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Title: Mark Twain Newspaper Correspondent
       Newspaper Articles 1862-1881
Author: Mark Twain
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Language: English
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------------------------------------------------------------------------

Title: Mark Twain Newspaper Correspondent
       Newspaper Articles 1862-1881



MARK TWAIN

NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENT

Newspaper Articles Written by Mark Twain

Collected from the Archives of Several Newspapers

1862-1881



TABLE OF CONTENTS

TERRITORIAL ENTERPRISE

1862

GALE

INDIAN TROUBLES ON THE OVERLAND ROUTE

MORE INDIAN TROUBLES

PETRIFIED MAN

THE SPANISH MINE

PETRIFIED MAN

LETTER FROM CARSON CITY

COMMITTEE ON INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS

MAP

TURNIP

THE PAH-UTES

GRAND BULL DRIVER'S CONVENTION

THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEPARTED

STOCK REMARKS

BOARD OF EDUCATION

BLOWN DOWN

THE SCHOOL

SAD ACCIDENT

THRILLING ROMANCE

FIRE, ALMOST

PRIVATE PARTY

1863

MORE GHOSTS

NEW YEAR'S DAY

ELECTION

PUBLIC SCHOOL

NEW YEARS EXTENSION

SUPREME COURT

BALL IN CARSON

MASS

FIREMEN'S MEETING

RECORDER'S COURT

FREE FIGHT

UNFORTUNATE THIEF

THE SANITARY BALL

DUE NOTICE

THE NEW COURT HOUSE

THE MUSIC

HIGH PRICE OF PORK

TERRITORIAL SWEETS

THE SPANISH

UNRELIABLE

RELIABLE

LETTER FROM CARSON

YE SENTIMENTAL LAW STUDENT

LA PLATA ORE COMPANY

THE CHINA TRIAL

THE CONCERT

SILVER BARS--HOW ASSAYED

THE UNRELIABLE

MANY CITIZENS

THE FIREMEN'S BALL

SMALL POX

SCHOOL-HOUSE

TRIAL TO-DAY

DISTRICT COURT

SUICIDE

TELEGRAPHIC

REPORTORIAL

UNRELIABLE

APOLOGETIC

CITY MARSHALL PERRY

CHAMPAGNE WITH THE BOARD OF BROKERS

CALICO SKIRMISH

A SUNDAY IN CARSON

EXAMINATION OF TEACHERS

A DISTINGUISHED VISITOR

THE LOIS ANN

ISLAND MILL

GOULD & CURRY

THE MINSTRELS

ADVICE TO THE UNRELIABLE ON CHURCH-GOING

HORRIBLE AFFAIR

ELECTRICAL MILL MACHINERY

SAN FRANCISCO, May 16, 1863

ALL ABOUT FASHIONS

A DUEL PREVENTED

AN APOLOGY REPUDIATED

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS HOTEL,

THE HOSPITAL

THE BATHS

THE WAKE-UP-JAKE

YE BULLETIN CYPHERETH

BIGLER VS. TAHOE

OVER THE MOUNTAINS

MR. BILLET IS COMPLIMENTED

THE MENKEN--WRITTEN ESPECIALLY FOR GENTLEMEN

THE TRIUMPHAL PARADE

GREAT PANTOMIME SPEECH

RACES SATURDAY AFTERNOON

A HINT TO CARSON

THE FAIR A SUCCESS AND A VALUABLE LESSON

A BLOODY MASSACRE NEAR CARSON

I TAKE IT ALL BACK

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN

ANOTHER BLOODY MASSACRE!

REVIEW OF "INGOMAR THE BARBARIAN"

ARTEMUS WARD

A TIDE OF ELOQUENCE

QUESTIONS OF PRIVILEGE

MR. STERNS SPEECH

THE LOGAN HOTEL

NO MORE MINES

STATE PRINTER

SCHOOL FUND

HANK MONK

"THE OLD PAH-UTAH"

THIRD HOUSE

REPORTED IN PHONOGPAPHIC SHORT-HAND BY MARK TWAIN

OUR CARSON DISPATCH--SECOND SESSION

A CHRISTMAS GIFT

ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE

CHRISTMAS PRESENTS

THE BOLTERS IN CONVENTION

A GORGEOUS SWINDLE

1864

POLITICS

THE LEGISLATURE

HOUSE-WARMING

RELIGIOUS

THE SQUAIRES TRIAL

MARSH CHILDREN

ARTEMUS

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

OPERA HOUSE

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

COMPOSITOR UP THERE WHO IS TOO ROTTEN PARTICULAR

MISS CLAPP'S SCHOOL

COMPOSITION

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

I HAD NEVER TALKED TO A CROWD BEFORE

TRAVELING WITH ADOLPH SUTRO

CONCERNING NOTARIES

WINTERS NEW HOUSE

AN EXCELLENT SCHOOL

CONCERNING UNDERTAKERS

CALIFORNIA STATE TELEGRAPH COMPANY

TAHOE

THE CARSON UNDERTAKER--CONTINUED

THE REMOVAL OF THE CAPITAL

NOT IN HIS RIGHT MIND

THE CAPITAL QUESTION

FRIGHTFUL ACCIDENT TO DAN DE QUILLE

MARK TWAIN TAKES A LESSON IN THE MANLY ART

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN

DAN REASSEMBLED

WASHOE. "INFORMATION WANTED"

PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE

MISCEGENATION

"MARK TWAIN" IN THE METROPOLIS

1865

JUST "ONE MORE UNFORTUNATE"

MARK TWAIN ON THE COLORED MAN

THE CRUEL EARTHQUAKE

A SINGULAR ILLUSTRATION

A MODEL ARTIST STRIKES AN ATTITUDE

WHAT HAPPENED TO A FEW VIRGINIANS

BOB ROACH'S PLAN FOR CIRCUMVENTING A DEMOCRAT

A LOVE OF A BONNET DESCRIBED

RE-OPENING OF THE PLAZA

MORE FASHIONS--EXIT "WATERFALL."

POPPER DEFIETH YE EARTHQUAKE

STEAMER DEPARTURES

THE BALLAD INFLICTION

EXIT "BUMMER"

ANOTHER LAZARUS

PLEASURE EXCURSION

EDITORIAL "PUFFING"

THE OLD THING

THE PIONEER'S BALL

UNCLE LIGE

A RICH EPIGRAM

CHRISTIAN SPECTATOR

MORE ROMANCE

MANAGERIAL

THIEF-CATCHING

CAUSTIC

THE MARTYR

THE NEW SWIMMING BATH

THE "ECCENTRICS"

GRAND FETE-DAY AT THE CLIFF HOUSE

MACDOUGALL VS. MAGUIRE

NURSERY RHYME

HOW LONG, O LORD, HOW LONG

"CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR."

FACETIOUS

MAYO AND ALDRICH

FINANCIAL

PERSONAL

MOCK DUEL--ALMOST

ANOTHER ENTERPRISE

SPIRIT OF THE LOCAL PRESS

EXTRAORDINARY DELICACY

A GRACEFUL COMPLIMENT

THE BLACK HOLE OF SAN FRANCISCO

CONVICTS

1866

NEW YEAR'S DAY

"WHITE MAN MIGHTY ONSARTAIN"

THE MINT DEFALCATION

THE OPENING NIGHT

THE PORTRAITS

PRECIOUS STONES

GORGEOUS NEW ROMANCE, By Fitz Smythe!

ANOTHER ROMANCE

FITZ SMYTHE'S HORSE

WHAT HAVE THE POLICE BEEN DOING?

THE KEARNY STREET GHOST STORY

BUSTED, AND GONE ABROAD

THE CHAPMAN FAMILY

SABBATH REFLECTIONS

MORE OUTCROPPINGS

CLOSED OUT

BEARDING THE FENIAN IN HIS LAIR

AMONG THE SPIRITS

MORE OUTCROPPINGS

TAKE THE STAND, FITZ SMYTHE

WHERE ARE THE POLICE?

MORE CEMETERIAL GHASTLINESS

REMARKABLE DREAM

MINISTERIAL CHANGE

MARK TWAIN A COMMITTEE MAN

THE FASHIONS

FUNNY

SPIRITUAL INSANITY

THE SIGNAL CORPS

VOYAGE OF THE AJAX

PLEASING INCIDENT

A NEW BIOGRAPHY OF WASHINGTON

LETTER FROM SACRAMENTO

I TRY TO OUT "SASS" THE LANDLORD--AND FAIL

MR. JOHN PAUL'S BAGGAGE

CARD FROM MARK TWAIN

CARD TO THE HIGHWAYMEN

1867

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS FROM WASHINGTON

IMPEACHMENT

1868

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS FROM WASHINGTON

"COAST" MATTERS

THE LOST CHIEF FOUND

COLONEL ELY PARKER, CHIEF OF THE SIX NATIONS

SANDWICH ISLANDS TREATY

CONGRESS ADJOURNED YESTERDAY

PUBLIC STEALING

THE POLITICAL STINK-POTS OPENED

STEWART'S SPEECH

MARK TWAIN IN NEW YORK

IMPEACHMENT

MORMONISM

GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN

OFFICE-HUNTING

THE MAN WHO STOPPED AT GADSBY'S

MRS. LINCOLN

FELIX O'BYRNE

STEWART'S SPEECH

WASHINGTON RASCALITY

IMPEACHMENT

RECIPROCITY

WOOD

THE GRAND COUP D'ETAT

KINGLY CONTEMPT FOR LONG SETTLED FORMS AND CUSTOMS

IMPEACHMENT

"ANDREW JOHNSON'S FAREWELL ADDRESS."

IMPEACHMENT



THE SAN FRANCISCO DAILY MORNING CALL

1864

BURGLAR ARRESTED

ANOTHER CHAPTER IN THE MARKS FAMILY HISTORY

PETTY POLICE COURT TRANSACTIONS

ANOTHER OF THEM

A TRIP TO THE CLIFF HOUSE

CHARGE AGAINST A POLICE OFFICER

CHARGES AGAINST AN OFFICER

MISSIONARIES WANTED FOR SAN FRANCISCO

THE KAHN OF TARTARY

HOUSE AT LARGE

SCHOOLCHILDREN'S REHEARSAL

THE OLD THING

POLICE COMMISSIONERS

ORIGINAL NOVELETTE

FOURTH OF JULY

SWILL MUSIC

ARRESTED FOR BIGAMY

THE BIGAMIST

OPIUM SMUGGLERS

YOUNG OFFENDER

UNITED STATES CIRCUIT COURT

BURGLARY--THE BURGLAR CAUGHT IN THE ACT

THE BIGAMIST

CHINESE SLAVES

THE BIGAMY CASE

UNITED STATES CIRCUIT COURT

POLICE COURT TESTIMONY

RUNAWAY

CALABOOSE THEATRICALS

INSPECTION OF THE FORTIFICATIONS

A GROSS OUTRAGE

MOSES IN THE BULRUSHES AGAIN

THE "COMING MAN" HAS ARRIVED

THE COUNTY PRISON

INDEPENDENT CANDIDATE FOR STOCKTON

JUVENILE CRIMINALS

ASSAULT

REAL DEL MONTE

A STAGE ROBBER AMONGST US

AMAZONIAN PASTIMES

DETECTIVE ROSE AGAIN

THE BOSS EARTHQUAKE

GOOD EFFECTS OF A HIGH TARIFF

THE HOSTILITY OF COLOR

ROUGH ON KEATING

ARREST OF A SECESH BISHOP

DEMORALIZING YOUNG GIRLS

FALSE PRETENCES

RAPE

PENALTY

CONCERNING HACKMEN

TROT HER ALONG

MRS. O'FARRELL

END OF THE RAPE CASE

MORE SANITARY MOLASSES

DISGUSTED AND GONE

ANOTHER LAZARUS

BURGLARY

CUSTOM HOUSE RESIGNATIONS

THE CAMANCHE

SOMBRE FESTIVITIES

ENLISTED FOR THE WAR

REFUSED GREENBACKS

ATTEMPTED SUICIDE

A MOVEMENT IN BUCKEYE

MORE STAGE ROBBERS AND THEIR CONFEDERATES CAPTURED

DEMOCRATIC MEETING AT HAYES' PARK

RECOVERED

FRUIT SWINDLING

OTIUM CUM DIGNITATE

SOLDIER MURDERED

ANOTHER OBSCENE PICTURE KNAVE CAPTURED

THE FITZGERALD INQUEST

HOW AMONG THE DOCTORS

ATTEMPTED SUICIDE

SHOP-LIFTING

MYSTERIOUS

ASSAULT BY A HOUSE

ESCAPED

COLLISION

THE MURDERER KENNEDY

OUR U.S. BRANCH MINT

INTELLIGENCE OFFICE ROW

AN ACCUMULATION OF COPPERHEADS

WHAT A SKYROCKET DID

SUNDRIES

"WON'T YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR"

AN ILL-ADVISED PROSECUTION

SCHOOL DIRECTOR POPE AND THE CALL

MAN RUN OVER

ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE A PAWNBROKER

THE NEW CHINESE TEMPLE

WHAT GOES WITH THE MONEY

MARY KANE

MORE ABUSE OF SAILORS

THE CHINESE TEMPLE

IT IS THE DANIEL WEBSTER

RAIN

THE NEW CHINESE TEMPLE

INEXPLICABLE NEWS FROM SAN JOSE

CAMANCHE ITEMS--SANITARY CONTRIBUTIONS

SUPERNATURAL IMPUDENCE

A DARK TRANSACTION

INGRATITUDE

POLICE CONTRIBUTIONS

THE THEATRES, ETC.

THE LADIES' FAIR

A "CONFEDERACY" CAGED

GOOD FROM LOUDERBACK

HOW TO CURE HIM OF IT

THE FAIR

ARREST OF ANOTHER OF THE ROBBING GANG

ENTHUSIASTIC HARD-MONEY DEMONSTRATION

CHINESE RAILROAD OBSTRUCTIONS

SHINER NO. 1

MAYHEM

STRONG AS SAMPSON AND MEEK AS MOSES

THE COSMOPOLITAN HOTEL BESIEGED

RINCON SCHOOL MILITIA

FINE PICTURE OF REV. MR. KING

THE THEATRES, ETC.

STRATEGY, MY BOY

THE MECHANIC'S FAIR

LOST CHILD

SUICIDE OUT OF PRINCIPLE

LABYRINTH GARDEN

THE LOST CHILD RECLAIMED

THE CALIFORNIAN

THE HURDLE-RACE YESTERDAY

DOMESTIC SILKS

LOOKS LIKE SHARP PRACTICE

A TERRIBLE MONSTER CAGED

A PROMISING ARTIST

PEEPING TOM OF COVENTRY

TURNED OUT OF OFFICE

A SMALL PIECE OF SPITE

CHRISTIAN FAIR

TERRIBLE CALAMITY

EARTHQUAKE

DEMOCRATIC STATE CONVENTION

BEAUTIFUL WORK

CAPTAIN KIDD'S STATEMENT

DEMOCRATIC STATE CONVENTION

MRS. HALL'S SMELTING FURNACE

CHARITABLE CONTRIBUTIONS

CROSS SWEARING

DEMOCRATIC RATIFICATION MEETING

RACE FOR THE OCCIDENTAL HOTEL PREMIUM

CURIOSITIES

A PHILANTHROPIC NATION

ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF A DETECTIVE OFFICER

SAD ACCIDENT--DEATH OF JEROME RICE

THE CAMANCHE

AN INGENIOUS CONTRIVANCE

COUNTY HOSPITAL DEVELOPMENTS

INTERESTING LITIGATION

EXTRAORDINARY ENTERPRISE

DONATIONS

SUICIDE OF DR. RAYMOND

THE ALLEGED SWINDLING

OFFICER ROSE RECOVERING

DR. RAYMOND NOT REMOVED

THE LATE SUICIDE--CORONER'S INQUEST

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS

THEATRICAL RECORD

DUE WARNING

THE THEATRES, ETC.

STABBED

A TERRIBLE WEAPON

OUT OF JAIL

QUEER FISH

STRIKE OF THE STEAMER EMPLOYEES

DEDICATION OF BUSH STREET SCHOOL

FAREWELL ADDRESS OF DR. BELLOWS

AH SOW DISCHARGED

CHILDREN AT THE FAIR

THE FAIR AT THE FAIR

MORTIMER AGAIN

ACCOMMODATING WITNESS

THE MINT TROUBLES

BOAT SALVAGE

NUISANCE

THE DEAF MUTES AT THE FAIR

AFTER MORTIMER

ADVICE TO WITNESSES

MORE CHILDREN

ROBBERY

DAMAGES AWARDED

EVERYBODY WANTS TO HELP

THE LAST HITCH AT THE MINT

AN INTERESTING CORRESPONDENCE

A ROUGH CUSTOMER

THE RODERICK CASE

MISCEGNATION

THE CAMANCHE

HAD A FIT



THE SACRAMENTO DAILY UNION

1866

CLIMATIC

THE AJAX VOYAGE CONTINUED--THE OLD NOR'WEST SWELL

STILL AT SEA

OUR ARRIVAL ELABORATED A LITTLE MORE

BOARD AND LODGING SECURED

COMING HOME FROM PRISON

THE EQUESTRIAN EXCURSION CONCLUDED

SAD ACCIDENT

THE WHALING TRADE

PARADISE AND THE PARI (JOKE)

HAWAIIAN LEGISLATURE

LEGISLATURE CONTINUED--THE SOLONS AT WORK

"HOME AGAIN"

BURNING OF THE CLIPPER SHIP HORNET AT SEA

A MONTH OF MOURNING

FUNERAL OF THE PRINCESS

AT SEA AGAIN

STILL IN KONA--CONCERNING MATTERS AND THINGS

GREAT BRITAIN'S QUEER MONUMENT TO CAPTAIN COOK

A FUNNY SCRAP OF HISTORY

THE ROMANTIC GOD LONO

THE HIGH CHIEF OF SUGARDOM

A NOTABLE DISCOVERY

THE GREAT VOLCANO OF KILAUEA



DAILY HAWAIIAN HERALD

1866

"MARK TWAIN" ON PHOTOGRAPHS.--

MARK TWAIN ON CAPTAIN COOK

MARK TWAIN ON ETIQUETTE

THE QUEEN'S ARRIVAL

MARK TWAIN'S LECTURE

HOW FOR INSTANCE?

OPEN LETTER TO MARK TWAIN



ALTA CALIFORNIA

1866

SO-LONG

"MARK TWAIN'S" FAREWELL

1867

AWAY

AN ELOPEMENT-SENSATION

SEQUEL TO THE ELOPEMENT

ANOTHER SEQUEL

ISAAC

THE CAPTAIN'S SPEECH

SCANDAL

STEAMER "COLUMBIA", AT SEA

THE FIRST DEATH

THE FALL OF THE ISAAC

A LEGEND FROM THE CAPTAIN

SAN JUAN AND CHOLERA

ASHORE

MASQUERADING ON THE ROAD

THE TWIN MOUNTAINS

THE GRAVE OF THE LOST STEAMER

ANCIENT CASTILLO

THE BORE

NICARAGUA

THE BORE CONQUERED

UNDER WAY AGAIN

OUR CONFOUNDED CHOIR

THE "WEST-SOU'-WESTER"

THE MONKEY

THE CHOLERA

KEY WEST

AT SEA AGAIN

HILARITY RESTORED

LEGEND OF THE MUSKET

THE TALE OF THE "BIRD OF A NEW SPECIE"

THE GULF STREAM

BROWN'S LOG-BOOK

SAFE AT LAST IN "THE STATES"

THE OVERGROWN METROPOLIS

THE MODEL ARTISTS

ALL DRAMADOM AFFECTED

THE BEWITCHING NEW FASHIONS

THE CENTURY CLUB

MY ANCIENT FRIENDS, THE POLICE

SUNDAY AMUSEMENTS

HENRY WARD BEECHER

"BISHOP SOUTHGATE'S MATINEE"

ST. ALBAN'S

THE VAGARIES OF AN INNOCENT

STEREOTYPING MACHINE

GRAND EUROPEAN PLEASURE TRIP

REV. MR. TWAIN

HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN!

THE ARABIAN NIGHTS REPEATED

THE GREAT MASQUERADE

HAPPY

UNHAPPY

INSIGNIFICANCE IN OFFICE

PHOTOGRAPH OF PITTSBURG, ETC.

CALIFORNIANS

SOCIABLES

THE "EUCHRE HORNS"

AT HOME AGAIN

WHERE THE CHANGE IS

STEAMBOATING

FEMALE SUFFRAGE

PREACHING AGAIN

BAD GOVERNMENT

PUBLIC SCHOOLS

NOTABLE THINGS IN ST. LOUIS

UP THE MISSISSIPPI

HANNIBAL--BY A NATIVE HISTORIAN

JIM TOWNSEND'S TUNNEL

KEOKUK AND QUINCY

THE MORMONS

BAD HOTEL, BUT GIFTED PORTER

MARION CITY

BOUND EAST AGAIN

PROGRESS AND PROSPERITY

PERSONAL

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS

THE MIDNIGHT MISSION

JEFF. DAVIS

BILLY FALL

THE MENKEN

A BIT OF HISTORY

RISTORI

REV. DR. CHAPIN

THE NUISANCE OF ADVICE

THE EXCISE LAW

THE TRAVELLERS' CLUB

THE BROADWAY BRIDGE

IN THE STATION HOUSE

PERSONAL INQUIRY

CALIFORNIA WINES

NOT GOING TO PARIS?

NEW YORK WEATHER

"HERALD" "PERSONALS"

HOTELS

PERSONAL

FOR CHRISTIANS TO READ

MISSIONARY BUSINESS

THE BLIND ASYLUM

WHAT BLINDED THEM

THE BOOTBLACKS

BOOTBLACK SCRIPTURIST

THE SEX IN NEW YORK

THAT SINGULAR SHIPWRECK

THE PRESSURE

BLOOD

INFORMATION FOR THE CHOLERA

ACADEMY OF DESIGN

GREELEY AND JEFF

FOOLISHNESS

THE FORREST DIVORCE

STEWART'S PALACE'

"THE DOMES OF THE YOSEMITE"

A CURIOUS BOOK

STREET LIVELIHOODS

A CHARACTER

ARTEMUS WARD

NEW YORK

BRIDGET DURGAN

THE INDIAN ROW

GREAT TEMPERANCE PICNIC

THE HOLY LAND EXCURSION

A SPECIMEN BRICK

SATISFIED CURIOSITY

THE LIFE-RAFT

1868

HOME AGAIN

A MODEL EXCURSION

MARK TWAIN IN WASHINGTON

OFFICE-SEEKING

SALARIES AND CLERKSHIPS

OUR PURCHASES

RETURN OF THE SUTRO TUNNEL FROM EUROPE

SINGULAR

COL. ELI PARKER

CHARLES DICKENS

COMPLIMENTARY

PRESIDENTIAL PRESENTS

THE BIG TREES

NIGGER SUPHRAGE

GRANT'S RECEPTION

IMPEACHMENT

COW MARCHED INTO THE HOUSE

HARTFORD

SMOKE SURREPTITIOUSLY

THE CHARTER OAK

THE PROPER TIME TO SAIL

PANAMA

HARTFORD--THE "BLUE LAWS."

MORALITY AND HUCKLEBERRIES

SIN IN THIS WORLD

A LEGEND

INTERNATIONAL BOAT RACE

THE "WICKEDEST MAN."

THE SHERMAN HOUSE

LEGEND

PATENT "ADDING MACHINE"

WAYS OF PROVIDENCE

THE NEW PILGRIM'S PROGRESS

A FIRST VISIT TO BOSTON

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

BOSTON POLITENESS

ROMANCE IN REAL LIFE

BLIND TOM



THE CHICAGO REPUBLICAN

1868

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN

CONGRESSIONAL POETRY

MR. JUSTICE FIELD

KALAMAZOO

THE CAPITOL POLICE

COLORADO AT THE DOOR

FASHIONS

DIED

IMPEACHMENT

"ONE'S AFRAID AND 'T'OTHER DAR'N'T."

ST. VALENTINE S DAY

CURIOUS LEGISLATION

A CHEERFUL GUEST

MORALIZING

IMPEACHMENT

AT SEA

BAD JOKES

CURIOUS CHANGES

NOVEL ENTERTAINMENT

I SAW A MAN HANGED THE OTHER DAY

UP AMONG THE CLOUDS

PANAMA RAILROAD

A GENUINE OLD SALT



THE GALAXY

1870

DIAMOND ENGAGEMENT RINGS

HIGGINS

HOGWASH

SUSPICIOUS PROPERTY IN HIS POSSESSION

DAN MURPHY

THE "TOURNAMENT" IN A.D. 1870

UNBURLESQUABLE THINGS

A DARING ATTEMPT AT A SOLUTION OF IT

TO CORRESPONDENTS

A MEMORY

THE STORY OF A GALLANT DEED

A ROYAL COMPLIMENT

THE APPROACHING EPIDEMIC

FAVORS FROM CORRESPONDENTS

THE ENIGMA

THE RECEPTION AT THE PRESIDENT'S

GOLDSMITH'S FRIEND ABROAD AGAIN

DISTRESSING ACCIDENT

MARK TWAIN'S MAP OF PARIS

GOLDSMITH'S FRIEND ABROAD AGAIN

A REMINISCENCE OF THE BACK SETTLEMENTS

A GENERAL REPLY

FAVORS FROM CORRESPONDENTS

AN ENGLISH CRITIC ON MARK TWAIN

THE INNOCENTS ABROAD

JUST BARELY ESCAPED BEING QUITE VALUABLE

"HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF."

RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR

THE "PRESENT" NUISANCE

DOGBERRY IN WASHINGTON

MARRIED

DIVORCES

1871

GOLDSMITH'S FRIEND ABROAD AGAIN

MEAN PEOPLE

A SAD, SAD BUSINESS

ANSWER TO AN INQUIRY FROM THE COMING MAN

A BOOK REVIEW

THE TONE-IMPARTING COMMITTEE

THE DANGER OF LYING IN BED

ONE OF MANKIND'S BORES

INDIGNITY PUT UPON THE REMAINS

MY FIRST LITERARY VENTURE

ABOUT A REMARKABLE STRANGER

ABOUT BARBERS




TERRITORIAL ENTERPRISE

Nevada Territory

Territorial Enterprise, October 1, 1862

LOCAL COLUMN

A GALE.--About 7 o'clock Tuesday evening (Sept. 30th) a sudden blast of
wind picked up a shooting gallery, two lodging houses and a drug store
from their tall wooden stilts and set them down again some ten or twelve
feet back of their original location, with such a degree of roughness as
to jostle their insides into a sort of chaos. There were many guests in
the lodging houses at the time of the accident, but it is pleasant to
reflect that they seized their carpet sacks and vacated the premises
with an alacrity suited to the occasion. No one hurt.

THE INDIAN TROUBLES ON THE OVERLAND ROUTE.--Twelve or fifteen emigrant
wagons arrived here on Monday evening, and all but five moved on towards
California yesterday. One of the five wagons which will remain in the
city is in charge of a man from Story county, Iowa, who started across
the plains on the 5th of May last, in company with a large train
composed principally of emigrants from his own section. From him we
learn the following particulars: When in the vicinity of Raft river,
this side of Fort Hall, the train was attacked, in broad daylight by
a large body of Snake Indians. The emigrants, taken entirely by
surprise--for they had apprehended no trouble--made but a feeble
resistance, and retreated, with a loss of six men and one woman of their
party. The Indians also captured the teams belonging to thirteen wagons,
together with a large number of loose cattle and horses. The names of
those killed in the affray are as follows: Charles Bulwinkle, from New
York; William Moats, Geo. Adams and Elizabeth Adams, and three others
whose names our informant had forgotten. The survivors were overtaken
on the afternoon by a train numbering 111 wagons, which brought them
through to Humboldt. They occasionally discovered the dead bodies of
emigrants by the roadside; at one time twelve corpses were found, at
another four, and at another two--all minus their scalps. They also saw
the wrecks of many wagons destroyed by the Indians. Shortly after the
sufferers by the fight recorded above had joined the large train, it
was also fired into in the night by a party of Snake Indians, but the
latter, finding themselves pretty warmly received, drew off without
taking a scalp. About a week before these events transpired, a party of
emigrants numbering 40 persons was attacked near City Rocks by the same
tribe of uncivilized pirates. Five young ladies were carried off, and,
it is thought, women and children in all to the number of fifteen.
All the men were killed except one, who made his escape and arrived
at Humboldt about the 20th of September. This train was called the
"Methodist Train," which was not altogether inappropriate, since the
whole party knelt down and began to pray as soon as the attack was
commenced. Every train which has passed over that portion of the route
in the vicinity of City Rocks since the 1st of August has had trouble
with the Indians. When our informant left Humboldt several wagons had
just arrived whose sides and covers had been transformed into magnified
nutmeg-graters by Indian bullets. The Snakes corralled the train, when
a fight ensued, which lasted forty-eight hours. The whites cut their way
out, finally, and escaped. We could not learn the number of killed and
wounded at this battle.

[MORE INDIAN TROUBLES.--] Mr. L. F. Yates, who arrived in this city a
few days since from Pike's Peak, has given us the following particulars
of a fight his train had on the 8th of last August, about one and a-half
miles this side of the junction of the Lander's Cut-off and Fort Bridger
roads. Their train consisted of 15 wagons and 40 men, with a number of
women and children. The train was attacked while passing along a ravine
by a party of Indians being concealed in among a thick growth of poplar
bushes. When the attack commenced, most of the front wagons were some
80 rods in advance. They formed in corral, and intrenched behind their
wagons, refused the slightest aid to those who were struggling with the
savages in the rear. The party thus left to fight their way through the
ambushed Indians numbered but nine men, and there were but four guns
with which to maintain the battle. Five of the nine were killed and one
wounded. The names of the killed are as follows: Parmelee, James Steele,
James A. Hart, Rufus C. Mitchell, from Central City, Colorado Territory,
and McMahan, residence unknown; the name of the man wounded is Frank
Lyman. He was shot through the lungs--recovered. The thirty-one men
who were hidden snugly behind their wagons, with a single honorable
exception, refused to render the slightest assistance to those who were
fighting for their lives and the lives of their families so near them.
Although they had 27 guns they refused to lend a single gun, when at
one time four men went to ask assistance. The cowards all clung to
their arms, and lay trembling behind their wagons. A man named Perry, or
Berry, was the only one who had sufficient courage to attempt to render
his struggling friends any assistance. He was shot in the face before
reaching the rear wagons, and was carried back to the corral. The fight
lasted nearly two hours, and some seven or eight Indians were killed, as
at various times they charged out of the bushes on their ponies. Several
Indian horses were killed, and at length the few left alive fought
through to where their thirty heroic friends (?) were corraled, leaving
the killed and two wagons in possession of the Indians. Thirty bigger
cowards and meaner men than those above mentioned never crossed the
plains; we are certain that every man of them left the States for fear
of being drafted into the army.

Territorial Enterprise, October 4, 1862

PETRIFIED MAN

A petrified man was found some time ago in the mountains south of
Gravelly Ford. Every limb and feature of the stony mummy was perfect,
not even excepting the left leg, which has evidently been a wooden one
during the lifetime of the owner--which lifetime, by the way, came to
a close about a century ago, in the opinion of a savan who has examined
the defunct. The body was in a sitting posture, and leaning against
a huge mass of croppings; the attitude was pensive, the right thumb
resting against the side of the nose; the left thumb partially supported
the chin, the fore-finger pressing the inner corner of the left eye and
drawing it partly open; the right eye was closed, and the fingers of the
right hand spread apart. This strange freak of nature created a profound
sensation in the vicinity, and our informant states that by request,
Justice Sewell or Sowell, of Humboldt City, at once proceeded to the
spot and held an inquest on the body. The verdict of the jury was that
"deceased came to his death from protracted exposure," etc. The people
of the neighborhood volunteered to bury the poor unfortunate, and were
even anxious to do so; but it was discovered, when they attempted to
remove him, that the water which had dripped upon him for ages from the
crag above, had coursed down his back and deposited a limestone sediment
under him which had glued him to the bed rock upon which he sat, as
with a cement of adamant, and Judge S. refused to allow the charitable
citizens to blast him from his position. The opinion expressed by
his Honor that such a course would be little less than sacrilege, was
eminently just and proper. Everybody goes to see the stone man, as many
as three hundred having visited the hardened creature during the past
five or six weeks.

Territorial Enterprise, late October, 1862

THE SPANISH MINE

This comprises one hundred feet of the great Comstock lead, and is
situated in the midst of the Ophir claims. We visited it yesterday, in
company with Mr. Kingman, Assistant Superintendent, and our impression
is that stout-legged people with an affinity to darkness, may spend
an hour or so there very comfortably. A confused sense of being buried
alive, and a vague consciousness of stony dampness, and huge timbers,
and tortuous caverns, and bottomless holes with endless ropes hanging
down into them, and narrow ladders climbing in a short twilight through
the colossal lattice work and suddenly perishing in midnight, and
workmen poking about in the gloom with twinkling candles--is all, or
nearly all that remains to us of our experience in the Spanish mine.
Yet, for the information of those who may wish to go down and see how
things are conducted in the realms beyond the jurisdiction of daylight,
we are willing to tell a portion of what we know about it. Entering
the Spanish tunnel in A street, you grope along by candle light for two
hundred and fifty feet--but you need not count your steps--keep on going
until you come to a horse. This horse works a whim used for hoisting ore
from the infernal regions below, and from long service in the dark,
his coat has turned to a beautiful black color. You are now upon the
confines of the ledge, and from this point several drifts branch out to
different portions of the mine. Without stopping to admire these gloomy
grottoes you descend a ladder and halt upon a landing where you are
fenced in with an open-work labyrinth of timbers some eighteen inches
square, extending in front of you and behind you, and far away above you
and below you, until they are lost in darkness. These timbers are framed
in squares or "stations," five feet each way, one above another, and
so neatly put together that there is not room for the insertion of a
knife-blade where they intersect. You are apt to wonder where the forest
around you came from, and how they managed to get it into that hole, and
what sums of money it must have cost, and so forth and so on, and you
wind up with a confused notion that the man who designed it all had
a shining talent for saw mills on a large scale. He could build the
frame-work beautifully at any rate. Whereupon, you desist from further
speculation, and waltz down a very narrow winding staircase, and the
further you squirm down it the dizzier you get and the more those open
timber squares seem to whiz by you, until you feel as if you are falling
through a well-ventilated shot-tower with the windows all open.

Finally, after you have gone down ninety-four feet, you touch bottom
again and find yourself in the midst of the saw mill yet, with the
regular accomplishments of workmen, and windlasses, and glimmering
candles and cetera, as usual. Now you can stoop and dodge about under
the "stations," and get your clothes dirty, and drip hot candle grease
all over your hands, and find out how they take those timbers and
commence at the top of the mine, and build them together like mighty
window sashes all the way down to the bottom of it; and if, after
coming down that tipsy staircase, you can by any possibility make out to
understand it, then you can render the information useful above ground
by building the third story of your house to suit you first, and
continuing its erection wrong end foremost until you wind up with the
cellar. You will also find out that at this depth the lead is forty-six
feet wide, with its sides walled and weather boarded as compactly and
substantially as those of a jail. And here and there in little recesses,
the walls of the lead are laid bare, showing the blue silver lines
traced upon the white quartz, after the fashion of variegated
marble--this, in places, you know, while others, where the ore is
richer, the blue predominates and the white is scarcely perceptible.
From these various recesses a swarm of workmen are constantly conveying
wheel-barrow loads of quartz to the windlasses, of all shades of value,
from that worth $75 to that worth $3,000 per ton--and if you should
chance to be in better luck than we were, you may happen to stumble on
a small specimen worth a dollar and a half a pound. Such things have
occurred in the Spanish mine before now. However, as we were saying, you
are now one hundred and seventy feet under the ground, and you can
move about and see how the ore is quarried and moved from one place to
another, and how systematically the great mine is arranged and worked
altogether, and how unsystematically the Mexicans used to carry on
business down there--and you may get into a bucket, if you please, and
extend your visit to the confines of purgatory--so to speak--if you
feel anxious to do so; but as this would afford you nothing more than a
glance at the bottom of a drain shaft, you could better employ your time
and talents in climbing that cork screw and seeking daylight again. And
before leaving the mouth of the tunnel, you would do well to visit the
office of Mr. Beckwith, the superintendent, where you can see a
small cabinet of specimens from the mine which has been pronounced by
scientific travelers to be one of the richest collections of the kind
in the world. We shall have occasion to speak of the steam hoisting
apparatus now in process of erection by the Spanish Company at an early
day.

Territorial Enterprise, November 1-10, 1862

LOCAL COLUMN

THE PETRIFIED MAN.--Mr. Herr Weisnicht has just arrived in Virginia City
from the Humboldt mines and regions beyond. He brings with him the head
and one foot of the petrified man, lately found in the mountains near
Gravelly Ford. A skillful assayer has analyzed a small portion of dirt
found under the nail of the great toe and pronounces the man to have
been a native of the Kingdom of New Jersey. As a trace of "speculation"
is still discernible in the left eye, it is thought the man was on his
way to what is now the Washoe mining region for the purpose of locating
the Comstock. The remains brought in are to be seen in a neat glass
case in the third story of the Library Building, where they have been
temporarily placed by Mr. Weisnicht for the inspection of the curious,
and where they may be examined by any one who will take the trouble to
visit them.

Territorial Enterprise, December 1862

LETTER FROM CARSON CITY

December 5, 1862

EDITOR ENTERPRISE: If your readers are not aware of the fact, I take
pleasure in informing them that the [Nevada] Supreme Court will meet
in Carson City on the 13th of the present month; and in connection
with this intelligence I present the following item, giving it in the
language in which I received it for fear of mistakes--for its terms are
darkly, mysteriously legal, and I have not the most distant conception
of what they mean, or what they are intended to have reference to--thus:
"Wm. Alford vs. Nathaniel Dewing et als.--Ordered filed, denying
rehearing." There it is, and I wash my hands of the matter. I don't know
Alford, and I don't know Dewing, and I don't know Et Als--and I never
heard of either, or any of these gentlemen until this very day, when the
Clerk of the Supreme Court brought me this written nightmare, which has
been distressing me up to the present moment. If it is a charge, I
do not make it; if it is an insinuation, I do not endorse it; if its
expression less exterior conceals a slur, I do not father it. I simply
publish the document as I received it, and take no responsibility upon
myself for the consequences. I do not wish these gentlemen any harm;
I would not willingly and knowingly do them the slightest possible
wrong--yet, if they ought to be filed--mind, I say if they ought to be
filed--if it is entirely right and proper that they should be filed--if,
in the opinion of the people of this commonwealth, it is deemed
necessary to file them--then, I say, let them be filed and be d----[here
the manuscript was illegible.--ED.] Now you have the document and the
facts in the case; and if there be a fault in the matter it is the
Clerk's, and I know what that Chinaman did it for. [If you have
forgotten the circumstance, I said in a letter that he had been cast for
a Chinaman in the recent tableaux here.]

The Roads and Highways bill was considered in Committee of the Whole
in the House yesterday. A clause in it provides for a tax of $4 on each
voter, or a day's work on the roads in lieu thereof. Storey was relieved
from the payment of this tax, which was entirely proper, since there is
not a free road in the whole county.

These grave and reverend legislators relax a little occasionally, and
indulge in chaste and refined jollity to a small extent. Col. Williams
is engineering a certain toll road franchise through the House, and the
other night he was laying before the Committee on Internal Improvements
some facts in the case, pending which he had occasion to illustrate his
theme with pencil and paper, and the result was a map, which, in view of
its grandeur of conception, elegance of design and masterly execution,
I feel justified in styling miraculous. Mr. Lovejoy, Chairman of the
Committee, captured it, incorporated it into his report, and presented
it before the House yesterday, thus:

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS

Map of Col. Williams' road "from a certain point to another place," as
drawn by himself, and which was conclusive evidence to your Committee:

Your committee would ask that it be referred to Col. Howard of the
Storey county delegation.

[Signed] LOVEJOY, Chairman

ACKLEY, Sec y.

It was so referred by the Speaker.

Col. Howard will report to-day. I have procured a copy of the
forthcoming document, and transmit it herewith.

REPORT ON WILLIAMS MAP

Your committee, consisting of a solitary but very competent individual,
to whom was referred Col. Williams' road from a certain point to another
place, would beg most respectfully to report:

Your committee has had under consideration said map.

The word map is derived from the Spanish word "mapa," or the Portuguese
word "mappa." Says the learned lexicographer Webster, "in geography a
map is a representation of the surface of the earth, or any part of it,
drawn on paper or other material, exhibiting the lines of latitude and
longitude, and the positions of countries, kingdoms, states, mountains,
rivers, etc."

Your committee, with due respect to the projector of the road in
question, would designate what is styled in the report a map, an
unnatural and diabolical scrawl, devoid of form, regularity or meaning.
Your committee has in times past witnessed the wild irregularity of the
footprints of birds of prey upon a moist sea shore. Your committee was
struck with the strong resemblance of the map under discussion to some
one of said footprints.

Your committee, during his juvenile days, has watched a frantic and
indiscreet fly emerge from a pot or vase containing molasses; your
committee has seen said fly alight upon a scrap of virgin paper, and
leave thereon a wild medley of wretched and discordant tracks; your
committee was struck with the wonderful resemblance of said fly-tracks
to the map now before your committee.

Yet your committee believes that the map in question has some merit as
an abstract hieroglyphic.

Your committee, therefore, recommends, the Council concurring, that the
aforesaid map be photographed, and that one copy thereof, framed in
sage brush, be hung over the Speaker's chair, and that another copy be
donated to the Council, to be suspended over the chair of the President
of that body, as a memento of the artistic skill and graphic genius of
one of our most distinguished members--a guide to all future Pi-Utes.
All of which is respectfully submitted.

HOWARD, Chairman and Sole Committee

A resolution passed the House yesterday, authorizing the Secretary
of the Territory to purchase and preserve files of the various papers
published in the Territory.

Territorial Enterprise, December 1862

LETTER FROM CARSON CITY

December 12, 1862

EDITORS ENTERPRISE: Ormsby heads the world on the turnip question. The
vegetable upon which I base this boast, was grown in the turnip
garden of Mr. S. D. Fairchild, back here towards King's Canyon--in the
suburbs--say about eight squares from the plaza. Mr. Fairchild left it
at the 'branch of the ENTERPRISE office in Carson, a day or two
since. The monster was accurately surveyed, with the following result:
circumference, forty inches; weight, a fraction over eighteen pounds.

Col. Williams, of the House, who says I mutilate his eloquence,
addressed a note to me this morning, to the effect that I had given his
constituents wrong impressions concerning him, and nothing but blood
would satisfy him. I sent him that turnip on a hand barrow, requesting
him to extract from it a sufficient quantity of blood to restore his
equilibrium--which I regarded as a very excellent joke. Col. Williams
ate it (raw) during the usual prayer by the chaplain. To sum up:
eighteen pounds of raw turnip is sufficient for an ordinary lunch--Col.
Williams had his feet on his desk at the time--he beamed--wherefore, I
think his satisfaction was complete.

Carson also boasts the only pork-packing establishment in Nevada
Territory. Mr. George T. Davis is the proprietor thereof, and he has
already killed and packed two hundred and fifty fine hogs this winter.
This will be cheering news to the young lady who told me the other
evening that she "loved pork."

The pleasantest affair of the season, perhaps, although not the most
gorgeous, was the "candy-pull" at the White House, a few nights ago.
The candy had not finished cooking at nine o'clock, so they concluded to
dance awhile. They always dance here when they have time. I have noticed
it frequently. I think it is a way they have. They got a couple of
able-bodied fiddlers and went at it. They opened with the dance called
the plain quadrille, which is very simple and easy, and is performed in
this wise: All you have to do is to stand up in the middle of the floor,
being careful to get your lady on your right hand side, and yourself on
the left hand side of your lady. Then you are all right you know. When
you hear a blast of music like unto the rush of many waters, you lay
your hand on your stomach and bow to the lady of your choice then you
turn around and bow to the fiddlers. The first order is, "First couple
fore and aft"--or words to that effect. This is very easy. You have
only to march straight across the house--keeping out of the way of the
advancing couple, who very seldom know where they are going to--and when
you get over, if you find your partner there, swing her; if you don't,
hunt her up--for it is very handy to have a partner in these plain
quadrilles. The next order is, "Ladies change." This is an exceedingly
difficult figure, and requires great presence of mind; because, on
account of shaking hands with the lobby members so much, and from the
force of human nature also, you are morally certain to offer your right,
when the chances are that your left hand is wanted. This has a tendency
to mix things. At this point order and regularity cease the dancers get
excited--the musicians become insane--turmoil and confusion ensue--chaos
comes again! Put your trust in Providence and stick to your partner.
Several of these engaging and beautiful plain quadrilles were danced
during the evening, and we might have enjoyed several more, but the
rostrum broke down and spilt the musicians. I was exceedingly delighted
with the waltz, and also with the polka. These differ in name, but there
the difference ceases--the dances are precisely the same. You have only
to spin around with frightful velocity and steer clear of the furniture.
This has a charming and bewildering effect. You catch glimpses of a
confused and whirling multitude of people, and above them a row of
distracted fiddlers extending entirely around the room. The waltz
and the polka are very exhilarating--to use a mild term--amazingly
exhilarating.

Nothing occurred to mar the joyousness of the occasion. The party was
very select except myself and Col. Williams; the candy was not burned;
the Governor sat down on a hot stove and got up again with great
presence of mind; the dancing was roomy and hilarious, and fun went to
waste. Henceforward my principles are fixed. I am a stern and unwavering
advocate of "candy-pulls."

There was a slight conflagration in Mr. Helm's office yesterday
morning--at least I was told so by my friend, the reporter for the
Virginia Union, who is not very reliable. He also stated that no damage
was done; but I don't put much confidence in what he says.

The ladies have not smiled much on this Legislature, so far. Thirty-two
of our loveliest visited the halls night before last, though, which
is an encouraging symptom. I cannot conscientiously say they smiled,
however, for the Revenue bill was before the House. This cheerful
subject is calculated to produce inward jollity, but the same is not apt
to blossom into smiles on the surface. The ladies were well pleased with
the night session, though--they enjoyed it exceedingly--in many respects
it was much superior to a funeral. The Revenue bill was finished up last
night, and in the name and at the request of the members, I invite
all the ladies in town to call again, at any time, either day or night
session. That Revenue bill was one of those nonsensical general public
concerns that we are not used to; but the fun will be resumed right
away, now that we are back on our regular toll roads again.

I went down to Empire City yesterday to see the Eagle Fire Company try
their new engine (by the way, you have, so far, neglected to mention
either the machine or the company in your paper). They first threw
an inch and a quarter stream over Dutch Nick's hotel, and then a
three-quarter inch stream over the liberty pole. This brought cheers
from the multitude (there were many ladies there from neighboring
cities). The boys grew excited and ambitious. Several ladies passed
by, wearing the new fashioned light-house bonnets. The Eagles, in their
madness, attempted to throw a half-inch stream over those bonnets. They
puffed their cheeks and strained every nerve; there was a moment
of painful suspense, as the pearly column went towering toward the
clouds--then a long, loud, reverberating shout, as it bent gracefully
and went over, without touching a feather! But the engine broke.

If McCluskey, of the Delta Saloon, could send me a reporter's
cobbler--an unusually long one--I think it would relieve my cold.

Territorial Enterprise, December 13-19, 1862

THE PAH-UTES

Ah, well--it is touching to see these knotty and rugged old
pioneers--who have beheld Nevada in her infancy, and toiled through her
virgin sands unmolested by toll-keepers; and prospected her unsmiling
hills, and knocked at the doors of her sealed treasure vaults; and
camped with her horned-toads, and tarantulas and lizards, under her
inhospitable sage brush; and smoked the same pipe; and imbibed lightning
out of the same bottle; and eaten their regular bacon and beans from the
same pot; and lain down to their rest under the same blanket--happy, and
lousy and contented--yea, happier and lousier and more contented
than they are this day, or may be in the days that are to come; it is
touching, I say, to see these weather-beaten and blasted old patriarchs
banding together like a decaying tribe, for the sake of the privations
they have undergone, and the dangers they have met--to rehearse the
deeds of the hoary past, and rescue its traditions from oblivion!
The Pah-Ute Association will become a high and honorable order in the
land--its certificate of membership a patent of nobility. I extend unto
the fraternity the right hand of a poor but honest half-breed, and say
God speed your sacred enterprise.

Territorial Enterprise, December 1862

[extracts from original]

A BIG THING IN WASHOE CITY OR THE GRAND BULL DRIVER'S CONVENTION

Carson, Midnight December 23d.

Eds., Enterprise:

On the last night of the session, Hon. Thomas Hannah announced that a
Grand Bull Drivers' Convention would assemble in Washoe City, on the
22d, to receive Hon. Jim Sturtevant and the other members of the Washoe
delegation. I journeyed to the place yesterday to see that the ovation
was properly conducted. I traveled per stage. The Unreliable of the
Union went also--for the purpose of distorting the facts. The weather
was delightful. It snowed the entire day. The wind blew such a hurricane
that the coach drifted sideways from one toll road to another, and
sometimes utterly refused to mind her helm. It is a fearful thing to
be at sea in a stagecoach. We were anxious to get to Washoe by four
o'clock, but luck was against us: we were delayed by stress of weather;
we were hindered by the bad condition of the various toll roads; we
finally broke the after spring of the wagon, and had to lay up for
repairs. Therefore we only reached Washoe at dusk. Messrs. Lovejoy,
Howard, Winters, Sturtevant, and Speaker Mills had left Carson ahead of
us, and we found them in the city. They had not beaten us much, however,
as I could perceive by their upright walk and untangled conversation.
At 6 P.M., the Carson City Brass Band, followed by the Committee of
Arrangements, and the Chairman of the Convention, and the delegation,
and the invited guests, and the citizens generally, and the hurricane,
marched up one of the most principal streets, and filed in imposing
procession into Foulke's Hall. The delegation, and the guests, and the
band, were provided with comfortable seats near the Chairman's desk, and
the constituency occupied the body-pews. The delegation and the guests
stood up and formed a semicircle, and Mr. Gregory introduced them one
at a time to the constituency. Mr. Gregory did this with much grace and
dignity, albeit he affected to stammer and gasp, and hesitate, and
look colicky, and miscall the names, and miscall them again by way of
correcting himself, and grab desperately at invisible things in the
air--all with a charming pretense of being scared.

The Hon. John K. Lovejoy arose in his place and blew his horn. He made
honorable mention of the Legislature and the Committee on Internal
Improvements. He told how the fountains of their great deep were broken
up, and they rained forty days and forty nights, and brought on a flood
of toll roads over the whole land. He explained to them that the more
toll roads there were, the more competition there would be, and the
roads would be good, and tolls moderate in consequence.

Mr. Speaker Mills responded to the numerous calls for him, and spoke
so well in praise of the Washoe delegation that I was constrained to
believe that there really was some merit in the deceased.

Hon. Theodore Winters next addressed the people. He said he went to the
Legislature with but one solitary object in view--the securing to this
Territory of an incorporation law. How he had succeeded, the people
themselves could tell...

The Chairman, Mr. Gaston, introduced Colonel Howard, and that gentleman
addressed the people in his peculiarly grave and dignified manner. The
constituency gave way to successive cataracts of laughter, which was
singularly out of keeping with the stern seriousness of the speaker's
bearing. He spoke about ten minutes, and then took his seat, in spite of
the express wish of the audience that he should go on.

Hon. Jim Sturtevant next addressed the citizens, extemporaneously. He
made use of the very thunder which I meant to launch at the populace.
Owing to this unfortunate circumstance, I was forced to keep up an
intelligent silence during the session of the convention...

After this the assemblage broke up and adjourned to take something to
drink. At nine o'clock the band again summoned the public to Foulke's
Hall, and I proceeded to that place. I found the Unreliable there, and
George Hepperly. I had requested Mr. Hepperly, as a personal favor, to
treat the Unreliable with distinguished consideration and I am proud
and happy to acknowledge he had done so. He had him in charge of two
constables.

The Hall had been cleared of the greater part of its benches, and the
ball was ready to commence. The citizens had assembled in force, and the
sexes were pretty equally represented in the proportion of one lady
to several gentlemen. The night was so infernally inclement--so to
speak--that it was impossible for ladies who lived at any considerable
distance to attend. However, those that were there appeared in
every quadrille, and with exemplary industry. I did not observe any
wallflowers--the climate of Washoe appears to be unsuited to that kind
of vegetation.

In accordance with the customs of the country, they indulged in the
plain quadrille at this ball. And notwithstanding the vicissitudes
which I have seen that wonderful national dance pass through, I solemnly
affirm that they sprung some more new figures on me last night. However,
the ball was a very pleasant affair. We could muster four sets and still
have a vast surplusage of gentlemen--but the strictest economy had to be
observed in order to make the ladies hold out.

