correctly identifies the narrator's find as worthless mica and offers a moral lesson.

### [XXIX](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/chapters/xxix)

Leads the prospecting, identifies the quartz ledge, performs the fire-assay, and explains the geology and the immense labor required to extract silver.

### [The Flood at Honey Lake Smith's](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/chapters/xxx)

Travels with the narrator and Ollendorff to Esmeralda; stays at Honey Lake Smith's during the flood.

### [XXXI](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/chapters/xxxi)

Paddles in the middle of the canoe during the crossing and swims to shore after it capsizes; realizes they are following their own tracks.

### [XXXII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/chapters/xxxii)

Finds four matches, attempts to light them, and throws away his pack of cards as part of a deathbed reform.

### [XXXIII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/chapters/xxxiii)

Found in a sitting posture in the snow, later caught playing solitaire.

### [XXXV](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/chapters/xxxv)

Implied as part of the mining company, though not directly named in this excerpt.

### [XXXIX](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/chapters/xxxix)

After returning to Esmeralda, he reconnoiters and then sets out alone for Humboldt.

### [Pocket-Mining and the Ghosts of a Boomtown](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/chapters/lx)

An old friend of the narrator, a miner who came down from Tuolumne and with whom the narrator went back to live in a small cabin.

### [LXXVIII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/chapters/lxxviii)

Implied among the friends who doubt the narrator's public speaking ability.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/characters/mr_ballou
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/characters