Twain's Roughing It

Re-read the following passage from Twain's Roughing It: "Now—let us remark in parenthesis—as all the peoples of the earth had representative adventurers in the Silverland, and as each adventurer had brought the slang of his nation or his locality with him, the combination made the slang of Nevada the richest and the most infinitely varied and copious that had ever existed anywhere in the world, perhaps except in the mines of California in the 'early days.' Slang was the language of Nevada. It was hard to preach a sermon without it, and be understood. Such phrases as 'You betrOh, no, I reckon notI"No Irish need apply,' and a hundred others, became so common as to fall from the lips of a speaker unconsciously—and very often when they did not touch the subject under discussion and consequently failed to mean anything" (63).
In a response between 500 and 700 words, demonstrate how you can focus on one or two specific examples of the literary structure of this passage—that is, the words it uses, the emphasis it places on them, its way of arranging them, particularly in relation to metaphor and the images and feelings such words generate. How does such literary language shape—indeed, make unique—the idea the passage is conveying? By answering this question, you will be doing a close reading of the passage: an analysis that pays sustained attention to the language of a text and the way such literary language produces effects. To weave your discussion together, relate the passage to the concept of America as we discussed it in our first lecture. What kind of America is being imagined here?