The supper and the champagne were excellent and abundant, and I offer no
word of blame against anybody for eating and drinking pretty freely. If
I were to blame anybody, I would commence with the Unreliable--for he
drank until he lost all sense of etiquette. I actually found myself in
bed with him with my boots on. However, as I said before, I cannot blame
the cuss; it was a convivial occasion, and his little shortcomings ought
to be overlooked. When I went to bed this morning, Mr. Lovejoy, arrayed
in fiery red night clothes, was dancing the war dance of his tribe (he
is President of the Paiute Association) around a spittoon and Colonel
Howard, dressed in a similar manner, was trying to convince him that
he was a humbug. A suspicion crossed my mind that they were partially
intoxicated, but I could not be sure about it on account of everything
appearing to turn around so. I left Washoe City this morning at nine
o'clock, fully persuaded that I would like to go back there again when
the next convention meets.

Territorial Enterprise, December 28, 1862

THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEPARTED

Old Dan is gone, that good old soul, we ne'er shall see him more--for
some time. He left for Carson yesterday, to be duly stamped and shipped
to America, by way of the United States Overland Mail. As the stage was
on the point of weighing anchor, the senior editor dashed wildly into
Wasserman's and captured a national flag, which he cast about Dan's
person to the tune of three rousing cheers from the bystanders. So,
with the gorgeous drapery floating behind him, our kind and genial hero
passed from our sight; and if fervent prayers from us, who seldom pray,
can avail, his journey will be as safe and happy as though ministering
angels watched over him. Dan has gone to the States for his health, and
his family. He worked himself down in creating big strikes in the mines
and keeping all the mills in this district going, whether their owners
were willing or not. These herculean labors gradually undermined his
health, but he went bravely on, and we are proud to say that as far as
these things were concerned, he never gave up--the miners never did, and
never could have conquered him. He fell under a scarcity of pack-trains
and hay wagons. These had been the bulwark of the local column; his
confidence in them was like unto that which men have in four aces;
murders, robberies, fires, distinguished arrivals, were creatures
of chance, which might or might not occur at any moment; but the
pack-trains and the hay-wagons were certain, predestined, immutable!
When these failed last week, he said "Et tu Brute," and gave us his
pen. His constitution suddenly warped, split and went under, and Daniel
succumbed. We have a saving hope, though, that his trip across the
Plains, through eighteen hundred miles of cheerful hay stacks, will so
restore our loved and lost to his ancient health and energy, that when
he returns next fall he will be able to run our five hundred mills
as easily as he used to keep five-score moving. Dan is gone, but he
departed in a blaze of glory, the like of which hath hardly been seen
upon this earth since the blameless Elijah went up in his fiery chariot.

Territorial Enterprise, December 30-31, 1862

LOCAL COLUMN

OUR STOCK REMARKS.--Owing to the fact that our stock reporter attended
a wedding last evening, our report of transactions in that branch of
robbery and speculation is not quite as complete and satisfactory
as usual this morning. About eleven o'clock last night the aforesaid
remarker pulled himself upstairs by the banisters, and stumbling over
the stove, deposited the following notes on our table, with the remark:
"S(hic)am, just 'laberate this, w(hic)ill, yer?" We said we would, but
we couldn't. If any of our readers think they can, we shall be pleased
to see the translation. Here are the notes: "Stocks brisk, and Ophir
has taken this woman for your wedded wife. Some few transactions have
occurred in rings and lace veils, and at figures tall, graceful and
charming. There was some inquiry late in the day for parties who would
take them for better or for worse but there were few offers. There seems
to be some depression in this stock. We mentioned yesterday that our
Father which art in heaven. Quotations of lost reference, and now I lay
me down to sleep," &c., &c., &c.

BOARD OF EDUCATION.--In accordance with a law passed at the late session
of the legislature, a Board of Education is to be organized in each of
the several counties. The Storey county Board will be composed of seven
members, apportioned as follows: Four from Virginia, two from Gold Hill,
and one from Flowery. The Chairman of the Board will be County School
Superintendent. These officers will have power to issue bonds sufficient
to defray the expenses of the schools, from the 1st of January until the
1st of November; to establish schools of all grades, engage and examine
teachers, etc. The election for the Board of Education will be held
next Monday, at the Court House, in Virginia; at the Postoffice, in Gold
Hill, and at the house of I. W. Knox, in Flowery, the polls to be open
from 8 o'clock in the morning until 6 in the evening. The Board will
meet and organize on the Monday following their election.

BLOWN DOWN.--At sunset yesterday, the wind commenced blowing after a
fashion to which a typhoon is mere nonsense, and in a short time the
face of heaven was obscured by vast clouds of dust all spangled over
with lumber, and shingles, and dogs and things. There was no particular
harm in that, but the breeze soon began to work damage of a serious
nature. Thomas Moore's new frame house on the east side of C street,
above the Court House, was blown down, and the fire-wall front of a one
story brick building higher up the street was also thrown to the ground.
The latter house was occupied as a store by Mr. Heldman, and owned by
Mr. Felton. The storm was very severe for a while, and we shall not be
surprised to hear of further destruction having been caused by it. The
damage resulting to Mr. Heldman's grocery store, amounts to $2,200.

AT HOME.--Judge Brumfield's nightmare--the Storey county
delegation--have straggled in, one at a time, until they are all at home
once more. Messrs. Mills, Mitchell, Meagher and Minneer returned several
days ago, and we had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Davenport, also,
yesterday. We do not know how long the latter gentleman has been here,
but we offer him the unlimited freedom of the city, any how. Justice
to a good representative is justice, you know, whether it be tardy or
otherwise.

THE SCHOOL.--Mr. Mellvile's school will open again next Monday, and in
the meantime the new furniture is being put up in the school house. The
Virginia Cadets (a company composed of Mr. Mellvile's larger pupils,)
will appear in public on New Year's Day, the weather permitting, armed
and equipped as the law directs. The boys were pretty proficient in
their military exercises when we saw them last, and they have probably
not deteriorated since then.

SAD ACCIDENT.--We learn from Messrs. Hatch &. Bro., who do a heavy
business in the way of supplying this market with vegetables, that
the rigorous weather accompanying the late storm was so severe on the
mountains as to cause a loss of life in several instances. Two sacks
of sweet potatoes were frozen to death on the summit, this side of
Strawberry. The verdict rendered by the coroner's jury was strictly in
accordance with the facts.

THRILLING ROMANCE.--On our first page, to-day, will be found the opening
chapters of a thrilling tale, entitled "An Act to amend and supplemental
to an Act to provide for Assessing and Collecting County and Territorial
Revenue." This admirable story was written especially for the columns of
this paper by several distinguished authors. We have secured a few more
productions of the same kind, at great expense, and we design publishing
them in their regular order. Our readers will agree with us that it
will redound considerably to their advantage to read and preserve these
documents.

FIRE, ALMOST.--The roof of the New York Restaurant took fire from the
stovepipe, yesterday morning, and but for the timely discovery of the
fact, a serious conflagration would have ensued, as the restaurant is
situated in a nest of frame houses, which would have burned like tinder.
As it was, nothing but a few shingles were damaged.

PRIVATE PARTY.--The members of Engine Co. No. 2, with a number of
invited guests, are to have a little social dance at La Plata Hall, this
evening. They have made every arrangement for having a pleasant time
of it, and we hope they may succeed to the very fullest extent of their
wishes.

Territorial Enterprise, January 1, 1863

MORE GHOSTS

Are we to be scared to death every time we venture into the street? May
we be allowed to go quietly about our business, or are we to be assailed
at every corner by fearful apparitions? As we were plodding home at the
ghostly hour last night, thinking about the haunted house humbug, we
were suddenly riveted to the pavement in a paroxysm of terror by that
blue and yellow phantom who watches over the destinies of the shooting
gallery, this side of the International. Seen in daylight, placidly
reclining against his board in the doorway, with his blue coat, and his
yellow pants, and his high boots, and his fancy hat, just lifted from
his head, he is rather an engaging youth, than otherwise; but at dead
of night, when he pops out his pallid face at you by candle light, and
stares vacantly upon you with his uplifted hat and the eternal civility
of his changeless brow, and the ghostliness of his general appearance
heightened by that grave-stone inscription over his stomach, "to-day
shooting for chickens here," you are apt to think of spectres starting
up from behind tomb-stones, and you weaken accordingly--the cold chills
creep over you--your hair stands on end--you reverse your front, and
with all possible alacrity, you change your base.

Territorial Enterprise, January 1, 1863

NEW YEAR'S DAY

Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions.
Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday,
everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last
oath. To-day, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from
now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting
our ancient short comings considerably shorter than ever. We shall also
reflect pleasantly upon how we did the same old thing last year about
this time. However, go in, community. New Year's is a harmless annual
institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for
promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we
wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the
occasion.

Territorial Enterprise, January 4, 1863

LOCAL COLUMN

[first lines not recovered]

... benevolent enterprise, and to be present and see such a phenomenon,
would be well worth the price of the ticket--six dollars, supper
included. Wherefore, we advise every citizen of Storey to go to the
ball--early--and stand ready to enjoy the joke. The fun to be acquired
in this way, for a trifling sum of money, cannot be computed by any
system of mathematics known to the present generation. And the more the
merrier. We all know that a thousand people can enjoy that failure more
extensively than a smaller number. Mr. Unger has tendered the use of the
large dining hall of the What Cheer House (nearly opposite the La Plata
Hall) with all the necessary table ware, and the waiters employed in
the hotel, free of charge. This generosity--this liberality in a
noble cause--calls for a second from somebody. Get your contributions
ready--money, wines, cakes, and knicknacks and substantials of all
kinds--and when the ladies call for them, deliver your offerings with
a grace and dignity graduated by the market value of the same, the
condition of your pecuniary affairs, and the sympathy you feel for
maimed and suffering humanity. The ladies may be looked for to-morrow.

ELECTION.--To-morrow morning, at eight o'clock, the polls will be opened
at the Court House, on C street, for the election of the four members of
the County Board of Education to which Virginia is entitled. Gold Hill
is entitled to two members, and Flowery to one. In the former place, the
polls will be at the Post Office, and in the latter at the house of Mr.
I. W. Knox. The Board will meet and organize on the Monday following
their election. They will have power to issue bonds for a sum sufficient
to defray the expenses of the respective schools of the county, from the
beginning of the present month until the first of November. They will
also have power to establish schools of all grades, engage and
examine teachers, etc. The Chairman of the Board will be County School
Superintendent. Let those who feel interested in school matters go and
deposit their opinions in the ballot-box to-morrow.

PUBLIC SCHOOL.--The juveniles are hereby notified to put away their
sleds and doll-babies and go into the traces again, at Mr. Mellvile's
school-house, corner of E and Washington streets, to-morrow morning,
at 10 o'clock. The pupils used to learn fast under the old regime of
puritanical straight-back benches. We shall expect the new chairs
and desks to impart a telegraphic celerity to their improvement
henceforward.

NEW YEARS EXTENSION.--Yesterday was New Years Day for the ladies. We
kept open house, and were called upon by seventy-two ladies--all young
and handsome. This stunning popularity is pleasant to reflect upon, but
we are afraid some people will think it prevented us from scouting for
local matters with our usual avidity. This is a mistake; if anything
had happened within the county limits yesterday, those ladies would have
mentioned it.

SUPREME COURT.--Gen. Williams finished his long and able argument in the
Chollar and Potosi case, at a late hour last night. This was the closing
speech. It is said that the Supreme Court cannot reasonably be expected
to render a decision in this important case before the end of the
present month.

BALL IN CARSON.--Just as we are going to press, we learn that Mrs.
Williamson is to give a ball at the White House in Carson City, next
Thursday evening. We have no particulars, but we suppose that one of
those pleasant, sociable affairs, which are Mrs. Williamson's specialty,
is in contemplation.

MASS.--Rev. Father Manogue notifies the Roman Catholics of Carson City
that Mass will be celebrated there this forenoon at 11 o'clock. We
presume that this service will take place at Miss Clapp's school house,
as it has been used by that denomination for some time past as a chapel.

FIREMEN'S MEETING.--The Virginia Engine Company will hold a meeting at
the engine house, A street, on Tuesday evening, January 6th, for the
purpose of electing officers to serve during the present year.

RECORDER'S COURT.--Business in this institution is still feeble. Only
one case yesterday--a scion of the noble house of Howard--Christian
name, John Doe, d. d., fined ten dollars and costs--paid the same and
was discharged.

Territorial Enterprise, January 6, 1863

LOCAL COLUMN

FREE FIGHT.--A beautiful and ably conducted free fight came off in C
street yesterday afternoon, but as nobody was killed or mortally wounded
in a manner sufficiently fatal to cause death, no particular interest
attaches to the matter, and we shall not publish the details. We pine
for murder--these fist fights are of no consequence to anybody.

Humboldt stocks are plenty in the market, at figures which we have
no doubt are low for the claims. The want of buyers is probably
attributable to the indefinite knowledge of these claims. There
are unquestionably many valuable ledges in the district offered at
exceedingly low prices.

The old friends and acquaintances of Jno. D. Kinney (who came to Nevada
Territory with Chief Justice Turner, and who returned to the States last
March,) will be gratified to learn that that sterling patriot is now a
captain in the Seventh Ohio Cavalry.

Milstead, who murdered a man named Varney, some time ago, near Ragtown,
in Humboldt county, will be hung in Dayton next Friday.

James Leconey, W. H. Barstow, Jas. Phelan and John A. Collins were
elected members of the Board of Education at Virginia.

Territorial Enterprise, January 8, 1863

[written after having his hat stolen]

UNFORTUNATE THIEF

We have been suffering from the seven years' itch for many months. It
is probably the most aggravating disease in the world. It is contagious.
That man has commenced a career of suffering which is frightful to
contemplate; there is no cure for the distemper--it must run its course;
there is no respite for its victim, and but little alleviation of its
torments to be hoped for; the unfortunate's only resource is to bathe
in sulphur and molasses and let his finger nails grow. Further advice is
unnecessary--instinct will prompt him to scratch.

Territorial Enterprise, January 10, 1863

LOCAL COLUMN

THE SANITARY BALL--The Sanitary Ball at La Plata Hall on Thursday night
[January 8, 1863] was a very marked success, and proved beyond the
shadow of a doubt, the correctness of our theory, that ladies never fail
in undertakings of this kind. If there had been about two dozen more
people there, the house would have been crowded--as it was, there was
room enough on the floor for the dancers, without trespassing on their
neighbors' corns. Several of those long, trailing dresses, even, were
under fire in the thickest of the fight for six hours, and came out
as free from rips and rents as they were when they went in. Not all of
them, though. We recollect a circumstance in point. We had just finished
executing one of those inscrutable figures of the plain quadrille; we
were feeling unusually comfortable, because we had gone through the
performance as well as anybody could have done it, except that we had
wandered a little toward the last; in fact we had wandered out of
our own and into somebody else's set--but that was a matter of small
consequence, as the new locality was as good as the old one, and we were
used to that sort of thing anyhow. We were feeling comfortable, and
we had assumed an attitude--we have a sort of talent for posturing--a
pensive attitude, copied from the Colossus of Rhodes--when the ladies
were ordered to the centre. Two of them got there, and the other two
moved off gallantly, but they failed to make the connection. They
suddenly broached to under full headway, and there was a sound of
parting canvas. Their dresses were anchored under our boots, you know.
It was unfortunate, but it could not be helped. Those two beautiful pink
dresses let go amidships, and remained in a ripped and damaged condition
to the end of the ball. We did not apologize, because our presence of
mind happened to be absent at the very moment that we had the greatest
need of it. But we beg permission to do so now.

An excellent supper was served in the large dining-room of the new
What Cheer House on B street. We missed it there, somewhat. We were not
accompanied by a lady, and consequently we were not eligible to a seat
at the first table. We found out all about that at the Gold Hill ball,
and we had intended to be all prepared for this one. We engaged a good
many young ladies last Tuesday to go with us, thinking that out of the
lot we should certainly be able to secure one, at the appointed time,
but they all seemed to have got a little angry about something--nobody
knows what, for the ways of women are past finding out. They told us we
had better go and invite a thousand girls to go to the ball. A thousand.
Why, it was absurd. We had no use for a thousand girls. A thou--but
those girls were as crazy as loons. In every instance, after they had
uttered that pointless suggestion, they marched magnificently out
of their parlors--and if you will believe us, not one of them ever
recollected to come back again. Why, it was the most unaccountable
experience we ever heard of. We never enjoyed so much solitude in so
many different places, in one evening before. But patience has its
limits; we finally got tired of that arrangement--and at the risk of
offending some of those girls, we stalked off to the Sanitary Ball alone
without a virgin, out of that whole litter. We may have done wrong--we
probably did do wrong to disappoint those fellows in that kind of
style--but how could we help it? We couldn't stand the temperature of
those parlors more than an hour at a time: it was cold enough to freeze
out the heaviest stock-holder on the Gould & Curry's books.

However, as we remarked before, everybody spoke highly of the supper,
and we believe they meant what they said. We are unable to say anything
in the matter from personal knowledge, except that the tables were
arranged with excellent taste, and more than abundantly supplied, and
everything looked very beautiful, and very inviting, also; but then we
had absorbed so much cold weather in those parlors, and had had so much
trouble with those girls, that we had no appetite left. We only eat a
boiled ham and some pies, and went back to the ball room. There were
some very handsome cakes on the tables, manufactured by Mr. Slade, and
decorated with patriotic mottoes, done in fancy icing. All those who
were happy that evening, agree that the supper was superb.

After supper the dancing was jolly. They kept it up till four in the
morning, and the guests enjoyed themselves excessively. All the dances
were performed, and the bill of fare wound up with a new style of plain
quadrille called a medley, which involved the whole list. It involved us
also. But we got out again--and we staid out, with great sagacity. But
speaking of plain quadrilles reminds us of another new one--the Virginia
reel. We found it a very easy matter to dance it, as long as we had
thirty or forty lookers-on to prompt us. The dancers were formed in
two long ranks, facing each other, and the battle opens with some light
skirmishing between the pickets, which is gradually resolved into a
general engagement along the whole line: after that, you have nothing to
do but stand by and grab every lady that drifts within reach of you, and
swing her. It is very entertaining, and elaborately scientific also; but
we observed that with a partner who had danced it before, we were able
to perform it rather better than the balance of the guests.

Altogether, the Sanitary Ball was a remarkably pleasant party, and we
are glad that such was the case--for it is a very uncomfortable task to
be obliged to say harsh things about entertainments of this kind. At
the present writing we cannot say what the net proceeds of the ball will
amount to, but they will doubtless reach quite a respectable figure--say
$400.

DUE NOTICE--Moralists and philosophers have adjudged those who throw
temptation in the way of the erring, equally guilty with those who are
thereby led into evil; and we therefore hold the man who suffers that
turkey to run at large just back of our office as culpable as our self,
if some day that fowl is no longer perceptible to human vision. The
Czar of Russia never cast his eye on the minarets of Byzantium half as
longingly as we gaze on that old gobbler. Turkey stuffed with oysters is
our weakness--our mouth waters at the recollection of sundry repasts of
that character--and this bird aforementioned appears to us to have an
astonishing capacity for oyster-stuffing. Wonder if those fresh oysters
at Almack's are all gone? We grow ravenous--pangs of hunger gnaw our
vitals--if to-morrow's setting sun gleams on the living form of that
turkey, we yield our reputation for strategy.

THE NEW COURT HOUSE.--Messrs. Unger & Denninger's new brick house, on B
street, has been leased by the County Commissioners for court rooms and
offices. The first floor, we believe, is to be used for a United States
District Court room, and the second story will be partitioned into
offices and a Probate Court room. It would probably have been better to
have reversed this order of things, on account of the superior light and
the freedom from dust and noise afforded by the upper story; yet it is
possible that these advantages may be as necessary in one case as the
other--we do not care about dictating much in the matter so long as no
one will be likely to pay us for it. But nevertheless, since the first
story is to be used for the District Court, we wish to suggest that that
box, that partition, be removed, and the whole of it set apart for
that purpose. It would then be a large, handsome and well-lighted hall,
whereas, in its present shape, it is not very greatly superior to the
present court room on C street. A gentleman informed us yesterday that
he thought the intention was to remove the partition, but he could not
be positive about it.

THE MUSIC.--Millington & McCluskey's band furnished the music for the
Sanitary Ball on Thursday night, and also for the Odd Fellows' Ball the
other evening in Gold Hill, and the excellence of the article was only
equalled by the industry and perseverance of the performers. We consider
that the man who can fiddle all through one of those Virginia Reels
without losing his grip, may be depended upon in any kind of musical
emergency.

Territorial Enterprise, January 11-21, 1863

LOCAL COLUMN

HIGH PRICE OF PORK.--In our record of probate proceedings to-day, will
be found the case of John Hill vs. John Doe Wentworth. As a matter of
principle, it may be well enough to stand by your rights until the lake
of fire and brimstone is no longer in a state of liquification, but
whether it be good policy to do so at all times is a question which
admits of argument. This case is an instance in point. The property
involved is about twenty or thirty dollars' worth of pork in a crude
state--we mean, two living hogs, probably worth but little more than
ten dollars each; yet this suit to determine their ownership has already
cost the parties to it some six or seven hundred dollars, and the
defeated but plucky plaintiff has given notice that he will apply for a
new trial! The new trial will double the bill of expenses, in all human
probability.

We learn from gentlemen who were present at the trial to-day, that there
were about thirty witnesses on the stand, and one of them a woman. The
hog dispute afforded those concerned and the lookers-on a good deal of
fun, but it was very costly. Those two distinguished pigs ought to be
taken care of and exhibited at the first agricultural fair of Nevada
Territory. At any rate, we shall officially spread the proceedings
of this trial upon the records of the Washoe Agricultural, Mining and
Mechanical Society, as evidence of the high value placed upon the hog in
Nevada Territory.

Territorial Enterprise, January 22-28, 1863

TERRITORIAL SWEETS

The following, which will do to sweeten some bachelor's coffee with, was
picked up in front of the International:

"DARLING: I have not had time to write you to-day--I have worked hard
entertaining company. Do come and see your little pet. I yearn for the
silvery cadence of your voice--I thirst for the bubbling stream of your
affection.

"YOUR MADELINE."

We feel for that girl. The water privilege which she pines for so
lovingly has probably dried up and departed, else her sweet note would
not have been floating around the streets without a claimant. We feel
for her deeply--and if it will afford her any relief, if it will conduce
to her comfort, if it will satisfy her yearning even in the smallest
degree, we will cheerfully call around and "bubble" awhile for her
ourself, if she will send us her address.

Territorial Enterprise, mid-February, 1863

THE SPANISH

We slide down into the Spanish mine yesterday, to look after the rich
strike which was made there lately.

[This in the time before elevators, when, as in the salt mines in
Austria, one slides down a polished wooden bannister on a waxed leather
apron to reduce the heat. It is a great ride down but a long hike back
up. Ed.]

We found things going on at about their usual gait, and the general
appearance of the mine in no respect differing from what it was before
the recent flood. A few inches of water still remain in the lower
gallery, but it interferes with nobody, and can be easily bailed out
whenever it may be deemed necessary. Every department of the Spanish
mine is now in first class working order, owing to the able management
of the general Superintendent, Mr. J. P. Corrigan: the slight damage
done by the inundation having been thoroughly repaired. In the matter
of bracing and timbering the mine, an improvement upon the old plan has
lately been added, which makes a large saving in the bill of expenses.
This improvement consists in building the stations wider and higher, and
filling up a wall of them here and there with refuse rock. Expenses are
not only lightened thus, but such walls never rot, are never in danger
of caving, need never be removed, and are altogether the strongest
supports that a mine can have. Intelligent people can understand, now,
that about a hundred dollars a day may be saved in this way, without
even taking into consideration the costly job of re-timbering every
two or three years, which is rendered unnecessary by it--and by way
of driving the proposition into heads like the Unreliable's, which is
filled with oysters instead of brains, we will say that by building
these walls, you are saved the time and labor of lowering heavy timbers
300 feet into the earth and hoisting up refuse rock the same distance;
for you can leave the one in the woods, and pile the other into boxed-up
stations as fast as you dig it out. However, it is time to speak of the
rich strike, now. This charming spot is two hundred and forty feet below
the surface of the earth. It extends across the entire width of the
ledge--from twenty-five to thirty feet--and has been excavated some
twenty feet on the length of the lead, and to the depth of twenty-one
feet. How much deeper it reaches, no man knoweth. The face of the walls
is of a dark blue color, sparkling with pyrites, or sulphurets, or
something, and beautifully marbled with little crooked streaks of
lightning as white as loaf sugar. This mass of richness pays from eight
to twelve hundred dollars a ton just as it is taken from the ledge,
without "sorting." Twenty thousand dollars' worth of it was hoisted out
of the mine last Saturday; about two hundred and fifty tons have been
taken out altogether. The hoisting apparatus is about perfect: when put
to its best speed, it can bail out somewhere in the neighborhood of a
hundred and fifty tons of rock in daylight. The rich ore we have been
talking about is sacked up as soon as it reaches the surface of the
Territory, and shipped off to the Company's mill (the Silver State)
at Empire City. The Silver State is a forty-stamp arrangement, with a
thundering chimney to it, which any one has noticed who has traveled
from here to Carson. Mr. Dorsey is the superintendent, and Mr. Janin
assayer.

Territorial Enterprise, February 5, 1863

LETTER FROM CARSON

CARSON, Tuesday Night.

EDS. ENTERPRISE: I received the following atrocious document the morning
I arrived here. It is from that abandoned profligate, the Unreliable,
and I think it speaks for itself:

CARSON CITY, Thursday Morning

TO THE UNRELIABLE--SIR: Observing the driver of the Virginia stage
hunting after you this morning, in order to collect his fare, I infer
you are in town.

In the paper which you represent, I noticed an article which I took to
be an effusion of your muddled brain, stating that I had "cabbaged" a
number of valuable articles from you the night I took you out of the
streets in Washoe City and permitted you to occupy my bed.

I take this opportunity to inform you that I will compensate you at the
rate of $20 per head for every one of those valuables that I received
from you, providing you will relieve me of their presence. This offer
can either be accepted or rejected on your part: but, providing you
don't see proper to accept it, you had better procure enough lumber to
make a box 4 x 8, and have it made as early as possible. Judge Dixson
will arrange the preliminaries, if you don't accede. An early reply is
expected by

RELIABLE

Not satisfied with wounding my feelings by making the most extraordinary
references and allusions in the above note, he even sent me a challenge
to fight, in the same envelope with it, hoping to work upon my fears
and drive me from the country by intimidation. But I was not to be
frightened; I shall remain in the Territory. I guessed his object at
once, and determined to accept his challenge, choose weapons and things,
and scare him, instead of being scared myself. I wrote a stern reply to
him, and offered him mortal combat with bootjacks at a hundred yards.
The effect was more agreeable than I could have hoped for. His hair
turned black in a single night, from excess of fear; then he went into a
fit of melancholy, and while it lasted he did nothing but sigh, and sob,
and snuffle, and slobber, and blow his nose on his coat-tail, and say
"he wished he was in the quiet tomb"; finally, he said he would commit
suicide--he would say farewell to the cold, cold world, with its cares
and troubles, and go and sleep with his fathers, in perdition. Then rose
up this young man, and threw his demijohn out of the window, and took a
glass of pure water, and drained it to the very, very dregs. And then he
fell on the floor in spasms. Dr. Tjader was called in, and as soon as he
found that the cuss was poisoned, he rushed down to the Magnolia Saloon
and got the antidote, and poured it down him. As he was drawing his last
breath, he scented the brandy and lingered yet a while upon the earth,
to take a drink with the boys. But for this, he would have been no more
and possibly a good deal less--in another moment. So he survived; but he
has been in a mighty precarious condition ever since. I have been up to
see how he was getting along two or three times a day. He is very low;
he lies there in silence, and hour after hour he appears to be absorbed
in tracing out the figures in the wall paper. He is not changed in the
least, though; his face looks just as natural as anything could be there
is no more expression in it than a turnip. But he is a very sick man; I
was up there a while ago, and I could see that his friends had begun to
entertain hopes that he would not get over it. As soon as I saw that,
all my enmity vanished; I even felt like doing the poor Unreliable a
kindness, and showing him, too, how my feelings towards him had changed.
So I went and bought him a beautiful coffin, and carried it up and set
it down on his bed, and told him to climb in when his time was up. Well,
sir, you never saw a man so affected by a little act of kindness as he
was by that. He let off a sort of war-whoop, and went to kicking things
around like a crazy man, and he foamed at the mouth, and went out of one
fit and into another faster than I could take them down in my note-book.
I have got thirteen down, though, and I know he must have had two or
three before I could find my pencil. I actually believe he would have
had a thousand, if that old fool who nurses him hadn't thrown the coffin
out of the window, and threatened to serve me in the same way if I
didn't leave. I left, of course, under the circumstances, and I learn
that although the patient was getting better a moment before this
circumstance, he got a good deal worse immediately afterward. They say
he lies in a sort of a stupor now, and if they cannot rally him, he is
gone in, as it were. They may take their own course now, though, and use
their own judgment. I shall not go near them again, although I think I
could rally him with another coffin.

I did not return to Virginia yesterday, on account of the wedding.
The parties were Hon. James H. Sturtevant, one of the first Pi-Utes of
Nevada, and Miss Emma Curry, daughter of Hon. A. Curry, who also claims
that his is a Pi-Ute family of high antiquity. Curry conducted the
wedding arrangements himself, and invited none but Pi-Utes. This
interfered with me a good deal. However, as I had heard it reported that
a marriage was threatened, I felt it my duty to go down there and find
out the facts in the case. They said I might stay, as it was me; the
permission was unnecessary, though--I calculated to do that anyhow.
I promised not to say anything about the wedding, and I regard that
promise as sacred--my word is as good as my bond. At three o'clock
in the afternoon, all the Pi-Utes went up stairs to the old Hall of
Representatives in Curry's house, preceded by the bride and groom, and
the brides maids and groomsmen (Miss Jo. Perkins and Miss Nettie Curry,
and Hon. John H. Mills and Wm. M. Gillespie) and followed by myself
and the fiddlers. The fiddles were tuned up, three quadrille sets were
formed on the floor. Father Bennett advanced and touched off the high
contracting parties with the hymeneal torch ( married them, you know),
and at the word of command from Curry, the fiddle-bows were set in
motion, and the plain quadrilles turned loose. Thereupon, some of the
most responsible dancing ensued that you ever saw in your life. The
dance that Tam O'Shanter witnessed was slow in comparison to it. They
kept it up for six hours, and then they carried out the exhausted
musicians on a shutter, and went down to supper. I know they had a fine
supper, and plenty of it, but I do not know much else. They drank so
much champagne around me that I got confused, and lost the hang of
things, as it were. Mills, and Musser, and Sturtevant, and Curry, got to
making speeches, and I got to looking at the bride and bridesmaids--they
looked uncommonly handsome--and finally I fell into a sort of trance.
When I recovered from it the brave musicians were all right again, and
the dance was ready to commence. They went to slinging plain quadrilles
around as lively as ever, and never rested again until nearly midnight,
when the dancers all broke down and the party broke up. It was all
mighty pleasant, and jolly, and sociable, and I wish to thunder I was
married myself. I took a large slab of the bridal cake home with me to
dream on, and dreamt that I was still a single man, and likely to
remain so, if I live and nothing happens--which has given me a greater
confidence in dreams than I ever felt before. I cordially wish the newly
married couple all kinds of happiness and posterity, though.

Richardson's case was continued to the next term of the District
Court last Thursday, and the prisoner admitted to bail in the sum of
$10,000--$7,000 on the charge of murder (the killing of Con Mason), and
$3,000 on the charge of highway robbery.

Three new mining companies filed their certificates of incorporation in
the County Clerk's and Territorial Secretary's offices last Saturday.
Their ledges are located in the new Brown & Murphy District, in Lyon
county. The names, etc., of the new companies are as follows: Jennie V.
Thompson G. & S. M. Company, capital stock $220,000, in 2,200 shares of
$100 each; Byron G. & S. M. Company, same number of shares, etc.; Lion
G. & S. Company, capital stock $230,000, in 2,300 shares of $100 each.
The following gentlemen are Trustees of all three companies: C. L.
Newton, J. D. Thompson, J. Ball, G. C. Haswell and Wm. Millikin. The
principal offices of the companies are in Carson City.

MARK TWAIN

Territorial Enterprise, February 8, 1863

LETTER FROM CARSON

CARSON, Thursday Morning

EDS. ENTERPRISE: The community were taken by surprise last night, by
the marriage of Dr. J. H. Wayman and Mrs. M. A. Ormsby. Strategy did it.
John K. Trumbo lured the people to a party at his house, and corraled
them, and in the meantime Acting Governor Clemens proceeded to the
bride's dwelling and consolidated the happy couple under the name and
style of Mr. and Mrs. Wayman, with a life charter, perpetual succession,
unlimited marital privileges, principal place of business at ho--blast
those gold and silver mining incorporations! I have compiled a long list
of them from the Territorial Secretary's books this morning, and their
infernal technicalities keep slipping from my pen when I ought to
be writing graceful poetical things. After the marriage, the high
contracting parties and the witnesses there assembled, adjourned to Mr.
Trumbo's house. The ways of the Unreliable are past finding out. His
instincts always prompt him to go where he is not wanted, particularly
if anything of an unusual nature is on foot. Therefore, he was present
and saw those wedding ceremonies through the parlor windows. He climbed
up behind Dr. Wayman's coach and rode up to Trumbo's--this shows that
his faculties were not affected by his recent illness. When the bride
and groom entered the parlor he went in with them, bowing and scraping
and smiling in his imbecile way, and attempting to pass himself off for
the principal groomsman. I never saw such an awkward, ungainly lout in
my life. He had on a pair of Jack Wilde's pantaloons, and a swallow-tail
coat belonging to Lytle ("Schermerhorn's Boy"), and they fitted him as
neatly as an elephant's hide would fit a poodle dog. I would be ashamed
to appear in any parlor in such a costume. It never enters his head
to be ashamed of anything, though. It would have killed me with
mortification to parade around there as he did, and have people stepping
on my coat tail every moment. As soon as the guests found out who he was
they kept out of his way as well as they could, but there were so many
gentlemen and ladies present that he was never at a loss for somebody to
pester with his disgusting familiarity. He worried them from the parlor
to the sitting-room, and from thence to the dancing-hall, and then
proceeded upstairs to see if he could find any more people to stampede.
He found Fred. Turner, and stayed with him until he was informed that
he could have nothing more to eat or drink in that part of the house. He
went back to the dancing-hall then, but he carried away a codfish under
one arm, and Mr. Curry's plug hat full of sour-krout under the other.
He posted himself right where he could be most in the way, and fell to
eating as comfortably as if he were boarding with Trumbo by the week.
They bothered him some, though, because every time the order came to
"all promenade," the dancers would sweep past him and knock his cod fish
out of his hands and spill his sour-krout. He was the most loathsome
sight I ever saw; he turned everybody's stomach but his own. It makes no
difference to him, either, what he eats when hungry. I believe he would
have eaten a corpse last night, if he had one. Finally, Curry came
and took his hat away from him and tore one of his coat tails off and
threatened to thresh him with it, and that checked his appetite for a
moment. Instead of sneaking out of the house, then, as anybody would
have done who had any self respect, he shoved his codfish into the
pocket of his solitary coat tail (leaving at least eight inches of it
sticking out), and crowded himself into a double quadrille. He had it
all to himself pretty soon; because the order "gentlemen to the right"
came, and he passed from one lady to another around the room, and wilted
each and every one of them with the horrible fragrance of his breath.
Even Trumbo, himself, fainted. Then the Unreliable, with a placid
expression of satisfaction upon his countenance, marched forth and swept
the parlors like a pestilence. When the guests had been persecuted as
long as they could stand it, though, they got him to drink some kerosene
oil, which neutralized the sour-krout and cod fish, and restored his
breath to about its usual state, or even improved it, perhaps, for it
generally smells like a hospital.

The Unreliable interfered with Col. Musser when he was singing the
pea-nut song; he bothered William Patterson, Esq., when that baritone
was singing, "Ever of thee I'm fondly dreaming"; he interrupted Epstein
when he was playing on the piano; he followed the bride and bridegroom
from place to place, like an evil spirit, and he managed to keep himself
and his coat-tail eternally in the way. I did hope that he would stay
away from the supper-table, but I hoped against an impossibility. He was
the first one there, and had choice of seats also, because he told Mr.
Trumbo he was a groomsman; and not only that, but he made him believe,
also, that Dr. Wayman was his uncle. Then he sailed into the ice cream
and champagne, and cakes and things, at his usual starvation gait,
and he would infallibly have created a famine, if Trumbo had not been
particularly well fortified with provisions. There is one circumstance
connected with the Unreliable's career last night which it pains me
to mention, but I feel that it is my duty to do it. I shall cut the
melancholy fact as short as possible, however: seventeen silver spoons,
a New Testament and a gridiron were missed after supper. They were found
upon the Unreliable's person when he was in the act of going out at the
back door.

Singing and dancing commenced at seven o'clock in the evening, and were
kept up with unabated fury until half-past one in the morning, when the
jolly company put on each other's hats and bonnets and wandered home,
mighty well satisfied with Trumbo's "corn shucking," as he called it.

Well, you were particularly bitter about the "extra session" yesterday
morning, and with very small cause, too, it seems to me. You rush in
desperately and call out all the fire engines in the universe, and lo!
there is nothing but a chunk of harmless fox-fire to squirt at after
all. You slash away right and left at the lawyers, just as if they were
not human like other people, subject to the same accidents of fortune
and circumstances, moved by the same springs of action, and honest or
dishonest according to the nature which God Almighty endowed them with.
Stuff! You talk like a wooden man. A man's profession has but little to
do with his moral character. If we had as many preachers as lawyers,
you would find it mixed as to which occupation could muster the most
rascals. Then you pitch into the legislators, and say that, "with two or
three exceptions, they are men who failed to complete their programmes
of rascality," etc. Humbug! They never commenced any such programme. I
reported their proceedings--I was behind the scenes, and I know. I talk
sweepingly, perhaps--so do you, in that wild sentence. There might have
been two or three first-class rascals in the Legislature--I have that
number in my eye at the present moment--but the balance were fully as
honest as you, and considerably more so than me. I could prove this by
simply reminding you of their names. Run over the list, and see if there
are not some very respectable names on it. I have acknowledged that
there were several scoundrels in the Legislature, but such a number, in
as large a body as the last Assembly, could carry no measure, you know,
and the men I am thinking of couldn't even influence one. The Lord
originally intended them to do transportation duty in a jackass train,
I think. And then, how you talk about the pecuniary wants of our
legislators: "Their hungry wallets yearn for a second assault on the
greenbacks and franchises of the Territory." That is humbug, also. Take
the House, for instance. I can name you fifteen members of that body
whose pecuniary condition is very comfortable--who stand in no more
pressing need of Territorial greenbacks than you do of another leg. And
I can name you half a dozen others who are not suffering for food and
raiment, and whom Providence will be able to take care of, I think,
without bringing an extra session of the Nevada Legislature to pass.
You talk like a wooden man, I tell you. Why there are not enough
"Territorial Greenbacks" in the Secretary's office and the Territorial
Treasury put together to start a wholesale pea-nut stand with; and why
should thirty-nine legislators want to neglect their business to go to
Carson and gobble up and divide such a pittance? Bosh.

Somebody made a blunder; somebody did a piece of rascality. It was not
the legislators, yet only they can set the matter right--and if they
want to go back to the capital and do it, it is rather a credit to them
than a dishonor. I cannot see anything very criminal in this conduct
of theirs. You are too brash, you know--that is what is the matter with
you. You say you heard a report that the Acting Governor had decided to
call an extra session. Well, what if you did? Don't you suppose that,
being here, at the seat of government, I would naturally know a good
deal more about it than anybody's reports? Reports lie--I do not. Why
didn't you ask me for information? I always have an abundance of the
article on hand. I will give you some now: the Acting Governor has not
decided to call an extra session; he is not seriously thinking of such
a thing at present; he is not expecting to think of it next week; he
is not in favor of the measure, and does not wish to move in the matter
unless a majority of the counties expressly desire it. Now, you have
said a great many things in your article which you ought not to
have said; you have done injustice to all the parties whom you have
mentioned; you have hollered "wolf!" when there was nothing present but
the mildest sort of a lamb; and the properest course for you to pursue
will be to screw down your throttle-valve and dry up.

I have a strong inclination to continue this subject a while longer, but
I promised to go down in town and get drunk with Curry and Trumbo, and
Tom Bedford and Gillespie, before I leave for Virginia. My promises are
sacred. I have also to receive a petition from citizens of Carson, with
several thousand names on it, requesting me to extend my visit here a
few years longer. It affords me great pleasure to state that several
hundred sheets of this petition are covered with the autographs of
intelligent and beautiful ladies.

Territorial Enterprise, February 19, 1863

YE SENTIMENTAL LAW STUDENT

EDS. ENTERPRISE--I found the following letter, or Valentine, or whatever
it is, lying on the summit, where it had been dropped unintentionally,
I think. It was written on a sheet of legal cap, and each line was duly
commenced within the red mark which traversed the sheet from top to
bottom. Solon appeared to have had some trouble getting his effusion
started to suit him. He had begun it, "Know all men by these presents,"
and scratched it out again; he had substituted, "Now at this day comes
the plaintiff, by his attorney," and scratched that out also; he had
tried other sentences of like character, and gone on obliterating them,
until, through much sorrow and tribulation, he achieved the dedication
which stands at the head of his letter, and to his entire satisfaction,
I do cheerfully hope. But what a villain a man must be to blend together
the beautiful language of love and the infernal phraseology of the law
in one and the same sentence! I know but one of God's creatures who
would be guilty of such depravity as this: I refer to the Unreliable.
I believe the Unreliable to be the very lawyer's-cub who sat upon the
solitary peak, all soaked in beer and sentiment, and concocted the
insipid literary hash I am talking about. The handwriting closely
resembles his semi-Chinese tarantula tracks.

SUGAR LOAF PEAK, February 14, 1863.

To the loveliness to whom these presents shall come, greeting:--This is
a lovely day, my own Mary; its unencumbered sunshine reminds me of your
happy face, and in the imagination the same doth now appear before me.
Such sights and scenes as this ever remind me, the party of the second
part, of you, my Mary, the peerless party of the first part. The view
from the lonely and segregated mountain peak, of this portion of what
is called and known as Creation, with all and singular the
hereditaments and appurtenances thereunto appertaining and belonging, is
inexpressively grand and inspiring; and I gaze, and gaze, while my
soul is filled with holy delight, and my heart expands to receive thy
spirit-presence, as aforesaid. Above me is the glory of the sun; around
him float the messenger clouds, ready alike to bless the earth with
gentle rain, or visit it with lightning, and thunder, and destruction;
far below the said sun and the messenger clouds aforesaid, lying prone
upon the earth in the verge of the distant horizon, like the burnished
shield of a giant, mine eyes behold a lake, which is described and set
forth in maps as the Sink of Carson; nearer, in the great plain, I see
the Desert, spread abroad like the mantle of a Colossus, glowing by
turns, with the warm light of the sun, hereinbefore mentioned, or darkly
shaded by the messenger clouds aforesaid; flowing at right angles with
said Desert, and adjacent thereto, I see the silver and sinuous thread
of the river, commonly called Carson, which winds its tortuous course
through the softly tinted valley, and disappears amid the gorges of the
bleak and snowy mountains--a simile of man!--leaving the pleasant valley
of Peace and Virtue to wander among the dark defiles of Sin, beyond the
jurisdiction of the kindly beaming sun aforesaid! And about said sun,
and the said clouds, and around the said mountains, and over the plain
and the river aforesaid, there floats a purple glory--a yellow mist--as
airy and beautiful as the bridal veil of a princess, about to be wedded
according to the rites and ceremonies pertaining to, and established
by, the laws or edicts of the kingdom or principality wherein she doth
reside, and whereof she hath been and doth continue to be, a lawful
sovereign or subject. Ah! my Mary, it is sublime! it is lovely! I have
declared and made known, and by these presents do declare and make known
unto you, that the view from Sugar Loaf Peak, as hereinbefore described
and set forth, is the loveliest picture with which the hand of the
Creator has adorned the earth, according to the best of my knowledge and
belief, so help me God.

Given under my hand, and in the spirit-presence of the bright being
whose love has restored the light of hope to a soul once groping in the
darkness of despair, on the day and year first above written.

(Signed) SOLON LYCURGUS.

Law Student, and Notary Public in and for the said County of Storey, and
Territory of Nevada.

To Miss Mary Links, Virginia (and may the laws have her in their holy
keeping).

MARK TWAIN

Territorial Enterprise, February 19, 1863

[some text of this article has not been recovered]

LOCAL COLUMN

[LA PLATA ORE COMPANY.--]... The company was organized under a deed
of trust, and has been steadily at work, with scarce any intermission,
since the 1st of May, 1861--under the general superintendence of the
President, Col. W. H. Howard. The claim is believed to comprise some of
the finest ledges in the Virginia and Gold Hill range, and from present
appearances it looks as if the company were about to commence realizing
the reward of their long and well-bestowed labor, as in addition to
the ledges already noticed, the top of a fine ledge has already been
uncovered on the west side of the claim, where the chimney ranging with
the Butler's Peak and Mount Davidson ledges crops out.

THE CHINA TRIAL.--We were there, yesterday, not because we were obliged
to go, but just because we wanted to. The more we see of this aggravated
trial, the more profound does our admiration for it become. It has more
phases than the moon has in a chapter of the almanac. It commenced as an
assassination; the assassinated man neglected to die, and they turned it
into assault and battery; after this the victim did die, whereupon his
murderers were arrested and tried yesterday for perjury; they convicted
one Chinaman, but when they found out it was the wrong one, they let him
go--and why they should have been so almighty particular is beyond
our comprehension; then, in the afternoon, the officers went down
and arrested Chinatown again for the same old offense, and put it in
jail--but what shape the charge will take this time, no man can foresee:
the chances are that it will be about a stand-off between arson and
robbing the mail. Capt. White hopes to get the murderers of the Chinaman
hung one of these days, and so do we, for that matter, but we do not
expect anything of the kind. You see, these Chinamen are all alike, and
they cannot identify each other. They mean well enough, and they really
show a disinterested anxiety to get some of their friends and relatives
hung, but the same misfortune overtakes them every time: they make
mistakes and get the wrong man, with unvarying accuracy. With a zeal in
behalf of justice which cannot be too highly praised, the whole Chinese
population have accused each other of this murder, each in his regular
turn, but fate is against them. They cannot tell each other apart. There
is only one way to manage this thing with strict equity: hang the gentle
Chinamen promiscuously, until justice is satisfied.

THE CONCERT.--We shall always guard against insinuating that the
citizens of Virginia are not filled with a fondness for music, after
what we saw at Mr. Griswold's Concert last night. The house was filled,
from dome to cellar (we speak figuratively, since there was neither
dome nor cellar to the house,) with people who entirely appreciated the
performance, and testified pleasure by frequent and hearty applause. The
Concert was a notable credit to the talent of Virginia, and we think
we speak the public desire when we ask for another like it. Mr. James
Gilmore, a very youthful looking poet, recited a martial poem whereof
himself was the author. It was received with great applause. We only
heard five of the songs set...

Territorial Enterprise, February 17-22, 1863

SILVER BARS--HOW ASSAYED

We propose to speak of some silver bars which we have been looking at,
and to talk science a little, also, in this article, if we find that
what we learned in the latter line yesterday has not escaped our memory.
The bars we allude to were at the banking house of Paxton Thornburgh,
and were five in number; they were the concentrated result of portions
of two eight-day runs of the Hoosier State Mill, on Potosi rock. The
first of the bricks bore the following inscription, which is poetry
stripped of flowers and flummery, and reduced to plain common sense:
"No. 857; Potosi Gold and Silver Mining Company; Theall & Co., assayers;
688.48 ounces, gold, 020 fine, silver, 962 fine; gold $572.13, silver
$1,229.47." Bars No. 836 and No. 858 bore about the same inscription,
save that their values differed, of course, the one being worth $1,800,
and the other a fraction under $1,300. The two largest bars were still
in the workshop, and had not yet been assayed; one of them weighed
nearly a hundred pounds and 1 was worth about $3,000, and the other,
which contained over 900 ounces, was worth in the neighborhood of
$2,000. The weight of the whole five bars may be set down in round
numbers at 300 pounds, and their value, at say, $10,000. Those are about
the correct figures. We are very well pleased with the Hoosier
State mill and the Potosi mine--we think of buying them. From the
contemplation of this result of two weeks' mill and mining labor, we
walked through the assaying rooms, in the rear of the banking house,
with Mr. Theall, and examined the scientific operations there, with a
critical eye. We absorbed much obtuse learning, and we propose to give
to the ignorant the benefit of it. After the amalgam has been retorted
at the mill, it is brought here and broken up and put into a crucible
(along with a little borax,) of the capacity of an ordinary plug hat;
this vessel is composed of some kind of pottery which stands heat like a
salamander; the crucible is placed in a brick furnace; in the midst of
a charcoal fire as hot as the one which the three Scriptural Hebrew
children were assayed in; when the mass becomes melted, it is well
stirred, in order to get the metals thoroughly mixed, after which it
is poured into an iron brick mould; such of the base metals as were
not burned up, remain in the crucible in the form of a "sing." The next
operation is the assaying of the brick. A small chip is cut from each
end of it and weighed; each of these is enveloped in lead and placed in
a little shallow cup made of bone ashes, called a cupel, and put in a
small stone-ware oven, enclosed in a sort of parlor stove furnace,
where it is cooked like a lost sinner; the lead becomes oxydized and is
entirely absorbed by the pores of the cupel--any other base metals that
may still linger in the precious stew, meet the same fate, or go up
the chimney. The gold and silver come from the cupel in the shape of a
little button, and in a state of perfect purity; this is weighed once
more, and what it has lost by the cooking process, determines the amount
of base metal that was in it, and shows exactly what proportion of it
the bar contains--the lost weight was base metal you understand, and was
burned up or absorbed by the cupel. The scales used in this service are
of such extremely delicate construction that they have to be shut up
in a glass case, since a breath of air is sufficient to throw them
off their balance--so sensitive are they, indeed, that they are even
affected by the particles of dust which find their way through the
joinings of the case and settle on them. They will figure the weight of
a piece of metal down to the thousandth part of a grain, with stunning
accuracy. You might weigh a musquito here, and then pull one of his legs
off, and weigh him again, and the scales would detect the difference.
The smallest weight used--the one which represents the thousandth part
of a grain--is composed of aluminum, which is the metallic base of
common clay, and is the lightest metal known to science. It looks like
an imperceptible atom clipped from the invisible corner of a piece
of paper whittled down to an impossible degree of sharpness--as it
were--and they handle it with pincers like a hair pin. But with an
excuse for this interesting digression, we will return to the silver
button again. After the weighing, melting and re-weighing of it has
shown the amount of base metal contained in the brick, the next thing to
be done is to separate the silver and gold in it, in order to find out
the exact proportions of these in the bar. The button is placed in a
mattrass filled with nitric acid, (an elongated glass bottle or tube,
shaped something like a bell clapper) which is half buried in a box
of hot sand--they called it a sand bath--on top of the little cupel
furnace, where all the silver is boiled out of said button and held in
solution, (when in this condition it is chemically termed "nitrate of
silver.") This process leaves a small pinch of gold dust in the bottom
of the mattrass which is perfectly pure; its weight will show the
proportion of pure gold in the bar, of course. The silver in solution is
then precipitated with muriatic acid (or something of that kind--we are
not able to swear that this was the drug mentioned to us, although we
feel very certain that it was,) and restored to metal again. Its weight,
by the musquito scales, will show the proportion of silver contained in
the brick, you know. Now just here, our memory is altogether at fault.
We cannot recollect what in the world it is they do with the "dry cups."
We asked a good many questions about them--asking questions is our
regular business--but we have forgotten the answers. It is all owing to
lager beer. We are inclined to think, though, that after the silver has
been precipitated, they cook it a while in those little chalky-looking
"dry cups," in order to turn it from fine silver dust to a solid button
again for the sake of convenient handling--but we cannot begin to
recollect anything about it. We said they made a separate assay of the
chips cut from each end of a bar; now if these chips do not agree--if
they make different statements as to the proportions of the various
metals contained in the bar, it is pretty good proof that the mixing was
not thorough, and the brick has to be melted over again; this occurrence
is rare, however. This is all the science we know. What we do not know
is reserved for private conversation, and will be liberally inflicted
upon any body who will come here to the office and submit to it. After
the bar has been assayed, it is stamped as described in the beginning of
this dissertation, and then it is ready for the mint. Science is a very
pleasant subject to dilate upon, and we consider that we are as able
to dilate upon it as any man that walks--but if we have been guilty of
carelessness in any part of this article, so that our method of assaying
as set forth herein may chance to differ from Mr. Theall's, we would
advise that gentleman to stick to his own plan nevertheless, and not go
to following ours--his is as good as any known to science. If we have
struck anything new in our method, however, we shall be happy to hear of
it, so that we can take steps to secure to ourself the benefits accruing
therefrom.

Territorial Enterprise, February 25, 1863

LOCAL COLUMN

THE UNRELIABLE.--This poor miserable outcast crowded himself into the
Firemen's Ball, night before last, and glared upon the happy scene with
his evil eye for a few minutes. He had his coat buttoned up to his chin,
which is the way he always does when he has no shirt on. As soon as the
managers found out he was there, they put him out, of course. They had
better have allowed him to stay, though, for he walked straight across
the street, with all his vicious soul aroused, and climbed in at the
back window of the supper room and gobbled up the last crumb of the
repast provided for the guests, before he was discovered. This accounts
for the scarcity of provisions at the Firemen's supper that night. Then
he went home and wrote a particular description of our ball costume,
with his usual meanness, as if such information could be of any
consequence to the public. He never vouchsafed a single compliment to
our dress, either, after all the care and taste we had bestowed upon it.
We despise that man.

"MANY CITIZENS."--In another column of this paper will be found a
card signed by "Many Citizens of Carson," stating that the County
Commissioners of Ormsby county have removed the Sheriff from office
and appointed some one else in his stead. They also ask whether the
Commissioners really possess the power to remove the Sheriff, or the
Governor of the Territory, or the President of the United States, at
pleasure. This is all well enough, except that in the face of our well
known ability in the treatment of ponderous questions of unwritten law,
these citizens have addressed their inquiries to the chief editor of
this paper--a man who knows no more about legal questions than he does
about religion--and so saturated with self-conceit is he, that he has
even attempted, in his feeble way, to answer the propositions set forth
in that note. We ignore his reply entirely, and notwithstanding the
disrespect which has been shown us, we shall sink private pique for the
good of our fellow men, and proceed to set their minds at rest on this
question of power. We declare that the County Commissioners do possess
the power to remove the officers mentioned in that note, at pleasure.
The Organic Act says so in so many words. We invite special attention
to the fist clause of section 2 of that document, where this language is
used, if we recollect rightly: "The executive power and authority in and
over said Territory of Nevada shall be vested in a Governor and other
officers, who shall hold their offices for four years, and until their
successors shall be appointed and qualified, unless sooner removed by
the County Commissioners." That is explicit enough, we take it.
"Other officers" means any or all other officers, of course, else such
dignitaries as it was intended to refer to would have been specifically
mentioned; consequently, the President of the United States, and the
Governor and Sheriff being "officers," come within the provisions of the
law, and may be shoved out of the way by the Commissioners as quietly
as they would abate a nuisance. We might enlarge upon this subject
until Solomon himself couldn't under stand it--but we have settled the
question, and we despise to go on scattering pearls before swine who
have not asked us for them. In thus proving by the Organic Act, and
beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the County Commissioners are invested
with power to remove the Sheriff or the Governor or the President,
whenever they see fit to do so, we have been actuated solely by a love
of the godlike principles of right and justice, and a desire to show the
public what an unmitigated ass the chief editor of this paper is. Having
succeeded to our entire satisfaction, we transfer our pen to matters
of local interest, although we could prove, if we wanted to, that the
County Commissioners not only possess the power to depose the officers
above referred to but to hang them also, if they feel like it.
When people want a legal opinion in detail, they must address their
communications to us, individually, and not to irresponsible smatterers,
like the chief editor.

THE FIREMEN'S BALL.--About seventy couples assembled at Topliffe's
Theatre night before last, upon the occasion of the annual ball of
Virginia Engine Company No. 1. The hall was ablaze, from one end to
the other, with flags, mirrors, pictures, etc.; and when the crowd of
dancers had got into violent motion, and thoroughly fuddled with plain
quadrilles, the looking-glasses multiplied them into a distracted and
countless throng. Verily, the effect was charming to the last degree.
The decoration of the theatre occupied several days, and was done under
the management of a committee composed of Messrs. Brokaw, Robinson,
Champney, Claresy, Garvey and Sands, and they certainly acquitted
themselves with marked ability. The floor was covered with heavy
canvass, and we rather liked the arrangement--but the wind got under it
and made it fill and sag like a circus tent, insomuch that it
impeded the Varsovienne practice, and caused the ladies to complain
occasionally. Benham's "People's Band" made excellent music; however,
they always do that. We have not one particle of fault to find with the
ball; the managers kept perfect order and decorum, and did everything
in their power to make it pass pleasantly to all the guests. They
succeeded. But of all the failures we have been called upon to
chronicle, the supper was the grandest. It was bitterly denounced by
nearly everybody who sat down to it--officers, firemen, men, women and
children. Now, the supposition is, that somebody will come out in a card
and deny this, and attribute base motives to us: but we are not to be
caught asleep, or even napping, this time--we have got all our proofs at
hand, and shall explode at anybody who tries to show that we cannot tell
the truth without being actuated by unworthy motives. Chief Engineer
Peasley and officer Birdsall said that the supper contract was for a
table supplied with everything the market could afford, and in such
profusion that the last who came might fare as well as the first (the
contractor to receive a stipulated sum for each supper furnished)--and
they also say that no part or portion of that contract was entirely
fulfilled. The entertainment broke up about four o'clock in the morning,
and the guests returned to their homes well satisfied with the ball
itself, but not with the supper.

SMALL POX.--From Carson we learn, officially, that Dr. Munckton has been
sent down to Pine Nut Springs to look after some cases of small pox,
reported as existing among the Washoe Indians there. It is said that
three men and a mahala are afflicted with it; the doctor intends
vaccinating their attendants and warning the other Indians to keep away.
Capt. Jo says one of the Indians caught the disease from a shirt given
him by a white man. We do not believe any man would do such a thing as
that maliciously, but at the same time, any man is censurable who is
so careless as to leave infected clothing lying about where these poor
devils can get hold of it. The commonest prudence ought to suggest the
destruction of such dangerous articles.

SCHOOL-HOUSE.--An addition is being built to the public school house,
and will be completed and put in order for occupation as soon as
possible. Mr. Mellvile's school has increased to such an extent that the
old premises were found insufficient to accommodate all the pupils. As
soon as the new building is completed, the school will be divided into
three departments--advanced, intermediate and infant--and one of these
will occupy it.

TRIAL TO-DAY.--Sam Ingalls, who attempted the life of Pease the other
day with a bowie knife, will be up before Judge Atwill to-day on a
charge of drawing a deadly weapon. A case of this kind should never be
allowed to pass without a severe rebuke, and if the evidence finds the
prisoner guilty, he will probably catch it to-day; if it does not, why,
no one wants him rebuked, of course.

DISTRICT COURT.--The testimony for both sides in the case of the Burning
Moscow vs. Madison Company was completed yesterday, and the lawyers
will begin to throw hot shot at each other this morning--which is our
military way of saying that the arguments of counsel herein will be
commenced to-day. A great deal of interest is manifested in this suit,
and the lobbies will be crowded during its trial.

SUICIDE.--We learn by a note received last night per Langton's Express,
that a German named John Meyer, a wood dealer in Downieville, committed
suicide there on the night of the 19th inst., by blowing his brains out
with a pistol. The cause is supposed to have been insanity.

TELEGRAPHIC.--A message for S. S. Harman remains uncalled for at the
Telegraph office.

Territorial Enterprise, February 26, 1863

[last portion of mock obituary of the "Unreliable"; first portion of
original text not recovered]

REPORTORIAL

He became a newspaper reporter, and crushed Truth to earth and kept her
there; he bought and sold his own notes, and never paid his board; he
pretended great friendship for Gillespie, in order to get to sleep with
him; then he took advantage of his bed fellow and robbed him of his
glass eye and his false teeth; of course he sold the articles, and
Gillespie was obliged to issue more county scrip than the law allowed,
in order to get them back again; the Unreliable broke into my trunk
at Washoe City, and took jewelry and fine clothes and things, worth
thousands and thousands of dollars; he was present, without invitation,
at every party and ball and wedding which transpired in Carson during
thirteen years. But the last act of his life was the crowning meanness
of it: I refer to the abuse of me in the Virginia Union of last
Saturday, and also to a list of Langton's stage passengers sent to the
same paper by him, wherein my name appears between those of "Sam
Chung" and "Sam Lee." This is his treatment of me, his benefactor. That
malicious joke was his dying atrocity. During thirteen years he played
himself for a white man: he fitly closed his vile career by trying to
play me for a Chinaman. He is dead and buried now, though: let him
rest, let him rot. Let his vices be forgotten, but let his virtues be
remembered: it will not infringe much upon any man's time.

MARK TWAIN.

P. S.--By private letters from Carson, since the above was in type, I
am pained to learn that the Unreliable, true to his unnatural instincts,
came to life again in the midst of his funeral sermon, and remains so
to this moment. He was always unreliable in life--he could not even be
depended upon in death. The shrouded corpse shoved the coffin lid to
one side, rose to a sitting posture, cocked his eye at the minister and
smilingly said, "O let up, Dominie, this is played out, you know--loan
me two bits!" The frightened congregation rushed from the house, and the
Unreliable followed them, with his coffin on his shoulder. He sold
it for two dollars and a half, and got drunk at a "bit house" on the
proceeds. He is still drunk.

Territorial Enterprise, between February 17-26, 1863

LOCAL COLUMN

APOLOGETIC.--We are always happy to apologize to a man when we do him an
injury. We have wounded William Smiley's feelings, and we will heal them
up again or bust. We said in yesterday's police record that Bill (excuse
the familiarity, William,) was drunk. We lied. It is our opinion that
Sam Wetherill did, too, for he gave us the statement. We have gleaned
the facts in the case, though, from William himself, and at his request
we hasten to apologize. His offense was mildness itself. He only had a
pitched battle with another man, and resisted an officer. That was all.
Come up, William, and take a drink.

Territorial Enterprise, March 4, 1863

CITY MARSHALL PERRY

John Van Buren Perry, recently re-elected City Marshal of Virginia City,
was born a long time ago, in County Kerry, Ireland, of poor but honest
parents, who were descendants, beyond question, of a house of high
antiquity. The founder of it was distinguished for his eloquence; he was
the property of one Baalam, and received honorable mention in the Bible.

John Van Buren Perry removed to the United States in 1792--after having
achieved a high gastronomical reputation by creating the first famine in
his native land--and established himself at Kinderhook, New Jersey, as
a teacher of vocal and instrumental music. His eldest son, Martin Van
Buren, was educated there, and was afterwards elected President of the
United States; his grandson, of the same name, is now a prominent New
York politician, and is known in the East as 'Prince John;' he keeps up
a constant and affectionate correspondence with his worthy grandfather,
who sells him feet in some of his richest wildcat claims from time to
time.

While residing at Kinderhook, Jack Perry was appointed Commodore of the
United States Navy, and he forthwith proceeded to Lake Erie and fought
the mighty marine conflict, which blazes upon the pages of history as
"Perry's Victory." In consequence of this exploit, he narrowly escaped
the Presidency.

Several years ago Commodore Perry was appointed Commissioner
Extraordinary to the Imperial Court of Japan, with unlimited power to
treat. It is hardly worthwhile to mention that he never exercised that
power; he never treated anybody in that country, although he patiently
submitted to a vast amount of that sort of thing when the opportunity
was afforded him at the expense of the Japanese officials. He returned
from his mission full of honors and foreign whisky, and was welcomed
home again by the plaudits of a grateful nation.

After the war was ended, Mr. Perry removed to Providence, Rhode Island,
where he produced a complete revolution in medical science by inventing
the celebrated "Pain Killer" which bears his name. He manufactured this
liniment by the ship-load, and spread it far and wide over the suffering
world; not a bottle left his establishment without his beneficent
portrait upon the label, whereby, in time, his features became as well
known unto burned and mutilated children as Jack the Giant Killer's.

When pain had ceased throughout the universe Mr. Perry fell to writing
for a livelihood, and for years and years he poured out his soul in
pleasing and effeminate poetry.

His very first effort, commencing:

"How doth the little busy bee

Improve each shining hour," etc.-

gained him a splendid literary reputation, and from that time forward
no Sunday-school library was complete without a full edition of his
plaintive and sentimental "Perry-Gorics." After great research and
profound study of his subject, he produced that wonderful gem which is
known in every land as "The Young Mother's Apostrophe to Her Infant,"
beginning:

"Fie! fie! oo itty bitty pooty sing!

To poke oo footsy-tootsys into momma's eye!"

This inspired poem had a tremendous run, and carried Perry's fame into
every nursery in the civilized world. But he was not destined to wear
his laurels undisturbed: England, with monstrous perfidy, at once
claimed the "Apostrophe" for her favorite son, Martin Farquhar Tupper,
and sent up a howl of vindictive abuse from her polluted press against
our beloved Perry. With one accord, the American people rose up in his
defense, and a devastating war was only averted by a public denial
of the paternity of the poem by the great Proverbial over his own
signature. This noble act of Mr. Tupper gained him a high place in the
affection of this people, and his sweet platitudes have been read here
with an ever augmented spirit of tolerance since that day.

The conduct of England toward Mr. Perry told upon his constitution to
such an extent that at one time it was feared the gentle bard would fade
and flicker out altogether; wherefore, the solicitude of influential
officials was aroused in his behalf, and through their generosity he
was provided with an asylum in Sing Sing prison, a quiet retreat in the
state of New York. Here he wrote his last great poem, beginning:

"Let dogs delight to bark and bite,

For God hath made them so--

Your little hands were never made

To tear out each other's eyes with--"

and then proceeded to learn the shoemaker's trade in his new home, under
the distinguished masters employed by the commonwealth.

Ever since Mr. Perry arrived at man's estate his prodigious feet have
been a subject of complaint and annoyance to those communities which
have known the honor of his presence. In 1835, during a great leather
famine, many people were obliged to wear wooden shoes, and Mr. Perry,
for the sake of economy, transferred his boot-making patronage from
the tan-yard which had before enjoyed his custom, to an undertaker's
establishment--that is to say, he wore coffins. At that time he was a
member of Congress from New Jersey, and occupied a seat in front of the
Speaker's throne. He had the uncouth habit of propping his feet upon
his desk during prayer by the chaplain, and thus completely hiding that
officer from every eye save that of Omnipotence alone. So long as the
Hon. Mr. Perry wore orthodox leather boots the clergyman submitted to
this infliction and prayed behind them in singular solitude, under mild
protest; but when he arose one morning to offer up his regular petition,
and beheld the cheerful apparition of Jack Perry's coffins confronting
him, "The jolly old bum went under the table like a sick porpus" (as
Mr. P. feelingly remarks), "and never shot off his mouth in that shanty
again."

Mr. Perry's first appearance on the Pacific Coast was upon the boards
of the San Francisco theaters in the character of "Old Pete" in Dion
Boucicault's "Octoroon." So excellent was his delineation of that
celebrated character that "Perry's Pete" was for a long time regarded as
the climax of histrionic perfection.

Since John Van Buren Perry has resided in Nevada Territory, he has
employed his talents in acting as City Marshal of Virginia, and in
abusing me because I am an orphan and a long way from home, and can
therefore be persecuted with impunity. He was re-elected day before
yesterday, and his first official act was an attempt to get me drunk
on champagne furnished to the Board of Aldermen by other successful
candidates, so that he might achieve the honor and glory of getting me
in the station-house for once in his life. Although he failed in his
object, he followed me down C street and handcuffed me in front of Tom
Peasley's, but officers Birdsall and Larkin and Brokaw rebelled against
this unwarranted assumption of authority, and released me--whereupon I
was about to punish Jack Perry severely, when he offered me six bits to
hand him down to posterity through the medium of this Biography, and I
closed the contract. But after all, I never expect to get the money.

Territorial Enterprise, March 7, 1863

CHAMPAGNE WITH THE BOARD OF BROKERS

By a sort of instinct we happened in at Almack's just at the moment that
the corks were about to pop, and discovering that we had intruded we
were retreating when Daggett, the soulless, insisted upon our getting
with the Board of Brokers, and we very naturally did so. The President
had already been toasted, the Vice-President had likewise been
complimented in the same manner. Mr. Mitchell had delivered an address
through his unsolicited mouth-piece, Mr. Daggett, whom he likened unto
Baalam's ass--and very aptly too--and the press had been toasted, and
he had attempted to respond and got overcome by something--feelings
perhaps--when that ever lasting, omnipresent, irrepressible,
"Unreliable" crowded himself into the festive apartment, where he shed
a gloom upon the Board of Brokers, and emptied their glasses while they
made speeches. The imperturbable impudence of that iceberg surpasses
anything we ever saw. By a concerted movement the young man was
partially put down at length, however, and the Board launched out into
speech-making again, but finally somebody put up five feet of "Texas,"
which changed hands at eight dollars a foot, and from that they branched
off into a wholesale bartering of "wildcat"--for their natures were
aroused by the first smell of blood of course--and we adjourned to make
this report. The Board will begin its regular meetings Monday next.

Territorial Enterprise, between March 1-12, 1863

LOCAL COLUMN

CALICO SKIRMISH.--Five Spanish women, of unquestionable character, were
arraigned before Judge Atwill yesterday, some as principals and some
as accessories to a feminine fight of a bloodthirsty description in
A street. It was proved that one of them drew a navy revolver and a
bowie-knife and attempted to use them upon another of the party, but
being prevented, she fired three shots through the floor, for the
purpose of easing her mind, no doubt. She was bound over to keep the
peace, and the whole party dismissed.

Territorial Enterprise, between Feb. 24--March 31, 1863

[portion of letter from Carson City]

A SUNDAY IN CARSON

I arrived in this noisy and bustling town of Carson at noon to-day, per
Langton's express. We made pretty good time from Virginia, and might
have made much better, but for Horace Smith, Esq., who rode on the box
seat and kept the stage so much by the head she wouldn't steer. I
went to church, of course,--I always go to church when I--when I go to
church--as it were. I got there just in time to hear the closing hymn,
and also to hear the Rev. Mr. White give out a long metre doxology,
which the choir tried to sing to a short-metre tune. But there wasn't
music enough to go around: consequently, the effect was rather singular,
than otherwise. They sang the most interesting parts of each line,
though, and charged the balance to "profit and loss;" this rendered the
general intent and meaning of the doxology considerably mixed, as far as
the congregation were concerned, but inasmuch as it was not addressed to
them, anyhow, I thought it made no particular difference.

By an easy and pleasant transition, I went from church to jail. It was
only just down stairs--for they save men eternally in the second story
of the new court house, and damn them for life in the first. Sheriff
Gasherie has a handsome double office fronting on the street, and its
walls are gorgeously decorated with iron convict-jewelry. In the rear
are two rows of cells, built of bomb-proof masonry and furnished with
strong iron doors and resistless locks and bolts. There was but one
prisoner--Swayze, the murderer of Derickson--and he was writing; I do
not know what his subject was, but he appeared to be handling it in a
way which gave him great satisfaction...

Territorial Enterprise, March--April, 1863

EXAMINATION OF TEACHERS

A grand examination of candidates for positions as teachers in our
public schools was had yesterday in one of the rooms of the
Public School in this city. Some twenty-eight candidates were
present--twenty-three of whom were ladies and five gentlemen. We do the
candidates but simple justice when we say that we have never seen
more intelligent faces in a crowd of the size. The following gentlemen
constituted the Board of Examiners: Dr. Geiger, Mr. J. W. Whicher and
John A. Collins. We observed that Messrs. Feusier, Adkison and Robinson
of the Board of Trustees were also present yesterday. Printed questions
are given to each of the candidates, the answers to which are written
out and handed in with the signature of the applicant appended. These
are all examined in private by the Board, and those who have best
acquitted themselves are selected as teachers. In all, we believe, about
twelve teachers are to be chosen. Upon each of the following subjects a
great number of questions are to be answered: General questions, methods
of teaching, object teaching; spelling, reading, writing, defining,
arithmetic, grammar, geography, natural philosophy, history of the
United States, physiology and hygiene, chemistry, algebra, geometry,
natural history, astronomy--in all, eighteen subjects, with about as
many questions upon each. Yesterday they had got as far as the ninth
subject, grammar, at the time of our visit, and we presume have got
but little further. To-day the examination will be resumed. If there is
anything that terrifies us it is an examination. We don't even like
an examination in a Police Court. In vain we looked from face to face
yesterday through the whole list of candidates for signs of fright or
trepidation. All appeared perfectly at ease, though quite in earnest.
We took a look at some of the questions and were made very miserable by
barely glancing them over. We became much afraid that some member of the
Board would suddenly turn upon us and require us on pain of death or a
long imprisonment, to answer some of the questions. Under the head of
"Object Teaching," we found some ten questions--some of them, like a
wheel within a wheel, containing ten questions in one. We barely glanced
at the list, reading here and there a question, when we felt great beads
of perspiration starting out upon our brow--our massive intellect oozing
out. Happening to read a question like this, "Name four of the faculties
of children that are earliest developed," we at once became anxious to
get out of the room. We expected each moment that one of the Board would
seize us by the collar and ask, "Why is it?" or something of the kind,
and we wanted to leave--thought we would feel better in the open air.
When the answers of all the candidates are opened and read we will try
to be on hand; we are anxious for information on those "four faculties."
We think the above a good deal like the conundrum about the young man
who "went to the Sandwich Islands; learned the language of the Kanakas,
came home, got married, got drunk, went crazy, was sent to Stockton--Why
is it?" Then under the same head we noticed ten questions about mining
for silver ores and ten more about the reduction of silver ores.
Why these twenty-three "school marms" are expected to be posted on
amalgamating processes, is more than we can guess. As this is a mining
country, we presume it is necessary for a lady to give satisfactory
answers to such questions as the following, before being entrusted with
the education of our little Washoeites: "What is your opinion of the
one-ledge theory? Have you seen the Ophir horse? Have you conscientious
scruples as to black dyke? Are you committed to the sage-brush process?
Give your opinion on vein matter, and state your reasons for thinking
so; and tell wherein you differ with those who do not agree with you."

Territorial Enterprise, April 3, 1863

LOCAL COLUMN

A DISTINGUISHED VISITOR.--Madame Clara Kopka arrived in Virginia a few
days since, and is still sojourning in the city. To many of our citizens
the name will be unfamiliar, yet such is by no means the case in the
hospitals and upon the battle-fields of the East, where she has devoted
nearly twelve months to arduous labor in tending the sick and wounded
soldiers. In this service she has endured all the hardships and
privations of camp life, without hope or desire of reward, and to the
serious detriment of her health. She comes among us partly to satisfy
a taste for travel, and partly to gather renewed vigor by a change
of climate. She asked Mayor Arick for a homestead, supposing, in the
simplicity of her heart, that the barren but beautiful landscape which
surrounds Virginia was free to any who thought they could make use of
it. Unfortunately, this is not the case; but the Silver Terrace Company
could give Madame the homestead she covets without inconveniencing
themselves in the least, and we have an idea that they will consider it
a pleasure to do so. Madame Kopka brings with her a bundle of letters
from military officers, from brigade and subordinate surgeons in the
army, from Secretary Stanton, and letters of recommendation to General
Halleck, all of which speak of her in the highest terms of praise.
We cannot spare room for these letters, but we publish two newspaper
extracts which will answer every purpose, perhaps. The first is from a
long article, written by an army surgeon, in the N. Y. Home Journal of
September 13th, and the other from the N. Y Tribune of July 5th...

THE LOIS ANN.--This claim is situated in a ravine which runs up in a
northwesterly direction out of American Flat, and is on the Ophir Grade,
about two miles and a half from Gold Hill. The ledge did not crop out,
but was uncovered by a small slide in the hillside, and found by Mr.
Lightford, the present Superintendent, and located some four or five
weeks ago. A well timbered incline has since been sunk upon it to the
depth of twenty-five feet, and work in it is still going on day and
night, although a stream of water from the vein materially interferes
with the operations of the men. In the bottom of the incline the ledge
is about ten feet wide, has a casing of blue clay, and is well defined;
a great quantity of quartz has been taken from it, which looks exactly
like third or fourth-class Ophir, but it won't pay to crush yet awhile,
although choice specimens of it have assayed as high as ninety-two
dollars to the ton. We visited the mine in company with Mr. H. C. Brown
and Mr. Lightford, the Superintendent, and we share their opinion, that
there is big pay rock in it somewhere, and it is only necessary to sink
a reasonable depth to find it. Such promising indications as have been
found in this claim are not often discovered so near the surface. Three
north extensions have been located on the Lois Ann, and shafts sunk, and
the lead struck on the first and third, the character and appearance
of the rock in both instances proving identical with that of the
original--coarse crystalized quartz, of a porous nature, and of a dark
blue color like Comstock rock. There are fourteen hundred feet in the
discovery claim, and the property is owned principally by mill men of
Gold Hill. One of the best indications about the Lois Ann is at present
much the most troublesome--we refer to the stream of water which pours
from the ledge; work in the incline will have to be suspended on account
of it and a tunnel commenced from the ravine--this will be about
a hundred and fifty feet long, and will tap the lead at a depth of
seventy-five feet. A mill-site has been taken up in the vicinity with
the intention of turning the water to useful account in case the ledge
proves as excellent as it is expected it will. Another good-looking
ledge lies back of the Lois Ann, and parallel with it, which belongs to
the same company. There is a claim of a thousand feet in the vicinity of
these leads which is called the Zanesville, and the rock from it pays in
gold from the very surface; every pound of it is saved, and mill men
who have tested it say it will yield about a hundred dollars to the ton;
there is only a mere trace of silver in it. The ledge is only about two
feet wide, in the bottom of a shaft twelve feet deep, but is increasing
in width slowly; possibly the Zanesville may peter out and go to
thunder, but there is no prospect of such a result at present. It is
rich, but as it is only a gold ledge, and is so small, we have less
confidence in it than in the Lois Ann.

ISLAND MILL.--The Island Mill, built on Carson river by Mr. Hite, of
Gold Hill, is about completed now, and the machinery was set in motion
yesterday to see if there was anything wrong about it. The result was
satisfactory, and the Island Mill will go to work formally and forever
next Tuesday.

GOULD & CURRY.--They struck it marvelously rich in a new shaft in the
Gould & Curry mine last Saturday night. We saw half a ton of native
silver at the mouth of the tunnel, on Tuesday, with a particle of quartz
in it here and there, which could be readily distinguished without the
aid of a glass. That particular half ton will yield some where in the
neighborhood of ten thousand dollars. We have long waited patiently
for the Gould & Curry to flicker out, but we cannot discover
much encouragement about this last flicker. However, it is of no
consequence--it was a mere matter of curiosity anyhow; we only wanted to
see if she would, you know.

THE MINSTRELS.--We were present at La Plata Hall about two minutes last
night, and heard Sam. Pride's banjo make a very excellent speech in
English to the audience. The house was crowded to suffocation.

Territorial Enterprise, April 12, 1863

[partial excerpt]

ADVICE TO THE UNRELIABLE ON CHURCH-GOING

In the first place, I must impress upon you that when you are dressing
for church, as a general thing, you mix your perfumes too much; your
fragrance is sometimes oppressive; you saturate yourself with cologne
and bergamot, until you make a sort of Hamlet's Ghost of yourself, and
no man can decide, with the first whiff, whether you bring with you air
from Heaven or from hell. Now, rectify this matter as soon as possible;
last Sunday you smelled like a secretary to a consolidated drug store
and barber shop. And you came and sat in the same pew with me; now don't
do that again.

In the next place when you design coming to church, don't lie in bed
until half past ten o'clock and then come in looking all swelled and
torpid, like a doughnut. Do reflect upon it, and show some respect for
your personal appearance hereafter.

There is another matter, also, which I wish to remonstrate with you
about. Generally, when the contribution box of the missionary department
is passing around, you begin to look anxious, and fumble in your vest
pockets, as if you felt a mighty desire to put all your worldly wealth
into it--yet when it reaches your pew, you are sure to be absorbed
in your prayer-book, or gazing pensively out of the window at far-off
mountains, or buried in meditation, with your sinful head supported by
the back of the pew before you. And after the box is gone again, you
usually start suddenly and gaze after it with a yearning look, mingled
with an expression of bitter disappointment (fumbling your cash again
meantime), as if you felt you had missed the one grand opportunity for
which you had been longing all your life. Now, to do this when you have
money in your pockets is mean. But I have seen you do a meaner thing. I
refer to your conduct last Sunday, when the contribution box arrived at
our pew--and the angry blood rises to my cheek when I remember with what
gravity and sweet serenity of countenance you put in fifty cents and
took out two dollars and a half...

Territorial Enterprise, between April 16-18, 1863

HORRIBLE AFFAIR

For a day or two a rumor has been floating around, that five Indians had
been smothered to death in a tunnel back of Gold Hill, but no one seemed
to regard it in any other light than as a sensation hoax gotten up for
the edification of strangers sojourning within our gates. However,
we asked a Gold Hill man about it yesterday, and he said there was no
shadow of a jest in it--that it was a dark and terrible reality. He gave
us the following story as being the version generally accepted in Gold
Hill:--That town was electrified on Sunday morning with the intelligence
that a noted desperado had just murdered two Virginia policemen, and had
fled in the general direction of Gold Hill. Shortly afterward, some one
arrived with the exciting news that a man had been seen to run and hide
in a tunnel a mile or a mile and a half west of Gold Hill. Of course
it was Campbell--who else would do such a thing, on that particular
morning, of all others? So a party of citizens repaired to this
spot, but each felt a natural delicacy about approaching an armed and
desperate man in the dark, and especially in such confined quarters;
wherefore they stopped up the mouth of the tunnel, calculating to hold
on to their prisoner until some one could be found whose duty would
oblige him to undertake the disagreeable task of bringing forth the
captive. The next day a strong posse went up, rolled away the
stones from the mouth of the sepulchre, went in and found five dead
Indians!--three men, one squaw and one child, who had gone in there
to sleep, perhaps, and been smothered by the foul atmosphere after
the tunnel had been closed up. We still hope the story may prove a
fabrication, notwithstanding the positive assurances we have received
that it is entirely true. The intention of the citizens was good, but
the result was most unfortunate. To shut up a murderer in a tunnel was
well enough, but to leave him there all night was calculated to
impair his chances for a fair trial--the principle was good, but the
application was unnecessarily "hefty." We have given the above story for
truth--we shall continue to regard it as such until it is disproven.

Territorial Enterprise, April 19--30, 1863

LOCAL COLUMN

ELECTRICAL MILL MACHINERY.--Mr. Wm. L. Card, of Silver City, has
invented a sort of infernal machine, which is to turn quartz mills by
electricity. It consists of wheels and things, and--however, we could
not describe it without getting tangled. Mr. Card assures us that he can
apply his invention to all the mills in Silver City, and work the whole
lot with one powerful Grove battery. We believe--and if we had galvanic
sense enough to explain the arrangement properly, others would also. A
patent has already been applied for.

Territorial Enterprise, May 19-21, 1863

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN

SAN FRANCISCO, May 16, 1863

EDS. ENTERPRISE: The Unreliable, since he has been here, has conducted
himself in such a reckless and unprincipled manner that he has brought
the whole Territory into disrepute and made its name a reproach, and its
visiting citizens objects of suspicion. He has been a perfect nightmare
to the officers of the Occidental Hotel. They give him an excellent
room, but if, in prowling about the house, he finds another that suits
him better, he "locates" it ( that is his slang way of expressing it).
Judging by his appearance what manner of man he was, the hotel clerk at
first gave him a room immediately under the shingles--but it was found
impossible to keep him there. He said he could not stand it, because
spinning round and round, up that spiral staircase, caused his beer to
ferment, and made him foam at the mouth like a soda fountain; wherefore,
he descended at the dead of night and "jumped" a room on the second
floor (the very language he used in boasting of the exploit). He said
they served an injunction on him there, "and," says he, "if Bill Stewart
had been down here, Mark, I'd have sued to quiet title, and I'd
have held that ground, don't you know it?" And he sighed; and after
ruminating a moment, he added, in a tone of withering contempt: "But
these lawyers won't touch a case unless a man has some rights;
humph! they haven't any more strategy into 'em than a clam. But Bill
Stewart--thunder! Now, you just take that Ophir suit that's coming off
in Virginia, for instance--why, God bless you, Bill Stewart'll worry the
witnesses, and bullyrag the Judge, and buy up the jury and pay for 'em;
and he'll prove things that never existed--hell! What won't he prove!
That's the idea--what won't he prove, you know? Why, Mark, I'll tell you
what he done when--"

The Unreliable was interrupted here by a messenger from the hotel
office, who handed him several sheets of legal cap, very neatly folded.
He took them and motioned the young man to retire. "Now," said he,
confidentially, "do you know what that is, Sweetness?" I said I thought
it was a wash bill, or a hotel bill, or some thing of that kind. His
countenance beamed with admiration: "You've struck it, by the Lord; yes,
sir, that's just what it is--it's another of them d--d assessments; they
levied one on me last week, and I meant to go and see a lawyer about it,
but"--The Unreliable simmered down into a profound reverie, and I waited
in silence to see what species of villainy his fertile brain would bring
forth. At last he started up exultingly, with a devilish light in his
eye: "I've got them in the door, Mark! They've been trying all they knew
how to freeze me out, but they can't win. This hotel ain't incorporated
under the laws of the Territory, and they can't collect--they are only
a lot of blasted tenants in common! O, certainly" (with bitter scorn
), "they'll get rich playing me for a Chinaman, you know." I forbear to
describe how he reveled in the prospect of swindling the Occidental out
of his hotel bill--it is too much humiliation even to think of it.

This young man insisted upon taking me to a concert last night, and I
refused to go at first, because I am naturally suspicious of him, but
he assured me that the Bella Union Melodeon was such a chaste and
high-toned establishment that he would not hesitate to take any lady
there who would go with him. This remark banished my fears, of course,
and we proceeded to the house of amusement. We were the first arrivals
there. He purchased two pit-tickets for twenty- five cents apiece; I
demurred at this kind of hospitality, and reminded him that orchestra
seats were only fifty cents, and private boxes two dollars and a half.
He bent on me a look of compassion, and muttered to himself that some
people have no more sense than a boiled carrot--that some people's
intellects were as dark as the inside of a cow. He walked into the pit,
and then climbed over into the orchestra seats as coolly as if he had
chartered the theatre. I followed, of course. Then he said, "Now, Mark,
keep your eye skinned on that doorkeeper, and do as I do." I did as
he did, and I am ashamed to say that he climbed a stanchion and took
possession of a private box. In due course several gentlemen performers
came on the stage, and with them half a dozen lovely and blooming
damsels, with the largest ankles you ever saw. In fact, they were
dressed like so many parasols--as it were. Their songs, and jokes, and
conundrums were received with rapturous applause. The Unreliable said
these things were all copyrighted; it is probably true--I never heard
them anywhere else. He was well pleased with the performance, and every
time one of the ladies sang, he testified his approbation by knocking
some of her teeth out with a bouquet. The Bella Union, I am told, is
supported entirely by Washoe patronage. There are forty-two single
gentlemen here from Washoe, and twenty-six married ones; they were
all at the concert last night except two--both unmarried. But if the
Unreliable had not told me it was a moral, high-toned establishment, I
would not have observed it.

Hon. Wm. H. Davenport, of Virginia, and Miss Mollie Spangler, of
Cincinnati, Ohio, were married here on the 10th instant, at the
residence of Colonel John A. Collins. Among the invited guests were
Judge Noyes and lady, Messrs. Beecher and Franz, of Virginia, and Mr.
Mark Twain; among the uninvited I noticed only the Unreliable. It will
probably never be known what became of the spoons. The bridal party left
yesterday for Sacramento, and may be expected in Virginia shortly. Old
fat, jolly B. C. Howard, a Lyon county Commissioner, is here, at the
Russ House, where he will linger a while and then depart for his old
home in Vermont, to return again in the Fall. Col. Raymond, of the
Zephyr-Flat mill, is in the city, also, and taking up a good deal of
room in Montgomery street and the Bank Exchange; he has invested in
some fast horses, and I shall probably take them over to Washoe shortly.
There are multitudes of people from the Territory here at the three
principal hotels--consequently provisions are scarce. If you will send
a few more citizens down we can carry this election, and fill all these
city offices with Carson and Virginia men.

There is not much doing in stocks just now, especially in the Boards.
But I suspect it is the case here as it is in Virginia, that the Boards
do precious little of the business. Many private sales of Union ( Gold
Hill) and Yellow Jacket have transpired here during the past week at
much higher prices than you quote those stocks at. Three hundred feet of
Golden Gate changed hands at $100 per foot, and fifty feet at $110; but
a telegram from Virginia yesterday, announcing that they had "struck
it"--and moderately rich--in the San Francisco, raised both stocks
several figures, as also the Golden Eagle (first south extension of the
Golden Gate), which had been offered the day before at $30 a foot. Two
hundred feet of Oriental were sold at private sale to-day at $7 a foot.
Now, you hear no talk in Virginia but the extraordinary dullness of the
San Francisco market. Humbug! It may be dull in the Boards, but it is
lively enough on the street. If you doubt it, say so, and I will move
around a little and furnish you with all the statistics you want.

I meant to say something glowing and poetical about the weather, but the
Unreliable has come in and driven away refined emotion from my breast.
He says: "Say it's bully, you tallow brained idiot! that's enough;
anybody can understand that; don't write any of those infernal, sick
platitudes about sweet flowers, and joyous butterflies, and worms and
things, for people to read before breakfast. You make a fool of yourself
that way; everybody gets disgusted with you; stuff! be a man or a mouse,
can't you?"

I must go out now with this conceited ass--there is no other way to get
rid of him.

MARK TWAIN

Territorial Enterprise, June 21-24, 1863

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN

ALL ABOUT FASHIONS

SAN FRANCISCO, June 19.

EDS. ENTERPRISE:--I have just received, per Wells-Fargo, the following
sweet scented little note, written in a microscopic hand in the center
of a delicate sheet of paper--like a wedding invitation or a funeral
notice--and I feel it my duty to answer it:

VIRGINIA, June 16.

"MR. MARK TWAIN:--Do tell us something about the fashions. I am dying to
know what the ladies of San Francisco are wearing. Do, now, tell us all
you know about it, won't you? Pray excuse brevity, for I am in such a
hurry. BETTIE.

"P. S.--Please burn this as soon as you have read it."

"Do tell us"--and she is in "such a hurry." Well, I never knew a girl in
my life who could write three consecutive sentences without italicising
a word. They can't do it, you know. Now, if I had a wife, and
she--however, I don't think I shall have one this week, and it is hardly
worthwhile to borrow trouble.

Bettie, my love, you do me proud. In thus requesting me to fix up the
fashions for you in an intelligent manner, you pay a compliment to my
critical and observant eye and my varied and extensive information,
which a mind less perfectly balanced than mine could scarcely
contemplate without excess of vanity. Will I tell you something about
the fashions? I will, Bettie--you better bet you bet, Betsey, my
darling. I learned those expressions from the Unreliable; like all the
phrases which fall from his lips, they are frightfully vulgar--but then
they sound rather musical than otherwise.

A happy circumstance has put it in my power to furnish you the fashions
from headquarters--as it were, Bettie: I refer to the assemblage of
fashion, elegance and loveliness called together in the parlor of the
Lick House last night--[a party given by the proprietors on the occasion
of my paying up that little balance due on my board bill.] I will give a
brief and lucid description of the dresses worn by several of the ladies
of my acquaintance who were present. Mrs. B. was arrayed in a superb
speckled foulard, with the stripes running fore and aft, and with
collets and camails to match; also, a rotonde of Chantilly lace,
embroidered with blue and yellow dogs, and birds and things, done in
cruel, and edged with a Solferino fringe four inches deep--lovely. Mrs.
B. is tall, and graceful and beautiful, and the general effect of her
costume was to render her appearance extremely lively.

Miss J. W. wore a charming robe polonais of scarlet ruche a la vieille,
with yellow fluted flounces of rich bombazine, fourteen inches wide;
low neck and short sleeves; also a Figaro veste of bleached
domestic--selvedge edge turned down with a back-stitch, and trimmed with
festoons of blue chicoree taffetas--gay?--I reckon not. Her head-dress
was the sweetest thing you ever saw: a bunch of stately ostrich
plumes--red and white--springing like fountains above each ear, with a
crown between, consisting of a single fleur de soliel, fresh from the
garden--Ah, me! Miss W. looked enchantingly pretty; however, there was
nothing unusual about that--I have seen her look so, even in a milder
costume.

Mrs. J. B. W. wore a heavy rat-colored brocade silk, studded with large
silver stars, and trimmed with organdy; balloon sleeves of nankeen
pique, gathered at the wrist, cut bias and hollowed out some at
the elbow; also, a bournous of black Honiton lace, scolloped, and
embroidered in violent colors with a battle piece representing the
taking of Holland by the Dutch; low neck and high-heeled shoes; gloves;
palm leaf fan; hoops; her head-dress consisted of a simple maroon
colored Sontag, with festoons of blue illusion depending from it; upon
her bosom reposed a gorgeous bouquet of real sage brush, imported from
Washoe. Mrs. W. looked regally handsome. If every article of dress
worn by her on this occasion had been multiplied seven times, I do not
believe it would have improved her appearance any.

Miss C. wore an elegant Cheveux de la Reine (with ruffles and furbelows
trimmed with bands of guipre round the bottom), and a mohair Garibaldi
shirt; her unique head-dress was crowned with a graceful pomme de terre
(Limerick French), and she had her hair done up in papers--greenbacks.
The effect was very rich, partly owing to the market value of the
material, and partly to the general loveliness of the lady herself.

Miss A. H. wore a splendid Lucia de Lammermoor, trimmed with green
baize: also, a cream-colored mantilla shaped pardessus, with a deep gore
in the neck, and embellished with a wide greque of taffetas ribbon, and
otherwise garnished with ruches, and radishes and things. Her coiffure
was a simple wreath of sardines on a string. She was lovely to a fault.

Now, what do you think of that effort, Bettie (I wish I knew your other
name) for an unsanctified newspaper reporter, devoid of a milliner's
education? Doesn't it strike you that there are more brains and fewer
oysters in my head than a casual acquaintance with me would lead one to
suppose? Ah, well--what I don't know, Bet, is hardly worth the finding
out, I can tell you. I could have described the dresses of all
the ladies in that party, but I was afraid to meddle with those of
strangers, because I might unwittingly get something wrong, and give
offense. You see strangers never exercise any charity in matters of
this kind--they always get mad at the least inaccuracies of description
concerning their apparel, and make themselves disagreeable. But if you
will just rig yourself up according to the models I have furnished you,
Bets, you'll do, you know--you can weather the circus.

You will naturally wish to be informed as to the most fashionable style
of male attire, and I may as well give you an idea of my own personal
appearance at the party. I wore one of Mr. Lawlor's shirts, and Mr.
Ridgway's vest, and Dr. Wayman's coat, and Mr. Camp's hat, and Mr.
Paxton's boots, and Jerry Long's white kids, and Judge Gilchrist's
cravat, and the Unreliable's brass seal-ring, and Mr. Tollroad
McDonald's pantaloons--and if you have an idea that they are anyways
short in the legs, do you just climb into them once, sweetness. The
balance of my outfit I gathered up indiscriminately from various
individuals whose names I have forgotten and have now no means of
ascertaining, as I thoughtlessly erased the marks from the different
garments this morning. But I looked salubrious, B., if ever a man did.

Territorial Enterprise, August 2, 1863

A DUEL PREVENTED

WHEREAS, Thomas Fitch, editor of the Union, having taken umbrage at an
article headed "The Virginia Union--not the Federal," written by Joseph
T. Goodman, our chief editor, and published in these columns; and
whereas said Fitch having challenged said Goodman to mortal combat,
naming John Church as his "friend;" and whereas the said Goodman having
accepted said challenge, and chosen Thos. Peasley to appoint the means
of death--

Therefore, on Friday afternoon it was agreed between the two seconds
that the battle should transpire at nine o'clock yesterday morning
(which would have been late in the day for most duelists, but it was
fearfully early for newspaper men to have to get up)--place, the foot
of the canon below the Gould & Curry mill; weapons, navy six-shooters;
distance, fifteen paces; conditions, the first fire to be delivered at
the word, the others to follow at the pleasure of the targets, as long
as a chamber in their pistols remained loaded. To say that we felt a
little proud to think that in our official capacity we were about to
rise above the recording of ordinary street broils and the monotonous
transactions of the Police Court to delineate the ghastly details of a
real duel, would be to use the mildest of language. Much as we deplored
the state of things which was about to invest us with a new dignity, we
could not help taking much comfort in the reflection that it was out
of our power, and also antagonistic to the principles of our class,
to prevent the state of things above mentioned. All conscientious
scruples--all generous feelings must give way to our inexorable
duty--which is to keep the public mind in a healthy state of excitement,
and experience has taught us that blood alone can do this. At midnight,
in company with young Wilson, we took a room at the International,
to the end that through the vigilance of the watchman we might not be
suffered to sleep until past nine o'clock. The policy was good--our
strategy was faultless. At six o'clock in the morning we were on the
street, feeling as uncomfortable in the gray dawn as many another early
bird that founded its faith upon the inevitable worm and beheld too
late that that worm had failed to come to time, for the friends of the
proposed deceased were interfering to stop the duel, and the officers
of the law were seconding their efforts. But the two desperadoes finally
gave these meddlers the slip, and drove off with their seconds to the
dark and bloody ground. Whereupon young Wilson and ourself at once
mounted a couple of Olin's fast horses and followed in their wake at the
rate of a mile a minute.

Since then we enjoy more real comfort in standing up than sitting down,
being neither iron-clad nor even half-soled. But we lost our bloody
item at last--for Marshal Perry arrived early with a detachment of
constables, and also Deputy Sheriff Blodgett came with a lot of blasted
Sheriffs, and the battle ground lying and being in Storey county, these
miserable, meddling whelps arrested the whole party and marched them
back to town. And at the very moment that we were suffering for a duel.
The whole force went off down there and left the city at the mercy of
thieves and incendiaries. Now, that is about all the strategy those
fellows know. We have only to add that Goodman and Fitch were obliged to
give bonds in the sum of $5,000 each to keep the peace, and if anything
were lacking to make this robbery of the reporters complete, that last
circumstance furnished the necessary material. In interfering with our
legitimate business, Mr. Perry and Mr. Blodgett probably think they are
almighty smart, but we calculate to get even with them.

Territorial Enterprise, August 4, 1863

[portion of original]

AN APOLOGY REPUDIATED

We are to blame for giving "the Unreliable" an opportunity to
misrepresent us, and therefore refrain from repining to any great extent
at the result. We simply claim the right to deny the truth of every
statement made by him in yesterday's paper, to annul all apologies he
coined as coming from us, and to hold him up to public commiseration as
a reptile endowed with no more intellect, no more cultivation, no more
Christian principle than animates and adorns the sportive jackass rabbit
of the Sierras. We have done.

Territorial Enterprise, Aug. 19, 1863

[from Steamboat Springs, Nevada Territory; dated August 18, 1863]

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN

EDS. ENTERPRISE: Never mind the date--I haven't known what day of the
month it was since the fourth of July. In reality, I am not well enough
to write, but am angry now, and like our old Methodist parson at home in
Missouri, who started in to produce rain by a season of fervent prayer,
"I'll do it or bust." I notice in this morning's ENTERPRISE a lame,
impotent abortion of a biography of Marshal Perry, and I cannot
understand what you mean by it. You either want to impose upon the
public with an incorrect account of that monster's career (compiled from
items furnished by himself, I'll warrant), or else you wish to bring
into disrepute my own biography of him, which is the only correct and
impartial one ever published. Which is it? If you really desired that
the people should know the man they were expected to vote for, why did
you not republish that history? By referring to it you will see that
your own has not a word of truth in it. Jack Perry has made you believe
he was born in New York, when in reality he was born in New Jersey; he
has told you he was a pressman--on the contrary, he is by occupation a
shoemaker,--by nature a poet, and by instinct a great moral humbug. If
I chose, I could enumerate a dozen more instances to prove that, in his
own vulgar phraseology, Jack Perry has successfully played you for a
Chinaman. I suppose if he had told you the size of his boots was No. 5,
you wouldn't have known enough to refrain from publishing the absurdity.
Now the next time you want any facts about Jack Perry, perhaps you had
better refer to the standard biography compiled by myself, or else let
me hash them up for you. You have rushed into these biographies like a
crazy man, and I suppose you have found out by this time that you are no
more fitted for that sort of thing than I am for a circus rider (which
painfully reminds me that my last horseback trip at Lake Bigler, on that
razor-bladed beast of Tom Nye's, has lengthened my legs and shortened
my body some). If I could devote more time to composition and less to
coughing, I would write all those candidates' biographies over again,
just to show you how little you know about it.

I must have led a gay life at Lake Bigler, for it seems a month since I
flew up there on the Pioneer coach, alongside of Hank Monk, the king of
stage drivers. But I couldn't cure my cold. I was too careless. I
went to the lake (Lake Bigler I must beg leave to call it still,
notwithstanding, if I recollect rightly, it is known among sentimental
people as either Tahoe Lake or Yahoo Lake--however, one of the last
will do as well as the other, since there is neither sense nor music
in either of them), with a voice like a bull frog, and by indulging
industriously in reckless imprudence, I succeeded in toning it down to
an impalpable whisper in the course of seven days. I left there in the
Pioneer coach at half-past one on Monday morning, in company with Mayor
Arick, Mr. Boruck and young Wilson (a nice party for a Christian to
travel with, I admit), and arrived in Carson at five o'clock--three
hours and a half out. As nearly as I can estimate it, we came down the
grade at the rate of a hundred miles an hour; and if you do not know how
frightfully deep those mountain gorges look, let me recommend that you
go, also, and skim along their edges at the dead of night.

I left Carson at two o'clock with Dyer--Dyer, the polite Dyer, the
accommodating--Dyer, of the Carson and Steamboat stage line, and reached
the Steamboat Springs Hotel at dusk, where all others who are weary and
hungry are invited to come, and be handsomely provided for by Messrs.
Holmes & Stowe. At Washoe we ate a supper of unimpeachable squareness at
the Washoe Exchange, where I found Hon. J. K. Lovejoy, Dr. Bowman, and
Captain Rawlings--there may have been other old acquaintances present,
but the champagne that Lovejoy drank confused my vision so much that
I cannot recollect whether there were or not. I learned here that the
people who own ranches along Steamboat creek are very indignant at Judge
Mott for granting an injunction to the Pleasant Valley Mill Company,
whereby they are prohibited from using the water in the stream upon
their lands. They say the mill company purchased the old Smith ranch and
that portion of the creek which passes through it, and now they assume
the right to deprive ranchmen owning property two or three miles above
their lines from irrigating their lands with water which the mill
company never before pretended to claim.

They further state that the mill men gave bonds in the trivial sum of
$1,000, whereas the damage already done the crops by the withdrawal of
the water amounts to more than $20,000. Again, the idea is that the mill
men need the water to wet a new ditch which they have been digging,
and after that is accomplished they will pay the amount of the bond
and withdraw the injunction. More over--so the story runs--Judge Mott
promised a decision in the case three weeks ago, and has not kept his
word. The citizens of Galena, in mass meeting assembled, have drawn up
a petition praying that the Judge will redress their grievances to-day,
with out further delay. If the prayer is unheeded, they will turn the
water on their ranches to-morrow in defiance of the order of the court.
I believe I have recounted all these facts just as I got them; but if
I haven't, I can't help it, because I have lost my note-book again.
I think I could lose a thousand note-books a week if I had them. And,
moreover, if you can ferret out the justice of the above proceedings,
you are a better lawyer than I am--and here comes Orrick Johnson's
Virginia stage again, and I shall have to fling in my benediction before
I sing the doxology, as usual. Somehow or other, I can never get through
with what I have to say.

MARK TWAIN

Territorial Enterprise, Aug. 25, 1863

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS HOTEL,

August 23, 1863.

THE SPRINGS.

EDS. ENTERPRISE: I have overstepped my furlough a full week--but then
this is a pleasant place to pass one's time. These springs are ten miles
from Virginia, six or seven from Washoe City and twenty from Carson.
They are natural--the devil boils the water, and the white steam puffs
up out of creviccs in the earth, along the summits of a series of low
mounds extending in an irregular semi-circle for more than a mile. The
water is impregnated with a dozen different minerals, each one of
which smells viler than its fellow, and the sides of the springs are
embellished with very pretty parti-colored incrustations deposited by
the water. From one spring the boiling water is ejected a foot or more
by the infernal force at work below, and in the vicinity of all of them
one can hear a constant rumbling and surging, somewhat resembling the
noises peculiar to a steamboat in motion--hence the name.

THE HOTEL.

The Steamboat Springs Hotel is very pleasantly situated on a grassy
flat, a stone's throw from the hospital and the bath houses. It is
capable of accommodating a great many guests. The rooms are large,
"hard-finished" and handsomely furnished; there is an abundant supply of
pure water, which can be carried to every part of the house, in case of
fire, by means of hose; the table is furnished with fresh vegetables
and meats from the numerous fine ranches in the valley, and lastly, Mr.
Stowe is a pleasant and accommodating landlord, and is ably seconded by
Messrs. Haines, Ellsworth and Bingham. These gentlemen will never allow
you to get ill-humored for want of polite attention--as I gratefully
remember, now, when I recall the stormy hours of Friday, when that
accursed "Wake-up Jake" was in me. But I haven't got to that, yet.
God bless us! it is a world of trouble, and we are born to sorrow
and tribulation--yet, am I chiefest among sinners, that I should be
prematurely damned with "Wake-up Jake," while others not of the elect
go free? I am trying to go on with my letter, but this thing bothers me;
verily, from having "Wake-up Jake" on the stomach for three days, I
have finally got it on the brain. I am grateful for the change. But I
digress.

THE HOSPITAL.

Dr. Ellis, the proprietor of the Springs, has erected a large,
tastefully designed, and comfortable and well ventilated hospital, close
to the bath-houses, and it is constantly filled with patients afflicted
with all manner of diseases. It would be a very profitable institution,
but a great many who come to it half dead, and leave it again restored
to robust health, forget to pay for the benefits they have received.
Others, when they arrive, confess at once that they are penniless,
yet few men could look upon the sunken cheeks of these, and upon their
attenuated forms and their pleading, faded eyes, and refuse them the
shelter and assistance we all may need some day. Without expectation of
reward, Dr. Ellis gives back life, hope and health to many a despairing,
poverty stricken devil; and when I think of this, it seems so strange
that he could have had the meanness to give me that "Wake up-Jake."
However, I am wandering away from the subject again. All diseases
(except confirmed consumption,) are treated successfully here. A
multitude of invalids have attended these baths during the past three
years, yet only an insignificant number of deaths have occurred among
them. I want to impress one thing upon you: it is a mistaken notion that
these Springs were created solely for the salvation of persons suffering
venereal diseases. True, the fame of the baths rests chiefly upon the
miracles performed upon such patients, and upon others afflicted with
rheumatism, erysipelas, etc., but then all ordinary ailments can be
quickly and pleasantly cured here without a resort to deadly physic.
More than two-thirds of the people who come here are afflicted with
venereal diseases--fellows who know that if "Steamboat" fails with them
they may as well go to trading feet with the undertaker for a box--yet
all here agree that these baths are none the less potent where other
diseases are concerned. I know lots of poor, feeble wretches in Virginia
who could get a new lease of life by soaking their shadows in Steamboat
Springs for a week or two. However, I must pass on to

THE BATHS.

My friend Jim Miller has charge of these. Within a few days the new
bath-house will be finished, and then twelve persons may bathe at once,
or if they be sociable and choose to go on the double-bed principle,
four times as many can enjoy the luxury at the same time. Persons
afflicted with loathsome diseases use bath-rooms which are never entered
by the other patients. You get up here about six o'clock in the morning
and walk over to the bath-house; you undress in an ante room and take a
cold shower-bath--or let it alone, if you choose; then you step into
a sort of little dark closet floored with a wooden grating, up through
which come puffs and volumes of the hottest steam you ever performed to,
(because the awkwardest of us feel a hankering to waltz a little under
such circumstances, you know), and then if you are alone, you resolve to
have company thenceforward, since to swap comments upon your sensations
with a friend, must render the dire heatless binding upon the human
constitution. I had company always, and it was the pleasantest thing in
the world to see a thin-skinned invalid cavorting around in the vapory
obscurity, marveling at the rivers of sweat that coursed down his
body, cursing the villainous smell of the steam and its bitter, salty
taste--groping around meanwhile, for a cold corner, and backing finally,
into the hottest one, and darting out again in a second, only remarking
"Outch!"--and repeating it when he sits down, and springs up the
same moment off the hot bench. This was fun of the most comfortable
character; but nothing could be more agreeable than to put your eye
to the little square hole in the door, and see your boiled and smoking
comrade writhing under the cold shower-bath, to see him shrink till his
shoulders are level with the top of his head, and then shut his eyes
and gasp and catch his breath, while the cruel rain pattered down on his
back and sent a ghastly shiver through every fibre of his body. It will
always be a comfort to me to recall these little incidents. After the
shower-bath, you return to the ante-room and scrub yourself all over
with coarse towels until your hide glows like a parlor carpet--after
which, you feel as elastic and vigorous as an acrobat. Then if you are
sensible, you take no exercise, but just eat your breakfast and go to
bed--you will find that an hour's nap will not hurt you any.

THE WAKE-UP-JAKE.

A few days ago I fell a victim to my natural curiosity and my
solicitude for the public weal. Everybody had something to say about
"wake-up-Jake." If a man was low-spirited; if his appetite failed
him; if he did not sleep well at night; if he were costive; if he were
bilious; or in love; or in any other kind of trouble; or if he doubted
the fidelity of his friends or the efficacy of his religion, there was
always some one at his elbow to whisper, "Take a 'wake-up,' my boy." I
sought to fathom the mystery, but all I could make out of it was that
the "Wake-up Jake" was a medicine as powerful as "the servants of the
lamp," the secret of whose decoction was hidden away in Dr. Ellis'
breast. I was not aware that I had any use for the wonderful "wake-up,"
but then I felt it to be my duty to try it, in order that a suffering
public might profit by my experience--and I would cheerfully see that
public suffer perdition before I would try it again. I called upon Dr.
Ellis with the air of a man who would create the impression that he
is not so much of an ass as he looks, and demanded a "Wake up-Jake" as
unostentatiously as if that species of refreshment were not at all new
to me. The Doctor hesitated a moment, and then fixed up as repulsive a
mixture as ever was stirred together in a table-spoon. I swallowed
the nauseous mess, and that one meal sufficed me for the space of
forty-eight hours. And during all that time, I could not have enjoyed a
viler taste in my mouth if I had swallowed a slaughter-house. I lay down
with all my clothes on, and with an utter indifference to my fate here
or hereafter, and slept like a statue from six o'clock until noon. I got
up, then, the sickest man that ever yearned to vomit and couldn't. All
the dead and decaying matter in nature seemed buried in my stomach, and
I "heaved, and retched, and heaved again," but I could not compass a
resurrection--my dead would not come forth. Finally, after rumbling, and
growling, and producing agony and chaos within me for many hours, the
dreadful dose began its work, and for the space of twelve hours it
vomited me, and purged me, and likewise caused me to bleed at the nose.

I came out of that siege as weak as an infant, and went to the bath with
Palmer, of Wells, Fargo & Co., and it was well I had company, for it was
about all he could do to keep me from boiling the remnant of my life out
in the hot steam. I had reached that stage wherein a man experiences
a solemn indifference as to whether school keeps or not. Since then, I
have gradually regained my strength and my appetite, and am now animated
by a higher degree of vigor than I have felt for many a day. 'Tis well.
This result seduces many a man into taking a second, and even a third
"wake-up-Jake," but I think I can worry along without any more of them.
I am about as thoroughly waked up now as I care to be. My stomach never
had such a scouring out since I was born. I feel like a jug. If I could
get young Wilson or the Unreliable to take a "wake-up Jake," I would do
it, of course, but I shall never swallow another myself--I would sooner
have a locomotive travel through me. And besides, I never intend
to experiment in physic any more, just out of idle curiosity. A
"wake-up-Jake" will furbish a man's machinery up and give him a fresh
start in the world--but I feel I shall never need anything of that sort
any more. It would put robust health, and life and vim into young Wilson
and the Unreliable--but then they always look with suspicion upon any
suggestion that I make.

GOOD-BYE.

Well, I am going home to Virginia to-day, though I dislike to part from
the jolly boys (not to mention iced milk for breakfast, with eggs laid
to order, and spiced oysters after midnight with the Reverend Jack
Holmes and Bingham) at the Steamboat Springs Hotel. In conclusion, let
me recommend to such of my fellow citizens as are in feeble health, or
are wearied out with the cares of business, to come down and try the
hotel, and the steam baths, and the facetious "wake up-Jake." These will
give them rest, and moving recreation--as it were.

MARK TWAIN

Territorial Enterprise, August 27, 1863

LOCAL COLUMN

YE BULLETIN CYPHERETH.--The Bulletin folks have gone and swallowed an
arithmetic; that arithmetic has worked them like a "wake up-Jake," and
they have spewed up a multitude of figures. We cypher up the importance
of the Territory sometimes so recklessly that our self-respect lies
torpid within us for weeks afterwards--but we see now that our most
preposterous calculations have been as mild as boardinghouse milk; we
perceive that we haven't the nerve to do up this sort of thing with
the Bulletin. It estimates the annual yield of the precious metals at
$730,000,000! Bully! They say figures don't lie--but we doubt it. We
are distanced--that must be confessed; yet, appalled as we are, we will
venture upon the Bulletin's "boundless waste" of figures, and take the
chances. A Gould & Curry bar with $2,000 in it weighs nearly 100 pounds;
$100,000 worth of their bullion would weigh between two and two and
a half tons; it would take two of Wells Fargo's stages to carry that
$100,000 without discommoding the passengers; it would take 100 stages
to carry $5,000,000, 2,000 stages to carry $100,000,000, and 14,600
stages to carry the Bulletin's annual yield of $730,000,000! Wells,
Fargo & Co. transport all the bullion out of the Territory in their
coaches, and to attend to this little job, they would have to send
forty stages over the mountains daily throughout the year, Sundays not
excepted, and make each of the forty carry considerably more than a ton
of bullion!--yet they generally send only two stages, and the greatest
number in one day, during the heaviest rush, was six coaches; they
didn't each carry a ton of bullion, though, old smarty from Hongkong.
The Bulletin also estimates the average yield of ore from our mines at
$1,000 a ton! Bless your visionary soul, sixty dollars--where they get
it "regular like"--is considered good enough in Gold Hill, and it is a
matter of some trouble to pick out many tons that will pay $400. From
sixty to two hundred is good rock in the Ophir, and when that company,
or the Gould & Curry, or the Spanish, or any other of our big companies
get into a chamber that pays over $500, they ship it to the Bay, my boy.
But they don't ship thousands of tons at a time, you know. In Esmeralda
and Humboldt, ordinary "rich rock" yields $100 to $200, and when better
is found, it is shipped also. Reese River appears to be very rich, but
you can't make an "average" there yet awhile; let her mines be developed
first. We place the average yield of the ore of our Territory at $100
a ton--that is high enough; we couldn't starve, easily, on forty-dollar
rock. Lastly, the Bulletin puts the number of our mills at 150. That is
another mistake; the number will not go over a hundred, and we would not
be greatly amazed if it even fell one or two under that. While we are on
the subject, though, we might as well estimate the "annual yield" of
the precious metals, also; we did not intend to do it at first. Mr.
Valentine, Wells Fargo's handsome and accomplished agent, has handled
all the bullion shipped through the Virginia office for many a month.
To his memory--which is excellent--we are indebted for the following
exhibit of the company's business in the Virginia office since the first
of January, 1862: From January 1st to April 1st, about $270,000 worth of
bullion passed through that office; during the next quarter, $570,000;
next quarter, $800,000; next quarter, $956,000; next quarter,
$1,275,000; and for the quarter ending on the 30th of last June, about
$1,600,000. Thus in a year and a half, the Virginia office only shipped
$5,330,000 in bullion. During the year 1862 they shipped $2,615,000, so
we perceive the average shipments have more than doubled in the last six
months. This gives us room to promise for the Virginia office $500,000
a month for the year 1863, and now, perhaps, judging by the
steady increase in the business, we too, like the Bulletin, are
"underestimating," somewhat. This gives us $6,000,000 for the year. Gold
Hill and Silver City together can beat us--we will give them eight, no,
to be liberal, $10,000,000. To Dayton, Empire City, Ophir and Carson
City, we will allow an aggregate of $8,000,000, which is not over the
mark, perhaps, and may possibly be a little under it. To Esmeralda
we give $4,000,000. To Reese River and Humboldt $2,000,000, which is
liberal now, but may not be before the year is out. So we prognosticate
that the yield of bullion this year will be about $30,000,000. Placing
the number of mills in the Territory at 100, this gives to each the
labor of $300,000 in bullion during the twelve months. Allowing them to
run 300 days in the year, (which none of them more than do) this makes
their work average $ 1,000 a day--one ton of the Bulletin's rock, or ten
of ours. Say the mills average 20 tons of rock a day and this rock worth
$50 as a general thing, and you have got the actual work of our
100 mills figured down just about to a spot--$1,000 a day each, and
$30,000,000 a year in the aggregate. Oh no!--we have never been to
school--we don't know how to cypher. Certainly not--we are probably
a natural fool, but we don't know it. Anyhow, we have mashed the
Bulletin's estimate all out of shape and cut the first left-hand figure
off its $730,000,000 as neatly as a regular banker's clerk could have
done it.

Territorial Enterprise, September 4-5, 1863

BIGLER VS. TAHOE

I hope some bird will catch this Grub the next time he calls Lake Bigler
by so disgustingly sick and silly a name as "Lake Tahoe." I have removed
the offensive word from his letter and substituted the old one, which
at least has a Christian English twang about it whether it is pretty
or not. Of course Indian names are more fitting than any others for our
beautiful lakes and rivers, which knew their race ages ago, perhaps, in
the morning of creation, but let us have none so repulsive to the ear as
"Tahoe" for the beautiful relic of fairy-land forgotten and left asleep
in the snowy Sierras when the little elves fled from their ancient
haunts and quitted the earth. They say it means "Fallen Leaf"--well
suppose it meant fallen devil or fallen angel, would that render its
hideous, discordant syllables more endurable? Not if I know myself.
I yearn for the scalp of the soft-shell crab--be he injun or white
man--who conceived of that spoony, slobbering, summer-complaint of a
name. Why, if I had a grudge against a half-price nigger, I wouldn't be
mean enough to call him by such an epithet as that; then, how am I to
hear it applied to the enchanted mirror that the viewless spirits of the
air make their toilets by, and hold my peace? "Tahoe"--it sounds as
weak as soup for a sick infant. "Tahoe" be--forgotten! I just saved my
reputation that time. In conclusion, "Grub," I mean to start to Lake
Bigler myself, Monday morning, or somebody shall come to grief.

MARK TWAIN.

Territorial Enterprise, September 17, 1863

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN

SAN FRANCISCO, September 13, 1863

OVER THE MOUNTAINS

EDITORS ENTERPRISE: The trip from Virginia to Carson by Messrs.
Carpenter & Hoog's stage is a pleasant one, and from thence over the
mountains by the Pioneer would be another, if there were less of it. But
you naturally want an outside seat in the day time, and you feel a good
deal like riding inside when the cold night winds begin to blow; yet if
you commence your journey on the outside, you will find that you will
be allowed to enjoy the desire I speak of unmolested from twilight to
sunrise. An outside seat is preferable, though, day or night. All you
want to do is to prepare for it thoroughly. You should sleep forty-eight
hours in succession before starting so that you may not have to do
anything of that kind on the box. You should also take a heavy overcoat
with you. I did neither. I left Carson feeling very miserable for want
of sleep, and the voyage from there to Sacramento did not refresh me
perceptibly. I took no overcoat and I almost shivered the shirt off
myself during that long night ride from Strawberry Valley to Folsom.
Our driver was a very companionable man, though, and this was a happy
circumstance for me, because, being drowsy and worn out, I would have
gone to sleep and fallen overboard if he had not enlivened the dreary
hours with his conversation. Whenever I stopped coughing, and went to
nodding, he always watched me out of the corner of his eye until I got
to pitching in his direction, and then he would stir me up and inquire
if I were asleep. If I said "No" (and I was apt to do that), he always
said "it was a bully good thing for me that I warn't, you know," and
then went on to relate cheerful anecdotes of people who had got to
nodding by his side when he wasn't noticing, and had fallen off and
broken their necks. He said he could see those fellows before him now,
all jammed and bloody and quivering in death's agony--"G'lang! d--n that
horse, he knows there's a parson and an old maid in side, and that's
what makes him cut up so; I've saw him act jes' so more'n a thousand
times!" The driver always lent an additional charm to his conversation
by mixing his horrors and his general information together in this way.
"Now," said he, after urging his team at a furious speed down the grade
for a while, plunging into deep bends in the road brimming with a thick
darkness almost palpable to the touch, and darting out again and again
on the verge of what instinct told me was a precipice, "Now, I seen a
poor cuss--but you're asleep again, you know, and you've rammed your
head agin' my side-pocket and busted a bottle of nasty rotten medicine
that I'm taking to the folks at the Thirty-five Mile House; do you
notice that flavor? ain't it a ghastly old stench? The man that takes
it down there don't live on anything else it's vittles and drink to him;
anybody that ain't used to him can't go a-near him; he'd stun
'em--he'd suffocate 'em; his breath smells like a grave yard after an
earthquake--you Bob! I allow to skelp that ornery horse, yet, if he
keeps on this way; you see he's been on the over land till about two
weeks ago, and every stump he sees he cal'lates it's an Injun." I was
awake by this time, holding on with both hands and bouncing up and down
just as I do when I ride a horse back. The driver took up the thread of
his discourse and proceeded to soothe me again: "As I was a saying,
I see a poor cuss tumble off along here one night--he was monstrous
drowsy, and went to sleep when I'd took my eye off of him for a
moment--and he fetched up agin a boulder, and in a second there wasn't
anything left of him but a promiscus pile of hash! It was moonlight,
and when I got down and looked at him he was quivering like jelly, and
sorter moaning to himself, like, and the bones of his legs was sticking
out through his pantaloons every which way, like that." ( Here the
driver mixed his fingers up after the manner of a stack of muskets, and
illuminated them with the ghostly light of his cigar.) "He warn't in
misery long though. In a minute and a half he was deader'n a smelt--Bob!
I say I'll cut that horse's throat if he stays on this route another
week." In this way the genial driver caused the long hours to pass
sleeplessly away, and if he drew upon his imagination for his fearful
histories, I shall be the last to blame him for it, because if they had
taken a milder form I might have yielded to the dullness that oppressed
me, and got my own bones smashed out of my hide in such a way as to
render me useless forever after--unless, perhaps, some one chose to turn
me to account as an uncommon sort of hat-rack.

MR. BILLET IS COMPLIMENTED BY A STRANGER

Not a face in either stage was washed from the time we left Carson until
we arrived in Sacramento; this will give you an idea of how deep the
dust lay on those faces when we entered the latter town at eight o'clock
on Monday morning. Mr. Billet, of Virginia, came in our coach, and
brought his family with him--Mr. R. W. Billet of the great Washoe Stock
and Exchange Board of Highwaymen--and instead of turning his complexion
to a dirty cream color, as it generally serves white folks, the dust
changed it to the meanest possible shade of black: however, Billet isn't
particularly white, anyhow, even under the most favorable circumstances.
He stepped into an office near the railroad depot, to write a note, and
while he was at it, several lank, gawky, indolent immigrants, fresh
from the plains, gathered around him. Missourians--Pikes--I can tell
my brethren as far as I can see them. They seemed to admire Billet very
much, and the faster he wrote the higher their admiration rose in their
faces, until it finally boiled over in words, and one of my countrymen
ejaculated in his neighbor's ear,--"Dang it, but he writes mighty well
for a nigger!"

THE MENKEN--WRITTEN ESPECIALLY FOR GENTLEMEN

When I arrived in San Francisco, I found there was no one in town--at
least there was no body in town but "the Menken"--or rather, that no one
was being talked about except that manly young female. I went to see her
play "Mazeppa," of course. They said she was dressed from head to foot
in flesh-colored "tights," but I had no opera-glass, and I couldn't see
it, to use the language of the inelegant rabble. She appeared to me to
have but one garment on--a thin tight white linen one, of unimportant
dimensions; I forget the name of the article, but it is indispensable to
infants of tender age--I suppose any young mother can tell you what
it is, if you have the moral courage to ask the question. With the
exception of this superfluous rag, the Menken dresses like the Greek
Slave; but some of her postures are not so modest as the suggestive
attitude of the latter. She is a finely formed woman down to her knees;
if she could be herself that far, and Mrs. H. A. Perry the rest of the
way, she would pass for an unexceptionable Venus. Here every tongue
sings the praises of her matchless grace, her supple gestures, her
charming attitudes. Well, possibly, these tongues are right. In the
first act, she rushes on the stage, and goes cavorting around after
"Olinska"; she bends herself back like a bow; she pitches headforemost
at the atmosphere like a battering ram; she works her arms, and her
legs, and her whole body like a dancing-jack: her every movement is as
quick as thought; in a word, without any apparent reason for it, she
carries on like a lunatic from the beginning of the act to the end of
it. At other times she "whallops" herself down on the stage, and rolls
over as does the sportive pack-mule after his burden is removed. If
this be grace then the Menken is eminently graceful. After a while
they proceed to strip her, and the high chief Pole calls for the "fiery
untamed steed"; a subordinate Pole brings in the fierce brute, stirring
him up occasionally to make him run away, and then hanging to him like
death to keep him from doing it; the monster looks round pensively upon
the brilliant audience in the theatre, and seems very willing to stand
still--but a lot of those Poles grab him and hold on to him, so as to be
prepared for him in case he changes his mind. They are posted as to his
fiery untamed nature, you know, and they give him no chance to get loose
and eat up the orchestra. They strap Mazeppa on his back, fore and aft,
and face upper most, and the horse goes cantering up-stairs over the
painted mountains, through tinted clouds of theatrical mist, in a brisk
exciting way, with the wretched victim he bears unconsciously digging
her heels into his hams, in the agony of her sufferings, to make him go
faster. Then a tempest of applause bursts forth, and the curtain falls.
The fierce old circus horse carries his prisoner around through the back
part of the theatre, behind the scenery, and although assailed at every
step by the savage wolves of the desert, he makes his way at last to his
dear old home in Tartary down by the foot lights, and beholds once more,
O, gods! the familiar faces of the fiddlers in the orchestra. The noble
old steed is happy, then, but poor Mazeppa is insensible--"ginned out"
by his trip, as it were. Before the act closes, however, he is restored
to consciousness and his doting old father, the king of Tartary; and the
next day, without taking time to dress--without even borrowing a shirt,
or stealing a fresh horse--he starts off on the fiery untamed, at the
head of the Tartar nation, to exterminate the Poles, and carry off his
own sweet Olinska from the Polish court. He succeeds, and the curtain
falls upon a bloody combat, in which the Tartars are victorious.
"Mazeppa" proved a great card for Maguire here; he put it on the boards
in first-class style, and crowded houses went crazy over it every night
it was played. But Virginians will soon have an opportunity of seeing it
themselves, as "the Menken" will go direct from our town there without
stopping on the way. The '"French Spy" was played last night and the
night before, and as this spy is a frisky Frenchman, and as dumb as an
oyster, Miss Menken's extravagant gesticulations do not seem so overdone
in it as they do in "Mazeppa." She don't talk well, and as she goes
on her shape and her acting, the character of a fidgety "dummy" is
peculiarly suited to her line of business. She plays the Spy, without
words, with more feeling than she does Mazeppa with them.

I am tired writing, now, so you will get no news in this letter. I have
got a note-book full of interesting hieroglyphics, but I am afraid that
by the time I am ready to write them out, I shall have forgotten what
they mean. The lady who asked me to furnish her with the Lick House
fashions, shall have them shortly--or if I ever get time, I will dish up
those displayed at the great Pioneer ball, at Union Hall, last Wednesday
night.

MARK TWAIN

Territorial Enterprise, October 1863

[portion of original]

First Annual Fair of the Washoe Agricultural, Mining and Mechanical
Society

Carson City, October 19,1863

THE TRIUMPHAL PARADE

Late on Saturday afternoon, after the announcement of the awards in
class A had been made, all the stock that had received premiums formed
in a sort of triumphal procession, with the band at the head, and the
stock following in the order of precedence to which they were entitled
by the decision of the Judges, and marched down to the city, through
the principal streets of which they paraded two or three times back and
forth before final dismissal. The parade of so many fine animals in the
streets was really a very fine sight, and was witnessed by everybody
with much pleasure, being the first grand parade of the kind ever seen
in the Territory.

GREAT PANTOMIME SPEECH

While waiting at the race course on Saturday for the arrival of some of
the officers from the Pavilion, some of the boys belonging to the brass
band in attendance concluded to do what they could for the amusement
of those present, and so took possession of the platform from which the
awards were to be made. One of the party was introduced to the audience
as a very eloquent gentleman, who had volunteered to favor those present
with a speech on the success of the Fair. The speaker took his position
and made a polite bow to his audience, another of the musicians prepared
to take down the speech and the third acted in the capacity of bottle
holder. The speaker soon launched forth, and in a few moments had
worked himself up into a tremendous state of excitement. His lips worked
convulsively, though no sound escaped them. He pointed toward the rocky
peaks of the Sierras, then at the surrounding brown hills, finishing
with a complacent wave of his hand toward the broad valley in which he
stood. He was leaning far over the railing of the platform in the
middle of a most eloquent appeal to the crowd, occasionally pointing
heavenward, when his bottle-holder was suddenly overtaken by a violent
fit of admiration, which he felt constrained to manifest by a most
vigorous stamping upon the boards of the platform--so vigorous that he
burst through one of the boards and hung suspended by the arms. A keg of
nails was kicked over in the row, and the great oratorical effort came
to an end amid the prolonged shouts and cheers of the crowd. I was
favored with a look at the speech as taken down by the reporter, and
give the following extract: "_____! _____! _____? _____! (?)_____;
_____, _____, _____!!! _____." There were some ten pages in the same
style, but as your readers will perhaps be better pleased with the
extract I have given than with the whole speech, as taken down by the
reporter, I will omit the balance.

RACES SATURDAY AFTERNOON

The challenge of "Deuces" against the field on Friday, for $300,
catch-weights, barring "Breckinridge," was accepted by "Kate Mitchell,"
but to-day she was lame and forfeited. After the failure of these horses
to run, a race was gotten up between three Spanish nags, for a purse
of $27.50, single dash of a mile. In starting "Grey Dick" and the black
nag, "Sheep," got off at the tap of the drum, but the sorrel horse
"Split-ear," was held by his owner. "Sheep" and "Grey Dick" dashed
forward, when the cry of "Come back!" was raised by several, also by a
voice or two on the Judges' stand. "Grey Dick's" rider came back,
but the rider of "Sheep" (Johnny Craddock), after riding back a short
distance and ascertaining that the drum had tapped, turned about and
rode leisurely around the track, winning the race and purse, according
to the decision of the Judges and the rules of the Carson Racing Club.
The decision was that once the drum was tapped, it was a go--the riders
not being required to pay any attention to the calls to come back from
anybody. Outside bets were declared drawn. A new race was now made up
between the same nags. Theo. Winters paid the entrance fees for the
three horses, amounting to $15; purse, $20; single dash of a mile. The
horses got a very fair start; on the first quarter "Sheep" got the lead,
"Grey Dick" came next, and "Split-ear" brought up the rear. "Sheep"
still held his own on nearing the home-stretch, but "Grey Dick" soon
began to gain on him, and they were soon head and head. Both riders used
the whip freely on the home-stretch and the race was more stubbornly
contested than any one that has taken place on the track this week. The
betting had been very free on "Sheep" and "Grey Dick," "Sheep" seeming
to be the favorite, and the excitement was intense. "Sheep" passed the
score 6 inches ahead of "Grey Dick," winning the purse; time, 1:58. A
purse of $16.25 was now made up, the same horses to run, single dash of
one mile. "Grey Dick" had the track, "Split-ear" second, "Sheep" third.
The horses got a very good start. "Grey Dick" led for the first half
mile, "Sheep" following closely and "Split-ear" far behind. "Grey Dick"
kept the lead down the home stretch, the others following in about the
same order in which they passed the half mile post, and came in three
lengths ahead of "Sheep," "Split-ear" being three or four hundred yards
behind. "Grey Dick" won the purse; time, 2:08. A purse of $25 was now
made up for a slow race--the slowest horse of the three to win--riders
to change horses. "Split-ear" had the track, "Sheep" second, "Grey Dick"
third. "Sheep's" owners had given him all the water he could drink
on the sly, and from the start he was behind and kept at least three
hundred yards behind all the way round the track, "Grey Dick" came in
first, "Split-ear" second and "Sheep" rolled along far behind. "Sheep"
won the race and purse; time 2:17.

A HINT TO CARSON

There are some things that kept running through my mind while looking
through the city of Carson, and considering the peculiarities of its
site, that I cannot refrain from jotting down here, though not coming
strictly under the head of the Fair. However, they were suggested by
improvements made on the Plaza in preparing for the holding of the Fair,
and may, therefore, be considered as one of its legitimate fruits.
I think that every person who attended the Fair must have been most
forcibly struck with the great improvement made in the appearance of
the Plaza by the planting of evergreens on it in front of and about the
Pavilion; this first led me to consider the site of the town and the
many advantages its location afforded for making it one of the prettiest
and pleasantest cities on the Eastern Slope. Situated on a wide, and
almost level, plain, at but a short distance from the eastern base of
the Sierras, with numerous fine mountain streams tumbling down the hills
behind it, Carson might have every street as well supplied with ditches
of water as are those of Salt Lake City. The water from these ditches
might be made to cause a thousand gardens in the city to "bloom as
the rose." At no very great expense, the water of one of the mountain
streams nearby might be brought upon the Plaza in pipes, and used to
supply fountains in various parts of the grounds; about these fountains
willows and plats of flowers might be planted, which, with a liberal
sprinkling of cottonwood and other trees in various parts, would make it
a far prettier place than the "Willows," near San Francisco. With some
such improvements Carson would be apt to attract nearly all the wealthy
men owning mines and mills, or doing business in this part of the
Territory--they would all wish to reside in or near so pretty and
pleasant a place. If the Plaza was turned into a park as pleasant and
beautiful as it might be made, it would soon become a general place of
resort on Saturdays and Sundays for all the young people, and pleasure
seekers in general, of all the neighboring towns and cities. If the
present Pavilion is allowed to stand where it is, it should be raised at
least six to eight feet higher than it is by putting under it some kind
of basement; then, with a broad flight of steps at the entrance of each
wing, it would be a really imposing edifice, and one that would at once
elicit the admiration of every stranger passing through the town. Mr.
Curry, one of the most public-spirited men in Carson, has already put
a beautiful and substantial fence around the Plaza, and has offered to
build a fountain that will throw a stream some twenty-five feet high,
provided the Water Company, now about supplying water to the city, would
furnish the amount of water needed. The people of Carson have, as I
remarked above, the foundations for the handsomest city on the Eastern
Slope, and the fault will lie with themselves if they don't make it
such.

THE FAIR A SUCCESS AND A VALUABLE LESSON

I have not yet been able to obtain the exact amount of all the receipts
of the Fair, and will therefore defer all mention of sums. The receipts
in full will shortly be obtained and published; I may, however, say that
I heard it stated that the receipts would be much more than adequate to
the liquidation of all outstanding liabilities of the Society, and that
the $2,000 appropriated by the Legislature could be allowed to stand
over untouched for the Fair of next year. A number of the members of the
Society have acted most generously, and done much toward contributing to
the financial success of the institution. Theodore Winters in the start
donated the Society $200; afterwards he presented to the Society all
his winnings, amounting to $225, and has in various other ways aided the
institution to near the amount of $1,000. The owners of the Carson Race
Course, as I took occasion to mention in a former letter, acted in the
most liberal and handsome manner by the Society, in giving them the free
use of all their grounds and buildings, to say nothing of the fact of
their having worked all the week like Trojans for the success of the
Fair. Mr. Gillespie, the Secretary, and many other officers of the
Society, labored day and night during the progress of the exhibition,
that nothing might be left undone that could further the plans or aid
the triumphant result of an institution which too many had predicted
would die in an inglorious fizzle. But we have no "fizzle" to chronicle.
We have not, it is very true, made the grandest display of the kind ever
seen on the Pacific Coast, but there have been much worse. We came
to the exhibition, many of us, with a feeling of dubiousness in our
hearts--half ashamed to tell where we were going, even when on the way.
When we came away, we felt quite proud, held up our heads, and said we'd
"been to the Fair!" We have most of us been dwellers in the mountains
and delvers in the mines, and knew little of the agricultural capacity
of our valleys; we had rather supposed that we should be obliged always
to look to California for our supplies of such articles of farm produce
as we might need; but we have now had a faint glimpse of what may be
done upon our soil, and feel no hesitancy in calling upon all who wish
to till the earth in a land where the soil yields a bountiful return,
and the best market in the world is open at the door of the cultivator,
to come and occupy the land lying ready and free for all settlers. All
who are now engaged in the cultivation of the soil of Washoe, and were
present at the exhibition--and even those who only hear of it from the
reports going forth--will now go to work in greater earnestness and
with more confidence. Especially will this be the case with those
contemplating fruit culture; and we shall expect soon to see orchards in
all our valleys and vineyards gracing the slopes of all our hills.

Territorial Enterprise, October 28, 1863

A BLOODY MASSACRE NEAR CARSON

From Abram Curry, who arrived here yesterday afternoon from Carson,
we have learned the following particulars concerning a bloody massacre
which was committed in Ormsby county night before last. It seems that
during the past six months a man named P. Hopkins, or Philip Hopkins,
has been residing with his family in the old log house just at the
edge of the great pine forest which lies between Empire City and Dutch
Nick's. The family consisted of nine children--five girls and four
boys--the oldest of the group, Mary, being nineteen years old, and the
youngest, Tommy, about a year and a half. Twice in the past two months
Mrs. Hopkins, while visiting in Carson, expressed fears concerning the
sanity of her husband, remarking that of late he had been subject to
fits of violence, and that during the prevalence of one of these he had
threatened to take her life. It was Mrs. Hopkins' misfortune to be given
to exaggeration, however, and but little attention was paid to what she
said. About ten o'clock on Monday evening Hopkins dashed into Carson on
horseback, with his throat cut from ear to ear, and bearing in his hand
a reeking scalp from which the warm, smoking blood was still dripping,
and fell in a dying condition in front of the Magnolia saloon. Hopkins
expired in the course of five minutes, without speaking. The long red
hair of the scalp he bore marked it as that of Mrs. Hopkins. A number of
citizens, headed by Sheriff Gasherie, mounted at once and rode down
to Hopkins' house, where a ghastly scene met their gaze. The scalpless
corpse of Mrs. Hopkins lay across the threshold, with her head split
open and her right hand almost severed from the wrist. Near her lay
the ax with which the murderous deed had been committed. In one of
the bedrooms six of the children were found, one in bed and the
others scattered about the floor. They were all dead. Their brains had
evidently been dashed out with a club, and every mark about them seemed
to have been made with a blunt instrument. The children must have
struggled hard for their lives, as articles of clothing and broken
furniture were strewn about the room in the utmost confusion. Julia
and Emma, aged respectively fourteen and seventeen, were found in the
kitchen, bruised and insensible, but it is thought their recovery is
possible. The eldest girl, Mary, must have taken refuge, in her terror,
in the garret, as her body was found there, frightfully mutilated, and
the knife with which her wounds had been inflicted still sticking in her
side. The two girls, Julia and Emma, who had recovered sufficiently to
be able to talk yesterday morning, state that their father knocked them
down with a billet of wood and stamped on them. They think they were the
first attacked. They further state that Hopkins had shown evidence
of derangement all day, but had exhibited no violence. He flew into a
passion and attempted to murder them because they advised him to go to
bed and compose his mind. Curry says Hopkins was about forty-two years
of age, and a native of Western Pennsylvania; he was always affable and
polite, and until very recently we had never heard of his ill treating
his family. He had been a heavy owner in the best mines of Virginia and
Gold Hill, but when the San Francisco papers exposed the game of cooking
dividends in order to bolster up our stocks he grew afraid and sold out,
and invested to an immense amount in the Spring Valley Water Company of
San Francisco. He was advised to do this by a relative of his, one of
the editors of the San Francisco Bulletin, who had suffered pecuniarily
by the dividend-cooking system as applied to the Daney Mining Company
recently. Hopkins had not long ceased to own in the various claims on
the Comstock lead, however, when several dividends were cooked on his
newly acquired property, their water totally dried up, and Spring Valley
stock went down to nothing. It is presumed that this misfortune drove
him mad and resulted in his killing himself and the greater portion of
his family. The newspapers of San Francisco permitted this water company
to go on borrowing money and cooking dividends, under cover of which
cunning financiers crept out of the tottering concern, leaving the crash
to come upon poor and unsuspecting stockholders, without offering to
expose the villainy at work. We hope the fearful massacre detailed above
may prove the saddest result of their silence.

Territorial Enterprise, October 29, 1863

[the text of this article is from C. A. V. Putman's "Dan De Quille and
Mark Twain," published in the Salt Lake City Tribune on April 25, 1898.
It may be based upon memory and incomplete.]

I TAKE IT ALL BACK

The story published in the Enterprise reciting the slaughter of a family
near Empire was all a fiction. It was understood to be such by all
acquainted with the locality in which the alleged affair occurred. In
the first place, Empire City and Dutch Nick's are one, and in the next
there is no "great pine forest" nearer than the Sierra Nevada mountains.
But it was necessary to publish the story in order to get the fact
into the San Francisco papers that the Spring Valley Water company
was "cooking" dividends by borrowing money to declare them on for its
stockholders. The only way you can get a fact into a San Francisco
journal is to smuggle it in through some great tragedy.

Territorial Enterprise, November, 1863

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN

Carson City, November 7, 1863

EDS. ENTERPRISE: This has been a busy week--a notable and a historical
week--and the only one which has yet passed over this region, perhaps,
whose deeds will make any important stir in the outside world. Some
dozens of people in America have heard of Nevada Territory (which they
vaguely understand to be in Virginia City, though they have no definite
idea as to where Virginia City is) as the place which sends silver
bricks to the Sanitary fund; and some other dozens have heard of Washoe,
without exactly knowing whether the name refers to the Northwest passage
or to the source of the Nile--but when it is shouted abroad through
the land that a new star has risen on the flag--a new State born to the
Union--then the nation will wake up for a moment and ask who we are and
where we came from. They will also ascertain that the new acquisition
is called Nevada; they will find out its place on the map, and always
recollect afterwards, in a general way, that it is in North America;
they will see at a glance that Nevada is not in Virginia City and be
surprised at it; they will behold that neither is it in California, and
will be unable to comprehend it; they will learn that our soil is alkali
flats and our shrubbery sage-brush, and be as wise as they were before;
their mouths will water over statistics of our silver bricks, and verily
they will believe that God createth silver in that form. This week's
work is the first step toward giving the world a knowledge of Nevada,
and it is a giant stride, too, for it will provoke earnest inquiry.
Immigration will follow, and wild-cat advance.

This Convention of ours is well worth being proud of. There is not
another commonwealth in the world, of equal population, perhaps, that
could furnish the stuff for its fellow. I doubt if any Constitutional
Convention ever officiated at the birth of any State in the Union which
could boast of such a large proportion of men of distinguished ability,
according to the number of its members, as is the case with ours. There
are thirty-six delegates here, and among them I could point out fifteen
who would rank high in any community, and the balance would not be
second rate in most Legislatures. There are men in this body whose
reputations are not local, by any means--such as Governor Johnson, Wm.
M. Stewart, Judge Bryan, John A. Collins, N. A. H. Ball, General North
and James Stark, the tragedian. Such a constellation as that ought to
shed living light upon our Constitution. General North is President
of the Convention; Governor Johnson is Chairman of the Legislative
Committee--one of the most important among the Standing Committees,
and one which has to aid in the construction of every department of
the Constitution; Mr. Ball occupies his proper place as Chairman of the
Committee on Finance, State Debt, etc.; the Judiciary Committee is
built of sound timber, and is hard to surpass; it is composed of Messrs.
Stewart, Johnson, Larrowe and Bryan.

We shall have a Constitution that we need not be ashamed of, rest
assured; but it will not be framed in a week. Every article in it will
be well considered and freely debated upon.

And just here I would like to know if it would not be as well to get up
a constitutional silver brick or so, and let the Sanitary fund rest
a while. It would cost at least ten thousand dollars to put this
Convention through in anything approaching a respectable style; yet the
sum appropriated by the Legislature for its use was only $3,000, and the
scrip for it will not yield $1,500. The new State will have to shoulder
the present Territorial debt of $90,000, but it seems to me we might
usher her into the world without adding to this an accouchement fee--so
to speak--of ten or fifteen thousand more. Why, the Convention is so
poor that it cannot even furnish newspapers for its members to read;
kerosene merchants hesitate to afford it light; unfeeling draymen
who haul wood to the people, scorn its custom; it elected official
reporters, and for two days could negotiate no desks for them to write
on: it confers upon them no spittoons, to this day; in fact, there is
only one spittoon to every 7 members and they furnish their own fine-cut
into the bargain; in my opinion there are not inkstands enough to go
around, or pens either, for that matter; Col. Youngs, Chairman of
the Committee on Ways and Means (to pay expenses), has gone blind and
baldheaded, and is degenerating into a melancholy lunatic; this is
all on account of his financial troubles; it all comes of his tireless
efforts to bullyrag a precarious livelihood for the Convention out of
Territorial scrip at forty-one cents on the dollar. Will ye see him die,
when fifty-nine cents would save him? I wish I could move the Convention
up to Virginia, that you might see the Delegates worried, and business
delayed or brought to a stand still every hour in the day by the eternal
emptiness of the Treasury. Then would you grow sick, as I have done, of
hearing members caution each other against breeding expense. I begin to
think I don't want the Capital at Virginia if this financial distress
is always going to haunt us. Now, I had forgotten until this moment that
all these secrets about the poverty of the Convention treasury, and the
inoffensive character of Territorial scrip, were revealed to the house
yesterday by Colonel Youngs, with a feeling request that the reporters
would keep silent upon the subject, lest people abroad should smile at
us. I clearly forgot it--but it is too late to mend the matter now.

Hon. Gordon N. Mott is in town, and leaves with his family for San
Francisco to-morrow. He proposes to start to Washington by the steamer
of the 13th.

Mr. Lemmon's little girl, two years old, had her thigh bone broken in
two places this afternoon; she was run over by a wagon. Dr. Tjader set
the limb, and the little sufferer is doing as well as could be expected
under the circumstances.

I used to hear Governor Johnson frequently mentioned in Virginia as a
candidate for the United States Senate from this budding State of ours.
He is not a candidate for that or any other office, and will not become
one. I make this correction on his own authority, and, therefore,
the various Senatorial aspirants need not be afraid to give it full
credence.

Messrs. Pete Hopkins and A. Curry have compromised with me, and there
is no longer any animosity existing on either side. They were a little
worried at first, you recollect, about that thing which appeared
recently (I think it was in the Gold Hill News), concerning an
occurrence which has happened in the great pine forest down there at
Empire.

We sent our last report to you by our stirring official, Gillespie,
Secretary of the Convention. I thought that might account for your not
getting it, in case you didn't get it, you know.

MARK TWAIN

Territorial Enterprise, November 17, 1863

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN

CARSON, November 15, 1863

EDITORS ENTERPRISE: Compiled by our own Reporter! Thus the Virginia
Union of this morning gobbles up the labors of another man. That
"Homographic Record of the Constitutional Convention" was compiled by
Mr. Gillespie, Secretary of the Convention, at odd moments snatched
from the incessant duties of his position, and unassisted by "our own
reporter" or anybody else. Now this isn't fair, you know. Give the devil
his due--by which metaphor I refer to Gillespie, but in an entirely
inoffensive manner, I trust; and do not go and give the credit of this
work to one who is not entitled to it. I copied that chart myself, and
sent it to you yesterday, and I don't see why you couldn't have come out
and done the complimentary thing, by claiming its paternity for me. In
that case, I should not have mentioned this matter at all. But the
main object of the present letter is to furnish you with the revolting
details of--

ANOTHER BLOODY MASSACRE!

A massacre, in which no less than a thousand human beings were deprived
of life without a moment's warning of the terrible fate that was
in store for them. This ghastly tragedy was the work of a single
individual--a man whose character was gifted with many strong points,
among which were great benevolence and generosity, and a kindness of
heart which rendered him susceptible of being persuaded to do things
which were really, at times, injurious to himself, and which noble trait
in his nature made him a very slave to those whom he loved--a man whose
disposition was a model of mildness until a fancied wrong drove him
mad and impelled him to the commission of this monstrous crime--this
wholesale offering of blood to the angry spirit of revenge which rankled
in his bosom. It is said that some of his victims were so gashed, and
torn, and mutilated, that they scarcely retained a semblance of human
shape. As nearly as I can get at the facts in the case--and I have taken
unusual pains in collecting them--the dire misfortune occurred about
as follows: It seems that certain enemies ill-treated this man, and in
revenge he burned a large amount of property belonging to them. They
arrested him, and bound him hand and foot, and brought him down to Lehi,
the county seat, for trial. And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily
upon him, and the cords that were upon his arms became as flax that was
burnt with fire, and his bands loosed from off his hands. And he found
a new jaw-bone of an ass, and put forth his hand and took it, and slew a
thousand men there with. When he had finished his terrible tragedy,
the desperado, criminal (whose name is Samson), deliberately wiped his
bloody weapon upon the leg of his pantaloons, and then tried its edge
upon his thumb, as a barber would a razor, simply remarking, "With the
jaw-bone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I
slain a thousand men." He even seemed to reflect with satisfaction upon
what he had done, and to derive great comfort from it--as if he would
say, "ONLY a mere thousand--Oh, no I ain't on it, I reckon."

I am sorry that it was necessary for me to furnish you with a narrative
of this nature, because my efforts in this line have lately been
received with some degree of suspicion; yet it is my inexorable duty to
keep your readers posted, and I will not be recreant to the trust, even
though the very people whom I try to serve, upbraid me.

MARK TWAIN

P.S.--Now keep dark, will you? I am hatching a deep plot. I am "laying,"
as it were, for the editor of that San Francisco Evening Journal. The
massacre I have related above is all true, but it occurred a good
while ago. Do you see my drift? I shall catch that fool. He will look
carefully through his Gold Hill and Virginia exchanges, and when he
finds nothing in them about Samson killing a thousand men, he will think
it is another hoax, and come out on me again, in his feeble way, as he
did before. I shall have him foul, then, and I will never let up on him
in the world (as we say in Virginia). I expect it will worry him some,
to find out at last, that one Samson actually did kill a thousand men
with the jaw-bone of one of his ancestors, and he never heard of it
before.

MARK

Territorial Enterprise, November 1863

["Ingomar, the Barbarian," was presented at Maguire's Opera House in
Virginia City during the fall of 1863. Mark Twain reviewed the play
after this own fashion:]

REVIEW OF "INGOMAR THE BARBARIAN"

ACT. 1.--Mrs. Claughley appears in the costume of a healthy Greek matron
(from Limerick). She urges Parthenia, her daughter, to marry Polydor,
and save her father from being sold out by the sheriff--the old man
being in debt for assessments.

Scene 2.--Polydor--who is a wealthy, spindle-shanked, stingy old
stockbroker--prefers his suit and is refused by the Greek maiden--by the
accomplished Greek maiden, we may say, since she speaks English with out
any perceptible foreign accent.

Scene 3.--The Comanches capture Parthenia's father, old Myron (who is
the chief and only blacksmith in his native village) they tear him from
his humble cot, and carry him away, to Reese River. They hold him as a
slave. It will cost thirty ounces of silver to get him out of soak.

Scene 4.--Dusty times in the Myron family. Their house is
mortgaged--they are without dividends--they cannot "stand the raise."

Parthenia, in this extremity, applies to Polydor. He sneeringly advises
her to shove out after her exiled parent herself.

She shoves!

ACT II.--Camp of the Comanches. In the foreground, several of the
tribe throwing dice for tickets in Wright's Gift Entertainment. In
the background, old Myron packing faggots on a jack. The weary slave
weeps--he sighs--he slobbers. Grief lays her heavy hand upon him.

Scene 2.--Comanches on the war-path, headed by the chief, Ingomar.
Parthenia arrives and offers to remain as a hostage while old Myron
returns home and borrows thirty dollars to pay his ransom with. It was
pleasant to note the varieties of dress displayed in the costumes of
Ingomar and his comrades. It was also pleasant to observe that in
those ancient times the better class of citizens were able to dress
in ornamental carriage robes, and even the rank and file indulged in
Benkert boots, albeit some of the latter appeared not to have been
blacked for several days.

Scene 3.--Parthenia and Ingomar alone in the woods. "Two souls with but
a single thought, etc." She tells him that is love. He "can't see it."

Scene 4.--The thing works around about as we expected it would in the
first place. Ingomar gets stuck after Parthenia.

Scene 5.--Ingomar declares his love--he attempts to embrace her--she
waves him off, gently, but firmly--she remarks, "Not too brash, Ing.,
not too brash, now!" Ingomar subsides. They finally flee away, and hie
them to Parthenia's home.

ACTS III and IV.--Joy! Joy! From the summit of a hill, Parthenia beholds
once more the spires and domes of Silver City.

Scene 2.--Silver City. Enter Myron. Tableau! Myron begs for an extension
on his note--he has not yet raised the whole ransom, but he is ready to
pay two dollars and a half on account.

Scene 3.--Myron tells Ingomar he must shuck himself, and dress like a
Christian; he must shave; he must work; he must give up his sword! His
rebellious spirit rises. Behold Parthenia tames it with the mightier
spirit of Love. Ingomar weakens--he lets down--he is utterly
demoralized.

Scene 4.--Enter old Timarch, Chief of Police. He offers Ingomar--but
this scene is too noble to be trifled with in burlesque.

Scene 5.--Polydor presents his bill--213 drachmas. Busted again--the old
man cannot pay. Ingomar compromises by becoming the slave of Polydor.

Scene 6.--The Comanches again, with Thorne at their head! He asks who
enslaved the chief? Ingomar points to Polydor. Lo! Thorne seizes the
trembling broker, and snatches him bald-headed!

Scene 7.--Enter the Chief of Police again. He makes a treaty with the
Comanches. He gives them a ranch apiece. He decrees that they shall
build a town on the American Flat, and appoints great Ingomar to be its
Mayor! [Applause by the supes.]

Scene 8.--Grand tableau--Comanches, police, Pi-Utes, and citizens
generally--Ingomar and Parthenia hanging together in the centre. The old
thing--The old poetical quotation, we mean--They double on it--Ingomar
observing "Two souls with but a single Thought," and she slinging in the
other line, "Two Hearts that Beat as one." Thus united at last in a fond
embrace, they sweetly smiled upon the orchestra and the curtain fell.

[reprinted in the Golden Era, NOV. 29, 1863]

Territorial Enterprise, c. November 27, 1863

[Mark Twain on Artemus Ward, "The Wild Humorist of the Plains"]

We understand that Artemus Ward contemplates visiting this region to
deliver his lectures, and perhaps make some additions to his big "sho."
In his last letter to us he appeared particularly anxious to "sekure a
kupple ov horned todes; alsowe, a lizard which it may be persessed of 2
tales, or any comical snaix, and enny sich little unconsidered trifles,
as the poets say, which they do not interest the kommun mind. Further,
be it nown, that I would like a opportunity for to maik a moddel in
wax of a average size wash-owe man, with feet attached, as an kompanion
pictur to a waxen figger of a nigger I have sekured, at an large
outlaye, whitch it has a unnatural big hed onto it. Could you also
manage to gobbel up the skulp of the layte Missus Hopkins? I adore sich
foot-prints of atrocity as it were, muchly. I was roominatin' on gittin'
a bust of Mark Twain, but I've kwit kontemplatin' the work. They tell
me down heer to the Bay that the busts air so kommun it wood only bee
an waist of wax too git us kounterfit presentiment." We shall assist Mr.
Ward in every possible way about making his Washoe collection and have
no doubt but he will pick up many curious things during his sojourn.

Territorial Enterprise, December 1-3, 1863

[excerpt from original article concerning an affair in Virginia City]

A TIDE OF ELOQUENCE

Afterwards, Mr. Mark Twain being enthusiastically called upon, arose,
and without previous preparation, burst forth in a tide of eloquence so
grand, so luminous, so beautiful and so resplendent with the gorgeous
fires of genius, that the audience were spell-bound by the magic of his
words, and gazed in silent wonder in each other's faces as men who felt
that they were listening to one gifted with inspiration [Applause.] The
proceedings did not end here, but at this point we deemed it best to
stop reporting and go to dissipating, as the dread solitude of our
position as a sober, rational Christian, in the midst of the driveling
and besotted multitude around us, had begun to shroud our spirits with a
solemn sadness tinged with fear. At ten o'clock the curtain fell.

Territorial Enterprise, December 1863

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN

Carson City, December 5, 1863

EDITOR'S ENTERPRISE: The church in Carson prospereth. A fine edifice
will soon be completed here, wherein the gospel may be comfortably
preached, and listened to in comfort likewise. A complimentary benefit
to this enterprise was given at the theatre last night by Hon. James
Stark and Mrs. Cutler, the profits of which amounted to upwards of
two hundred dollars. Mrs. Cutler recited several poems, and sang a
few choice songs with such grace and excellence as won for her the
compliment of repeated and enthusiastic encores. Mr. Stark's readings
were well selected and admirably delivered. His recital of the speech
of Sergeant Buzfuz, in the great breach of promise case of Bardell vs.
Pickwick, was a very miracle of declamation. If all men could read it
like him, that speech would live after Cicero's very creditable efforts
had been forgotten; yet heretofore I had looked upon that as the tamest
of Mr. Dickens' performances.

And just here, I am constrained, in behalf of the community, to do
justice to Charley Parker's liberality and good citizenship. He prepared
his theatre for this church benefit, put a stove in the green room, and
had the house duly cleaned and lighted--all at his own expense. It was a
good action, and gracefully and unostentatiously performed.

The Convention will probably complete its labors about Wednesday. The
members are growing restive and impatient under this long exile from
their private business, and are anxious to finish their work and get
back home. Three of the Esmeralda delegation--Messrs. Stark, Conner and
Bechtel, being imperatively called away by the necessity of attending
to their private affairs, have been granted indefinite leave of absence.
These gentlemen have been constantly at their posts, and unremitting in
the discharge of their duties, and well deserved this kindness at the
hands of the Convention. And between you and me, if there were no ladies
in Carson, my estimable old fossil, Colonel Youngs, would ask permission
to go home, also. Now, why will a man, when he gets to be a thousand
years old, go on hanging around the women, and taking chances on fire
and brimstone, instead of joining the church and endeavoring, with
humble spirit and contrite heart, to ring in at the eleventh hour, like
the thief on the cross? Why will he?

QUESTIONS OF PRIVILEGE

Mr. STERNS rose to a question of privilege again, to-day, and requested
that the reporters would publish his speeches verbatim or not at all.
The fact is, they ought to be reported verbatim, but then we work
eighteen hours a day, and still have not time to give more than the
merest skeletons of the speeches made in the Convention. Johnson and
Stewart, and Larrowe, and Bryan, and others, complain not, however,
although we condense their remarks fearfully. Even Judge Brosnan's
stately eloquence, adorned with beautiful imagery and embellished with
classic quotations, hath been reported by us thus tersely: "Mr. Brosnan
opposed the motion." Only that, and nothing more. But we had taste
enough not to mar a noble speech with the deadly engines of reduction
and the third person.

Now, in condensing the following speech, the other day, we were
necessarily obliged to leave out some of its most salient points, and I
acknowledge that my friend Sterns had ample cause for being annoyed at
its mutilation. I hope he will find the present report all right, though
(albeit the chances are infernally against that result)I have got his
style verbatim, whether I have the substance or not.

MR. STERNS SPEECH

The question being on the amendment offered in Committee of the Whole,
to Mr. Stewart's proposed substitute for Section 1 of the Article
entitled "Taxation," as reported from the Standing Committee:

Mr. STERNS said--Mr. President, I am opposed, I am hostile, I am
uncompromisingly against this proposition to tax the mines. I will go
further, sir. I will openly assert, sir, that I am not in favor of this
proposition. It is wrong entirely wrong, sir (as the gentleman from
Washoe has already said); I fully agree (with the gentleman who has
just taken his seat) that it is unjust and unrighteous. I do think, Mr.
President, that (as has been suggested by the gentleman from Ormsby)
we owe it to our constituents to defeat this pernicious measure.
Incorporate it into your Constitution, sir, and (as was eloquently and
beautifully set forth in the speech of the gentleman from Storey) the
gaunt forms of want, and poverty, and starvation, and despair will
shortly walk in the high places of this once happy and beautiful land.
Add it to your fundamental law, sir, and (as was stated yesterday by the
gentleman from Lander) God will cease to smile upon your labors. In the
language (of my colleague), I entreat you, sir, and gentlemen, inflict
not this mighty iniquity upon generations yet unborn! Heed the prayers
of the people and be merciful! Ah, sir, the quality of mercy is not
strained, so to speak (as has been aptly suggested heretofore), but
droppeth like the gentle dew from Heaven, as it were. The gentleman from
Douglas has said this law would be unconstitutional, and I cordially
agree with him. Therefore, let its course to the ramparts be
hurried--let the flames that shook the battle's wreck, shine round it
o'er the dead--let it go hence to that undiscovered country from whose
bourne no traveler returns (as hath been remarked by the gentleman from
Washoe, Mr. Shamp), and in thus guarding and protecting the poor miner,
let us endeavor to do unto others as we would that others should do
unto us (as was very justly and properly observed by Jesus Christ upon a
former occasion).

After which, the Convention not knowing of any good reason why they
should not tax the miners, they went to work and taxed them.

Now, that is verbatim, as nearly as I could come at it. I took it from
my own mysterious short-hand notes, which are mighty shaky, I am willing
to admit; but then, I guarded against inaccuracy by consulting the
several authorities quoted in the speech, and from them I have the
assurance that my report of Mr. Sterns' comprehensive declamation is
eminently correct. I cannot bet on it, though, nevertheless--I cannot
possibly bet on it.

I think I have hit upon the right plan, now. It is better to report
a member verbatim, occasionally, and keep him pacified, than have him
rising to these uncomfortable questions of privilege every now and then.
I hope to be able to report Bill Stewart verbatim in the course of a day
or two, if he will hold on a spell.

MARK TWAIN

Territorial Enterprise, December 1863

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN

Carson City, December 12, 1863

THE LOGAN HOTEL

Such is my destination. Thither I go to recuperate. I take with me a
broken spirit, blighted hopes and a busted constitution. Also some gin.
I shall return again, after many days, restored to vigorous health;
restored to original purity; free from sin, and prepared to accept any
lucrative office the people can be induced to force upon me. If elected,
I shall donate my salary to charitable institutions. I will finish
building this chronic brick church here, and lease a high-priced parson
to run it. Also, an exorbitant choir. Everything connected with the
church shall be conducted in the bulliest manner. The Logan Hotel is
situated on the banks of Lake Bigler--or Lake Tahoe, which signifieth
"grasshopper" in the Digger tongue. I am not going with any of the
numerous pleasure parties which go daily to the lake and infest the
Logan Hotel. I shall travel like Baxter's hog--in a gang by myself. I am
weary of the gay world, and I pine for an hour of solitude. The hotel is
new, handsomely furnished, and commodious; it stands within fifty feet
of the water's edge, and commands a view of all the grand scenery there
about; its table is furnished with the best the market affords, and
behold they eat trout there every day; fifteen miles over the new King's
Canyon road is all the journey it is necessary to take--after which the
worn pilgrim may rest in peace in the bosom of Logan & Stewart. That is
as good a thing as I want, as long as I am not married.

NO MORE MINES

A year from now, there will not be a mine left in this Territory. This
is an appalling statement, but it is a true one. I guessed it from
remarks made by that disreputable old cottonhead, Bill Stewart, who as
good as promised me ten feet in the "Justis," and then backed down again
when the stock went up to $80 a foot. That was a villainous way to treat
me, who have gone on juries for him, and held my grip through all the
monstrous fabrications he chose to present in his eloquent sophistry,
and then brought in a verdict for him, when it seemed morally certain
that Providence would interfere and stop the nefarious business. I said,
the last time, that I would never serve on one of Bill Stewart's juries
again, until they put a lightning rod on the Court House. I said it, and
my word is good. I am not going to take any more chances like that.
But what I commenced to tell about was, that last night, after the
Convention adjourned, and the political meeting was called together,
Bill Stewart went to work with his characteristic indecent haste (just
a parallel case with that Justis affair), to construe the
Constitution!--construe and determine the species of the new-laid egg
from which is to be hatched our future power and greatness, while
the tender thing was warm yet! Bill Stewart is always construing
something--eternally distorting facts and principles. He would climb
out of his coffin and construe the burial service. He is a long-legged,
bull-headed, whopper-jawed, constructionary monomaniac. Give him a
chance to construe the sacred law, and there wouldn't be a damned soul
in perdition in a month. I have my own opinion of Bill Stewart, and
if it would not appear as if I were a little put out about that Justis
(that was an almighty mean thing), I would as soon express it as not.
He construed the Constitution, last night, as I remarked before. He gave
the public to understand that the clause providing for the taxation of
the mines meant nothing in particular; that he wanted the privilege of
construing that section to suit himself; that a mere hole in the ground
was not a mine, and it wasn't property (he slung that in because he
has a costly well on his premises in Virginia); and that it would be a
difficult matter to determine in our courts what does really constitute
a mine. Do you see his drift? Well, I do. He will prove to the
satisfaction of the courts that there are only two definite kinds of
mine; that one of these is an excavation from which metallic ores or
other mineral substances are "DUG" (which is the dictionary phrase).
Then of course, the miners will know enough to stop "digging" and go
to blasting. Bill Stewart will then show, easily enough, that these
fellows' claims are not "mines" according to the dictionary, and
consequently they cannot be taxed. He will show that the only other
species of "mine" is a "pronominal adjective," and proceed to prove that
there is nothing in the Constitution that will permit the State to tax
English grammar. He will demonstrate that a mere hole in the ground is
not a mine, and is not liable to taxation. The end will be that a year
from now we shall all own in these holes in the ground, but no man will
acknowledge that he owns in a "mine"; and about that time custom, and
policy, and construction, combined, will have taught us to speak of the
staunch old bulwark of the State as "The Great Gould & Curry Hole-in-the
Ground." Bill Stewart will put them up to it. In one short year, sir,
from this date, I feel within me that Bill Stewart will have succeeded
in construing the last vestige of a mine out of this country.

STATE PRINTER

This subject worried the Convention some. In the first place, the
Standing Committee reported an article providing for the election of
a State Printer, whose compensation was to be fixed by law, etc. The
members, without even showing the Committee the courtesy of discussing
the matter, snubbed them very pointedly, by pitching the bill overboard
without offering the semblance of an apology for their conduct. They
substituted an article providing for printing State work by contract.
That was debated to death, and duly buried with its still-born
predecessor. Then they tried a Superintendent of Public Printing. That
plan appeared to suit them. They adopted it, and looked upon the work of
their hands and pronounced it good. There the matter rested until last
night, when Governor Johnson got up and asked unanimous consent to
substitute the original State Printer article for the Superintendent. He
pointed out to the Convention that the office of Superintendent would be
turned into a mere sinecure, and its incumbent would accomplish no good
to the State and behold, without a word of objection, the change was
made! Verily, it is vastly better to yield to wisdom at last, than not
at all.

SCHOOL FUND

Speaking of State Printer, reminds me that we made a mistake in the
report published this morning. We said the school moneys were to be
invested only in United States bonds--whereas, the truth is, it was
decided that they might be invested in either United States or State
bonds.

HANK MONK

A superb gold watch, worth five or six hundred dollars, was presented to
Hank Monk, here, night before last. The donors were John S. Henning, Joe
Clark, H. H. Raymond, Alex. O'Neil, William Thompson, Jr., John 0. Earl,
W. M. Lent and three others. The ceremonies were conducted at Frank
Ludlow's daguerrean rooms. Judge Turner made the presentation speech,
and Judge Hardy replied on behalf of the defendant. Champagne flowed
freely. The watch is gorgeously embellished with coaches and horses, and
with charms and seals in keeping with the same, and bears for a motto
Hank's famous remark to Horace Greeley: "KEEP YOUR SEAT, HORACE--I'LL
GET YOU THERE ON TIME!"

"THE OLD PAH-UTAH"

Lovejoy has issued the first number of his paper at Washoe City, and the
above is its name. It is as pretty as a sweetheart, and as readable as
a love-letter--and in my experience, these similes express a good deal.
But why should Lovejoy spell it Pah-Utah? That isn't right--it should be
Pi-Uty, or Pi-Ute. I speak by authority. Because I have carefully noted
the little speeches of self-gratulation of our noble red brother, and
he always delivers himself in this wise: "Pi-Uty boy heepy work--Washoe
heep lazy." But if you question his nationality, he remarks, with
oppressive dignity: "Me no dam Washoe--me Pi-Ute!" Wherefore, my
researches have satisfied me that one of these, or both, is right.
Lovejoy ought to know this, even better than me; he came here before
May, 1860, and is, consequently, a blooded Pi-Ute, while I am only an
ignorant half-breed.

CARSON CITY

Call your Constitutioners home. They do nothing but sing the praises of
Carson City, and Carson society, and Carson climate. Hite, and Brosnan,
and Youngs, and Sterns, and half the balance of them, are more than half
inclined to stay here. It is absurd. Pipe to quarters!

FINAL REPORT

The Third House of the Constitutional Convention met in solemn grandeur,
at 1l o'clock last night. To-morrow or next day I shall compile a
verbatim report of its proceedings for the forthcoming volume of
official reports of the Convention, and if you think you can afford
to pay enough for it I will allow you to publish it in advance of that
volume.

MARK TWAIN

President Constitutional Convention (Third House)

Territorial Enterprise, December 1863

[The "Third House" was an informal group of pranksters who often met and
burlesqued the legislative process.]

Nevada State Constitutional Convention; Third House

Carson City, December 13, 1863

REPORTED IN PHONOGPAPHIC SHORT-HAND BY MARK TWAIN

The Third House met in the Hall of the Convention at 11 P. M., Friday,
immediately after the final adjournment of the First House.

On motion of Mr. Nightingill, the rules were suspended and the usual
prayer dispensed with, on the ground that it was never listened to by
the members of the First House, which was composed chiefly of the
same gentlemen which constitute the Third, and was consequently merely
ornamental and entirely unnecessary.

Mr. Mark Twain was elected President of the Convention, and Messrs.
Small and Hickok appointed to conduct him to the Chair, which they did
amid a dense and respectful silence on the part of the house, Mr. Small
stepping grandly over the desks, and Mr. Hickok walking under them.

The President addressed the house as follows, taking his remarks down in
short-hand as he proceeded.

Gentlemen--This is the proudest moment of my life. I shall always think
so. I think so still. I shall ponder over it with unspeakable emotion
down to the latest syllable of recorded time. It shall be my earnest
endeavor to give entire satisfaction in the high and bully position to
which you have elevated me. [Applause.]

The President appointed Mr. Small, Secretary, Mr. Gibson, official
reporter, and Mr. Pete Hopkins, Chief Page, and Uncle Billy Patterson,
First Assistant Page. These officers came forward and took the following
oath:

"We do solemnly affirm that we have never seen a duel, never been
connected with a duel, never heard of a duel, never sent or received a
challenge, never fought a duel, and don't want to. Furthermore, we will
support, protect and defend this constitution which we are about
to frame, until we can't rest, and will take our pay in scrip." Mr.
Youngs--"Mr. President: I, ah--I--that is--"

The President--"Mr. Youngs, if you have got anything to say, say it; and
don't stand there and shake your head and gasp 'I--ah, I--ah,' as you
have been in the habit of doing in the former Convention."

Mr. Youngs--"Well, sir, I was only going to say that I liked your
inaugural, and I perfectly agree with the sentiments you appeared to
express in it, but I didn't rightly understand what--"

The President--"You have been sitting there for thirty days, like a bump
on a log, and you never rightly understand anything. Take your seat,
sir, you are out of order. You rose for information? Well, you'll not
get it--sit down. You will appeal from the decision of the Chair? Take
your seat, sir, the Chair will entertain no appeals from its decisions.
And I would suggest to you, sir, that you will not be permitted, here,
to growl in your seat, and make malicious side remarks in an undertone,
for fifteen minutes after you have been called to order, as you have
habitually done in the other house."

The President--"The subject before the house is as follows. The
Secretary will read:"

Secretary--"A-r, ar,--t-i, ti--arti, c-l-e, cle,--article--"

The President--"What are you trying to do, sir?"

Secretary--"Well, I am only a helpless orphan, and I can't read
writing."

The Chair appointed Mr. Hickok to assist Mr. Small, and discharged Mr.
Gibson, the official reporter, because he did not know how to write.

Mr. Youngs--(singing)--"For the lady I love will soon be a bride, with
the diadem on her brow-ow-ow."

President--"Order, you snuffling old granny!"

Mr. Youngs--"I AM in order, sir."

The President--"You are not, sir--sit down."

Mr. Youngs--"I won't, sir! I appeal to--."

The President--"Take your--seat!"

Mr. Youngs--"But I insist that Jefferson's Manual--."

The President--"D--n Jefferson's Manual! The Chair will transact its own
business in its own way, sir."

Mr. Chapin--"Mr. President: I do hope the amendment will not pass. I do
beg of gentlemen--I do beseech of gentlemen--that they will examine
this matter carefully, and earnestly, and seriously, and with a sincere
desire to do the people all the good, and all the justice, and all the
benefit it is in their power to do. I do hope, Mr. President-."

The President--"Now, there YOU go! What are you trying to get through
your head?--there's nothing before the house."

The question being on Section 4, Article 1 (free exercise of religious
liberty):

Mr. Stewart said--"Mr. President: I insist upon it, that if you tax the
mines, you impose a burden upon the people which will be heavier than
they can bear. And when you tax the poor miner's shafts, and drifts, and
bed-rock tunnels, you are NOT taxing his property; you are NOT taxing
his substance; you are NOT taxing his wealth--no, but you are taxing
what may become property some day, or may not; you are taxing the shadow
from which the substance may eventually issue or may not; you are taxing
the visions of Alnaschar; which may turn to minted gold, or only prove
the forerunners of poverty and misfortune; in a word, sir, you are
taxing his hopes; taxing the aspirations of his soul; taxing the
yearnings of his heart of hearts! Yes, sir, I insist upon it, that if
you tax the mines, you will impose a burden upon the people which will
be heavier than they can bear. And when you tax the poor miner's shafts,
and drifts, and bed-rock tunnels, you are NOT taxing his property; you
are NOT taxing his substance; you are NOT taxing his wealth--no, but you
are taxing what may become property some day, or may not; you are taxing
the shadow from which the substance may eventually issue or may not; you
are taxing the visions of Alnaschar, which may turn to minted gold, or
merely prove the fore runners of poverty and misfortune; in a word, sir,
you are taxing his hopes! taxing the aspirations of his soul!--taxing
the yearnings of his heart of hearts! Ah, sir, I do insist upon it that
if you tax the mines, you will impose a burden upon the people which
will be heavier than they can bear. And when you tax the poor miner's
shafts, and drifts, and bed-rock tunnels--"

The President--"Take your seat, Bill Stewart! I am not going to sit
here and listen to that same old song over and over again. I have been
reporting and re-reporting that infernal speech for the last thirty
days, and want you to understand that you can't play it off on this
Convention any more. When I want it, I will repeat it myself--I know it
by heart, anyhow. You and your bed-rock tunnels, and blighted miners'
blasted hopes, have gotten to be a sort of nightmare to me, and I won't
put up with it any longer. I don't wish to be too hard on your speech,
but if you can't add something fresh to it, or say it backwards, or sing
it to a new tune, you have simply got to simmer down for awhile."

Mr. Johnson--"Mr. President: I wish it distinctly understood that I
am not a candidate for the Senate, or any other office, and have no
intention of becoming one. And I wish to call the attention of the
Convention to the fact, sir, that outside influences have been brought
to bear, here, that--"

The President--"Governor Johnson, there is no necessity of your putting
in your shovel here, until you are called upon to make a statement. And
if you allude to the engrossing clerk as an outside influence, I must
inform you, sir, that his battery has been silenced with Territorial
scrip at forty cents on the dollar."

Mr. Sterns--"Mr. President, I cordially agree with the gentleman from
Storey county, that if we tax the mines we shall impose a burden upon
the people that will be heavier than they can bear. I agree with him,
sir, that in taxing the poor miner's shafts, and drifts, and bed-rock
tunnels, we would not be taxing his property, or his wealth, or his
substance, but only that which may become such at some future day--an
Alnascharean vision, which might turn to coin or might only result in
disaster and disappointment to the defendant--in a word, sir, I coincide
with him in the opinion that it would be equivalent to taxing the hopes
of the poor miner--his aspirations--the dear yearnings of his--"

The President--"Yearnings of his grandmother! I'll slam this mallet at
the next man that attempts to impose that tiresome old speech on this
body. SET DOWN! You have been pretty regular about re-hashing other
people's platitudes heretofore, Mr. Sterns, but you have got to be
a little original in the Third House. Your sacrilegious lips will be
marring the speeches of the Chair, next."

Mr. Ralston--"Mr. President: I have but a word to say, and I do not
wish to occupy the attention of the house any longer than I can help;
although I could, perhaps, throw more light upon the matter of our
eastern boundary than those who have not visited that interesting but
comparatively unknown section of our budding commonwealth. It is growing
late, and I do not feel as if I had a right to tax the patience--"

The President--"Tax! Take your seat, sir, take your seat. I will NOT be
bullyragged to death with this threadbare subject of taxation. You
are out of order, anyhow. How do you suppose anybody can listen in any
comfort to your speech, when you are fumbling with your coat all the
time you are talking, and trying to button it with your left hand, when
you know you can't do it? I have never seen you succeed yet, until just
as you got the last word out. And then the moment you sit down, you
always unbutton it again. You may speak, hereafter, Mr. Ralston, but I
want you to understand that you have got to button your coat before
you get up. I do not mean to be kept in hot water all the time by your
little oratorical eccentricities ."

Mr. Larrowe--"Mr. President: There are nine mills in Lander county
already--let me see--there is Dobson's, five stamp; Thompson's, eight
stamp; Johnson's, three stamp--well, I cannot give the names of all of
them, but there are nine, sir--NINE splendid, steam-power quartz-mills,
disturbing with their ceaseless thunder the dead silence of centuries!
Nine noble quartz-mills, sir, cheering with the music of their batteries
the desponding hearts of pilgrims from every land!--nine miraculous
quartz-mills, sir, from whose steam-pipes and chimneys ascends a
grateful incense to the god of Labor and Progress!--nine sceptred and
anointed quartz-mills, sir, whose mission it is to establish the power,
and the greatness, and the glory of Nevada, and place her high along
the--"

The President--"Now will you just take your seat, and hold your clatter
until somebody asks you for your confounded Reese River quartz-mill
statistics? What has Reese River got to do with religious freedom?--and
what have quartz-mills got to do with it--and what have you to do with
it yourself? You are out of order, sir--plant yourself. And moreover,
when you get up here to make a speech, I don't want you to yell at me as
if you thought I were in San Francisco--I'm not hard of hearing. I don't
see why President North didn't tone you down long ago."

Mr. Larrowe--"I think I am in order, Mr. President. It was a rule in the
other Convention that no member could speak when there was no question
before the house; but after the question had been announced by
the Chair, members could then go on and speak on any subject they
pleased--or rather, that was the custom, sir--the ordinary custom."

The President--"Yes, sir, I know it has been the custom for thirty days
and thirty nights in the other Convention, but I will let gentlemen
know that they can't ring in three-stamp Reese River quartz mills on the
third house when I am considering the question of religious liberty--the
same being dear to every American heart. Plant yourself, sir--plant
yourself. I don't want any more yowling out of you, now.

Mr. Small--"The Secretary would beg leave to state, for the information
of the Con-----"

The President--"There, now, that's enough of that. You learned that from
Gillespie, I won't have any of that kind of nonsense here. When you
have got anything to say, talk it right out; and see that you use the
personal pronoun 'I,' also, and drop that presumptuous third person.
'The Secretary would beg leave to state!' The devil he would. Now
suppose you take a back seat, and wait until somebody asks you to state
something. Mr. Chapin, you will please stop catching flies while the
Chair is considering the subject of religious toleration.

Mr. Ball--"Mr. President: The Finance Committee, of which I have the
honor to be chairman, have arrived at the conclusion that it is a
hundred and thirty miles from here to Folsom; that it will take two
hundred and thirty miles of railroad iron to build a road that distance,
without counting the switches; this would figure up as follows: Bars, 14
feet 3 inches long; weight, 800 pounds; 1,000 bars to the mile, 800,000
pounds; 130,000 bars for the whole distance, weight, 104,000,000 pounds;
original cost of the iron, with insurance and transportation to Folsom
from St. Louis, via Salt Lake City, added, say three dollars and a half
a pound, would mount to a fraction over or under $312,722,239.42. Three
hundred and twelve million, seven hundred and twenty-two thousand, two
hundred and thirty-nine dollars and forty-two cents, sir. That is the
estimate of the Committee, sir, for prime cost of one class of material,
without counting labor and other expenses. In view of these facts, sir,
it is the opinion of the Committee that we had better not build
the road. I did not think it necessary to submit a written report,
because--"

The President--"Take your seat, Mr. Ball--take your seat, sir, your evil
eye never lights upon this Chair but the spirit moves you to confuse its
intellect with some of your villainous algebraical monstrosities. I will
not entertain them, sir; I don't know anything about them. You needn't
mind bringing in any written reports here--or verbal ones either, unless
you can confine yourself to a reasonable number of figures at a time, so
that I can understand what you are driving at. No, sir, the Third
House will not build the railroad. The other Convention's donation of
$3,000,000 in bonds, worth forty cents on the dollar, will buy enough
of one of those bars to make a breastpin, and that will have to satisfy
this common wealth for the present. I observe that Messrs. Wasson and
Gibson and Noteware and Kennedy have their feet on their desks. The
chief page will proceed to remove those relics of ancient conventional
barbarism from sight."

Mr. Musser--"Mr. President: To be, or not to be that is the question--

The President--"No, sir! The question is, shall we tolerate religious
indifference in this community; or the rights of conscience; or the
right of suffrage; or the freedom of the press; or free speech, or free
schools, or free niggers. The Chair trusts it knows what it is about,
without any instructions from the members."

Mr. Musser--"But, sir, it was only a quotation from--"

The President--"Well, I don't care, I want you to sit down. The
Chair don't consider that you know much about religion anyhow, and
consequently the subject will suffer no detriment from your letting
it alone. You and Judge Hardy can subside, and study over the preamble
until you are wanted."

Mr. Brosnan--"Mr. President, these proceedings have all been irregular,
extremely and customarily irregular. I will move, sir, that the question
be passed, for the present, and that we take up the next section."

Mr. Mitchell--"I object to that, Mr. President. I move that we go into
Committee of the Whole on it."

Mr. Wasson--"I move that it be referred back to the Standing Committee."

Mr. North--"I move that the rules be suspended and the whole article
placed upon its final passage."

The President--"Gentlemen, those of you who are in favor of adopting
the original proposition, together with the various motions now pending
before the house, will signify the same by saying aye."

No one voting in the negative, the chair decided the vote to be
unanimous in the affirmative.

The President--"Gentlemen, your proceedings have been exactly similar
to those of the convention which preceded you. You have considered a
subject which you knew nothing about; spoken on every subject but the
one before the house, and voted without knowing what you were voting for
or having any idea what would be the general result of your action. I
will adjourn the Convention for an hour, on account of my cold, to the
end that I may apply the remedy prescribed for it by Dr. Tjader--the
same being gin and molasses. The Chief Page is hereby instructed to
provide a spoonful of molasses and a gallon of gin, for the use of the
President."

OUR CARSON DISPATCH--SECOND SESSION

BY TELEGRAPH

Third House met after recess, and transacted the following business:

Secretary read Section 15, Legislative Department:

"SECTION 15. The doors of each house shall be kept open during the
session."

Kinkead moved to amend by adding the words "and the windows also, if the
weather will permit."

Secretary read Section 32, Legislative Department:

"SECTION 32. No law shall be passed authorizing married women to carry
on business as sole traders."

On motion of Stems, construed to mean that married women shall not
preach.

Secretary read Section 6, Declaration of Rights:

"SECTION 6. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines
imposed."

Youngs moved to amend by striking out the word "bair'l" and inserting
the word "board." Adopted, unanimously.

SECTION 1. Miscellaneous Provisions, was amended so as to read as
follows:

"SECTION 1. The seat of government shall be at Carson, and the
Legislature shall hold its session in the plaza during the first six
years."

Section added empowering the President of the Third House of the
Convention to convene, by proclamation, the Third House of the State
Legislature, for the purpose of electing two United States Senators,
within thirty days after the Constitution shall have been ratified.

Name of the State changed to "Washoe," in conformity with the law which
called the Convention together.

New section added, as follows:

"SECTION--. No Sheriff or other officer shall be expected to arrest any
assassin or other criminal on strong presumptive evidence, merely, nor
any other evidence, unless such assassin or other criminal shall insist
upon his privilege of being arrested."

The hour having arrived for the President to take his regular gin and
molasses, the Convention adjourned.

Last night, about 12 o'clock--[here the telegraph ceased
working.-BLOOMER, operator.]

Territorial Enterprise, December 25--27, 1863

LOCAL COLUMN

A CHRISTMAS GIFT.--"Mr. Twain--compliments of Miss Chase--Christmas,
1863." This handwriting disposed us to suspect treachery, and to regard
the box as a deadly infernal machine. It was on this account that we got
a stranger to open it. This precaution was unnecessary. The diabolical
box had nothing in it but a ghastly, naked, porcelain doll baby.
However, we are much obliged--we always had a hankering to have a baby,
and now we are satisfied--the mythical "Miss Chase" helped us to the
business, and she has our cordial thanks for her share in it.

Territorial Enterprise, late December 1863

[Mark Twain's review of Artemus Ward's lecture]

"There are perhaps fifty subjects treated in it, and there is a passable
point in every one of them, and a healthy laugh, also, for any of God's
creatures who hath committed no crime, the ghastly memory of which
debars him from smiling again while he lives. The man who is capable
of listening to the 'Babes in the Wood' from beginning to end without
laughing either inwardly or outwardly must have done murder, or at least
meditated it, at some time during his life."

Territorial Enterprise, December 29, 1863

LOCAL COLUMN

CHRISTMAS PRESENTS.--We received from Carson, Saturday, a long yellow
box, of suspicious appearance, with the following inscription upon it:
"Mark Twain, ENTERPRISE Office, Virginia--Free--Politeness Langton's
Pioneer Express--Be-hi-me-soi-vin." That last phrase is Greek, and means
"Bully for you!" We are not sure that it was written by Mrs. H. F. R.,
of Carson, and there was no evidence accompanying the box to show that
it was. This is what makes us so obstinate in the opinion that it might
have been written by somebody else. The box contained a toy rabbit, of
the jackass persuasion, gifted with ears of aggravated dimensions, and
swathed in sage-brush; an Indian chief--a mere human creation--made of
raisins, strung on a skeleton formed of a single knitting-needle, with
a solitary fig for a body, and a chicken feather driven into the head
of the effigy, to denote its high official character. One more present
remained--the same being a toy watchman's rattle, made of pine and
tastefully painted. We are glad to have that rattle now, but when we
asked for such a thing at a certain convivial party in Carson, it will
be remembered that we meant to bestow it upon another young man who was
present, and whose absent mind, we imagined, might be collected together
and concentrated by means of such an instrument. We have presented the
rabbit to Artemus Ward, to be preserved as a specimen of our resources;
the other presents we shall always wear near our heart. The following
report of the committee, accompanying the box, has been received,
accepted, adopted, and the same referred to the Committee of the Whole
people:

CARSON City, December 25, 1863.

Mr. MARK TWAIN--Sir: The undersigned has the honor to be selected by the
gay company of ladies and gentlemen and boys and girls and Santa Claus,
who came in person with Judge Dixson's wolf-skin cap, coat, pants and
a mask, and sleigh bells around his waist, and dashed in the room just
after Mrs. Cutter and two long rows of children had sung a pretty piece,
and read a letter from Santa Claus, when that individual immediately
dashed into the room to the terror of some of the children, thirty-six
in all, and climbed the Christmas tree, all covered with presents,
and little lighted candles, and handed down things for everybody, and
afterwards danced with the now reconciled children, and then dashed out;
after which there was supper and dancing by the ladies and gentlemen;
and the school which was thus made to enjoy them selves last night till
midnight, was Miss H. K. Clapp and Mrs. Cutter's Seminary, which is one
of the best there is, and instructed me to send you these things, which
I do by Langton's Express, handed down from the Christmas tree by Santa
Claus, marked "Mark Twain," to wit: One rabbit under a sage brush, to
represent your design for a seal in the Constitutional Convention; one
rattle, presented by a lady of whom you begged for one when you were
here last, and a Pi-Ute to be eaten, being a chief with a chicken
feather in his hat, composed of a fig for his body and otherwise
raisins, sent to you by request of a lady of the medical profession, all
of which is submitted by

WILLIAM A. TRINITY, Committee.

Territorial Enterprise, December 30, 1863

THE BOLTERS IN CONVENTION

AT 7 o'clock last night a large number of citizens met at the Court
House for the purpose of selecting sixteen new delegates, which they
hoped might prove more acceptable to the State Convention than those
elected by the regular County Convention day before yesterday. There
appeared to be some discord in this Convention as well as in that
which preceded it, but of course the manner in which it was constituted
prevented the possibility of anyone's bolting from it in the regular
and recognized way. It was a gorgeous sight to behold those two hundred
fearless spirits of Storey--those noble human soda-bottles, so to speak,
effervescing with the holy gas of pure unselfish patriotism, rising in
their might to bust out, as it were, the infamous action of 3,000 voters
of Storey county, as done in the County Convention by their chosen
representatives. But we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and we
glorious Americans will occasionally astonish the God that created us
when we get a fair start.

The proceedings opened with three cheers and a tiger for the stars and
stripes.

Mr. Corson moved that Dr. Minneer be elected chairman of the meetings.
Carried.

Mr. Barclay nominated Wm. H. Davenport and James Phelan as Secretaries.
They were elected without opposition.

The following Vice Presidents were then elected: James Brannon, Dighton
Corson, Judge Leconey, J. W. Noyes, Thos. Lynch, Judge Ferris, John
A. Collins, A. B. Elliott, E. Bond, W. H. Young, J. S. Black, Thos. G.
Taylor, S. A. Kellogg, Judge Frizell, J. H. Heilshorn, P. Quigley, J.
T. Sage, John Church, W. R. Warnock and R. H. Rider. [Several of these
gentlemen were said to be present.]

The Chairman reviewed the action of the County Convention, and said it
was not satisfactory to the majority of the community; therefore the
people had met now to improve upon that action in their sovereign
capacity as fountain-head of power in the land. He said the present
Convention would nominate sixteen delegates, and hoped they would be
accepted by the State Convention in preference to the delegates elected
by the late packed Convention.

[A voice--"Three cheers!" No response.]

A committee previously and mysteriously appointed immediately brought
in a report containing the following names. There was no suspicion of
packing about it, however. The report reads as follows:

Report of the committee appointed by a meeting of citizens held at the
Court House on Monday evening, December 29th, to select the names of
sixteen citizens to be presented to the mass meeting this evening
as suitable persons to represent Storey county in the Union State
Convention, to be held at Carson on the 31st inst., beg leave to submit
the following names: Dr. Geiger, John Dohle, Thomas Lynch, Captain
White, Joseph Loryea, J. L. Black, George E. Brickett, Thomas Hannah, J.
D. Meagher, Augustus Ash.

Mr. Corson moved that the report be accepted, and the committee
discharged. Carried.

Mr. Fitch was called for and addressed the Convention at great length,
re-hashing, adding to and improving his most recent editorials in the
Virginia Union. He was heard with interest and was frequently applauded.

As is always his custom, Mr. Brosnan spoke eloquently and feelingly,
and was repeatedly and loudly cheered. Public speakers are not given
to adhering strictly to the truth as a general thing, but we know Judge
Brosnan is. However, he stood up there last night and misrepresented old
Nestor--a poor devil who has been dead hundreds and hundreds of years.
And Judge Brosnan knew perfectly well that he was departing from the
record when he unblushingly abused old Nestor's wardrobe and said he
wore a poisoned shirt. Now why couldn't he confine himself to living
convention-packers and let dead foreigners alone? That's it--we are down
on that kind of thing, you know.

[Cries, "Hannah! Hannah!" "Gentlemen, wait a moment!" "I call for the
adoption of the report before we have any speaking!"]

However, Mr. Hannah came forward and said that "As had been remarked
by both gentlemen who have preceded me," and then went on and made both
gentlemen's speeches over again, in such a pleasant way, and with such
vehemence of manner that "the people"--that mighty lever being present,
and filling very nearly three-fourths of the house--"the people"
applauded each familiar argument as it fell upon their ears, and felt
really comfortable over it. He touched us very agreeably by speaking
of us as "those intelligent reporters who officiated at the late
Constitutional Convention." [The word "intelligent" is our own. We had
an idea it would make the sentence read better.] Toward the last, Mr.
Hannah soared into originality, and touched upon a multitude of subjects
on his own hook. Notwithstanding its apparent originality, however, we
shall always be haunted by the dreadful suspicion that the fag-end of
Tom Hannah's speech was gobbled out of the Babes in the Wood.

Mr. Brosnan moved that a committee of five be appointed to draft
resolutions.

Mr. Pepper suggested that there was already a question before the house.
[A voice "Sit down."]

The Chairman remarked that there was a question before the house, and
proceeded to state it as being on the adoption of the report of the
Committee on Nominations.

The house refused to entertain the report in its entirety, and demanded,
in great confusion, that the candidates should be voted for separately,
which was done, and the following gentlemen elected:

Messrs. Geiger, Dohle, Lynch, White, Black, Hannah, Warnock, Ash,
Phillips, G. H. [sic], J. Y. Paul, Doak (?), Frizell, Burke, Knox,
Brickett.

Messrs. Loryea and Meagher were voted for and rejected, and confusion
grew worse confounded in the meantime.

Mr. Warnock moved the appointment of a Nominating Committee of ten, to
present names to the next mass meeting, as candidates for Legislators,
Judges, etc. Carried.

The Committee on Resolutions was appointed as follows: Messrs. Brosnan,
Frizell, Hannah, Corson, Bond.

The committee created by Mr. Warnock's resolution was then nominated
and elected, as follows: Messrs. Warnock, Jas. Campbell, Hannah, Jacob
Young, Manning, Lackey, Dimock, Carey, Van Vliet and Flood.

Mr. Corson moved to add five to the committee, and take them from Gold
Hill and Flowery. Carried.

The following gentlemen were nominated and elected: Messrs. Phillips, La
Flower and Bishop.

[Here great trouble arose about a suggestion that the Convention might
possibly be electing people who were opposed to them. It was a wise and
bully idea. Mr. James Campbell called at our office after the Convention
adjourned, and requested us to remove his name from the nominating
committee.]

After which, with remarkable unanimity, the Convention struck off the
names of the Gold Hill members from the nominating committee, and left
it to the President to fill up with other Gold Hill men.

Mr. Frizell submitted the following names, which he said had been
selected by a mass meeting in Gold Hill: Wm. C. Derall, E. R. Burke, Ed.
C. Morse, Sam Doak, and J. W. Phillips.

They were unanimously elected.

Chas. H. Knox of Flowery was added to the committee.

The Committee on Resolutions then reported as follows:

Resolved, That as subjects of a Government, yet free, we rejoice at
the inestimable right and privilege to publicly assemble and approve
or condemn, when the general good requires it, the manner in which our
representatives may have discharged the duties as signed them by the
suffrages of the people.

2. As the sense of this large assemblage of citizens which may justly
be denominated a spontaneous uprising of an outraged and insulted
constituency, that the action of the County Nominating Convention,
held in Virginia on the 28th day of December, instant, has been unjust,
unfair, arbitrary, and without precedent in the history of conventional
legislation.

3. That the resolutions adopted, and the other proceedings had by the
said Convention, fail to express the true sentiments of the people
of this county, and only proclaim the sentiments of a few interested
individuals. Regarding them as such, we unanimously repudiate them, and
declare that those resolutions and proceedings ought not to have, and
have not, any binding force upon the political action of the free,
independent and Union-loving electors of Storey county.

4. That copies of the proceedings of this meeting be transmitted to the
members of the ensuing State Nominating Convention, from other counties,
accompanied with a respectful request that they will do justice to the
great majority of the people of Storey county, and rebuke the odious and
unjust system of "packing" conventions by admitting the nominees of
this meeting to seats in the Convention, as the true delegates and
representatives of the people of Storey.

The resolutions were unanimously adopted.

A County Central Committee was elected, as follows: J. L. Black, Chas.
Knox, Jas. Phelan, E. R. Burke, Samuel Doak, T. R. P. Dimock, Thos.
Barclay, Dighton Corson, W. D. [sic] Warnock, Jacob Young.

Motion that the delegates elected be instructed to go to Carson
to-morrow (Wednesday ) and that no proxies be allowed except in extreme
cases, and that such extreme cases be attended to by the delegates,
themselves. Carried.

A motion that the Central Committee meet in the District Court room
to-morrow (Wednesday) evening, prevailed.

Also, a motion that the Convention adjourn until next Monday evening--to
meet then at the District Court room.

The meeting broke up with cheers for the Convention, the Union, the old
flag, and groans for Stewart and Baldwin.

It was a dusty, a very dusty, Convention, and as has been previously
remarked in America, we are a great people.

CARD

EDS. ENTERPRISE.--The gentleman who reported the proceedings of the
Union mass meeting last evening for the ENTERPRISE, unintentionally
misquotes. He says Mr. Brosnan slandered the defunct "Nestor." Not
so--Mr. B____ made no allusion to that hair brained, crazy old fool,
"Nestor," nor to his "wardrobe." But Mr. B____ did mention that other
jealous and wicked "cuss," Nessus, and his historical, villainous
"shirt."

Now, if that facetious sinner, blunderer and sage-brush painter, "Mark
Twain," had thus libelled me, I could forgive him; but to be thus
misrepresented (though undesignedly) by the "intelligent" reporter of
the ENTERPRISE is, as Mrs. Partington would say, assolutely inseparable.

Virginia, Dec. 30th

C. M. BROSNAN

Territorial Enterprise, December 30, 1863

A GORGEOUS SWINDLE

Dr. May, of the International Hotel, has put into our hands the
following documents, which will afford an idea of how infinitely mean
some people can become when they get a chance. This firm of Read & Co.,
Bankers, 42 South Third street, Philadelphia, will do to travel--but
not in Washoe, if we understand the peculiar notions of this people.
The accompanying letter, circular, and certificate of stock were sent by
Read & Co. to Dr. May's nephew, Theodore E. Clapp, Esq., Postmaster at
White Pigeon, Michigan. Through the Doctor, Mr. Clapp had learned a good
deal about Washoe, and saw at a glance, of course, that a swindle was on
foot which would not only cheat multitudes of the poorest classes of
men in the States, but would go far toward destroying confidence in
our mines and our citizens if permitted to succeed. He lost no time,
therefore, in forwarding the villainous papers to Dr. May, and we are
sure the people of the Territory are right heartily thankful to him for
doing so.

The certificate of stock is a curiosity in the way of unblushing
rascality. It does not state how many shares there are in the
company, or what a share is represented by. It is a comprehensive
arrangement--the company propose to mine all over "Nevada Territory,
adjoining California"! They are not partial to any particular mining
district. They are going to "carry on" a general "gold and silver mining
business"!--the untechnical, leather-headed thieves! The company is "TO
BE" organized--at some indefinite period in the future probably in
time for the resurrection. The company is "to be" incorporated "for the
purpose of purchasing machinery"--they only organize a company in order
to purchase machinery--the inference is, that they calculate to steal
the mine. And only to think--a man has only got to peddle forty or fifty
of these certificates of stock for Messrs. Read & Co. in order to become
fearfully and wonderfully wealthy!--or, as they eloquently put it,
"By taking hold now, and assisting to raise the capital stock of this
company, you have it within your grasp to place yourself [in] a way
to receive a large income annually without spending one cent!" Oh, who
wouldn't take hold now? Breathes there a man with soul so lead that he
wouldn't take hold under such seductive circumstances? Scasely. Read &
Co. want to get money--rather than miss, they will even grab at a paltry
two-and-a-half piece thus: "You can send in $2.50 at a time." Two and a
half at a time, to buy shares in another Gould & Curry!

But the coolest, the soothingest, the most refreshingest paragraph
(to speak strongly) is that one which is stuck in at the bottom of
the circular, with an air about it which mutely says, "it's of no
consequence, and scarcely worth mentioning, but then it will do to fill
out the page with." The paragraph reads as follows: "N.B.--Subscribers
can receive their dividends, as they fall due, at Messrs. Read & Co's
Banking House, No. 42 South Third street, Philadelphia, or have them
forwarded by express, of which all will be regularly notified!" We
imagine we can see a denizen of some obscure western town walking with
stately mien to the express office to get his regular monthly dividend;
we imagine less fortunate people making way for him, and whispering
together, "There goes old Thompson--owns ten shares in the People's Gold
and Silver Mining Company--Lord! but he's rich!--he's going after his
dividends now." And we imagine we see old Thompson and his regular
dividends fail to connect. And finally, we imagine we see the envied
Thompson jeered at by his same old neighbors as "the old fool who got
taken in by the most palpable humbug of the century."

Who is "Wm. Heffly, Esq., of San Francisco," who knows it all, and who
has calmly waited for three years without once swerving from his purpose
of "starting a mining company" as soon as he could become satisfied that
quartz-mining was a permanent thing? Cautious scoundrel! You couldn't
fool him into going into a highway robbery like the "People's Gold and
Silver Mining Company," until he was certain he could make the thing
look plausible. But if he wrote those circulars and things, he was never
a week in Washoe in his life, because we don't talk about "cap rock"
in this country--that's a Pike's Peak phrase; and when we talk about
"cab-rock," we never say it pays "$24 to the ton," or any other price;
we don't crush wall-rock, as a general thing. There is no "Washoe Mining
District" in this Territory, and the President of the People's Company
did a bully good thing when he "reserved the right to change the
location" of operations whenever he pleased. Mr. Heffly's knowledge
of the prices of leading stocks here borders on the marvelous. He says
Gould & Curry is worth "$5,000 per share." A "share" is three inches;
but Gould & Curry don't sell at $20,000 a foot; he puts Ophir at $2,400
"per share"; now a "share" of Ophir is one inch. All the other prices
mentioned by Mr. Heffly are wrong, and never were right at any time,
perhaps. In the items written by Mr. Heffly, and pretended to be clipped
from the Bulletin and the Standard, he uses mining technicalities never
uttered either by miners or newspaper men in this part of America.
The only true statement in these documents is the one which
reads--"Therefore, in subscribing to the capital stock of this company,
you are acting on a certainty, and taking no risk whatever." That is
eminently so. You are acting on a certainty of being swindled, and so
far from there being any risk about that result, it is the deadest "open
and shut" thing in the world.

Now this swindle ought to be well ventilated by the newspapers--not that
sound business men will ever be swindled by it, but the unsuspecting
multitude, who yearn to grow suddenly rich, will assuredly have their
slender purses drained by it.

Territorial Enterprise, January, 1864

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN

January 10, 1864

POLITICS

EDITORS ENTERPRISE: Well, how are you and the News and the Bulletin
making out for the Constitution in Storey?

I suppose it will be voted down here. I said so to a Virginia man
yesterday. "Well," says he, "that reminds me of a circumstance. A good
old practical Dutchman once contributed liberally toward the building of
a church. By and by they wanted a lightning rod for it, and they came to
the Dutchman again. 'Not a dam cent,' says he, 'not a dam cent! I helps
to puild a house for te Lord, und if he joose to dunder on it and knock
it down, he must do it at his own risk!' Now in the Constitution, we
have placed the Capital here for several years; Carson has always fared
well at our hands in the legislature, and finally, we have tacitly
consented to say nothing more about the Mint being built in this
inconvenient locality. This is the house that has been built for
Carson--and now if she chooses to go and dunder on it and knock it down,
by the Lord she'll have to take the consequences! The fact is all our
bullion is silver, and we don't want the country flooded with silver
coin; therefore, we can save the Government a heavy expense, and do the
Territory a real kindness, by showing the authorities that we don't need
a mint, and don't want one. And as to that Capital, we'll move it up to
Storey, where it belongs."

So spake the Virginian. I listened as one having no taxable property
and never likely to have; as one being out of office and willing to
stay out; as one having no tangible right to take an interest in the
Constitution, and consequently not caring a straw whether it carried or
not. The man spoke words of wisdom, though. I am aware that the capital
could have been removed last session, and from the complexion of the
new Territorial Assembly, I suppose it can be done this year.
Notwithstanding these things though, and notwithstanding I am a free
white male citizen of Storey county, I conjecture that I have a right
to my private opinion that Carson is the proper place for the seat of
Government and it ought to remain here so long as I don't try to make
capital out of that opinion. Nobody has a right to arrest me for being
disorderly on such ground as that.

BAGGAGE

Dan, will you send my baggage down here, or have I got to go on
borrowing clothes from Pete Hopkins through all eternity?

YOUNG GILLESPIE

Young Gillespie is down here in my employ. On a small salary. I have
got him figuring with the Legislators for extra compensation for the
reporters.

THE LEGISLATURE

The Territorial Legislature will meet here next Tuesday at noon. The
rooms used last year in the county buildings, have been let by the
County Commissioners for the use of the two Houses, at $500 for the
session of forty days, payable in greenbacks. The halls are now being
fitted up, and will be ready at the proper time.

HOUSE-WARMING

All Carson went out to warm Theodore Winters' new house, in Washoe
Valley, on Friday evening, and had a pleasant time of it. The house and
its furniture together, cost $50,000.

WARREN ENGINE COMPANY

The Warren boys brought out their superb machine for practice yesterday.
She threw a heavy stream entirely over the tall flag-staff in the Plaza.

RELIGIOUS

Religious matters are booming along in Carson. Mrs. Wiley, who is an
unusually talented vocalist, has been requested to give a concert for
the benefit of my old regular chronic brick church, and will probably do
so shortly.

THE SQUAIRES TRIAL

A jury has finally been empaneled in this murder case, or man slaughter
case, or justifiable homicide, or whatever it is, and the trial set for
to-morrow.

MARSH CHILDREN

Concerning the Marsh troupe, R. G. Marsh sends the following note to
Major Dallam, of the Independent: "--Please insert enclosed corrected
advertisement, and make such flourish and announcement as your local
feeling will admit of, consistent with a kleer konshuns. Yours till we
meat and drink."

The Company will appear at the Carson Theatre on Monday, Tuesday and
Wednesday evenings of the present week. Billy O'Neil comes along, too.

ARTEMUS

I received a letter from Artemus Ward, to-day, dated "Austin, January
1." It has been sloshing around between Virginia and Carson for awhile.
I hope there is no impropriety in publishing extracts from a private
letter--if there be, I ought not to copy the following paragraph of his:

"I arrived here yesterday morning at 2 o'clock. It is a wild, untamable
place, but full of lion-hearted boys. I speak tonight. See small bills.
*** I hope, some time, to see you and Kettle-belly Brown in New York. My
grandmother--my sweet grandmother--she, thank God, is too far advanced
in life to be affected by your hellish wiles. My aunt--she might fall.
But didn't Warren fall, at Bunker Hill? [The old woman's safe. And so
is the old girl, for that matter.-MARK.] DO not sir, do not, sir, do not
flatter yourself that you are the only chastely-humorous writer onto the
Pacific slopes. *** I shall always remember Virginia as a bright spot in
my existence, and all others must or rather cannot be, 'as it were.'"

I am glad that old basket-covered jug holds out. I don't know that it
does, but I have an impression that way. At least I can't make anything
out of that last sentence. But I wish him well, and a safe journey,
drunk or sober.

MARK TWAIN

Territorial Enterprise, January 12-13, 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

CARSON, 11 A.M., January 12, 1864.

The Constitution pot boils. Gentlemen from the different sections of
the Territory--visiting brethren of the Legislature agree in the opinion
that the Constitution will carry by a very respectable vote on the 19th.
This will have its effect upon Ormsby county, which, strangely enough,
considering the advantages she would derive from having the Capital
permanently located at Carson, a mint built here, and the number
of resident officials increased, has heretofore been opposed to the
establishment of a State Government.

And speaking of the mint, I have an item of news relating to that
subject. Mr. Lockhart, the Indian Agent, has just received a letter from
Commissioner Bennet, in which he says he has been informed by Secretary
Chase that no further steps will be taken toward building a mint in this
region until our State Representatives arrive in Washington! This is in
consequence of efforts now being made by Mr. Conness to have the mint
located at Virginia. The authorities want advice from representatives
direct from the people. As I said before, the people of Ormsby will
oppose the Constitution.

O, certainly they will! They will if they are sick--or sentimental--or
consumptive--or don't know their own interests--or can't see when God
Almighty smiles upon them, and don't care anyhow. Now if Ormsby votes
against the Constitution, let us clothe ourselves in sackcloth and put
ashes on our heads; for in that hour religious liberty will be at an
end here--her next step will be to vote against her eternal salvation.
However the anti-Constitutional sentiment here is growing weak in the
knees.

Most of the members have arrived, and the wheels of government will
begin to churn at 12 M.

MARK TWAIN

Territorial Enterprise, January 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

Carson City, January 13, 1864

Before the Legislature begins its labors, I will just mention that the
Marsh Troupe will perform in Virginia to-morrow night (Thursday)--at
the Opera House of course--for the benefit of Engine Company No. 2. They
played here last night--"Toodles," you know. Young George Marsh--whose
theatrical costumes are ungainly enough, but not funny--took the part of
Toodles, and performed it well--performed it as only cultivated talent,
or genius, or which you please, or both, could enable him to do it.
Little Jenny Arnot (she with the hideous--I mean affected--voice)
appeared as Mrs. Toodles. Jenny is pretty--very pretty; but by the usual
sign, common to all those of her sex similarly gifted, I perceive she
knows it. Therefore, let us not speak of it. Jenny is smart--but she
knows that too, and I grant you it is natural that she should. And
behold you, when she does forget herself and make use of her own natural
voice, and drop her borrowed one, it is the pleasantest thing in life
to see her play. The other ladies--however, I neglected to preserve
a theatre bill, and I do not know what characters they personified.
However, one was a handsome sailor boy, and the other was a lovely,
confiding girl with auburn hair--the same being stuck after each
other. Alexander was gotten up in considerable taste as a ratty old
gentleman--the father of one of the stuck--the auburn one, I think.
Beatty was one of those dear reformed pirates, who comes in at the
finale with a bandaged head and a broken heart, and leans up against
the side-scenes and slobbers over his past sins, and is so interesting.
Billy O'Neil was so successful in keeping the house in a roar as the
Limerick Boy, and especially as the Irish Schoolmaster, that he was
frequently driven from his own masterly gravity. After the performance
was over, he said, "Those girls on the front seats knew where the laugh
came in, didn't they?" I said they did. I further observed that if there
was any place where the laugh didn't come in, those girls on the front
seats didn't know it. Wherefore, if so, he had them there. My head was
level. I think I am not transcending the limits of truth, when I assert
that my head was eminently level. I would not flatter Billy O'Neil, yet
I cannot help thinking that as "Barney the Baron," night before last,
he was the drunkest white man that ever crossed the mountains. George
Boulden, assisted by Mr. Alexander, sang "When this Cruel War is Over,
as it Were," and was thrice encored.

A circumstance happened to an acquaintance of mine this week, which I
promised to say nothing about. A young man from one of the neighboring
counties, took a good deal of silk dress, with a moderate amount of girl
in it, home from the theatre, and on his way back to his constituents
he jammed his leg into a suburban post-hole, and remained anchored out
there in the dark until considerably after midnight. He wept, and he
prayed, and he cussed. He continued to cuss. He cussed himself, and the
Board of Alder men, and the County Commissioners. He even cussed his own
relations, and more particularly his grandmother, which was innocent. It
seemed a good deal mixed as to whether he was ever going to get loose or
not; but the coyotes got to skirmishing around him and grabbing at his
independent leg, and made him uncommon lively. Whereat, he put on his
strength, and tugged and cussed, and kicked at the coyotes, and cussed
again, and tugged, and finally, out he came--but he pulled the post-hole
up by the roots in doing of it. It was funny--exceedingly funny.
However, I don't mind it; I slept all the same, and just as well.

I have received that carpet-sack of mine at last. It contained two
shirts and six empty champagne bottles. Also one garrote collar, with a
note from Dan written on it in pencil, accounting for the bottles under
the plea that "voluminous baggage maketh a man to be respected." It was
an airy and graceful thought, and a credit to his great mind. The shirts
were marked respectively "R. M. Daggett" and "Sandy Baldwin," from which
I perceive that Dan has been foraging again.

We organized yesterday. "We" is the House of Representatives, you
understand. Simmons will make a good Speaker; and, besides, I shall be
nearby to volunteer a little of my Third House experience, occasionally.
The Council did not expend half an hour in getting very thoroughly and
permanently organized. The regular joint committees were appointed
to wait on the Governor, and that Body will be produced in Court this
morning to testify concerning the condition of the country. N.B.--The
several departments of the law-making power are called Bodies. The
Governor is one of them, by law--therefore it is disrespectful to speak
of him otherwise than as a Body--a jolly, unctuous, oleaginous old Body.
That's it. I do not consider that we are entirely organized yet, either.
You see, we are entitled to a Chaplain. The Organic Act vouchsafes unto
us the consolations of religion--payable in Greenbacks at three dollars
a day. We roped in the Rev. Mr. White, yesterday, and gouged him out of
a prayer, for which, of course, we never intend to pay him. We go in for
ministers looking to Providence in little matters of this kind. Well,
there is no harm in us, and we calculate to run this institution without
a Chaplain. In accordance with a motion of Mr. Nightingill, we dispensed
with the services of Chaplain in the Third House, and it is a matter
of no little pride to me to observe that this Aggregation of Wisdom
manifests a disposition, not only in this but in many other respects,
to send Jefferson's Manual and the Organic Act to the d--l and take
the published proceedings of that Body as its parliamentary gospel--its
guide to temporal glory and ultimate salvation. The House will proceed
to business now in a few minutes.

MARK TWAIN

Territorial Enterprise, January 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

Carson, January 14, 1864

HOUSE--THIRD DAY

Say--you have got a compositor up there who is too rotten particular, it
seems to me. When I spell "devil" in my usual frank and open manner, he
puts it "d--l"! Now, Lord love his conceited and accommodating soul,
if I choose to use the language of the vulgar, the low-flung and the
sinful, and such as will shock the ears of the highly civilized, I don't
want him to appoint himself an editorial critic and proceed to tone me
down and save me from the consequences of my conduct; that is, unless
I pay him for it, which I won't. I expect I could spell "devil' before
that fastidious cuss was born.--MARK TWAIN.

The Speaker called the House to order at 10 A.M.

RESOLUTIONS

Mr. Heaton introduced a concurrent resolution, that when the Legislative
Assembly adjourn to-morrow, it be to meet again on Wednesday, 21st, at
12 M.

A motion to suspend the rules was put to a vote and carried--ayes 15;
noes, Messrs. Clagett, Curley, Gillespie, Gove, Hess, Hunter, Jones and
Trask.

Mr. Gillespie moved to amend by making the hour 1 P.M.

[More skirmishing about parliamentary usage but the Chair is not in
fault.--REPORTER.]

Mr. Fisher offered an amendment, to read "the House of Representatives
and Council concurring." [Mr. Fisher got his notion from--well--say
inspiration, for instance.--REPORTER.]

Mr. Clagett finally got up and straightened the blasted resolution.

The Speaker made a suggestion concerning the wording of the document.
[Half an hour more will get it all right, you know. The parliamentary
skirmishing still goes on, with unabated intelligence. This Aggregation
of Wisdom can frame a concurrent resolution, but we must have time
we must have a reasonable length of time to do it in. I could have
furnished all the amendments offered to this document, and all the
transmogrifications it has passed through--but then you don't want
a column of that kind of information. I don't consider it
important.--REP.]

The resolution as infinitely amended and improved, was voted upon at
last, and carried--ayes 18, noes 5--Messrs. Clagett, Gillespie, Gove,
Hunter and Phillips. [I asked the Clerk what the resolution proposed to
do now? And he said he'd be d--d if he knew.--REP.]

Mr. Clagett offered a resolution that the regular daily sessions of the
House commence at 10 A.M.

Mr. Fisher moved to insert "except when otherwise ordered."

On a division the motion was lost--14 to 6.

The resolution was then adopted.

Territorial Enterprise, January 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS--HOUSE--FOURTH DAY

Carson, January 15.

The Committee on Rules for the Government of the House, reported
yesterday the good old-fashioned and entirely proper rule that members
and officers should keep their seats at adjournment until the Speaker
had declared the House adjourned and left the Chair. Well, sir, the
House debated it and voted it down. I can prove it by the Clerk's
Journal. Now, considering that it was a harmless measure, and a
customary one, and a mark of respect to the Chair; and considering that
it is very seldom enforced, and also, that it was a little disrespectful
to the Chair to vote it down, the action of the House in the matter
seems somewhat strained. But I will interrupt you just here, if you
please, and suggest to you that it is none of your business, and I want
to know what you are putting in your lip about it for? I expect we can
attend to our own affairs. And didn't they bullyrag that concurrent
resolution yesterday? I reckon not. I do not admire the taste of the
lobby members, though, in letting on as if they knew so much more about
it, when the House is being rent with the mortal agonies of an effort
to adjourn itself over for a week without adjourning the Council at the
same time. The House did not wish to adjourn the Council without being
asked to do so by that body, and if the House found it very nearly
impossible to word the resolution so as not to adjourn the Council
aforesaid, I do not conceive that it was dignified on the part of the
lobby members to express by their countenances that they had their
own opinions concerning the House. But didn't the House worry that
concurrent resolution for a few hours or so? You bet you. However, we
had better let "parliamentary usage" alone for the present, until our
former knowledge on the knotty subject returns to our memories. Because
Providence is not going to put up with this sort of thing much
longer, you know. I observe there is no lightning rod on these county
buildings.--MARK TWAIN

Territorial Enterprise, January 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

HOUSE--NINTH DAY

Carson, January 20

Mr. Dean offered a resolution to employ a copying clerk.

Mr. Gillespie offered an amendment requiring the Engrossing and
Enrolling Clerks to do this proposed officer's work. [These two officers
are strictly ornamental--have been under wages since the first day
of the session--haven't had anything to do, and won't for two weeks
yet--and now by the eternal, they want some more useless clerical
jewelry to dangle to the Legislature. If the House would discharge its
extra scribblers, and let the Chief Clerk hire assistance only when he
wants it, it seems to me it would be better.--REP.]

Without considering the appointment of a new jimcrack ornament, and
starting his pay six weeks before he goes to work ( only thirteen
dollars a day), the House adjourned.

Territorial Enterprise, January 19-20, 1864

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN

CARSON, January 14.

MISS CLAPP'S SCHOOL.

By authority of an invitation from Hon. Wm. M. Gillespie, member of
the House Committee on Colleges and Common Schools, I accompanied that
statesman on an unofficial visit to the excellent school of Miss Clapp
and Mrs. Cutler, this afternoon. The air was soft and balmy--the sky
was cloudless and serene--the odor of flowers floated upon the idle
breeze--the glory of the sun descended like a benediction upon mountain
and meadow and plain--the wind blew like the very devil, and the day was
generally disagreeable.

The school--however, I will mention, first that a charter for an
educational institution to be called the Sierra Seminary, was granted
to Miss Clapp during the Legislative session of 1861, and a bill will
be introduced while the present Assembly is in session, asking an
appropriation of $20,000 to aid the enterprise. Such a sum of money
could not be more judiciously expended, and I doubt not the bill will
pass.

The present school is a credit both to the teachers and the town. It
now numbers about forty pupils, I should think, and is well and
systematically conducted. The exercises this afternoon were of a
character not likely to be unfamiliar to the free American citizen who
has a fair recollection of how he used to pass his Friday afternoons
in the days of his youth. The tactics have undergone some changes, but
these variations are not important. In former times a fellow took his
place in the luminous spelling class in the full consciousness that
if he spelled cat with a "k," or indulged in any other little
orthographical eccentricities of a similar nature, he would be degraded
to the foot or sent to his seat; whereas, he keeps his place in the
ranks now, in such cases, and his punishment is simply to "'bout face."
Johnny Eaves stuck to his first position, to-day, long after the balance
of the class had rounded to, but he subsequently succumbed to the word
"nape," which he persisted in ravishing of its final vowel. There was
nothing irregular about that. Your rightly-constructed schoolboy will
spell a multitude of hard words without hesitating once, and then lose
his grip and miss fire on the easiest one in the book.

The fashion of reading selections of prose and poetry remains the same;
and so does the youthful manner of doing that sort of thing. Some pupils
read poetry with graceful ease and correct expression, and others place
the rising and falling inflection at measured intervals, as if they had
learned the lesson on a "see-saw;" but then they go undulating through
a stanza with such an air of unctuous satisfaction, that it is a comfort
to be around when they are at it.

"The boy--stoo-dawn--the burning deck--

When-sawl--but him had fled--

The flames--that shook--the battle--zreck--Shone round--him o'er--the
dead."

That is the old-fashioned impressive style--stately, slow-moving and
solemn. It is in vogue yet among scholars of tender age. It always will
be. Ever since Mrs. Hemans wrote that verse, it has suited the pleasure
of juveniles to emphasize the word "him," and lay atrocious stress upon
that other word "o'er," whether she liked it or not; and I am prepared
to believe that they will continue this practice unto the end of time,
and with the same indifference to Mrs. Hemans' opinions about it, or any
body's else.

They sing in school, now-a-days, which is an improvement upon the
ancient regime; and they don't catch flies and throw spit-balls at the
teacher, as they used to do in my time--which is another improvement,
in a general way. Neither do the boys and girls keep a sharp look-out on
each other's shortcomings and report the same at headquarters, as was
a custom of by-gone centuries. And this reminds me of Gov. Nye's last
anecdote, fulminated since the delivery of his message, and consequently
not to be found in that document. The company were swapping old school
reminiscences, and in due season they got to talking about that
extinct species of tell-tales that were once to be found in all
minor educational establishments, and who never failed to detect and
impartially denounce every infraction of the rules that occurred among
their mates. The Governor said that he threw a casual glance at a pretty
girl on the next bench one day, and she complained to the teacher--which
was entirely characteristic, you know. Says she, "Mister Jones, Warren
Nye's looking at me." Whereupon, without a suggestion from anybody, up
jumped an infamous, lisping, tow-headed young miscreant, and says he,
"Yeth, thir, I thee him do it!" I doubt if the old original boy got off
that ejaculation with more gusto than the Governor throws into it.

The "compositions" read to-day were as exactly like the compositions I
used to hear read in our school as one baby's nose is exactly like all
other babies' noses. I mean the old principal ear-marks were all there:
the cutting to the bone of the subject with the very first gash, without
any preliminary foolishness in the way of a gorgeous introductory; the
inevitable and persevering tautology; the brief, monosyllabic sentences
(beginning, as a very general thing, with the pronoun "I"); the penchant
for presenting rigid, uncompromising facts for the consideration of the
hearer, rather than ornamental fancies; the depending for the success of
the composition upon its general merits, without tacking artificial
aids to the end of it, in the shape of deductions, or conclusions, or
clap-trap climaxes, albeit their absence sometimes imparts to these
essays the semblance of having come to an end before they were
finished--of arriving at full speed at a jumping-off place and going
suddenly overboard, as it were, leaving a sensation such as one feels
when he stumbles without previous warning upon that infernal "To be
Continued" in the midst of a thrilling magazine story. I know there are
other styles of school compositions, but these are the characteristics
of the style which I have in my eye at present. I do not know why this
one has particularly suggested itself to my mind, unless the literary
effort of one of the boys there to-day left with me an unusually vivid
impression. It ran something in this wise:

COMPOSITION.

"I like horses. Where we lived before we came here, we used to have a
cutter and horses. We used to ride in it. I like winter. I like snow.
I used to have a pony all to myself, where I used to live before I came
here. Once it drifted a good deal--very deep--and when it stopped I went
out and got in it."

That was all. There was no climax to it, except the spasmodic bow which
the tautological little student jerked at the school as he closed his
labors.

Two remarkably good compositions were read. Miss P.'s was much the best
of these--but aside from its marked literary excellence, it possessed
another merit which was peculiarly gratifying to my feelings just
at that time. Because it took the conceit out of young Gillespie as
completely as perspiration takes the starch out of a shirt-collar.
In his insufferable vanity, that feeble member of the House of
Representatives had been assuming imposing attitudes, and beaming
upon the pupils with an expression of benignant imbecility which was
calculated to inspire them with the conviction that there was only one
guest of any consequence in the house. Therefore, it was an unspeakable
relief to me to see him forced to shed his dignity. Concerning the
composition, however. After detailing the countless pleasures which had
fallen to her lot during the holidays, the authoress finished with a
proviso, in substance as follows--I have forgotten the precise language:
"But I have no cheerful reminiscences of Christmas. It was dreary,
monotonous and insipid to the last degree. Mr. Gillespie called early,
and remained the greater part of the day!" You should have seen the
blooming Gillespie wilt when that literary bombshell fell in his camp!
The charm of the thing lay in the fact that that last naive sentence
was the only suggestion offered in the way of accounting for the
dismal character of the occasion. However, to my mind it was
sufficient--entirely sufficient.

Since writing the above, I have seen the architectural plans and
specifications for Miss Clapp and Mrs. Cutler's proposed "Sierra
Seminary" building. It will be a handsome two-story edifice, one hundred
feet square, and will accommodate forty "boarders" and any number of
pupils beside, who may board elsewhere. Constructed of wood, it will
cost $12,000; or of stone, $18,000. Miss Clapp has devoted ten acres of
ground to the use and benefit of the institution. I sat down intending
to write a dozen pages of variegated news. I have about accomplished the
task--all except the "variegated." I have economised in the matter of
current news of the day, considerably more than I purposed to do, for
every item of that nature remains stored away in my mind in a very
unwritten state, and will afford unnecessarily ample material for
another letter. It is useless material, though, I suspect, because,
inasmuch as I have failed to incorporate it into this, I fear me I shall
not feel industrious enough to weave out of it another letter until it
has become too stale to be interesting. Well, never mind--we must learn
to take an absorbing delight in educational gossip; nine-tenths of the
revenues of the Territory go into the bottomless gullet of that ravenous
school fund, you must bear in mind.

MARK TWAIN.

Territorial Enterprise, January, 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

HOUSE--TENTH DAY

Carson, January 21

An officer of the House--Charles Carter, Messenger--is lying at the
point of death this morning. He ruptured a blood vessel of the brain,
night before last, previous to which time he was in robust health. He
was a youth of great promise, and was respected and esteemed by all
who knew him. He held the position of Messenger of the House during the
session of 1862, and his faithful attention to the duties of the office
then was endorsed by his re-election the present session.

The chief portion of the population of Carson spent last night in
feasting and dancing at the Warm Springs. Such of them as are out of
bed at this hour, declare the occasion to have been one of unmitigated
felicity.

The House met at 10 A.M.

LEAVE OF ABSENCE

Mr. Calder asked and obtained leave for one day for Mr. Clagett who was
engaged in drafting a bill.

QUESTION OF PRIVILEGE

Mr. Stewart rose to a question of privilege, and said the ENTERPRISE
and Union reporters had been moving Ellen Redman's toll-bridge from its
proper position on the Carson Slough to an illegal one on the Humboldt
Slough. [I did that. If Ellen Redman don't like it, I can move her
little bridge back again--but under protest. I waded that Humboldt
Slough once, and I have always had a hankering to see a bridge over it
since.--MARK.]

Mr. Phillips moved to amend Mr. Gillespie's resolution by striking out
that portion which puts the Enrolling and Engrossing Clerks under the
sole control of the Chief Clerk. Lost.

A warm debate sprung up on the subject. Mr. Gillespie manfully contended
for the justness and expediency of adopting his resolution, and stated
several propositions which were eminently correct, to-wit: that these
subordinate officers ought to be under the control of the Chief Clerk;
that they were under the pay of the House, and had been for some time,
and yet had nothing to do; and finally, that copying being within
the scope of their duties, they ought to be put at it and afforded
an opportunity of rendering an equivalent for their salaries. Messrs.
Stewart, Dixson and others were very fearful of discommoding the
subordinate clerks, and very anxious to embellish the House with some
more fellows calculated to swing a sinecure gracefully. The Chief Clerk
stated that Mr. Powell, the Enrolling Clerk, had labored assiduously,
from the first, in rendering any and all assistance asked at his hands,
but nobody coming forward to say how much Captain Murphy had done, and
nobody being supplied with a pile of estimates [sufficient] to portray
how much he hadn't done, it became the general impression that Captain
Murphy had been considerably more ornamental than useful to the House of
Representatives. But I am here only during the courtesy of the House--on
my good behavior, as it were--and I am a little afraid that if I say
this aggregation of Wisdom elected Captain Murphy more out of regard for
his military services than respect for the nasty manner in which he can
sling a pen, I shall get notice to quit.--MARK.

Mr. Gillespie, on leave, amended his resolution by adding "Provided said
clerks shall not be interfered with in the discharge of their respective
duties"--and had the resolution not been furnished with this loophole if
it had not been thus emasculated, it would not have passed. By a scratch
it carried, though, and here are the voters' names:

AYES--Messrs. Calder, Elliott, Gillespie, Gove, Hess, Hunter, McDonald,
Nelson, Requa, Trask, Ungar, Speaker--12.

NOES-Messrs. Barclay, Curler, Dean, Dixson, Fisher, Heaton, Jones,
Phillips, Stewart, Tennant--10.

Territorial Enterprise, January 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

HOUSE--SIXTEENTH DAY

Carson City, January 27

GENERAL ORDERS

The House resolved itself into Committee of the Whole, Mr. Fisher in the
chair, upon the unfinished business of the general orders, and occupied
the remainder of the forenoon session in the consideration of the Act
providing for the appointment of Notaries Public and defining their
duties. [This is a most important bill, and if passed will secure
clearer and more comprehensible records hereafter. It will leave Storey
county twelve Notaries in place of the fifteen hundred we have at
present, and these twelve will have to be men of solid reputation,
since they will have to give heavier bonds than all the fifteen hundred
combined do at present; they must give bail in the sum of $5,000
each--$60,000 altogether. Mr. Fisher said three would be sufficient
for Douglas county--he didn't want all the property there tied up in
Notary's bonds. Mr. Clagett said there was scarcely a valid deed on the
Humboldt records, because the certificates attached to them by ignorant
Notaries were worthless, and he supposed property worth millions had
already been jeopardized in the Territory by this kind of officers. He
said one really splendid ignoramus out there who forwarded a bond in
the sum of $10, had it returned with a notification that it must be
increased to $500; he couldn't straddle the blind, and had to give up
his commission. Besides, Mr. Clagett said, the passage of this Act would
oust from office some twenty-five rabid Secessionists in Humboldt county
alone! [Sensation.] If you could just see the official bonds drawn up
and sent to the office of the Secretary of the Territory by some of
these mentally deaf, dumb and blind Notaries, you would wonder, as I
do, what they have been and gone and done, that Heaven should be down on
them so. They never use revenue stamps--they don't subscribe the oath,
they--well, they don't do anything that could lay them liable to an
accusation of knowing it all, or even any fraction of it.

[Mr. Tennant said some few secesh had been appointed in Lander, but not
so many as in Humboldt--they found one secesh in Lander last spring, and
Acting-Governor Clemens captured him. I send you a copy of the bill, as
they have just finished amending it in the Committee of the Whole, and
suggest that you publish it.--MARK]

Territorial Enterprise, January 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

Carson City, January 28, 1864

HOUSE--SEVENTEENTH DAY

I delivered that message last night, but I didn't talk loud
enough--people in the far end of the hall could not hear me. They said
"Louder--louder," occasionally, but I thought that was a way they had--a
joke, as it were. I had never talked to a crowd before, and knew none
of the tactics of the public speaker. I suppose I spoke loud enough
for some houses, but not for that District Court room, which is about
seventy-five feet from floor to roof, and has no ceiling. I hope the
people will deal as mildly with me, however, as I did with the public
officers in the annual message. Some folks heard the entire document,
though--there is some comfort in that. Hon. Mr. Clagett, Speaker Simmons
of the inferior House, Hon. Hal Clayton, Speaker of the Third House,
Judge Haydon, Dr. Alban, and others whose opinions are entitled to
weight, said they would travel several miles to hear that message again.
It affords me a good deal of satisfaction to mention it. It serves to
show that if the audience could have heard-me distinctly, they would
have appreciated the wisdom thus conferred upon them. They seemed to
appreciate what they did hear though, pretty thoroughly. After the first
quarter of an hour I ceased to whisper, and became audible. One of these
days, when I get time, I will correct, amend and publish the message, in
accordance with a resolution of the Third House ordering 300,000 copies
in the various languages spoken at the present day.

P.S.--Sandy Baldwin and Theodore Winters heard that message, anyhow, and
by thunder they appreciated it, too. They have sent a hundred dollars
apiece to San Francisco this morning, to purchase a watch chain for His
Excellency Governor Twain. I guess that is a pretty good result for an
incipient oratorical slouch like me, isn't it? I don't know that anybody
tendered the other Governor a testimonial of any kind.

MARK TWAIN.

Territorial Enterprise, November 1863-February 1864

LETTER FROM DAYTON

[extract]

[TRAVELING WITH ADOLPH SUTRO.--] Eight left Virginia yesterday and came
down to Dayton with Mr. Sutro. Time 30 minutes--distance 8 or 9 miles.
There is nothing very slow about that kind of travel. We found Dayton
the same old place but taking up a good deal more room than it did the
last time I saw it, and looking more brisk and lively with its increase
of business, and more handsome on account of the beautiful dressed stone
buildings with which it is being embellished of late.

Just as we got fairly under way, and were approaching Ball Robert's
bridge, Sutro's dog, "Carlo," got to skirmishing around in the
extravagant exuberance of his breakfast, and shipped up a fight with six
or seven other dogs whom he was entirely unacquainted with, had never
met before and probably has no desire to meet again. He waltzed into
them right gallantly and right gallantly waltzed out again.

We also left at about this time and trotted briskly across Ball Robert's
bridge. I remarked that Ball Robert's bridge was a good one and a credit
to that bald gentleman. I said it in a fine burst of humor and more on
account of the joke than anything else, but Sutro is insensible to the
more delicate touches of American wit, and the effort was entirely lost
on him. I don't think Sutro minds a joke of mild character any more than
a dead man would. However, I repeated it once or twice without producing
any visible effect, and finally derived what comfort I could by laughing
at it myself.

Mr. Sutro being a confirmed businessman, replied in a practical and
businesslike way. He said the bridge was a good one, and so were all
public blessings of a similar nature when entrusted to the hands of
private individuals. He said if the county had built the bridge it would
have cost an extravagant sum of money, and would have been eternally
out of repair. He also said the only way to get public work well and
properly done was to let it out by contract.

"For instance," says he, "they have fooled away two or three years
trying to capture Richmond, whereas if they had let the job by contract
to some sensible businessman, the thing would have been accomplished and
forgotten long ago." It was a novel and original idea and I forgot my
joke for the next half hour in speculating upon its feasibility...

Territorial Enterprise, February 9, 1864

Letter from Carson City

CONCERNING NOTARIES

A strange, strange thing occurred here yesterday, to wit:

A MAN APPLIED FOR A NOTARY'S COMMISSION.

Think of it. Ponder over it. He wanted a notarial commission--he said so
himself. He was from Storey county. He brought his little petition along
with him. He brought it on two stages. It is voluminous. The County
Surveyor is chaining it off. Three shifts of clerks will be employed
night and day on it, deciphering the signatures and testing their
genuineness. They began unrolling the petition at noon, and people of
strong mining proclivities at once commenced locating claims on it. We
are too late, you know. But then they say the extensions are just as
good as the original. I believe you.

Since writing the above, I have discovered that the foregoing does not
amount to much as a sensation item, after all. The reason is, because
there are seventeen hundred and forty-two applications for notaryships
already on file in the Governor's office. I was not aware of it, you
know. There are also as much as eleven cords of petitions stacked up
in his back yard. A watchman stands guard over this combustible
material--the back yard is not insured. Since writing the above, strange
events have happened. I started downtown, and had not gone far, when I
met a seedy, ornery, ratty, hang-dog-looking stranger, who approached me
in the most insinuating manner, and said he was glad to see me. He
said he had often sighed for an opportunity of becoming acquainted with
me--that he had read my effusions (he called them "effusions,") with
solemn delight, and had yearned to meet the author face to face. He said
he was Billson--Billson of Lander--I might have heard of him. I told him
I had--many a time--which was an infamous falsehood. He said "D--n it,
old Quill-driver you must come and take a drink with me"; and says I,
"D--n it, old Vermin-ranch, I'll do it." [I had him there.] We took a
drink, and he told the bar-keeper to charge it. After which, he opened
a well-filled carpet-sack and took out a shirt-collar and a petition. He
then threw the empty carpet-sack aside and unrolled several yards of the
petition--"just for a starter," he said. "Now," says he, "Mark, have you
got a good deal of influence with Governor?" "Unbounded," says I, with
honest pride; "when I go and use my influence with Governor Nye, and
tell him it will be a great personal favor to me if he will do so and
so, he always says it will be a real pleasure to him--that if it were
any other man--any other man in the world--but seeing it's me, he wont."
Mr. Billson then remarked that I was the very man; he wanted a little
notarial appointment, and he would like me to mention it to the
Governor. I said I would, and turned away, resolved to damn young
Billson's official aspirations with a mild dose of my influence.

I walked about ten steps, and met a cordial man, with the dust of
travel upon his garments. He mashed my hands in his, and as I stood
straightening the joints back into their places again, says he, "Why
darn it, Mark, how well you're looking! Thunder! It's been an age since
I saw you. Turn around and let's look at you good. 'Gad, it's the same
old Mark! Well, how've you been--and what have you been doing with
yourself lately? Why don't you never come down and see a fellow? Every
time I come to town, the old woman's sure to get after me for not
bringing you out, as soon as I get back. Why she takes them articles of
yourn, and slathers 'em into her old scrap-book, along with deaths and
marriages, and receipts for the itch, and the small-pox, and hell knows
what all, and if it warn't that you talk too slow to ever make love,
dang my cats if I wouldn't be jealous of you. But what's the use fooling
away time here?--let's go and gobble a cocktail." This was old Boreas,
from Washoe. I went and gobbled a cocktail with him. He mentioned
incidentally, that he wanted a notaryship, and showed me a good deal
of his petition. I said I would use my influence in his behalf, and
requested him to call at the Governor's office in the morning, and get
his commission. He thanked me most heartily, and said he would. [I think
I see him doing of it.]

I met another stranger before I got to the corner--a pompous little man
with a crooked-handled cane and sorrel moustache. Says he, "How do you
do, Mr. Twain--how do you do, sir? I am happy to see you, sir--very
happy indeed, sir. My name is _____ _____. Pardon me, sir, but I
perceive you do not entirely recollect me--I am J. Bidlecome Dusenberry,
of Esmeralda, formerly of the city of New York, sir." "Well," says
I, "I'm glad to meet you, Dysentery, and--" "No, no Dusenberry, sir,
Dusenberry!--you--" "Oh, I beg your pardon," says I; "Dusenberry--yes,
I understand, now; but it's all the same, you know--Dusenberry, by any
other name would--however, I see you have a bale of dry goods--for me,
perhaps." He said it was only a little petition, and proceeded to show
me a few acres of it, observing casually that he was the candidate in
the notarial line--that he had read my lucumbrations (he called it all
that) with absorbing interest, and he would like me to use my influence
with the Governor in his behalf. I assured him his commission would
be ready for him as soon as it was signed. He appeared overcome with
gratitude, and insisted, and insisted, and insisted, until at last I
went and took a drink with him.

On the next corner I met Chief Justice Turner, on his way to the
Governor's office with a petition. He said, "God bless you, my dear
fellow--I'm delighted to see you--" and hurried on, after receiving my
solemn promise that he should be a Notary Public if I could secure his
appointment. Next I met William Stewart, grinning in his engaging way,
and stroking his prodigious whiskers from his nose to his stomach. Sandy
Baldwin was with him, and they both had measureless petitions on a dray
with the names all signed in their own handwriting. I knew those fellows
pretty well and I didn't promise them my influence. I knew if the
Governor refused to appoint them, they would have an injunction on him
in less than twenty-four hours, and stop the issuance of any more Notary
commissions. I met John B. Winters, next, and Judge North, and Mayor
Arick, and Washoe Jim, and John O. Earl, and Ah Foo, and John H.
Atchinson, and Hong Wo, and Wells Fargo, and Charley Strong, and Bob
Morrow, and Gen. Williams, and seventy-two other prominent citizens
of Storey county, with a long pack-train laden with their several
petitions. I examined their documents, and promised to use my influence
toward procuring notaryships for the whole tribe. I also drank with
them.

I wandered down the street, conversing with every man I met, examining
his petition. It became a sort of monomania with me, and I kept it
up for two hours with unflagging interest. Finally, I stumbled upon a
pensive, travel-worn stranger, leaning against an awning-post. I went up
and looked at him. He looked at me. I looked at him again, and again he
looked at me. I bent my gaze upon him once more, and says I, "Well?" He
looked at me very hard, and says he, "Well--" "Well what?" says I, "Well
I would like to examine your petition, if you please."

He looked very much astonished--I may say amazed. When he had recovered
his presence of mind, he says "What the devil do you mean?" I explained
to him that I only wanted to glance over his petition for a notaryship.
He said he believed I was a lunatic--he didn't like the unhealthy light
in my eye, and he didn't want me to come any closer to him. I asked him
if he had escaped the epidemic, and he shuddered said he didn't know of
any epidemic. I pointed to the large placard on the wall: "Coaches
will leave the Ormsby House punctually every fifteen minutes, for the
Governor's mansion, for the accommodation of Notorial aspirants, etc.,
etc.--Schemerhorn, Agent"--and I asked him if he didn't know enough to
understand what that meant? I also pointed to the long procession of
petition-laden citizens filing up the street toward the Governor's
house, and asked him if he was not aware that all those fellows were
going after notarial commissions--that the balance of the people had
already gone, and that he and I had the whole town to ourselves? He was
astonished again. Then he placed his hand upon his heart, and swore a
frightful oath that he had just arrived from over the mountains, and had
no petition, and didn't want a notaryship. I gazed upon him a moment in
silent rapture, and then clasped him to my breast. After which, I
told him it was my turn to treat, by thunder. Whereupon, we entered a
deserted saloon, and drank up its contents. We lay upon a billiard table
in a torpid condition for many minutes, but at last my exile rose up and
muttered in a sepulchral voice, "I feel it--O Heavens, I feel it in me
veins!" "Feel what?" says I, alarmed. Says he, "I feel--O me sainted
mother!--I feel--feel--a hankering to be a Notary Public!" And he tore
down several yards of wall-paper, and fell to writing a petition on it.
Poor devil--he had got it at last, and got it bad. I was seized with
the fatal distemper a moment afterward. I wrote a petition with frantic
haste, appended a copy of the Directory of Nevada Territory to it, and
we fled down the deserted streets to the Governor's office.

But I must draw the curtain upon these harrowing scenes--the memory of
them scorches my brain. Ah, this Legislature has much to answer for in
cutting down the number of Notaries Public in this Territory, with their
infernal new law.

Territorial Enterprise, February 12, 1864

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN

Carson City, February 5, 1864

WINTERS NEW HOUSE

EDITORS ENTERPRISE: Theodore Winters handsome dwelling in Washoe Valley,
is an eloquent witness in behalf of Mr. Steele's architectural skill.
The basement story is built of brick, and the spacious court which
surrounds it, and whose columns support the verandah above, is
paved with large, old-fashioned tiles. On this floor is the kitchen,
dining-room, bath-room, bed-chambers for servants, and a commodious
store-room, with shelves laden with all manner of substantials and
luxuries for the table. All these apartments are arranged in the most
convenient manner, and are fitted and furnished handsomely and plainly,
but expensively. Water pipes are numerous in this part of the house, and
the fluid they carry is very pure, and cold and clear. On the next floor
above, are two unusually large drawing-rooms, richly furnished, and
gotten up in every respect with faultless taste which is a remark one is
seldom enabled to apply to parlors and drawing-rooms on this coast.
The colors in the carpets, curtains, etc., are of a warm and cheerful
nature, but there is nothing gaudy about them. The ceilings are
decorated with pure, white mouldings of graceful pattern. Two large
bed-chambers adjoin the parlors, and are supplied with elaborately
carved black walnut four-hundred-dollar bedsteads, similar to those used
by Dan and myself in Virginia; the remainder of the furniture of these
chambers is correspondingly sumptuous and expensive. On the floor above
are half a dozen comfortable bedrooms for the accommodation of visitors;
also a spacious billiard-room which will shortly be graced by a table of
superb workmanship. The windows of the house are of the "Gothic" style,
and set with stained glass; the chandeliers are of bronze; the stair
railings of polished black walnut, and the principal doors of some kind
of dark-colored wood--mahogany, I suppose. There are two peculiarly
pleasant features about this house the ceilings are high, and the halls
of unusual width. The building--above the basement story--is of wood,
and strongly and compactly put together. It stands upon tolerably
high ground, and from its handsome verandah, Mr. Winters can see every
portion of his vast farm. From the stables to the parlors, the house
and its belongings is a model of comfort, convenience and substantial
elegance; everything is of the best that could be had, and there is no
circus flummery visible about the establishment.

I went out there to a party a short time ago, in the night, behind a
pair of Cormack's fast horses, with John James. On account of losing the
trail of the telegraph poles, we wandered out among the shingle machines
in the Sierras, and were delayed several hours. We arrived in time,
however, to take a large share in the festivities which were being
indulged in by the Governor and the Supreme Court and some twenty other
guests. The party was given by Messrs. Joe Winters and Pete Hopkins (at
Theodore Winters' expense) as a slight testimonial of their regard for
the friends they invited to be present. There was nothing to detract
from the pleasure of the occasion, except Lovejoy, who detracted most of
the wines and liquors from it.

AN EXCELLENT SCHOOL

I expect Mr. Lawlor keeps the best private school in the Territory--or
the best school of any kind, for that matter. I attended one of his
monthly examinations a week ago, or such a matter, with Mr. Clagett,
and we arrived at the conclusion that one might acquire a good college
education there within the space of six months. Mr. Lawlor's is a little
crib of a school-house, papered from door to ceiling with black-boards
adorned with impossible mathematical propositions done in white chalk.
The effect is bewildering, to the stranger, but otherwise he will find
the place comfortable enough. When we arrived, the teacher was talking
in a rambling way upon a great many subjects, like a member of the
House speaking to a point of order, and three boys were making verbatim
reports of his remarks in Graham's phonographic short-hand on the walls
of the school-room. These pupils had devoted half an hour to the study
and practice of this accomplishment every day for the past four or five
months, and the result was a proficiency usually attained only after
eighteen months of application. It was amazing. Mr. Lawlor has so
simplified the art of teaching in every department of instruction, that
I am confident he could impart a thorough education in a short time to
any individual who has as much as a spoonful of brains to work upon. It
is in no spirit of extravagance that I set it down here as my serious
conviction that Mr. Lawlor could even take one of our Miss Nancy
"Meriden" Prosecuting Attorneys and post him up so in a month or two
that he could tell his own witnesses from those of the defense in nine
cases out of ten. Mind, I do not give this as an absolute certainty, but
merely as an opinion of mine and one which is open to grave doubts,
too, I am willing to confess, now, when I come to think calmly and
dispassionately about it. No--the truth is, the more I think of it, the
more I weaken. I expect I spoke too soon--went off before I was primed,
as it were. With your permission, I will take it all back. I know two
or three prosecuting attorneys, and I am satisfied the foul density of
their intellects would put out any intellectual candle that Mr. Lawlor
could lower into them. I do not say that a Higher Power could not
miraculously illuminate them. No, I only say I would rather see it
first. A man always has more confidence in a thing after he has seen
it, you know; at least that is the way with me. But to proceed with that
school. Mr. Clagett invited one of those phonographic boys--Master
Barry Ashim--to come and practice his short-hand in the House of
Representatives. He accepted the invitation, and in accordance with
resolutions offered by Messrs. Clagett and Stewart, he was tendered the
compliment of a seat on the floor of the House during the session, and
the Sergeant-at-Arms instructed to furnish him with a desk and such
stationery as he might require. He has already become a reporter of no
small pretensions. There is a class in Mr. Lawlor's school composed of
children three months old and upwards, who know the spelling book by
heart. If you ask them what the first word is, in any given lesson, they
will tell you in a moment, and then go on and spell every word (thirty
five) in the lesson, without once referring to the book or making a
mistake. Again, you may mention a word and they will tell you which
particular lesson it is in, and what words precede it and follow it.
Then, again, you may propound an abstruse grammatical enigma, and the
school will solve it in chorus--will tell you what language is correct,
and what isn't; and why and wherefore; and quote rules and illustrations
until you wish you hadn't said anything. Two or three doses of this kind
will convince a man that there are youngsters in this school who know
everything about grammar that can be learned, and what is just
as important, can explain what they know so that other people can
understand it. But when those fellows get to figuring, let second-rate
mathematicians stand from under! For behold, it is their strong suit.
They work miracles on a black-board with a piece of chalk. Witchcraft
and sleight-of-hand, and all that sort of thing is foolishness to the
facility with which they can figure a moral impossibility down to an
infallible result. They only require about a dozen figures to do a sum
which by all ordinary methods would consume a hundred and fifty. These
fellows could cypher a week on a sheet of foolscap. They can find out
anything they want to with figures, and they are very quick about it,
too. You tell them, for instance, that you were born in such and such a
place, on such and such a day of the month, in such and such a year,
and they will tell you in an instant how old your grandmother is. I
have never seen any banker's clerks who could begin to cypher with those
boys. It has been Virginia's unchristian policy to grab everything that
was of any account that ever came into the Territory--Virginia could do
many a worse thing than to grab this school and move it into the shadow
of Mount Davidson, teacher and all.

CONCERNING UNDERTAKERS

There is a system of extortion going on here which is absolutely
terrific, and I wonder the Carson Independent has never ventilated the
subject. There seems to be only one undertaker in the town, and he owns
the only graveyard in which it is at all high-toned or aristocratic to
be buried. Consequently, when a man loses his wife or his child, or his
mother, this undertaker makes him sweat for it. I appeal to those whose
firesides death has made desolate during the few fatal weeks just past,
if I am not speaking the truth. Does not this undertaker take advantage
of that unfortunate delicacy which prevents a man from disputing
an unjust bill for services rendered in burying the dead, to extort
ten-fold more than his labors are worth? I have conversed with a good
many citizens on this subject, and they all say the same thing: that
they know it is wrong that a man should be unmercifully fleeced under
such circumstances, but, according to the solemn etiquette above
referred to, he cannot help himself. All that sounds very absurd to
me. I have a human distaste for death, as applied to myself, but I see
nothing very solemn about it as applied to anybody--it is more to be
dreaded than a birth or a marriage, perhaps, but it is really not as
solemn a matter as either of these, when you come to take a rational,
practical view of the case. Therefore I would prefer to know that an
undertaker's bill was a just one before I paid it; and I would rather
see it go clear to the Supreme Court of the United States, if I
could afford the luxury, than pay it if it were distinguished for its
unjustness. A great many people in the world do not think as I do about
these things. But I care nothing for that. The knowledge that I am
right is sufficient for me. This undertaker charges a hundred and fifty
dollars for a pine coffin that cost him twenty or thirty, and fifty
dollars for a grave that did not cost him ten--and this at a time when
his ghastly services are required at least seven times a week. I gather
these facts from some of the best citizens of Carson, and I can publish
their names at any moment if you want them. What Carson needs is a
few more undertakers--there is vacant land enough here for a thousand
cemeteries. MARK TWAIN

Territorial Enterprise, February 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

HOUSE--TWENTY-EIGHTH DAY

Carson, February 8, 1864

This bill appears--to a man up a tree--to be a bill of sale of Nevada
Territory to the California State Telegraph Company. They never print
this kind of bills--wherefore I shall have to copy it myself for you.
It flashed through the House under a suspension of the rules, before you
could wink, they tell me. It provides that Mr. Watson (his other name is
the California State Telegraph Company) shall have the exclusive right
to connect Star, Unionville, Austin, Virginia, Gold Hill, Carson,
etc., etc., with Sacramento and San Francisco, and nobody else shall be
permitted to do likewise, for five years after this line is completed,
and with a liberal length of time allowed Mr. Watson in which to get
ready to begin to commence completing it. To have all the telegraph
lines in the hands of one Company, makes it a little binding on
newspapers and other people.--MARK.]

Territorial Enterprise, February 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

HOUSE--TWENTY-NINTH DAY

Carson, February 9.

I see you want the ayes and noes on all important measures. Long ago I
got a batch of roll-calls and prepared to post the people concerning the
final action of this body upon the various bills presented. But I got
tired of it. I found the House too unanimous; they always voted aye,
and I discovered that the list of noes was a useless incumbrance to
the roll-call. Now when an important measure passes this House, and I
neglect the roll-call, that need be no excuse for your doing the same
thing; just publish the list of members and say they voted "aye"--you'll
be about right. The thing is done thus: When a bill is on its final
passage, and a member hears his name called, he rouses up and asks
what's going on? The Speaker says, by way of information, "Third reading
of a bill, sir." The member says, "Oh!--well, I vote aye," and
becomes torpid again at once. Now, concerning that infamous telegraph
monstrosity, it passed to its third reading in this House on the 4th of
February. Messrs. Babcock, Dixson, Gray and Stewart were absent, and had
no opportunity of voting aye but all the balance voted affirmatively, of
course, as follows: AYES--Messrs. Barclay, Brumfield, Calder, Clagett,
Curler, Deane, Elliott, Fisher, Gillespie, Gove, Heaton, Hess, Hunter,
Jones, McDonald, Nelson, Phillips, Requa, Tennant, Trask, Ungar and Mr.
Speaker.

NOES--None.

Territorial Enterprise, February 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

HOUSE--TUESDAY AFTERNOON

CARSON, February 10

The House then went into Committee of the Whole on the special
order--Mr. Fisher in the Chair--and took up the first bill on the list.
[Some seventy-five ladies have swarmed into the House, and the process
of swarming still continues. I have a presentiment that I am to have
an exhaustless stream of weak platitudes inflicted upon me by Young
Gillespie and other unmarried members.--MARK.]

Territorial Enterprise, February 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

HOUSE--THIRTY-FIRST DAY

CARSON, February 11

The House met at 10 A.M. Present, 18. Absent, Messrs. Clagett, Dixson,
Gillespie, Phillips, Stewart and Ungar.

QUESTIONS OF PRIVILEGE

Mr. Heaton rose to a question of privilege, and said he was reported in
the ENTERPRISE as having moved that the Committee of the Whole recommend
the rejection of Miss Clapp's Seminary bill. That was a mistake. He
said his motion was to refer the bill back to the Standing Committee on
Colleges and Common Schools. [I suppose that is true; I do not consider
myself responsible for mistakes made when the House is full of beautiful
women, who are: writing tender notes to me all the time and expecting me
to answer them. In cases of this kind, I would just as soon misrepresent
a member as any other way.--MARK] Mr. Heaton was easy on the reporters,
but he was very severe on Mr. Gillespie. He said it would appear from
the report that Mr. Gillespie included him among those members who had
dodged the issue on the telegraph bill--whereas he was absent from the
House, by permission of the Speaker, with the Prison Committee.

The Speaker said there was nothing incorrect about the report--that
Mr. Heaton was shielded from Mr. Gillespie's insinuation by a preceding
paragraph, which stated the fact that he had been excused from
attendance.

Whereupon Jefferson's Manual arose the same being known on the credit
accounts of the several saloons as "Young Gillespie"--and proceeded to
waste the time of the House, as usual, in dilating upon some trivial
distinction without a difference. [He was after the reporter of the
ENTERPRISE, in the first place, but before I could catch his drift,
he fell a victim to his old regular "parliamentary usage"
dysentery,--passed his brains, and became a smiling, sociable, driveling
lunatic. Consequently, I failed to find out what I had been doing to
young Gillespie, after all.--MARK TWAIN.]

HOUSE--AFTERNOON SESSION

MESSAGE

A message was received from the Council, transmitting the following
bills:

Council bill incorporating the Austin Christian Association. [The
Speaker was at a loss to know what committee to refer a bill of such an
unusual nature to--wherein his head was level. He finally referred it
to the Lander delegation, two of the most faithful and consistent
supporters of the Devil there are in the House.--MARK.]

Council bill for the relief of certain parties. Referred to the
Committee on Claims.

At 5 P.M. the House adjourned until 6:30 P.M.

[While I was absent a moment, yesterday, on important business, taking a
drink, the House, with its accustomed engaging unanimity, knocked one of
my pet bills higher than a kite, without a dissenting voice. I
convened the members in extra session last night, and deluged them
with blasphemy, after which I entered into a solemn compact with them,
whereby, in consideration of their re-instating my bill, I was to make
an ample apology for all the mean things I had said about them for
passing that infamous, unchristian, infernal telegraph bill the other
day. I also promised to apologize for all the mean things that other
people had published against them for their depraved action aforesaid.
They reinstated my pet to-day, unanimously, thus fulfilling their
contract to the letter, and in conformity with my promise above referred
to, I hereby solemnly apologize for their rascally conduct in
passing the infamous telegraph bill above mentioned. Under ordinary
circumstances, they never would have done such a thing--but upon that
occasion I think they had been fraternizing with Clagett and Simmons
at the White House, and were under the vicious influence of Humboldt
whisky. Consequently, they were not responsible, Sir--they were not
responsible, either to anybody on earth or in heaven.--MARK TWAIN.]

Territorial Enterprise, February 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

HOUSE--FRIDAY AFTERNOON

CARSON, February 12

An Act to amend an Act relating to game and fish. The passage of this
bill was also recommended. [It provides that trout shall neither be
caught in this Territory, nor exposed for sale, between the first of
January and the first of April, under a penalty of $25 for each fish
caught, killed or destroyed, or bought, sold or exposed for sale. The
Act goes into effect on the first of the coming March, and therefore it
would be well to publish it for the information of the people. It is a
good law, and calls our lake by its right name Lake Bigler--and rejects
the spooney appellation of "Tahoe," which signifieth "grasshopper" in
the Digger tongue, and "breech clout" in the Washoe lingo. Bigler is
the legitimate name of the Lake, and it will be retained until some name
less flat, insipid and spooney than "Tahoe" is invented for it. I
am sorry, myself, that it was not called in the first place by some
cognomen that could be persuaded to rhyme with something, because, you
see, every sentimental cuss who goes up there and becomes pregnant with
a poem invariably miscarries because of the unfortunate difficulty I
have just mentioned. I speak of the matter lightly, but it is not a
frivolous one, for all that. A very beautiful thing was once written
by a distinguished English poet about our royal river at home, but the
loveliness was all mashed out of it by the stress of weather to which he
was obliged to succumb in order to gouge a rhyme out of its name. He had
to call it "Mississip"!--MARK.]

Territorial Enterprise, February 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

HOUSE--SATURDAY AFTERNOON

CARSON, February 13

An Act to incorporate the Virginia, Gold Hill, Washoe and Carson
railroad.

[More railroads, you observe. The Council killed the Virginia and Dayton
Railroad bill the other day. That franchise was well guarded, and the
road would have been built. Will this, or any of the others?--REP.]

Mr. Barclay moved to lay the bill on the table. Lost.

The bill then passed by the following vote: [ayes 11, noes 9].

Territorial Enterprise, February 1864

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN

Carson City, February 13, 1864


THE CARSON UNDERTAKER--CONTINUED

EDITORS ENTERPRISE: The Independent takes hold of a wretched public evil
and shakes it and bullyrags it in the following determined and spirited
manner this morning:

"Our friend, Mark Twain, is such a joker that we cannot tell when he is
really in earnest. He says in his last letter to the ENTERPRISE, that
our undertaker charges exorbitantly for his services--as much as $150
for a pine coffin, and $50 for a grave and is astonished that the
Independent has not, ere this, said something about this extortion. As
yet we have had no occasion for a coffin or a bit of ground for grave
purposes, and therefore know nothing about the price of such things.
If any of our citizens think they have been imposed upon in this
particular, it is their duty to ventilate the matter. We have heard no
complaints."

That first sentence is false, and that clause in the second, which
refers to the Independent, is false, also. I knew better than to be
astonished when I wrote it. Unfortunately for the public of Carson, both
propositions in the third sentence are true. Having had no use for a
coffin himself, the editor "therefore knows nothing about the price of
such things." It is my unsolicited opinion that he knows very little
about anything. And anybody who will read his paper calmly and
dispassionately for a week will endorse that opinion. And more
especially his knowing nothing about Carson, is not surprising; he
seldom mentions that town in his paper. If the Second advent were to
occur here, you would hear of it first in some other newspaper. He
says, "If any of our citizens think they have been imposed upon in
this particular, it is their duty to ventilate the latter." It is their
duty--the duty of the citizens--to ferret out abuses and correct them,
is it? Correct them through your advertising columns and pay for it--is
that it? And then turn to your second page and find one of your insipid
chalk-milk editorials, defending the abuse and apologizing for the
perpetrator of it; or when public sentiment is too well established on
the subject, pretending, as in the above case, that you are the only
man in the community who don't know anything about it. Where did you get
your notion of the duties of a journalist from? Any editor in the world
will say it is your duty to ferret out these abuses, and your duty to
correct them. What are you paid for? What use are you to the community?
What are you fit for as conductor of a newspaper, if you cannot do these
things? Are you paid to know nothing, and keep on writing about it every
day? How long do you suppose such a jack-legged newspaper as yours would
be supported or tolerated in Carson, if you had a rival no larger than
a foolscap sheet, but with something in it, and whose editor would know,
or at least have energy enough to find out, whether a neighboring paper
abused one of the citizens justly or unjustly? That paragraph which I
have copied, seems to mean one thing, while in reality it means another.
It's true translation is, for instance: "Our name is Independent--that
is, in different phrase, Opinionless. We have no opinions on any
subject--we reside permanently on the fence. In order to have no
opinions, it is necessary that we should know nothing--therefore, if
this undertaker is fleecing the people, we will not know it, and then we
shall not offend him. We have heard no complaints, and we shall make no
inquiries, lest we do hear some."

Now, when I published a sarcasm upon the San Francisco Water Company,
and the iniquity of "cooking dividends," some time ago, in the
attractive form of a massacre at Dutch Nick's, by an irresponsible
crazy man, this lively Independent came after me with the spirit of
Old Hopkins strong upon him, and launched at me the red bolts of
its virtuous wrath for bringing the high mission of journalism into
disrepute for leading the citizens of California to believe that the
murderous proclivities of this people were more extensive than they
really were, or, in other words, creating the impression abroad that we
were all lunatics and liable to slay and destroy one another upon the
slightest provocation. I did not reply to that, because I took it to be
the fellow's honest opinion; and being his honest opinion, it was his
duty to express it, whether it galled me or not. But he has permitted so
many greater wrongs to pass unnoticed since then, that I have arrived
at the conclusion that he only did it to modify the circulation of the
ENTERPRISE hereabouts. I should be sorry to think he did it to procure
my discharge. He would not, if he knew I was an orphan. Yet the same
eyes that saw a great public wrong in that article on the massacre,
wilfully see no wrong in this undertaker's impoverishing charges for
burying people--charges which are made simply because, from the nature
of the service rendered, a man dare not demur to their payment, lest the
fact be talked of around town and he be disgraced. Oh, your Independent
is a consistent, harmless, non-committal sheet. I never saw a paper of
that non-committal name that wasn't. Even the religious papers bearing
it give a decided, whole-souled support to neither the Almighty nor the
Devil.

The editor of the Independent says he don't know anything about
this undertaker business. If he would go and report a while for some
responsible newspaper, he would learn the knack of finding out things.
Now if he wants to know that the undertaker charged three or four prices
for a coffin (the late Mr. Nash's) upon one occasion, and then refused
to let it go out of his hands, when the funeral was waiting, until
it was paid for, although the estate was good for it, being worth
$20,000--let him go and ask Jack Harris. If he wants any amount of
information, let him inquire of Curry, or Pete Hopkins, or Judge Wright.
Stuff! let him ask any man he meets in the street--the matter is as
universal a topic of conversation here as is the subject of "feet" in
Virginia. But I don't suppose you want to know anything about it. I want
to shed one more unsolicited opinion, which is that your Independent is
the deadest, flattest, [most] worthless thing I know--and I imagine my
cold, unsmiling undertaker has his hungry eye upon it.

Mr. Curry says if the people will come forward and take hold of the
matter, a city cemetery can be prepared and fenced in a week, and at a
trivial cost--a cemetery from which a man can set out for Paradise or
perdition just as respectably as he can from the undertaker's private
grounds at present. Another undertaker can then be invited to come and
take charge of the business. Mr. Curry is right--and no man can move
in the matter with greater effect than himself. Let the reform be
instituted.

MARK TWAIN

Territorial Enterprise, February 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

HOUSE--THIRTY-FIFTH DAY

CARSON, February 15

At one o'clock this morning, as Mr. Gray, barkeeper at Bingham's, was
leaving the saloon with his cash box in his hand, two men jumped out
from the shadow of a door, enveloped him in a blanket, and seized the
box. Gray held on to the property until the handle came off, and
then, having no pistol, shouted with good enough effect to attract the
attention of two foot passengers who had. These gentlemen opened a brisk
fire on the retreating highwaymen--sent eight or ten navy balls after
them--caused them to observe, plaintively, "O God!" and drop the
box. All the dogs in town woke up and barked--they always do on
such occasions, but they never bite, and they are opposed to chasing
highwaymen--so the same escaped. Mr. Gray recovered the box, of course,
which contained about one thousand dollars.--MARK.

You have got a mighty responsible delegation here from Storey county.
As Mr. Curler remarked the other day, "When you put your finger on that
delegation, as a general thing, they ain't there." I believe you. In the
face of a notice given last Saturday by Mr. Clagett, of the introduction
of a little bill to remove the Capital to Virginia--in the face of it,
I say, only one member from Storey, out of eight, was present when the
proper time arrived this morning for the introduction of the bill. Mr.
Elliott was present--he always is, for that matter, and always awake.
It has been a good thing for the whole Territory, on more than one
occasion, that he was at his post in this House. One member was
present--seven were absent: Messrs. Gillespie, Heaton, Nelson, Phillips,
Requa, Ungar and Barclay. Several of these gentlemen arrived an hour
after the order for the introduction of bills had been passed. Now if
the people of Storey do not want the Capital, it was the duty of these
members, since they knew the question was before the House, to be on
hand to use their best efforts to kill the bill--and if the people do
want the Capital, then it was the duty of those members to be here and
do what they could toward securing it. Above all things, they had no
business to be absent at such a time. They knew what was going on, and
they knew, moreover, that the fact that they have been pretty regular in
their attendance when toll-roads were to be voted on, will indifferently
palliate the offense of being absent upon this occasion. Last session
Storey offered an immense price for the capital, and nothing in the
world could have kept her from getting it but her own delegation. They
kept her from it, though. Mr. Burke was absent. His vote, at the proper
time, would have moved the Capital--and in the meantime, Mr. Tuttle,
of Douglas, was brought from a sick bed to vote no. I suppose this bill
will be introduced to-morrow (Tuesday) morning, at 10 o'clock--and I
suppose some of the Storey delegation will be absent again. But if you
want the roll-call to-morrow, you can have it. I have made a mistake.
Mr. Gillespie came in this morning before the introduction of
bills, though he was absent at an earlier hour, when the roll was
called.--MARK.

Territorial Enterprise, February 16, 1864

THE REMOVAL OF THE CAPITAL

EDITORS ENTERPRISE: I have just returned from the Capital, where I have
been a Legislative spectator for a while. The strongest conviction which
the experience of my visit forced upon my mind was, that the Capital
ought to be removed from Carson City.

I think you would be of my opinion if you could see with your own eyes,
and hear with your own ears, the doings of the Legislature for a few
days.

My first and best reason for thinking the Capital ought to be removed
is, that while it remains in Carson, the Legislative Assembly is beyond
the pale of newspaper criticism--beyond its restraining influence, and
consequently beyond the jurisdiction of the people, in a manner, since
the people are left in ignorance of what their servants are doing, and
cannot protest against their acts until it is too late. Your reports
of proceedings take up as much room in the city papers as can well
be spared, I suppose, and they are ample enough for all intents and
purposes--or rather, they would be, if the Virginia newspapers could
stay in Carson and criticize these proceedings, and also the members,
editorially, occasionally. A mere skeleton report carries but an
indifferent conception of the transactions of a Legislative body to the
minds of the people. For instance, in the style and after the manner of
one of these synopses: Mr. Stewart gave notice of a bill entitled an Act
to audit the claim of D. J. Gasherie. A day or so afterward, we learn
that according to former notice, Mr. Stewart introduced his bill. You
hear of it again in some committee report. And again, as having been
reported "favorably' by a Committee of the Whole. Next, your report says
Mr. Stewart's bill passed by so many ayes, and so many noes. The work is
done; none of your readers have the slightest idea what Mr. Gasherie's
claim was for, and neither does one of them imagine himself even
remotely interested in knowing anything about it. Yet the chief portion
of your readers, I take it, were very particularly interested in that
bill--because they will have to contribute money from their own pockets
to pay Mr. Gasherie's claim; and they were further interested, on
general principles, because the passage of that bill inflicted a great
wrong upon the Territory. Now, if the Legislature had been in session in
Virginia, under the eyes of the press, instead of those of six or seven
idle lobby members, I doubt if Mr. Stewart would have introduced the
bill; I doubt if the Committee of the Whole would have presumed to
consider it; I know the House and the Council would not have passed it.
When Mr. Elliott rose in his place and objected that this was a bill to
provide payment of a sum out of the Territorial Treasury, amounting to
between $1,800 and $1,900, for the maintenance by Sheriff Gasherie,
of several Ormsby county paupers, the newspapers would have promptly
seconded him in the suggestion that Ormsby county maintain her own
paupers, and pay the bill out of her own pocket. And when Mr. Stewart
acknowledged the justness of the suggestion, but said Ormsby had
bankrupted herself by purchasing a set of fine county buildings, and
must therefore beg this favor at the hands of the people of the whole
Territory, the newspapers would have known all about it, would have
demurred, and the members, with a sense of responsibility thus forced
upon them would have intentionally voted no upon the bill, instead of
voting aye without really knowing, perhaps, what particular measure
was before the House. Moreover, several other outrageous laws, already
passed, could never have been passed in Virginia. Twenty thousand
dollars of the people's money have been asked for to build a seminary in
Carson City and present it to two of her citizens--a private affair, and
no more public in its character than Mr. Chauvel's fencing school here,
and no more deserving of a Territorial appropriation of $20,000. Members
were not wanting to vote for the measure, and to advocate it strongly.
The bill would even have passed, probably, if Messrs. Clagett, and
Elliott had withheld their earnest opposition to it. Yet a bill to
provide for the establishment and maintenance of a public mining
college--a polytechnic school--has excited small interest among the
members. They forget that a mining education can be best acquired here
in the Territory--they forget, also, that the Seminary could offer no
inducements of a similar nature, since our citizens, for many years
to come, will prefer to educate their daughters at the inexpensive and
efficient seminaries of Benicia, San Jose, and Santa Clara. The Seminary
bill was resurrected on Saturday, consolidated with the Polytechnic
bill, $30,000 of public money added, and again brought before the
Legislature. So--$20,000 for a building, and a tax of 1 per cent. on
$30,000,000 of property, for "sundries." A crowd of young gentlemen and
ladies in one building might affect the matter of public morals more
than that of public education, I think. The school is not located, in
the bill, but the Ormsby delegation propose to have it established in
Carson. The Governor is to appoint the trustees, and they are to fix
upon a location, I believe. A mining school in a town fifteen miles from
a mine, would be a beneficial thing, in the abstract. Yet this $50,000
bill may pass, after all. So may the act to purchase Mr. Curry's prison
for $80,000 more--$130,000 to Carson, by way of compensation for the
stream of iniquitous private franchises which has been flowing from one
or two members of her delegation during the entire session. Could these
bills, unmodified, pass, if the people could be thoroughly posted as to
their merits, by the press? I suppose not. Clagett, Brumfield, Elliott,
and two or three other intelligent, industrious and upright members have
saved the credit of the Lower House, and protected the interests of the
people, in nearly every case where it has been done at all--but they
have received no commendation for it; neither have idle members, and
members of easy integrity, been censured. It is because the people have
been left in the dark as to who they ought to praise and who they ought
to blame.

It was urged, last session, that Storey county was disposed to stow
away, in her ravenous maw, everything that came in her way. That
argument lost her the Capital, by one vote--that argument, and one
other, which was a written pledge, on the part of Ormsby county, that
if the Capital were permitted to remain in Carson, halls should be
furnished for the use of the Legislature, free of charge. Storey county
offered to erect capital buildings at her own expense, and move the
officers and other governmental appurtenances within her lines, also at
her own expense. Let Storey county make that proposition to-day, and
it will be accepted. It is Ormsby county, now that is striving with
extraordinary energy, to swallow all public benefits--not Storey.
And Ormsby has failed to redeem her pledge--for she has charged the
Legislature $500 for the use of her Court-house, and after making the
contract, is now dissatisfied because the granting of a greater sum is
refused her.

Four members of one branch of the Legislature support the Specific
Contract bill because it will result to their personal advantage, in
sums varying from $1,000 to $4,000. More than that number have supported
private franchises on personal pecuniary grounds. One member would vote
$20,000 to the Seminary because he would reap an advantage, in dollars
and cents, from the passage of the bill. Inasmuch as these statements
come from the gentlemen referred to, themselves, they are entitled to
full credence. If there could be a merit attached to a wrong motive,
I think that merit might be considered to be the small amount of
intelligence required to keep from telling about it. But all Legislators
are not diplomats. Would it not be well to place the Assembly where the
press, and through the press the people, could look after it?

Mr. Clagett gave notice, on Saturday, of an Act to remove the Capital,
and the bill will probably be formally introduced to-day (Monday). If
the people of Storey county want the seat of government in their midst,
let them signify it promptly and cordially.

A LOOKER-ON

Territorial Enterprise, February 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

CARSON, February 16, 1864

Mayor Arick, Joe Goodman, George Birdsall, Young Harris, and other solid
citizens of Virginia arrived at 3 this morning, having left home at
midnight. They came down to see how the Capital question was going.
Send a lot more down--the more the merrier, and the greater degree
of interest is exhibited. Virginia seldom does things by halves--she
generally comes out strong when she takes hold of a question.--MARK.

* * * * * *

Mr. McDonald moved a recess.

Mr. Clagett hoped the motion would not prevail. He wished to go on
with the regular business--introduction of bills etc. [Sensation among
opponents to the removal of the Capital.]

The motion was lost.

Mr. Clagett moved a call of the House. [Numerous objections.] The motion
was carried--ayes 7, noes 5.

After a moment's delay, Mr. Dixson moved that further proceedings under
the call be dispensed with. Lost.

The absentees, Messrs. Ungar and Curler, were brought forward and
excused, and further proceedings under the call were then dispensed
with. Mr. Phillips moved a recess. Lost-ayes 9, noes 1l.

Mr. Clagett then, pursuant to previous notice, introduced an Act to
locate permanently the Capital of the Territory. [At Virginia--that
city to provide suitable buildings for 5 years at her own cost, before
October 1, 1864--otherwise the Act to be null and void.]

The bill was read in answer to numerous calls.

Mr. Elliott moved that the rules be suspended and the bill engrossed for
a third reading.

Mr. Dixson strenuously objected, and said he couldn't see the object of
rushing this bill through with such indecent haste. [Behold the virtuous
member from Lander--the heart of the same being in Carson.--MARK.]

Mr. Ungar moved to refer the bill to the Storey delegation, with
instructions to report forthwith.

Mr. Phillips moved to amend by substituting the Gold Hill portion of the
Storey delegation.

Mr. Clagett hoped the amendments would be rejected and Mr. Elliott's
motion agreed to, and in his remarks called attention to the fact that
Ormsby county made a written pledge last year that she would furnish
free halls to the Legislature from and after that session--but had
violated her pledge, inasmuch as those same County Commissioners have
charged and received $500 for the halls now being used by the Assembly.

Mr. Dixson did not want things rushed so--he wanted things printed;
he didn't know anything about things, and he wanted time to gain
information. He couldn't see what members meant by springing things in
this way. [Emotion, indicative of the distress which a Lander member
with his heart in Ormsby must naturally feel when he sees an attempt
made to ravish Carson against her will.]

Mr. Dixson sat down weeping, and snuffling, and wiping his nose on
his coat sleeve. [That's a joke of mine--he had a handkerchief with
him.--MARK.]

Mr. Tennant called for the reading of Ormsby's pledge, and Mr. Clagett
got it from Mr. Calder, and read it.

Mr. Stewart made an eloquent appeal in behalf of Ormsby county, and
moved as a substitute to the three or four motions already before the
House, that the bill be referred to a special committee, to consist
of one member from each county, with instructions to report to-morrow
morning. Carried; on a division--ayes 13, noes 4.

The Speaker appointed the committee as follows: Messrs. Clagett,
Stewart, Curler, Dean, Elliott, Gove, McDonald, Tennant and Partridge.

Territorial Enterprise, February 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

HOUSE--THIRTY-SEVENTH DAY

CARSON, February 17

[Dallam, of the Carson Independent, makes a full and unqualified apology
to me this morning--an entire column of it. He says he was not in his
right mind at the time, and hardly ever is. Now, when a man comes out
like that, and owns up with such pleasant candor, I think I ought
to accept his apology. Consequently, we will call it square. It is
flattering to me to observe that Dallam's editorials display great
ability this morning, and that the paper shows an extraordinary degree
of improvement in every respect. A becoming modesty should characterize
us all--it is not for me to say who the credit is due to for the
improvements mentioned. I only say I am glad to see the Independent
looking healthy and vigorous again.--MARK.]

PETITION

Mr. Stewart presented a petition, signed by most of the responsible
citizens of Ormsby, he said, setting forth that it had just come to a
knowledge of the fact that the Ormsby Commissioners had pledged free
Legislative Halls, and violated that pledge. The petitioners promise
that the rent money shall be at once refunded.

Mr. Stewart also presented a communication from the Secretary of the
Territory acknowledging the receipt of the full amount of the rent money
($500) as paid over to him by the petitioners yesterday.

Mr. Stewart moved the reference of the two documents to the Special
Committee on removal of the Capital.

Mr. McDonald objected that the Committee spoken of were ready now to
report, according to instructions. He moved to lay the papers on the
table, to be taken up at pleasure. Carried.

QUESTION OF PRIVILEGE

Mr. Stewart rose to a question of privilege, and spoke at considerable
length upon two editorials in the ENTERPRISE in relation to the removal
of the capital, and a communication upon the same subject in the same
paper, written by one "Looker-On," but whom Mr. Stewart, with ghastly
humor and with relentless and malignant irony, persisted in calling
"Looker On or Hanger-On, I don't know which!" He said the Gasherie bill
for supporting Ormsby county paupers, and which expense the Territory
was asked to pay, only amounted to $877, instead of the large amount
stated by the writer of the article!

[The amount being less, don't you see, the principle is not the same.
Of course. Certainly. Wherefore? Why not? The gentleman's question
of privilege was well taken. As long as the paupers did not cost, or
propose to cost the Territory much, it was impertinent in a newspaper to
mention it. That is the way Mr. Stewart and I look at it.--MARK.]

Mr. Stewart said the balance of the money was cash paid out of Mr.
Gasherie's own pocket in the catching of Territorial criminals, and of
course as anybody would willingly acknowledge, it was the Territory's
place to pay it.

Mr. Clagett, from the Special Committee on the removal of the capital,
presented a majority report favoring the removal.

Mr. Stewart, from the same committee, presented a minority report
recommending the indefinite postponement of the bill.

Mr. Dixson moved the reference of both reports to Committee of the
Whole.

Mr. McDonald moved to amend by accepting the majority report.

On a division, Mr. Dixson's motion prevailed--13 to 11.

Mr. Clagett called for the reading of the amendments recommended by the
majority report, which was done. [Stipulates that Virginia shall also
furnish Supreme Court rooms and Clerk's offices for five years.--REP.]

Mr. Stewart moved that the Ormsby petition and the communication from
the Secretary of the Territory be referred to Committee of the Whole.
Carried.

Mr. Barclay moved a re-consideration of the vote by which the bill and
the above documents were referred to Committee of the Whole. Lost by the
following vote:

AYES--Messrs. Barclay, Clagett, Curler, Elliott, Gillespie, Heaton,
McDonald, Nelson, Requa, Tennant, Ungar--11

NOES-Messrs. Brumfield, Calder, Dean, Dixson, Fisher, Gove, Hess,
Hunter, Jones, Phillips, Stewart, Trask, Mr. Speaker--13.

Mr. Elliott moved that the Capital Bill be made the special order for
tomorrow morning at 11 A.M. Lost by the following vote (required a
two-thirds vote to carry):

AYES--Messrs. Barclay, Calder, Clagett, Elliott, Fisher, Gillespie,
Heaton, McDonald, Nelson, Phillips, Requa, Tennant, Ungar and Mr.
Speaker--14.

NOES--Messrs. Brumfield, Curler, Dean, Dixson, Gove, Hess, Hunter,
Jones, Stewart and Trask--10.

Mr. Brumfield moved to change the time to 12 o'clock Saturday night (the
moment when the Legislature adjourns finally).

Mr. Clagett opposed the motion.

Lost, by the following vote:

AYES--Messrs. Brumfield, Dean, Dixson, Gove, Hess, Hunter, Jones,
Stewart--9.

NOES--Messrs. Barclay, Calder, Clagett, Curler, Elliott, Fisher,
Gillespie, Heaton, McDonald, Nelson, Phillips, Requa, Tennant, Trask,
Ungar, Mr. Speaker--16.

Mr. Clagett said that in order to stop this frittering away of valuable
time, and in order to get a test vote, he would move that the bill be
considered engrossed and ordered to a third reading. Carried by the
following vote:

AYES--Messrs. Barclay, Brumfield, Calder, Curler, Clagett, Elliott,
Fisher, Gillespie, Gove, Heaton, Hunter, Jones, McDonald, Nelson,
Phillips, Requa, Stewart, Tennant, Trask, Ungar--20.

NOES--Messrs. Dean, Dixson, Hess, Mr. Speaker--4.

Mr. McDonald moved that the bill be read by title only. Carried.

FINAL PASSAGE OF THE CAPITAL BILL

The bill was accordingly read a third time by title, and finally passed,
by the following vote:

AYES--Messrs. Barclay, Calder, Clagett, Curler, Elliott, Gillespie,
Heaton, McDonald, Nelson, Requa, Tennant, Ungar and Mr. Speaker--13.

NOES--Messrs. Brumfield, Dean, Dixson, Fisher, Gove, Hess, Hunter,
Jones, Phillips, Stewart and Trask--11.

Territorial Enterprise, February 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

HOUSE--THIRTY-EIGHTH DAY

CARSON, February 18, 1864

THE CAPITAL QUESTION

Mr. Calder, according to previous notice, moved a reconsideration of
the vote of yesterday, by which the Capital bill passed. He said his
objections had been removed by the bond submitted by Mr. Stewart.

Mr. Clagett spoke at some length on the subject, in demonstration of the
fact that a bond could not be drawn under such circumstances that would
be valid and binding.

Mr. Brumfield replied rather warmly. In reply to the old argument about
newspaper criticism which could be brought to bear on the Legislature
if the Capital were in Virginia, he was especially bitter on the
Bulletin--said he supposed it would be the favorite--that paper which
was to have been teeming with mining taxation articles to-day, but was
silent--had been purchased again, doubtless. As for the advantage a
community might derive from the presence of the Capital, he couldn't
appreciate the proposition; he didn't want the Capital at Virginia; he
was going there to live, and he didn't want to be bothered with it. As
to buying the Capital with the bond now before the House, neither Ormsby
county nor the Legislature had a right to buy and sell the Capital.

After some further debate, Mr. Gillespie moved the previous question,
which motion prevailed, and discussion was blockaded.

The motion to reconsider was then put and lost [!--REP.] by the
following tie vote [clinching the thing as far as the House is
concerned].

AYES--Messrs. Brumfield, Dean, Dixson, Fisher, Gove, Hess, Hunter,
Jones, Phillips, Stewart and Trask--1l

NOES--Messrs. Calder, Clagett, Curler, Elliott, Gillespie, Heaton,
McDonald, Nelson, Tennant, Ungar and Mr. Speaker--11.

ABSENT--Mr. Requa--don't know whether he dodged or not.

DODGED THE ISSUE--Mr. Barclay.

After the above bully proceedings, and on motion of Mr. McDonald, the
House took a recess until 2:30 P.M.

Thursday Afternoon

The Sergeant-at-Arms brought in Messrs. Dean, Phillips, Tennant, Jones,
Gillespie and Ungar.

Mr. Dean had been talking over family matters. Mr. Phillips had been
engineering a lawsuit. Mr. Tennant had been on committee business.
Messrs. Jones and Gillespie were playing billiards, and Mr. Ungar's
child was sick and he had been playing marbles with her.

Mr. Brumfield moved that Mr. Ungar be granted leave of absence to
continue playing marbles with her. [Laughter.]

A motion to fine Mr. Gillespie a box of cigars for engaging in the
unholy practice of playing billiards, was lost by a tie vote 10 to 10
[notwithstanding that youth has a remittance at Wells Fargo's from his
creditors in Virginia, and which he denied the same.--MARK. ]

The absentees were all excused.

Territorial Enterprise, February 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

Friday afternoon

CARSON, February 19

Mr. Gillespie moved to reduce the Sergeant-at-Arms' salary to $9 per
day, and strike out that portion which gives the reporters $7 per day.

Mr. Barclay said Mr. Gillespie was not so economical when he presented
his own bill. Mr. Fisher said he ought to remember the verse,

"The mercy I to others show,

That mercy show to me."

Considering the mercy shown him by the House, his opposition comes with
a bad grace from him.

[I feel called upon to observe that Mr. Gillespie got huffy--I would
prefer to call it by a milder term, but I cannot conscientiously do so.
Mr. Gillespie got huffy.--REP.]

After some further debate, Mr. Gillespie explained that there was no
vindictiveness in him--all his motives were dictated from on high--from
on high, sir!--[Tremendous applause.] He went on and made further and
even more aggravatedly absurd remarks. Mr. Barclay said it was customary
to pay the reporters.

Mr. Gillespie's motion in relation to the reporters was lost, by the
following vote:

AYES--Messrs. Clagett, Gillespie, Hess, Hunter, Nelson, Phillips,
Tennant and Trask--8. NOES--Messrs. Barclay, Brumfield, Calder, Curler,
Dean, Dixson, Fisher, Gove, Heaton, Jones, McDonald, Stewart, Ungar and
Mr. Speaker--15.

COUNCIL-AFTERNOON SESSION-THIRTY-NINTH DAY

CARSON, February 19

REMOVAL OF THE CAPITAL

Mr. Daggett moved that the Capital bill be taken from the table. Mr.
Coddington moved that the bill be indefinitely postponed.

Upon the latter's motion a lengthy discussion ensued. Mr. Daggett
opposing, and Messrs. Curry, Coddington, Sturtevant, Negus and Hall
supporting it.

Mr. Curry presented a communication from certain citizens of Carson
City, binding themselves in the sum of $20,000, to furnish suitable
halls and rooms for the Legislature and Territorial offices free of
cost, provided that the Capital be allowed to remain at Carson City,
while Nevada remained a Territory.

At the close of the debate, the motion to indefinitely postpone was
carried by the following vote:

AYES--Messrs. Coddington, Curry, Negus, Sturtevant, Waldron, Mr.
President.

NOES--Messrs. Daggett, Flagg, Sheldon, Thompson.

Territorial Enterprise, February 1864

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

HOUSE--LAST DAY--FORTIETH

CARSON, February 20

The Chaplain not being present, Mr. Fisher suggested that the Virginia
reporter be requested to officiate in his place.

By courtesy of the House, the Virginia reporter was allowed to explain
that he was not on it. [Excused.]

Mr. Phillips moved a call of the House. Carried.

Mr. Gillespie was produced before the bar of the House.

Mr. Brumfield moved, as the heaviest punishment that could be inflicted
upon him, that he be denied the comfort of making a single motion for
the space of an hour. [Laughter.]

Mr. Barclay moved that he be fined $5, and the same be paid to the
Sergeant-at-Arms.

Mr. Phillips moved to amend by contributing the money to the Sanitary
Fund.

The motions were lost.

Messrs. Dixson and Hunter were brought in and fined a box of cigars
each.

The Sergeant-at-Arms said Mr. Clagett was sick in bed.

The Speaker said he must come anyhow.

Mr. Fisher wanted the editor of the Independent sent for. [Laughter.]

The Speaker said he did not think Mr. Clagett needed purging.
[Laughter.]

Mr. Heaton came forward and was excused.

NOTICE

Mr. Stewart gave notice of an act to permanently locate the Capital
on the South side of Capt. Pray's saw mill on Lake Tahoe, in Douglas
county. [Sensation.]

[But nothing further appears in the record concerning this proposed
bill.--H. N. S.]

A Message was received from the Council asking the return of the
bill for the removal of the Capital. [Another of those grave Council
jokes--REP.]

In view of these portentous symptoms, a call of the House was ordered.

After calling the roll, Mr. Stewart moved that further proceedings under
the call be dispensed with.

The Chair decided the motion carried.

A motion to indefinitely postpone the Council message was lost--ayes 9,
noes 1l.

The motion to comply with the Council's request, carried--ayes 11, noes
8. [Confusion and contention--so to speak. The vote was even taken over
again, with the following result: ]

AYES--Messrs. Barclay, Calder, Clagett, Elliott, Gillespie, Heaton,
McDonald, Nelson, Tennant, Ungar and Mr. Speaker--11.

NOES--Messrs. Brumfield, Curler, Dean, Dixson, Fisher, Gove, Hunter,
Jones, Phillips, Stewart and Trask--11.

Mr. Speaker pro tem.--Mr. Fisher--decided the motion lost.

Mr. Barclay wished to remind our worthy reporter that he didn't dodge
the question this time. [His head is right. I cannot even swear that
he dodged it before, with malice aforethought. Good authority says his
absence before was unavoidable. I believe it. A man who votes as firmly
as Mr. Barclay does for reporters against log-rolling members, would
be apt to stick to his points upon all occasions when the same was
possible. How's that?--REP.]

Saturday Afternoon

Council bill to amend the Act to prohibit gambling. The bill was read.
[The Clerk pronounces the names of all games glibly, and without any
perceptible foreign accent.--REP.]

Saturday Night

[Mr. Stewart drew his everlasting toll-road on the House again. This
has been the old regular result of every five minutes idleness
to-day.--REP.]

THIRD HOUSE

The institution resolved itself into a respectable body, as expressed in
the above heading.

Mr. Thos. Hannah was elected assistant Clerk, and came forward and took
the oath.

Mr. Clagett introduced a voluminous bill for the relief of certain
citizens of Ormsby county. [It appropriates Curry's Warm Springs--gives
it to these parties as a franchise for a swimming school--and--never
mind, I will cease reporting and listen to the fun.--REP.]

[The Independent of this morning touched upon Mr. Clagett's seeming
repugnance to the use of the comb. On this hint, Mr. Barclay and
other members of the House, had procured a prodigious wooden comb and
conferred upon your servant the honor of presenting it.--REP.]

Mr. Mark Twain inquired if testimonials were still in order, and
received an affirmative reply from the Speaker. He arose in his place
and addressed Mr. Clagett as follows--[Never mind publishing it again.
I had no speech prepared, and therefore I was obliged to infringe upon
etiquette to some extent--that is to say, I had to take Mr. Fisher's
speech (apologizing to that gentleman, of course) and read it to Mr.
Clagett, merely saying "comb" where the word "cane" occurred, and
"legislator" in the place of "parliamentarian," and slinging in a few
"as it weres," and "so to speaks," etc., to add grace and vigor to
the composition. I think I must be a pretty good reader--the audience
appeared to admire Fisher's speech more when I delivered it than they
did when he delivered it himself.]

Mr. Clagett received the testimonial, and replied felicitously--as he is
wont to do. He concluded by saying it was a college practice to give the
ugliest student a penknife, with instructions to give it to a man uglier
than himself, if he should ever find one. He liked the idea--he thought
it his duty to confer the comb upon some person whose hair needed its
offices more than his own. [He passed it over to Mr. Hunter, of Washoe.
Applause and Laughter.]

Baskets of wine were now brought in, with the compliments of Theodore
Winters, President of the Washoe Agricultural, Mining and Mechanical
Society, and the House rested awhile to drink health and prosperity to
that gentleman.

Shortly after, other baskets were produced, per order, and at the
expense of the Speaker, and the operation of drinking was further
continued.

HUNTER'S MEMORIAL

Mr. Hunter, by request, came forward and read a long, solemn,
magnificent, hifalutin memorial about the mines, religion, chemistry,
social etiquette, agriculture, and other matter proper to a document of
this kind. The House applauded tempestuously--and laughed. They laughed
immoderately. Why they did it, I cannot imagine, for I never heard an
essay like this one before in my life. Now that is honest. Mr. Hunter
finally got angry and refused to finish reading the discourse, but when
it was explained to him that only lobby members had been laughing all
the time he was satisfied of course. I would like to hear the memorial
read in Virginia.

Mr. Stewart, from the special Committee, reported that the Governor had
no further communications to make.

Mr. Elliott offered a resolution that the House adjourn sine die at
11:30 P.M.

Mr. McDonald, true to his old regular motion [to adjourn] moved to amend
by making the hour 12 P.M. The motion prevailed.

And from this time until midnight, fun ran high.

At 12 P.M. Mr. Speaker declared the House adjourned sine die.

The members went up to the Governor's and had a good time for an hour.
The old man is as competent as any that walks, to make an evening
pass pleasantly. Wine, music, anecdotes and sentiments composed the
programme.

At 2 A.M. the exhilarated members closed the frolic by serenading the
Speaker, at the White House.

Territorial Enterprise, April 20, 1864

FRIGHTFUL ACCIDENT TO DAN DE QUILLE

Our time-honored confrere, Dan, met with a disastrous accident,
yesterday, while returning from American City on a vicious Spanish
horse, the result of which accident is that at the present writing he is
confined to his bed and suffering great bodily pain. He was coming down
the road at the rate of a hundred miles an hour (as stated in his
will, which he made shortly after the accident,) and on turning a sharp
corner, he suddenly hove in sight of a horse standing square across the
channel; he signaled for the starboard, and put his helm down instantly,
but too late, after all; he was swinging to port, and before he could
straighten down, he swept like an avalanche against the transom of the
strange craft; his larboard knee coming in contact with the rudder-post
of the adversary, Dan was wrenched from his saddle and thrown some three
hundred yards (according to his own statement, made in his will, above
mentioned,) alighting upon solid ground, and bursting himself open from
the chin to the pit of the stomach. His head was also caved in out of
sight, and his hat was afterwards extracted in a bloody and damaged
condition from between his lungs; he must have bounced end-for-end after
he struck first, because it is evident he received a concussion from
the rear that broke his heart; one of his legs was jammed up in his body
nearly to his throat, and the other so torn and mutilated that it pulled
out when they attempted to lift him into the hearse which we had sent
to the scene of the disaster, under the general impression that he
might need it; both arms were indiscriminately broken up until they were
jointed like a bamboo; the back was considerably fractured and bent
into the shape of a rail fence. Aside from these injuries, however, he
sustained no other damage. They brought some of him home in the hearse
and the balance on a dray. His first remark showed that the powers of
his great mind had not been impaired by the accident, nor his profound
judgment destroyed--he said he wouldn't have cared a d--n if it had been
anybody but himself. He then made his will, after which he set to
work with that earnestness and singleness of purpose which have always
distinguished him, to abuse the assemblage of anxious hash house
proprietors who had called on business, and to repudiate their bills
with his customary promptness and impartiality. Dan may have exaggerated
the above details in some respects, but he charged us to report
them thus, and it is a source of genuine pleasure to us to have the
opportunity of doing it. Our noble old friend is recovering fast, and
what is left of him will be around the Brewery again to-day, just as
usual.

Territorial Enterprise, April 1864

AN INFAMOUS PROCEEDING

[by Dan De Quille]

Some three days since, in returning to this city from American Flat, we
had the misfortune to be thrown from a fiery untamed steed of Spanish
extraction--a very strong extract, too. Our knee was sprained by our
fall and we were for a day or two confined to our room--of course
knowing little of what was going on in the great world outside. Mark
Twain, our confrere and room-mate, a man in whom we trusted, was our
only visitor during our seclusion. We saw some actions of his that
almost caused us to suspect him of contemplating treachery towards us,
but it was not until we regained in some degree the use of our maimed
limb that we discovered the full extent--the infamousness of this
wretch's treasonable and inhuman plottings. He wrote such an account of
our accident as would lead the public to believe that we were injured
beyond all hope of recovery. The next day he tied a small piece of
second-hand crape about his hat, and putting on a lugubrious look,
went to the Probate Court, and getting down on his knees commenced
praying--it was the first time he ever prayed for anything or to
anybody--for letters of administration on our estate. Before going
to the Court to pray he had stuffed the principal part of our
estate--consisting of numerous shares in the Pewterinctum--into his vest
pocket; also had secured our tooth-brush and had been using it a whole
day. He had on our only clean shirt and best socks, also was sporting
our cane and smoking our meerschaum. But what most showed his
heartlessness and utter depravity was the disposition he made of our
boots and coat. When we missed these we applied to Marshall Cooke. The
Marshall said he thought he could find them for us. He went on to say
that for sometime past he had noticed the existence of a suspicious
intimacy between Twain and a nigger saloon keeper, who had a dead-fall
on North B street. Proceeding to this palace he found that he was
correct in his conjecture. Twain had taken our boots and coat to the
darkey, and traded them off for a bottle of vile whiskey, with which he
got drunk; and when the police were about to snatch him for drunkenness,
he commenced blubbering, saying that he was "overcome for the untimely
death of poor Dan." By this dodge he escaped the lock-up, but if he
does not shortly give up our Pewtertinctum stock--which is of fabulous
vale--shell out our tooth-brush and take off our socks and best shirt,
he will not so easily escape the Territorial prison.

P. S.--We have just learned that he stole the crape he tied about his
hat from the door knob of Three's engine house, South B street.

Territorial Enterprise, April 1864

MARK TWAIN TAKES A LESSON IN THE MANLY ART

[by Dan DeQuille]

We may have said some harsh things of Mark Twain, but now we take them
all back. We feel like weeping for him--yes, we would fall on his breast
and mingle our tears with his'n. But that manly shirt front of his air
now a bloody one, and his nose is swollen to such an extent that to fall
on his breast would be an utter impossibility.

Yesterday, he brought back all our things and promised us that he
intended hereafter to lead a virtuous life. This was in the forenoon;
in the afternoon he commenced the career of virtue he had marked out for
himself and took a first lesson in boxing. Once he had the big gloves
on, he imagined that he weighed a ton and could whip his weight in
Greek-fire. He waded into a professor of the "manly art" like one of
Howlan's rotary batteries, and the professor, in a playful way he has,
when he wants to take the conceit out of forward pupils, let one fly
straight out from the shoulder and "busted" Mr. Twain in the "snoot,"
sending him reeling--not exactly to grass, but across a bench--with two
bountiful streams of "claret" spouting from his nostrils. At first his
nose was smashed out till it covered nearly the whole of his face and
then looked like a large piece of tripe, but it was finally scraped into
some resemblance of a nose, when he rushed away for surgical advice.
Pools of gore covered the floor of the Club Room where he fought, and
he left a bloody trail for half a mile through the city. It is estimated
that he lost several hogsheads of blood in all. He procured a lot of
sugar of lead and other cooling lotions and spent the balance of the day
in applying them with towels and sponges.

After dark, he ventured forth with his nose swollen to the size of
several junk bottles--a vast, inflammed and pulpy old snoot--to get
advice about having it amputated. None of his friends recognize him
now, and he spends his time in solitude, contemplating his ponderous
vermillion smeller in a two-bit mirror, which he bought for that
purpose. We cannot comfort him, for we know his nose will never be a
nose again. It always was somewhat lopsided; now it is a perfect lump
of blubber. Since the above was in type, the doctors have decided to
amputate poor Mark Twain's smeller. A new one is to be made for him of a
quarter of veal.

Territorial Enterprise, April 28, 1864

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN

Carson City, April 25

EDS. ENTERPRISE: The road from Virginia to Carson--as traveled by
Wilson's coaches--is in excellent condition, the same being neither
muddy nor very dusty. The stages do not even stop to rest on the chalk
hill.

We came by the penitentiary, but I did not consider it worth while to
stop at the institution more than a few minutes, inasmuch as I had
been in it before. Bob Howland, the Warden, was at his post, and I had
sufficient confidence in him to leave him there. He is probably there
yet. N.B.--When you journey in this direction, stop at the penitentiary
and examine the native silver fish on exhibition there in the aquarium.
They are caught in the Warm Springs. They are very like gold-fish, only
they are longer, and not so wide, and are white instead of yellow, and
also differ from gold-fish to some extent in the respect that they do
not resemble them. This description may sound a little incoherent, but
then I have set it down just as I got it from Bob Howland, in whom I
have every confidence. Mr. Curry is erecting a handsome stone edifice at
the Warm Springs, to be used as a hotel.

I heard in the stage, and also since I arrived here, that an organized
effort will shortly be made to rescue Jaynes, the murderer, from the
Storey county jail. Whether it be true or not, it will not be amiss to
put the officers on their guard with a hint.

The Supreme Court began its session here to-day, and adjourned over
until to-morrow, after hearing arguments for a new trial of Johnson for
killing Horace Smith. The ground upon which a new trial is sought, is
that some testimony was admitted upon the first trial in the District
Court which should have been ruled out. I have spoken with District
Attorney Corson on the subject, and he thinks the movement for a
rehearing will not succeed. From present appearances, I think Alderman
Earl will hold his seat for some time yet (if the sacred ambition to
sit in a high place in spite of law and gospel to the contrary shall
continue to animate him), as it has already been decided to submit his
case, through the District and City Attorneys, to the District Court,
and the long session now anticipated for the Supreme Court, will
doubtless delay his trial for some time. It would have been better,
wouldn't it, for the Council to have declared his seat vacant, and
allowed him to take legal steps for its restitution himself?

Governor Nye has not yet returned. It is said he will start back to
Carson to-morrow.

Acting-Governor Clemens made a requisition upon H. F. Rice, Esq., a day
or two since, for offices for the Secretary of the Territory, rent-free,
in accordance with the contract entered into by certain citizens during
the late session of the Legislature when the subject of removing the
Capital to Virginia was agitated. The requisition was duly honored, and
in the course of the week, handsome offices will be fitted up in the
second story of the north end of the county buildings for the use of the
Secretary and his clerks.

Mr. Colburn, or Coleman, or whatever his name is--the young man with
a penchant for trying unique experiments, and who was accused of
committing a rape on an infant here three years ago--is in trouble
again. A young girl who alleges that he seduced her in California some
time ago, is over here suing him for damages in the Probate Court.

Your carrier here neglects some of his subscribers as often as two or
three times a week, sometimes, or else his papers are stolen after he
leaves them. Let the matter be attended to--the people hunger after
Dan's intellectual rubbish.

The ladies gave a festival here last Friday for the benefit of my
chronic brick church. The net proceeds amounted to upwards of $500,
and will be applied to furnishing the edifice, which is still in a
high state of preservation, and is gradually but surely becoming really
ornamental. That is the church for the benefit of which I delivered
a Governor's message once, and consequently I still take a religious
interest in its welfare. I could sling a strong prayer for its
prosperity, occasionally, if I thought it would do any good. However,
perhaps it wouldn't--it would certainly be taking chances anyhow.

The ladies are making extraordinary preparations for a grand fancy-dress
ball, to come off in the county buildings here on the 5th of May, for
the benefit of the great St. Louis Sanitary Fair. The most pecuniary
results are anticipated from it, and I imagine, from the interest that
is being taken in the matter, the ladies of Gold Hill had better be
looking to their laurels, lest the fame of their recent brilliant effort
in the Sanitary line be dimmed somewhat by the financial achievements of
this forthcoming ball.

The infernal telegraph monopoly saddled upon this Territory by the last
Legislature, in the passage of that infamous special Humboldt telegraph
bill, and afterwards clinched by a still more rascally enactment on the
same occasion, is bearing its fruits, and the people here, as well as
at Virginia, are beginning to wince under illegal and exorbitant
telegraphic charges. They double the tariff allowed by law, and a man
has to submit to the imposition, because he cannot afford the time
and trouble of going to law for a trifle of five or ten dollars,
notwithstanding the comfort and satisfaction he would derive from
worrying the monopolists. The moment that law received the Governor's
signature last winter, you will recollect the Telegraph Company doubled
their prices for dispatches to and from San Francisco. And that is not
the worst they have done, if common report be true. This common report
says the telegraph is used by its owners to aid them in stock gambling
schemes. I recollect that on the night the jury went out in the Savage
and North Potosi case and failed to agree, our San Francisco dispatch
failed to come to hand, and the reason assigned was that a dispatch of
3,000 words was being sent from Virginia to San Francisco and the line
could not be used for other messages. Now that Telegraph Company may
have made money by trading in North Potosi on that occasion, but who is
young enough to believe they ever got two dollars and a half for that
voluminous imaginary dispatch? That telegraph is a humbug. The
Company are allowed to charge $3.50 for the first ten words across
the continent, and must submit to a considerable deduction on longer
dispatches--but they take the liberty of increasing that rate some
thirty-five per cent, and people have to put up with it. Colonel
Cradlebaugh tells me that last year, when he was a delegate at
Washington from this Territory, they always charged him more for
dispatches sent here than if they went through to California. The
Government pays the Overland Telegraph Company $40,000 a year, with the
understanding that Government messages are to pass over the lines free
of charge--but I know of several dispatches of this character that were
not permitted to leave the telegraph offices until they were paid for.
It is properly the District Attorney's business to look after these
telegraphic speculators, and that officer ought to be reminded of the
fact. The next Grand Jury here will endeavor to make it interesting to
the Telegraph Company.

Gillespie's monument--the ratty old Agricultural Fair shanty--still
rears its ghastly form in the plaza, and serves to remind me of that
statesman's extraordinary career in the House of Representatives. It
consisted in saving to his country the usual, but extravagant sum of
eight or ten dollars a day extra pay to Legislative reporters, and
in making a speech in favor of the Sierra Seminary bill which had the
effect of killing that really worthy measure. All through the session
Gillespie was mighty handy about smashing the life out of any little
incipient law that he chose to befriend, with one of his calamitous
speeches. His vote was patent, too; his "nay" invariably passed a bill,
and his "aye" was the deadest thing! [My language may be unrefined, but
it has the virtue of being uncommonly strong.] But that monument in
the plaza looks as hungry as Gillespie does himself, and much more
unsightly, and I look for one of them to eat the other some day, if they
ever get close enough together.

I depart for Silver Mountain in the Esmeralda stage at 7 o'clock
to-morrow morning. It is the early bird that catches the worm, but I
would not get up at that time in the morning for a thousand worms, if I
were not obliged to.

MARK TWAIN

Territorial Enterprise, April 28 or 30, 1864

[fragment of original]

DAN REASSEMBLED

The idea of a plebeian like Dan supposing he could ever ride a horse!
He! why, even the cats and the chickens laughed when they saw him go
by. Of course, he would be thrown off. Of course, any well-bred horse
wouldn't let a common, underbred person like Dan stay on his back!
When they gathered him up he was just a bag of scraps, but they put him
together, and you'll find him at his old place in the Enterprise office
next week, still laboring under the delusion that he's a newspaper man.

Territorial Enterprise, May 1--May 15, 1864

WASHOE. "INFORMATION WANTED"

SPRINGFIELD, MO., April 12.

"DEAR SIR:--My object in writing to you is to have you give me a full
history of Nevada: What is the character of its climate? What are the
productions of the earth? Is it healthy? What diseases do they die of
mostly? Do you think it would be advisable for a man who can make a
living in Missouri to emigrate to that part of the country? There
are several of us who would emigrate there in the spring if we could
ascertain to a certainty that it is a much better country than this. I
suppose you know Joel H. Smith? He used to live here; he lives in Nevada
now; they say he owns considerable in a mine there. Hoping to hear from
you soon, etc., I remain yours, truly,

WILLIAM _____.

DEAREST WILLIAM:--Pardon my familiarity--but that name touchingly
reminds me of the loved and lost, whose name was similar. I have taken
the contract to answer your letter, and although we are now strangers,
I feel we shall cease to be so if we ever become acquainted with each
other. The thought is worthy of attention, William. I will now respond
to your several propositions in the order in which you have fulminated
them.

Your object in writing is to have me give you a full history of Nevada.
The flattering confidence you repose in me, William, is only equalled
by the modesty of your request. I could detail the history of Nevada
in five hundred pages octavo, but as you have never done me any harm, I
will spare you, though it will be apparent to everybody that I would be
justified in taking advantage of you if I were a mind to do it. However,
I will condense. Nevada was discovered many years ago by the Mormons,
and was called Carson county. It only became Nevada in 1861, by act of
Congress. There is a popular tradition that God Almighty created it; but
when you come to see it, William, you will think differently. Do not let
that discourage you, though. The country looks something like a singed
cat, owing to the scarcity of shrubbery, and also resembles that animal
in the respect that it has more merits than its personal appearance
would seem to indicate. The Grosch brothers found the first silver lead
here in 1857. They also founded Silver City, I believe. (Observe the
subtle joke, William.) But the "history" of Nevada which you demand,
properly begins with the discovery of the Comstock lead, which event
happened nearly five years ago. The opinion now prevailing in the East
that the Comstock is on the Gould & Curry is erroneous; on the contrary,
the Gould & Curry is on the Comstock. Please make the correction,
William. Signify to your friends, also, that all the mines here do
not pay dividends as yet; you may make this statement with the utmost
unyielding inflexibility--it will not be contradicted from this quarter.
The population of this Territory is about 35,000, one half of which
number reside in the united cities of Virginia and Gold Hill. However, I
will discontinue this history for the present, lest I get you too deeply
interested in this distant land and cause you to neglect your family or
your religion. But I will address you again upon the subject next year.
In the meantime, allow me to answer your inquiry as to the character of
our climate.

It has no character to speak of, William, and alas! in this respect it
resembles many, ah, too many chambermaids in this wretched, wretched
world. Sometimes we have the seasons in their regular order, and then
again we have winter all the summer and summer all winter. Consequently,
we have never yet come across an almanac that would just exactly fit
this latitude. It is mighty regular about not raining, though, William.
It will start in here in November and rain about four, and sometimes
as much as seven days on a stretch; after that, you may loan out your
umbrella for twelve months, with the serene confidence which a Christian
feels in four aces. Sometimes the winter begins in November and winds up
in June; and sometimes there is a bare suspicion of winter in March and
April, and summer all the balance of the year. But as a general thing,
William, the climate is good, what there is of it.

What are the productions of the earth? You mean in Nevada, of course.
On our ranches here, anything can be raised that can be produced on
the fertile fields of Missouri. But ranches are very scattering--as
scattering, perhaps, as lawyers in heaven. Nevada, for the most part,
is a barren waste of sand, embellished with melancholy sage-brush, and
fenced in with snow clad mountains. But these ghastly features were
the salvation of the land, William, for no rightly constituted American
would have ever come here if the place had been easy of access, and none
of our pioneers would have staid after they got here if they had not
felt satisfied that they could not find a smaller chance for making a
living anywhere else. Such is man, William, as he crops out in America.

"Is it healthy?" Yes, I think it is as healthy here as it is in any part
of the West. But never permit a question of that kind to vegetate in
your brain, William, because as long as providence has an eye on you,
you will not be likely to die until your time comes.

"What diseases do they die of mostly?" Well, they used to die of
conical balls and cold steel, mostly, but here lately erysipelas and the
intoxicating bowl have got the bulge on those things, as was very
justly remarked by Mr. Rising last Sunday. I will observe, for your
information, William, that Mr. Rising is our Episcopal minister, and
has done as much as any man among us to redeem this community from its
pristine state of semi-barbarism. We are afflicted with all the diseases
incident to the same latitude in the States, I believe, with one or two
added and half a dozen subtracted on account of our superior altitude.
However, the doctors are about as successful here, both in killing and
curing, as they are anywhere.

Now, as to whether it would be advisable for a man who can make a living
in Missouri to emigrate to Nevada, I confess I am somewhat mixed. If you
are not content in your present condition, it naturally follows that you
would be entirely satisfied if you could make either more or less than a
living. You would exult in the cheerful exhilaration always produced by
a change. Well, you can find your opportunity here, where, if you retain
your health, and are sober and industrious, you will inevitably make
more than a living, and if you don't you won't. You can rely upon this
statement, William. It contemplates any line of business except the
selling of tracts. You cannot sell tracts here, William; the people take
no interest in tracts; the very best efforts in the tract line--even
with pictures on them--have met with no encouragement here. Besides, the
newspapers have been interfering; a man gets his regular text or so
from the Scriptures in his paper, along with the stock sales and the war
news, every day, now. If you are in the tract business, William, take no
chances on Washoe; but you can succeed at anything else here.

"I suppose you know Joel H. Smith?" Well--the fact is--I believe I
don't. Now isn't that singular? Isn't it very singular? And he owns
"considerable" in a mine here, too. Happy man. Actually owns in a
mine here in Nevada Territory, and I never even heard of him.
Strange--strange--do you know, William, it is the strangest thing that
ever happened to me? And then he not only owns in a mine, but owns
"consider able;" that is the strangest part about it--how a man could
own considerable in a mine in Washoe and I not know anything about it.
He is a lucky dog, though. But I strongly suspect that you have made
a mistake in the name; I am confident you have; you mean John Smith--I
know you do; I know it from the fact that he owns considerable in a mine
here, because I sold him the property at a ruinous sacrifice on the very
day he arrived here from over the plains. That man will be rich one of
these days. I am just as well satisfied of it as I am of any precisely
similar instance of the kind that has come under my notice. I said as
much to him yesterday, and he said he was satisfied of it, also. But he
did not say it with that air of triumphant exultation which a heart
like mine so delights to behold in one to whom I have endeavored to be a
benefactor in a small way. He looked pensive a while, but, finally, says
he, "Do you know, I think I'd a been a rich man long ago if they'd ever
found the d--d ledge?" That was my idea about it. I always thought, and
I still think, that if they ever do find that ledge, his chances will be
better than they are now. I guess Smith will be all right one of these
centuries, if he keeps up his assessments--he is a young man yet. Now,
William, I have taken a liking to you, and I would like to sell you
"considerable" in a mine in Washoe. I think I could get you a commanding
interest in the "Union," Gold Hill, on easy terms. It is just the
same as the "Yellow Jacket," which is one of the richest mines in the
Territory. The title was in dispute between the two companies some two
years ago, but that is all settled now. Let me hear from you on the
subject. Greenbacks at par is as good a thing as I want. But seriously,
William, don't you ever invest in a mining stock which you don't know
anything about; beware of John Smith's experience.

You hope to hear from me soon? Very good. I shall also hope to hear
from you soon, about that little matter above referred to. Now, William,
ponder this epistle well; never mind the sarcasm, here and there, and
the nonsense, but reflect upon the plain facts set forth, because they
are facts, and are meant to be so understood and believed.

Remember me affectionately to your friends and relations, and especially
to your venerable grand-mother, with whom I have not the pleasure to be
acquainted--but that is of no consequence, you know. I have been in your
town many a time, and all the towns of the neighboring counties--the
hotel keepers will recollect me vividly. Remember me to them--I bear
them no animosity.

Yours, affectionately,

MARK TWAIN.

Territorial Enterprise, May 24, 1864


PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE

[ I ]


ENTERPRISE OFFICE,

Saturday, May 21, 1864

JAMES LAIRD, ESQ.--Sir: In your paper of the present date appeared two
anonymous articles, in which a series of insults were leveled at the
writer of an editorial in Thursday's ENTERPRISE, headed "How is it?--How
it is." I wrote that editorial.

Some time since it was stated in the Virginia Union that its proprietors
were alone responsible for all articles published in its columns. You
being the proper person, by seniority, to apply to in cases of this
kind, I demand of you a public retraction of the insulting articles I
have mentioned, or satisfaction. I require an immediate answer to
this note. The bearer of this--Mr. Stephen Gillis--will receive any
communication you may see fit to make.

SAM. L. CLEMENS

[ II ]

OFFICE OF THE VIRGINIA DAILY UNION

VIRGINIA, May 21, 1864

SAMUEL CLEMENS, ESQ.--Mr. James Laird has just handed me your note
of this date. Permit me to say that I am the author of the Article
appearing in this morning's Union. I am responsible for it. I have
nothing to retract. Respectfully,

J. W. WILMINGTON

[ III ]

ENTERPRISE OFFICE,

Saturday Evening, May 21, 1864

JAMES LAIRD, ESQ.--Sir:--I wrote you a note this afternoon demanding
a published retraction of insults that appeared in two Articles in
the Union of this morning--or satisfaction. I have since received what
purports to be a reply, written by a person who signs himself "J. W.
Wilmington," in which he assumes the authorship and responsibility
of one of said infamous articles. Mr. Wilmington is a person entirely
unknown to me in the matter, and has nothing to do with it. In the
columns of your paper you have declared your own responsibility for all
articles appearing in it, and any farther attempt to make a catspaw
of any other individual and thus shirk a responsibility that you had
previously assumed will show that you are a cowardly sneak. I now
peremptorily demand of you the satisfaction due to a gentleman--without
alternative.

SAM. L. CLEMENS

[ IV ]

OFFICE OF THE VIRGINIA DAILY UNION,

VIRGINIA, Saturday evening, May 21st, 1864

SAM'L. CLEMENS, ESQ:--Your note of this evening is received. To the
first portion of it I will briefly reply, that Mr. J. W. Wilmington, the
avowed author of the article to which you object, is a gentleman now in
the employ of the Union office. He formerly was one of the proprietors
of the Cincinnati Enquirer. He was Captain of a Company in the Sixth
Ohio Regiment, and fought at Shiloh. His responsibility and character
can be vouched for to your abundant satisfaction.

For all editorials appearing in the Union, the proprietors are
personally responsible; for communications, they hold themselves ready,
when properly called upon, either to give the name and address of the
author, or failing that, to be themselves responsible.

The editorial in the ENTERPRISE headed "How is it?" out of which this
controversy grew, was an attack made upon the printers of the Union. It
was replied to by a Union printer, and a representative of the printers,
who in a communication denounced the writer of that article as a liar, a
poltroon and a puppy. You announce yourself as the writer of the article
which provoked this communication, and demand "satisfaction"--which
satisfaction the writer informs you, over his own signature, he is quite
ready to afford. I have no right, under the rulings of the code you have
invoked, to step in and assume Mr. Wilmington's position, nor would
he allow me to do so. You demand of me, in your last letter, the
satisfaction due to a gentleman, and couple the demand with offensive
remarks. When you have earned the right to the title by complying with
the usual custom, I shall be most happy to afford you any satisfaction
you desire at any time and in any place. In short, Mr. Wilmington has a
prior claim upon your attention. When he is through with you, I shall be
at your service. If you decline to meet him after challenging him, you
will prove yourself to be what he has charged you with being: "a liar, a
poltroon and a puppy," and as such, can not of course be entitled to the
consideration of a gentleman.

Respectfully,

JAMES L. LAIRD

[ V ]

ENTERPRISE OFFICE, VIRGINIA CITY

May 21,1864--9 o'clock, P.M.

JAMES L. LAIRD, ESQ.--Sir: Your reply to my last note in which I
peremptorily demanded satisfaction of you, without alternative--is just
received, and to my utter astonishment you still endeavor to shield your
craven carcass behind the person of an individual who in spite of your
introduction is entirely unknown to me, and upon whose shoulders you
cannot throw the whole responsibility. You acknowledge and reaffirm
in this note that "For all editorials appearing in the Union, the
proprietors are personally responsible." Now, sir, had there appeared
no editorial on the subject endorsing and reiterating the slanderous and
disgraceful insults heaped upon me in the "communication," I would have
simply called upon you and demanded the name of its author, and upon
your answer would have depended my farther action. But the "Editorial"
alluded to was equally vile and slanderous as the "communication," and
being an "Editorial" would naturally have more weight in the minds
of readers. It was the following undignified and abominably insulting
slander appearing in your "Editorial" headed "The 'How is it' issue,"
that occasioned my sending you first an alternative and then a
peremptory challenge:

"Never before in a long period of newspaper intercourse--never before
in any contact with a contemporary, however unprincipled he might have
been, have we found an opponent in statement or in discussion, who had
no gentlemanly sense of professional propriety, who conveyed in every
word, and in every purpose of all his words, such a groveling disregard
for truth, decency and courtesy as to seem to court the distinction,
only, of being understood as a vulgar liar. Meeting one who prefers
falsehood; whose instincts are all toward falsehood; whose thought is
falsification; whose aim is vilification through insincere professions
of honesty; one whose only merit is thus described, and who evidently
desires to be thus known, the obstacles presented are entirely
insurmountable, and whoever would touch them fully, should expect to be
abominably defiled."--Union, May 21

You assume in your last note, that I "have challenged Mr. Wilmington,"
and that he has informed me "over his own signature," that he is quite
ready to afford me "satisfaction." Both assumptions are utterly false.
I have twice challenged you, and you have twice attempted to shirk
the responsibility. Mr. W's note could not possibly be an answer to my
demand of satisfaction from you; and besides, his note simply avowed
authorship of a certain "communication" that appeared simultaneously
with your libelous "editorial," and states that its author had "nothing
to retract." For your gratification, however, I will remark that
Mr. Wilmington's case will be attended to in due time by a distant
acquaintance of his who is not willing to see him suffer in obscurity.
In the meantime, if you do not wish yourself posted as a coward, you
will at once accept my peremptory challenge, which I now reiterate.

SAM. L. CLEMENS

[ VI ]

OFFICE TERRITORIAL ENTERPRISE

VIRGINIA, May 21, 1864

J. W. WILMINGTON--Sir: You are, perhaps, far from those who are wont to
advise and care for you, else you would see the policy of minding
your own business and letting that of other people alone. Under these
circumstances, therefore, I take the liberty of suggesting that you are
getting out of your sphere. A contemptible ass and coward like yourself
should only meddle in the affairs of gentlemen when called upon to do
so. I approve and endorse the course of my principal in this matter,
and if your sensitive disposition is aroused by any proceeding of his,
I have only to say that I can be found at the ENTERPRISE office, and
always at your service.

S. E. GILLIS

[To the above, Mr. Wilmington gave a verbal reply to Mr. Millard--the
gentleman through whom the note was conveyed to him--stating that he had
no quarrel with Mr. Gillis; that he had written his communication only
in defense of the craft, and did not desire a quarrel with a member of
that craft; he showed Mr. G's note to Mr. Millard, who read it, but made
no comments upon it.]

[ VII ]

OFFICE OF THE VIRGINIA DAILY UNION,

Monday Morning, May 23, 1864

SAMUEL CLEMENS, ESQ.:--In reply to your lengthy communication, I have
only to say that in your note opening this correspondence, you demanded
satisfaction for a communication in the Union which branded the writer
of an article in the ENTERPRISE as a liar, a poltroon and a puppy. You
declare yourself to be the writer of the ENTERPRISE article, and
the avowed author of the Union communication stands ready to afford
satisfaction. Any attempt to evade a meeting with him and force one upon
me will utterly fail, as I have no right under the rulings of the code,
to meet or hold any communication with you in this connection. The
threat of being posted as a coward cannot have the slightest effect
upon the position I have assumed in the matter. If you think this
correspondence reflects credit upon you, I advise you by all means to
publish it; in the meantime you must excuse me from receiving any more
long epistles from you. JAMES L. LAIRD

I denounce Mr. Laird as an unmitigated liar, because he says I published
an editorial in which I attacked the printers employed on the Union,
whereas there is nothing in that editorial which can be so construed.
Moreover, he is a liar on general principles, and from natural instinct.
I denounce him as an abject coward, because it has been stated in his
paper that its proprietors are responsible for all articles appearing
in its columns, yet he backs down from that position; because he
acknowledges the "code," but will not live up to it; because he says
himself that he is responsible for all "editorials," and then backs down
from that also; and because he insults me in his note marked "IV,"
and yet refuses to fight me. Finally, he is a fool, because he cannot
understand that a publisher is bound to stand responsible for any and
all articles printed by him, whether he wants to do it or not.

SAM. L. CLEMENS

Territorial Enterprise, May 24, 1864

"MISCEGENATION"

We published a rumor, the other day, that the moneys collected at the
Carson Fancy Dress Ball were to be diverted from the Sanitary Fund and
sent forward to aid a "miscegenation" or some other sort of Society in
the East. We also stated that the rumor was a hoax. And it was--we were
perfectly right. However, four ladies are offended. We cannot quarrel
with ladies--the very thought of such a thing is repulsive; neither can
we consent to offend them even unwittingly--without being sorry for the
misfortune, and seeking their forgiveness, which is a kindness we hope
they will not refuse. We intended no harm, as they would understand
easily enough if they knew the history of this offense of ours, but
we must suppress that history, since it would rather be amusing than
otherwise, and the amusement would be at our expense. We have no love
for that kind of amusement--and the same trait belongs to human nature
generally. One lady complained that we should at least have answered the
note they sent us. It is true. There is small excuse for our neglect of
a common politeness like that, yet we venture to apologize for it, and
will still hope for pardon, just the same. We have noticed one thing in
this whole business--and also in many an instance which has gone before
it--and that is, that we resemble the majority of our species in the
respect that we are very apt to get entirely in the wrong, even when
there is no seeming necessity for it; but to offset this vice, we claim
one of the virtues of our species, which is that we are ready to repair
such wrongs when we discover them.

Territorial Enterprise, June 17-23, 1864

"MARK TWAIN" IN THE METROPOLIS

To a Christian who has toiled months and months in Washoe; whose hair
bristles from a bed of sand, and whose soul is caked with a cement
of alkali dust; whose nostrils know no perfume but the rank odor of
sage-brush--and whose eyes know no landscape but barren mountains and
desolate plains; where the winds blow, and the sun blisters, and
the broken spirit of the contrite heart finds joy and peace only in
Limburger cheese and lager beer--unto such a Christian, verily the
Occidental Hotel is Heaven on the half shell. He may even secretly
consider it to be Heaven on the entire shell, but his religion teaches a
sound Washoe Christian that it would be sacrilege to say it.

Here you are expected to breakfast on salmon, fried oysters and other
substantials from 6 till half-past 12; you are required to lunch on
cold fowl and so forth, from half-past 12 until 3; you are obliged to
skirmish through a dinner comprising such edibles as the world produces,
and keep it up, from 3 until half-past 7; you are then compelled to lay
siege to the tea-table from half-past 7 until 9 o'clock, at which hour,
if you refuse to move upon the supper works and destroy oysters gotten
up in all kinds of seductive styles until 12 o'clock, the landlord will
certainly be offended, and you might as well move your trunk to some
other establishment. [It is a pleasure to me to observe, incidentally,
that I am on good terms with the landlord yet.]

Why don't you send Dan down into the Gould & Curry mine, to see whether
it has petered out or not, and if so, when it will be likely to peter
in again. The extraordinary decline of that stock has given rise to
the wildest surmises in the way of accounting for it, but among the lot
there is harm in but one, which is the expressed belief on the part of
a few that the bottom has fallen out of the mine. Gould & Curry is
climbing again, however.

It has been many a day since San Francisco has seen livelier times in
her theatrical department than at present. Large audiences are to be
found nightly at the Opera House, the Metropolitan, the Academy of
Music, the American, the New Idea, and even the Museum, which is not
as good a one as Barnum's. The Circus company, also, played a lucrative
engagement, but they are gone on their travels now. The graceful,
charming, clipper-built Ella Zoyara was very popular.

Miss Caroline Richings has played during the past fortnight at Maguire's
Opera House to large and fashionable audiences, and has delighted them
beyond measure with her sweet singing. It sounds improbable, perhaps,
but the statement is true, nevertheless.

You will hear of the Metropolitan, now, from every visitor to Washoe.
It opened under the management of the new lessees, Miss Annette Ince and
Julia Dean Hayne, with a company who are as nearly all stars as it was
possible to make it. For instance--Annette Ince, Emily Jordan, Mrs.
Judah, Julia Dean Hayne, James H. Taylor, Frank Lawlor, Harry Courtaine
and Fred. Franks, (my favorite Washoe tragedian, whose name they
have put in small letters in the programme, when it deserves to be in
capitals--because, whatever part they give him to play, don't he always
play it well? and does he not possess the first virtue of a comedian,
which is to do humorous things with grave decorum and without seeming to
know that they are funny?)

The birds, and the flowers, and the Chinamen, and the winds, and the
sunshine, and all things that go to make life happy, are present in San
Francisco to-day, just as they are all days in the year. Therefore,
one would expect to hear these things spoken of, and gratefully, and
disagreeable matters of little consequence allowed to pass without
comment. I say, one would suppose that. But don't you deceive
yourself--any one who supposes anything of the kind, supposes an
absurdity. The multitude of pleasant things by which the people of San
Francisco are surrounded are not talked of at all. No--they damn the
wind, and they damn the dust, and they give all their attention to
damning them well, and to all eternity. The blasted winds and the
infernal dust--these alone form the eternal topics of conversation, and
a mighty absurd topic it seems to one just out of Washoe. There isn't
enough wind here to keep breath in my body, or dust enough to keep sand
in my craw. But it is human nature to find fault--to overlook that which
is pleasant to the eye, and seek after that which is distasteful to it.
You take a stranger into the Bank Exchange and show him the magnificent
picture of Sampson and Delilah, and what is the first object he
notices?--Sampson's fine face and flaming eye? or the noble beauty of
his form? or the lovely, half-nude Delilah? or the muscular Philistine
behind Sampson, who is furtively admiring her charms? or the perfectly
counterfeited folds of the rich drapery below her knees? or the symmetry
and truth to nature of Sampson's left foot? No, sir, the first thing
that catches his eye is the scissors on the floor at Delilah's feet, and
the first thing he says, "Them scissors is too modern--there warn't no
scissors like that in them days, by a d--d sight!"

MARK TWAIN.

Territorial Enterprise, June 27--30, 1865

JUST "ONE MORE UNFORTUNATE"

Immorality is not decreasing in San Francisco. I saw a girl in the
city prison last night who looked as much out of place there as I did
myself--possibly more so. She was petite and diffident, and only sixteen
years and one month old. To judge by her looks, one would say she was as
sinless as a child. But such was not the case. She had been living with
a strapping young nigger for six months! She told her story as artlessly
as a school-girl, and it did not occur to her for a moment that she
had been doing anything unbecoming; and I never listened to a narrative
which seemed more simple and straightforward, or more free from
ostentation and vain-glory. She told her name, and her age, to a day;
she said she was born in Holborn, City of London; father living, but
gone back to England; was not married to the negro, but she was left
without any one to take care of her, and he had taken charge of that
department and had conducted it since she was fifteen and a half years
old very satisfactorily. All listeners pitied her, and said feelingly:
"Poor heifer! poor devil!" and said she was an ignorant, erring child,
and had not done wrong wilfully and knowingly, and they hoped she would
pass her examination for the Industrial School and be removed from the
temptation and the opportunity to sin. Tears--and it was a credit to
their manliness and their good feeling--tears stood in the eyes of some
of those stern policemen.

O, woman, thy name is humbug! Afterwards, while I sat taking some notes,
and not in sight from the women's cell, some of the old blisters fell
to gossiping, and lo! young Simplicity chipped in and clattered away as
lively as the vilest of them! It came out in the conversation that she
was hail fellow well met with all the old female rapscallions in the
city, and had had business relations with their several establishments
for a long time past. She spoke affectionately of some of them, and the
reverse of others; and dwelt with a toothsome relish upon numberless
reminiscences of her social and commercial intercourse with them. She
knew all manner of men, too--men with quaint and suggestive names, for
the most part--and liked "Oyster-eyed Bill," and "Bloody Mike," and "The
Screamer," but cherished a spirit of animosity toward "Foxy McDonald"
for cutting her with a bowie-knife at a strumpet ball one night. She
a poor innocent kitten! Oh! She was a scallawag whom it would be base
flattery to call a prostitute! She a candidate for the Industrial
School! Bless you, she has graduated long ago. She is competent to take
charge of a University of Vice. In the ordinary branches she is equal to
the best; and in the higher ones, such as ornamental swearing, and fancy
embroidered filagree slang, she is a shade superior to any artist I ever
listened to.

Territorial Enterprise, July 7-19, 1865

[portion of letter from San Francisco describing black marchers in
Fourth of July celebration]

MARK TWAIN ON THE COLORED MAN

And at the fag-end of the procession was a long double file of the
proudest, happiest scoundrels I saw yesterday--niggers. Or perhaps I
should say "them damned niggers," which is the other name they go by
now. They did all it was in their power to do, poor devils, to modify
the prominence of the contrast between black and white faces which seems
so hateful to their white fellow-creatures, by putting their lightest
colored darkies in the front rank, then glooming down by some
unaggravating and nicely graduated shades of darkness to the fell and
dismal blackness of undefiled and unalloyed niggerdom in the remote
extremity of the procession. It was a fine stroke of strategy--the day
was dusty and no man could tell where the white folks left off and the
niggers began. The "damned naygurs"--this is another descriptive title
which has been conferred upon them by a class of our fellow-citizens who
persist, in the most short-sighted manner, in being on bad terms with
them in the face of the fact that they have got to sing with them in
heaven or scorch with them in hell some day in the most familiar and
sociable way, and on a footing of most perfect equality--the "damned
naygurs," I say, smiled one broad, extravagant, powerful smile of
grateful thankfulness and profound and perfect happiness from the
beginning of the march to the end; and through this vast, black,
drifting cloud of smiles their white teeth glimmered fitfully like
heat-lightning on a summer's night. If a white man honored them with
a smile in return, they were utterly overcome, and fell to bowing like
Oriental devotees, and attempting the most extravagant and impossible
smiles, reckless of lock-jaw. They might as well have left their hats at
home, for they never put them on. I was rather irritated at the idea of
letting these fellows march in the procession myself, at first, but
I would have scorned to harbor so small a thought if I had known the
privilege was going to do them so much good. There seemed to be a
religious-benevolent society among them with a banner--the only one in
the colored ranks, I believe--and all hands seemed to take boundless
pride in it. The banner had a picture on it, but I could not exactly get
the hang of its significance. It presented a very black and uncommonly
sick looking nigger, in bed, attended by two other niggers--one reading
the Bible to him and the other one handing him a plate of oysters; but
what the very mischief this blending of contraband dissolution, raw
oysters and Christian consolation, could possibly be symbolical of, was
more than I could make out.

Territorial Enterprise, October 10-11, 1865

[Portion of Letter from San Francisco]

THE CRUEL EARTHQUAKE

SINGULAR EFFECTS OF THE SHOCK ON THE REV. MR. STEBBINS.

Now the Rev. Mr. Stebbins acted like a sensible man--a man with his
presence of mind about him--he did precisely what I thought of doing
myself at the time of the earthquake, but had no opportunity--he came
down out of his pulpit and embraced a woman. Some say it was his wife.
Well, and so it might have been his wife--I'm not saying it wasn't, am
I? I am not going to intimate anything of that kind--because how do I
know but what it was his wife? I say it might have been his wife--and so
it might--I was not there, and I do not consider that I have any
right to say it was not his wife. In reality I am satisfied it was his
wife--but I am sorry, though, because it would have been so much better
presence of mind to have embraced some other woman. I was in Third
street. I looked around for some woman to embrace, but there was none
in sight. I could have expected no better fortune, though, so I said, "O
certainly--just my luck."

A SINGULAR ILLUSTRATION.

When the earthquake arrived in Oakland, the commanding officer of the
Congregational Sabbath School was reading these words, by way of text:
"And the earth shook and trembled!" In an instant the earthquake seized
the text and preached a powerful sermon on it. I do not know whether the
commanding officer resumed the subject again where the earthquake left
off or not, but if he did I am satisfied that he has got a good deal of
"cheek." I do not consider that any modest man would try to improve on a
topic that had already been treated by an earthquake.

A MODEL ARTIST STRIKES AN ATTITUDE.

A young gentleman who lives in Sacramento street, rushed down stairs
and appeared in public with no raiment on save a knit undershirt,
which concealed his person about as much as its tin foil cap conceals a
champagne bottle. He struck an attitude such as a man assumes when he is
looking up, expecting danger from above, and bends his arm and holds
it aloft to ward off possible missiles--and standing thus he glared
fiercely up at the fire-wall of a tall building opposite, from which
a few bricks had fallen. Men shouted at him to go in the house, people
seized him by the arm and tried to drag him away--even tender-hearted
women, (O, Woman!--O ever noble, unselfish, angelic woman!--O, Woman,
in our hours of ease uncertain, coy, and hard to please--when anything
happens to go wrong with our harness, a ministering angel thou), women,
I say, averted their faces, and nudging the paralyzed and impassible
statue in the ribs with their elbows beseeched him to take their
aprons--to take their shawls--to take their hoop-skirts--anything,
anything, so that he would not stand there longer in such a plight
and distract people's attention from the earthquake. But he wouldn't
budge--he stood there in his naked majesty till the last tremor died
away from the earth, and then looked around on the multitude--and
stupidly enough, too, until his dull eye fell upon himself. He went back
upstairs, then. He went up lively.

WHAT HAPPENED TO A FEW VIRGINIANS--CHARLEY BRYAN CLIMBS A TELEGRAPH
POLE.

But where is the use in dwelling on these incidents? There are enough of
them to make a book. Joe Noques, of your city, was playing billiards in
the Cosmopolitan Hotel. He went through a window into the court and then
jumped over an iron gate eighteen feet high, and took his billiard cue
with him. Sam Witgenstein took refuge in a church--probably the first
time he was ever in one in his life. Judge Bryan climbed a telegraph
pole. Pete Hopkins narrowly escaped injury. He was shaken abruptly from
the summit of Telegraph Hill and fell on a three-story brick house ten
feet below. I see that the morning papers (always ready to smooth over
things), attribute the destruction of the house to the earthquake.
That is newspaper magnanimity--but an earthquake has no friends.
Extraordinary things happened to everybody except me. No one even spoke
to me--at least only one man did, I believe--a man named Robinson--from
Salt Lake, I think--who asked me to take a drink. I refused.

Territorial Enterprise, October 21-24, 1865

[portion of letter from San Francisco written October 19, 1865]

BOB ROACH'S PLAN FOR CIRCUMVENTING A DEMOCRAT

Where did all these Democrats come from? They grow thicker and thicker
and act more and more outrageously at each successive election. Now
yesterday they had the presumption to elect S. H. Dwinelle to the
Judgeship of the Fifteenth District Court, and not content with this,
they were depraved enough to elect four out of the six Justices of the
Peace! Oh, 'Enery Villiam, where is thy blush! Oh, Timothy Hooligan,
where is thy shame! It's out. Democrats haven't got any. But Union men
staid away from the election--they either did that or else they came to
the election and voted Democratic tickets--I think it was the latter,
though the Flag will doubtless say it was the former. But these
Democrats didn't stay away--you never catch a Democrat staying away from
an election. The grand end and aim of his life is to vote or be
voted for, and he accommodates to circumstances and does one just as
cheerfully as he does the other. The Democracy of America left their
native wilds in England and Connaught to come here and vote--and when a
man, and especially a foreigner, who don't have any voting at home any
more than an Arkansas man has ice-cream for dinner, comes three or four
thousand miles to luxuriate in occasional voting, he isn't going to
stay away from an election any more than the Arkansas man will leave the
hotel table in "Orleans" until he has destroyed most of the ice cream.
The only man I ever knew who could counteract this passion on the part
of Democrats for voting, was Robert Roach, carpenter of the steamer
Aleck Scott, "plying to and from St. Louis to New Orleans and back,"
as her advertisement sometimes read. The Democrats generally came up as
deck passengers from New Orleans, and the yellow fever used to snatch
them right and left--eight or nine a day for the first six or eight
hundred miles; consequently Roach would have a lot on hand to "plant"
every time the boat landed to wood--"plant" was Roach's word. One day as
Roach was superintending a burial the Captain came up and said:

"God bless my soul, Roach, what do you mean by shoving a corpse into
a hole in the hill-side in this barbarous way, face down and its feet
sticking out?"

"I always plant them foreign Democrats in that manner, sir, because,
damn their souls, if you plant 'em any other way they'll dig out and
vote the first time there's an election--but look at that fellow,
now--you put 'em in head first and face down and the more they dig the
deeper they'll go into the hill."

In my opinion, if we do not get Roach to superintend our cemeteries,
enough Democrats will dig out at the next election to carry their entire
ticket. It begins to look that way.

Territorial Enterprise, October 26-28, 1865

San Francisco Letter

[written October 24, 1865; some portions missing]

A LOVE OF A BONNET DESCRIBED.

Well, you ought to see the new style of bonnets, and then die. You see,
everybody has discarded ringlets and bunches of curls, and taken to
the clod of compact hair on the "after-guard," which they call a
"waterfall," though why they name it so I cannot make out, for it looks
no more like one's general notion of a waterfall than a cabbage looks
like a cataract. Yes, they have thrown aside the bunches of curls which
necessitated the wearing of a bonnet with a back-door to it, or rather,
a bonnet without any back to it at all, so that the curls bulged out
from under an overhanging spray of slender feathers, sprigs of grass,
etc. You know the kind of bonnet I mean; it was as if a lady spread a
diaper on her head, with two of the corners brought down over her ears,
and the other trimmed with a bunch of graceful flummery and allowed
to hang over her waterfall--fashions are mighty tanglesome things to
write--but I am coming to it directly. The diaper was the only beautiful
bonnet women have worn within my recollection--but as they have taken
exclusively to the waterfalls, now, they have thrown it aside and
adopted, ah me, the infernalest, old-fashionedest, ruralest atrocity in
its stead you ever saw. It is perfectly plain and hasn't a ribbon, or
a flower, or any ornament whatever about it; it is severely shaped like
the half of a lady's thimble split in two lengthwise--or would be if
that thimble had a perfectly square end instead of a rounded one--just
imagine it--glance at it in your mind's eye--and recollect, no ribbons,
no flowers, no filagree--only the plainest kind of plain straw or plain
black stuff. It don't come forward as far as the hair, and it fits to
the head as tightly as a thimble fits, folded in a square mass against
the back of the head, and the square end of the bonnet half covers it
and fits as square and tightly against it as if somebody had hit the
woman in the back of the head with a tombstone or some other heavy and
excessively flat projectile. And a woman looks as distressed in it as a
cat with her head fast in a tea-cup. It is infamous.

RE-OPENING OF THE PLAZA.

The Plaza, or Portsmouth Square, is "done," at last, and by a resolution
passed by the Board of Supervisors last night, is to be thrown open to
the public henceforth at 7 o'clock A. M. and closed again at 7 o'clock
P. M. every day. The same resolution prohibits the visits of dogs to
this holy ground, and denies to the public the privilege of rolling on
its grass. If I could bring myself to speak vulgarly, I should say that
the latter clause is rough--very rough on the people. To be forced to
idle in gravel walks when there is soft green grass close at hand, is
tantalizing; it is as uncomfortable as to lie disabled and thirsty
in sight of a fountain; or to look at a feast without permission to
participate in it, when you are hungry; and almost as exasperating as to
have to smack your chops over the hugging and kissing going on between
a couple of sweethearts without any reasonable excuse for inserting your
own metaphorical shovel. And yet there is one consolation about it on
Nature's eternal equity of "compensation." No matter how degraded and
worthless you may become here, you cannot go to grass in the Plaza, at
any rate. The Plaza is a different thing from what it used to be; it
used to be a text from a desert--it was not large enough for a whole
chapter; but now it is traversed here and there by walks of precise
width, and which are graded to a degree of rigid accuracy which is
constantly suggestive of the spirit level; and the grass plots are as
strictly shaped as a dandy's side whiskers, and their surfaces clipped
and smoothed with the same mathematical exactness. In a word, the Plaza
looks like the intensely brown and green perspectiveless diagram of
stripes and patches which an architect furnishes to his client as a plan
for a projected city garden or cemetery. And its glaring greenness in
the midst of so much sombreness is startling and yet piercingly pleasant
to the eye. It reminds one of old John Dehle's vegetable garden in
Virginia, which, after a rain, used to burn like a square of green fire
in the midst of the dull, gray desolation around it.

MORE FASHIONS--EXIT "WATERFALL."

I am told that the Empress Eugenie is growing bald on the top of her
head, and that to hide this defect she now combs her "back hair" forward
in such a way as to make her look all right. I am also told that this
mode of dressing the hair is already fashionable in all the great
civilized cities of the world, and that it will shortly be adopted here.
Therefore let your ladies "stand-by" and prepare to drum their ringlets
to the front when I give the word. I shall keep a weather eye out
for this fashion, for I am an uncompromising enemy of the popular
"waterfall," and I yearn to see it in disgrace. Just think of the
disgusting shape and appearance of the thing. The hair is drawn to a
slender neck at the back, and then commences a great fat, oblong ball,
like a kidney covered with a net; and sometimes this net is so thickly
bespangled with white beads that the ball looks soft, and fuzzy, and
filmy and gray at a little distance--so that it vividly reminds you of
those nauseating garden spiders in the States that go about dragging a
pulpy, grayish bag-full of young spiders slung to them behind; and when
I look at these suggestive waterfalls and remember how sea-sick it used
to make me to mash one of those spider-bags, I feel sea-sick again, as
a general thing. Its shape alone is enough to turn one's stomach. Let's
have the back-hair brought forward as soon as convenient. N. B.--I shall
feel much obliged to you if you can aid me in getting up this panic. I
have no wife of my own and therefore as long as I have to make the most
of other people's it is a matter of vital importance to me that they
should dress with some degree of taste.

Territorial Enterprise, October 15-31, 1865

[portion of Letter from San Francisco]

POPPER DEFIETH YE EARTHQUAKE

Where's Ajax now, with his boasted defiance of the lightning? Who is
Ajax to Popper, and what is lightning to an earthquake? It is taking no
chances to speak of to defy the lightning, for it might pelt away at
you for a year and miss you every time--but I don't care what corner
you hide in, if the earthquake comes it will shake you; and if you will
build your house weak enough to give it a fair show, it will melt it
down like butter. Therefore, I exalt Popper above Ajax, for Popper
defieth the earthquake. The famous shake of the 8th of October snatched
the front out of Popper's great four-story shell of a house on the
corner of Third and Mission as easily as if it had been mere pastime;
yet I notice that the reckless Popper is rebuilding it again just as
thin as it was before, and using the same old bricks. Is this paying
proper respect to earthquakes? I think not. If I were an earthquake, I
would never stand for such insolence from Popper. I am confident that I
would shake that shell down, even if it took my last shake.

Territorial Enterprise, October 31-November 2, 1865

[portion of San Francisco letter]

STEAMER DEPARTURES


I feel savage this morning. And as usual, when one wants to growl, it
is almost impossible to find things to growl about with any degree of
satisfaction. I cannot find anything in the steamer departures to get
mad at. Only, I wonder who "J. Schmeltzer" is?--and what does he
have such an atrocious name for?--and what business has he got in the
States?--who is there in the States who cares whether Schmeltzer comes
or not? The conduct of this unknown Schmeltzer is exasperating to the
last degree.

And off goes General Rosecrans, without ever doing anything to give a
paper a chance to abuse him. He has behaved himself, and kept quiet, and
avoided scandalous meddling with the Oakland Seminaries, and paid his
board in the most aggravating manner. Let him go.

And Conness is gone. Oh, d--n Conness!

Territorial Enterprise, November 1865

THE BALLAD INFLICTION

It is bound to come! There is no help for it. I smell it afar off--I see
the signs in the air! Every day and every hour of every day I grow more
and more nervous, for with every minute of waning time the dreadful
infliction comes nearer and nearer in its inexorable march! In another
week, maybe, all San Francisco will be singing "Wearing of the Green!" I
know it. I have suffered before, and I know the symptoms. This holds
off long, but it is partly that the calamity may gather irresistible
worrying-power, and partly because it is harder to learn than Chinese.
But that is all the worse; for when the people do learn it they will
learn it bad--and terrible will be the distress it will bring upon the
community. A year ago "Johnny came marching home!" That song was sung by
everybody, in every key, in every locality, at all hours of the day and
night, and always out of tune. It sent many unoffending persons to the
Stockton asylum. There was no stopping the epidemic, and so it had to be
permitted to run its course and wear itself out. Short was our respite,
and then a still more malignant distemper broke out in the midst of this
harried and suffering community. It was "You'll not forget me, mother,
mother, mother, mother!" with an ever-accumulating aggravation of
expression upon each successive "mother." The fire-boys sat up all night
to sing it; and bands of sentimental stevedores and militia soldiers
patroled the streets and howled its lugubrious strains. A passion
for serenading attacked the youth of the city, and they sang it under
verandahs in the back streets until the dogs and cats destroyed their
voices in unavailing efforts to lay the devilish spirit that was driving
happiness from their hearts. Finally there came a season of repose, and
the community slowly recovered from the effects of the musical calamity.
The respite was not long. In an unexpected moment they were attacked,
front and rear, by a new enemy--"When we were marching through Georgia!"
Tongue cannot tell what we suffered while this frightful disaster was
upon us. Young misses sang it to the guitar and the piano; young men
sang it to the banjo and the fiddle; the un-blood stained soldier yelled
it with enthusiasm as he marched through the imaginary swamps and cotton
plantations of the drill-room; the firemen sang it as they trundled
their engines home from conflagrations; and the hated serenader tortured
it with his damned accordeon. Some of us survived, and some have gone
the old road to a haven of rest at Stockton, where the wicked cease from
troubling and the popular songs are not allowed. For the space of four
weeks the survivors have been happy.

But as I have said before, it is bound to come! Arrah-na-Pogque is
breeding a song that will bedeck some mountain with new-made graves! In
another week we shall be "Wearing of the Green," and in a fortnight some
will be wearing of the black in consequence. Three repetitions of this
song will produce lunacy, and five will kill--it is that much more
virulent than its predecessors. People are finding it hard to learn,
but when they get it learned they will find it potent for harm. It
is Wheatleigh's song. He sings it in Arrah-na-Pogque, with a sprig of
shamrock in his hat. Wheatleigh sings it with such aggravated solemnity
as to make an audience long for the grave. It is doled out slowly, and
every note settles deliberately to its place on one's heart like a
solid iceberg--and by the time it is finished the temperature of the
theatre has fallen to twenty degrees. Think what a dead-cold winter we
shall have here when this Arctic funeral melody becomes popular! Think
of it being performed at midnight, in lonely places, upon the spirit
depressing accordeon! Think of being driven to blow your brains out
under such circumstances, and then dying to the grave-yard cadences of
"Wearing of the Green!" But it is bound to come, and we may as well bow
our heads and submit with such degree of Christian resignation as we are
able to command.

THE CALIFORNIAN, Saturday, November 11, 1865

EXIT "BUMMER."--As we have devoted but little space to an event which
has filled our local contemporaries with as much sorrow (judging from
the columns of lamentations it has called forth) as would the decease
of the best biped in the city, we give "Mark Twain's" view of the
occurrence as recorded in the ENTERPRISE of the 8th. Strangely enough,
Mark, who can't stand "ballad infliction" seems to think there has not
been quite enough of "Bummer":

"The old vagrant 'Bummer' is really dead at last; and although he was
always more respected than his obsequious vassal, the dog 'Lazarus,' his
exit has not made half as much stir in the newspaper world as signalised
the departure of the latter. I think it is because he died a natural
death: died with friends around him to smooth his pillow and wipe
the death-damps from his brow, and receive his last words of love and
resignation; because he died full of years, and honor, and disease, and
fleas. He was permited to die a natural death, as I have said, but poor
Lazarus 'died with his boots on'--which is to say, he lost his life by
violence; he gave up the ghost mysteriously, at dead of night, with none
to cheer his last moments or soothe his dying pains. So the murdered
dog was canonized in the newspapers, his shortcomings excused and his
virtues heralded to the world; but his superior, parting with his life
in the fullness of time, and in the due course of nature, sinks as
quietly as might the mangiest cur among us. Well, let him go. In
earlier days he was courted and caressed; but latterly he has lost his
comeliness--his dignity had given place to a want of self-respect, which
allowed him to practice mean deceptions to regain for a moment that
sympathy and notice which had become necessary to his very existence,
and it was evident to all that the dog had had his day; his great
popularity was gone forever. In fact, Bummer should have died sooner:
there was a time when his death would have left a lasting legacy of fame
to his name. Now, however, he will be forgotten in a few days. Bummer's
skin is to be stuffed and placed with that of Lazarus."

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 31, 1864

ANOTHER LAZARUS

The lamented Lazarus departed this life about a year ago, and from that
time until recently poor Bummer has mourned the loss of his faithful
friend in solitude, scorning the sympathy and companionship of his
race with that stately reserve and exclusiveness which has always
distinguished him since he became a citizen of San Francisco. But, for
several weeks past, we have observed a vagrant black puppy has taken
up with him, and attends him in his promenades, bums with him at the
restaurants, and watches over his slumbers as unremittingly as did
the sainted Lazarus of other days. Whether that puppy really feels an
unselfish affection for Bummer, or whether he is actuated by unworthy
motives, and goes with him merely to ring in on the eating houses
through his popularity at such establishments, or whether he is one of
those fawning sycophants that fasten upon the world's heroes in order
that they may be glorified by the reflected light of greatness, we can
not yet determine. We only know that he hangs around Bummer, and snarls
at intruders upon his repose, and looks proud and happy when the old dog
condescends to notice him. He ventures upon no puppyish levity in the
presence of his prince, and essays no unbecoming familiarity, but in all
respects conducts himself with the respectful decorum which such a puppy
so situated should display. Consequently, in time, he may grow into high
favor.

Territorial Enterprise, November 9-12, 1865

[portion of San Francisco letter describing trip on tugboat "Rescue"]

PLEASURE EXCURSION

We lunched, then, and shortly began to drink champagne--by the basket.
I saw the tremendous guns frowning from the fort; I saw San Francisco
spread out over the sand-hills like a picture; I saw the huge fortress
at Black Point looming hazily in the distance; I saw tall ships sweeping
in from the sea through the Golden Gate; I saw that it was time to take
another drink, and after that I saw no more. All hands fell to singing
"When we were Marching Through Georgia," and the remainder of the trip
was fought out on that line. We landed at the steamboat wharf at 5
o'clock, safe and sound. Some of those reporters I spoke of said we had
been to Benicia, and the others said we had been to the Cliff House,
but, poor devils, they had been drinking, and they did not really know
where we had been. I know, but I do not choose to tell. I enjoyed that
trip first-rate. I am rather fond of a trip on a fast boat with a jolly
crowd. That was a jolly crowd. Sometimes they were all out forward
standing on their heads, and then the boat wouldn't steer because
her rudder was sticking up in the air like a sail of a wind-mill; and
sometimes they were all aft turning hand springs and playing "mumble
peg," and then the boat wouldn't steer because she stood so straight
up in the water that her head caught all the wind that was blowing; and
sometimes they were all on the starboard side eating and drinking and
singing, and then she wouldn't steer because she was listed worse than
any soldier that ever listed since the war began. Still, even under
these trying circumstances, the boat made fifteen miles an hour, and so
I suppose that on an even keel she can make a hundred, or thereabouts. I
enjoyed that excursion.

Territorial Enterprise, November 15-18, 1865

[portion of letter from San Francisco]

EDITORIAL "PUFFING"

Let "John Wychecombe Smith, Esq., one of our pioneer merchants, and one
among our wealthiest and most respected citizens," leave in the steamer
"to revisit the home of his nativity," and one of these papers will give
you half a column of sorrow and distress about it, and wind up with the
eternal "but we are happy to say that not many months will elapse ere he
will be with us again"--and forget to mention that a distinguished and
war-bronzed Major-General went in the same steamer with the wealthy and
successful Smith. The other paper would let John Wychecombe Smith go
to the States, or to the devil, either, a dozen times over, and always
maintain an insolent silence about it: but let Moike Mulrooney, or Tim
Murphy, or Judy O'Flaherty, receive a present of raal Irish whisky from
the ould country, and it will never let you hear the last of it.

Territorial Enterprise, November 18, 1865

[portion of letter from San Francisco]

THE OLD THING

As usual, the Alta reporter fastens the mysterious What Cheer robbery
on the same horrible person who knocked young Meyers in the head with
a slung-shot a year ago and robbed his father's pawnbroker shop of some
brass jewelry and crippled revolvers, in broad daylight; and he laid
that exploit on the horrible wretch who robbed the Mayor's Clerk, who
half-murdered detective officer Rose in a lonely spot below Santa Clara;
and he proved that this same monster killed the lone woman in a secluded
house up a dark alley with a carpenter's chisel, months before; and he
demonstrated by inspired argument that the same villain who chiselled
the woman tomahawked a couple of defenceless women in the most
mysterious manner up another dark alley a few months before that. Now,
the perpetrator of these veiled crimes has never been discovered, yet
this wicked reporter has taken the whole batch and piled them coolly
and relentlessly upon the shoulders of one imaginary scoundrel, with a
comfortable, "Here, these are yours," and with an air that says plainly
that no denial, and no argument in the case, will be entertained. And
every time anything happens that is unlawful and dreadful, and has a
spice of mystery about it, this reporter, without waiting to see if
maybe somebody else didn't do it, goes off at once and jams it on top of
the old pile, as much as to say, "Here--here's some more of your work."
Now this isn't right, you know. It is all well enough for Mr. Smythe
to divert suspicion from himself--nobody objects to that--but it is not
right for him to lay every solitary thing on this mysterious stranger,
whoever he is--it is not right, you know. He ought to give the poor
devil a show. The idea of accusing "The Mysterious" of the What Cheer
burglary, considering who was the last boarder to bed and the first one
up!

Smythe is endeavoring to get on the detective police force. I think
it will be wronging the community to give this man such a position as
that--now you know that yourself, don't you? He would settle down on
some particular fellow, and every time there was a rape committed, or a
steamship stolen, or an oyster cellar rifled, or a church burned down,
or a family massacred, or a black-and-tan pup stolen, he would march off
with portentous mien and snatch that fellow and say, "Here, you are at
it again, you know," and snake him off to the Station House.

Territorial Enterprise, November 19 or 21, 1865

THE PIONEER'S BALL

It was estimated that four hundred persons were present at the ball. The
gentlemen wore the orthodox costume for such occasions, and the ladies
were dressed the best they knew how. N. B.--Most of these ladies were
pretty, and some of them absolutely beautiful. Four out of every five
ladies, present were pretty. The ratio at the Colfax party was two out
of every five. I always keep the run of these things. While upon this
department of the subject, I may as well tarry a moment and furnish you
with descriptions of some of the most noticeable costumes.


Mrs. W. M. was attired in an elegant pate de foi gras, made expressly
for her, and was greatly admired.

Miss S. had her hair done up. She was the centre of attraction for the
gentlemen, and the envy of all the ladies.

Miss G. W. was tastefully dressed in a tout ensemble, and was greeted
with deafening applause wherever she went.

Mrs. C. N. was superbly arrayed in white kid gloves. Her modest and
engaging manner accorded well with the unpretending simplicity of her
costume, and caused her to be regarded with absorbing interest by every
one.

The charming Miss M. M. B. appeared in a thrilling waterfall, whose
exceeding grace and volume compelled the homage of pioneers and
emigrants alike. How beautiful she was!

The queenly Mrs. L. R. was attractively attired in her new and beautiful
false teeth, and the bon jour effect they naturally produced was
heightened by her enchanting and well sustained smile. The manner
of this lady is charmingly pensive and melancholy, and her troops of
admirers desired no greater happiness than to get on the scent of her
sozodont-sweetened sighs and track her through her sinuous course among
the gay and restless multitude.

Miss R. P., with that repugnance to ostentation in dress which is so
peculiar to her, was attired in a simple white lace collar, fastened
with a neat pearl-button solitaire. The fine contrast between the
sparkling vivacity of her natural optic and the steadfast attentiveness
of her placid glass eye was the subject of general and enthusiastic
remark.

The radiant and sylph-like Mrs. T., late of your State, wore hoops. She
showed to good advantage, and created a sensation wherever she appeared.
She was the gayest of the gay.

Miss C. L. B. had her fine nose elegantly enameled, and the easy grace
with which she blew it from time to time, marked her as a cultivated and
accomplished woman of the world; its exquisitely modulated tone excited
the admiration of all who had the happiness to hear it.

Being offended with Miss X., and our acquaintance having ceased
permanently, I will take this opportunity of observing to her that it is
of no use for her to be slopping off to every ball that takes place,
and flourishing around with a brass oyster-knife skewered through her
waterfall, and smiling her sickly smile through her decayed teeth, with
her dismal pug nose in the air. There is no use in it--she don't fool
anybody. Everybody knows she is old; everybody knows she is repaired
(you might almost say built) with artificial bones and hair and muscles
and things, from the ground up--put together scrap by scrap--and
everybody knows, also, that all one would have to do would be to pull
out her key-pin and she would go to pieces like a Chinese puzzle.
There, now, my faded flower, take that paragraph home with you and amuse
yourself with it; and if ever you turn your wart of a nose up at me
again I will sit down and write something that will just make you rise
up and howl.

Territorial Enterprise, November 28-30, 1865

UNCLE LIGE

I will now relate an affecting incident of my meeting with Uncle Lige,
as a companion novelette to the one published by Dan the other day,
entitled "Uncle Henry."

A day or two since--before the late stormy weather--I was taking a
quiet stroll in the western suburbs of the city. The day was sunny
and pleasant. In front of a small but neat "bit house," seated upon a
bank--a worn out and discarded faro bank--I saw a man and a little girl.
The sight was too much for me, and I burst into tears. Oh, God! I cried,
this is too rough! After the violence of my emotion had in a manner
spent itself, I ventured to look once more upon that touching picture.
The left hand of the girl (how well I recollect which hand it was! by
the warts on it)--a fair-haired, sweet-faced child of about eight years
of age--rested upon the right shoulder (how perfectly I remember it was
his right shoulder, because his left shoulder had been sawed off in a
saw-mill) of the man by whose side she was seated. She was gazing toward
the summit of Lone Mountain, and prating of the gravestones on the top
of it and of the sunshine and Diggers resting on its tomb-clad slopes.
The head of the man drooped forward till his face almost rested upon
his breast, and he seemed intently listening. It was only a pleasing
pretence, though, for there was nothing for him to hear save the
rattling of the carriages on the gravel road beside him, and he could
have straightened himself up and heard that easy enough, poor fellow. As
I approached, the child observed me, notwithstanding her extreme youth,
and ceasing to talk, smilingly looked at me, strange as it may seem. I
stopped, again almost overpowered, but after a struggle I mastered
my feelings sufficiently to proceed. I gave her a smile--or rather, I
swapped her one in return for the one I had just received, and she said:

"This is Uncle Lige--poor blind-drunk Uncle Lige."

This burst of confidence from an entire stranger, and one so young
withal, caused my subjugated emotions to surge up in my breast once
more, but again, with a strong effort, I controlled them. I looked at
the wine-bred cauliflower on the poor man's nose and saw how it had all
happened.

"Yes," said he, noticing by my eloquent countenance that I had seen how
it had all happened, notwithstanding nothing had been said yet about
anything having happened, "Yes, it happened in Reeseriv' a year ago;
since tha(ic)at time been living here with broth--Robert'n lill Addie
(e-ick.')."

"Oh, he's the best uncle, and tells me such stories!" cried the little
girl.

"At's aw-ri, you know (ick!)--at's aw ri," said the kind hearted, gentle
old man, spitting on his shirt bosom and slurring it off with his hand.

The child leaned quickly forward and kissed his poor blossomy face. We
beheld two great tears start from the man's sightless eyes, but when
they saw what sort of country they had got to travel over, they went
back again. Kissing the child again and again and once more and then
several times, and afterwards repeating it, he said:

"H(o-ook!)--oorah for Melical eagle star-spalgle baller! At's aw-ri, you
know--(ick!)--at's aw-ri"--and he stroked her sunny curls and spit on
his shirt bosom again.

This affecting scene was too much for my already over charged feelings,
and I burst into a flood of tears and hurried from the spot.

Such is the touching story of Uncle Lige. It may not be quite as sick
as Dan's, but there is every bit as much reasonable material in it for
a big calf like either of us to cry over. Cannot you publish the two
novelettes in book form and send them forth to destroy such of our
fellow citizens as are spared by the cholera?

Territorial Enterprise, December 8-10, 1865

A RICH EPIGRAM

Tom Maguire, Torn with ire, Lighted on Macdougall, Grabbed his throat,
Tore his coat, And split him in the bugle. Shame! Oh, fie! Maguire,
why Will you thus skyugle? Why bang and claw, And gouge and chaw The
unprepared Macdougall? Of bones bereft, See how you've left, Vestvali,
gentle Jew gal--And now you've slashed, And almost hashed, The form of
poor Macdougall.

Territorial Enterprise, December 13-15, 1865

[portion of San Francisco Letter, written December 11, 1865]

"Christian Spectator"--REV. O. P. FITZGERALD, of the Minna street
Methodist Church South, is fairly under way, now, with his new Christian
Spectator. The second number is before me. I believe I can venture to
recommend it to the people of Nevada, of both Northern and Southern
proclivities. It is not jammed full of incendiary religious matter about
hell-fire, and brimstone, and wicked young men knocked endways by a
streak of lightning while in the act of going fishing on Sunday. Its
contents are not exciting or calculated to make people set up all night
to read them. I like the Spectator a great deal better than I expected
to, and I think you ought to cheerfully spare room for a short review
of it. The leading editorial says: "A journal of the character of
the Spectator is always to a great extent the reflex of the editor's
individuality." Then follows a pleasant moral homily entitled "That
Nubbin;" then puffs of a religious college and a Presbyterian church;
then some poetical reflections on the happy fact "The War is Over;"
then a "hyste" of some old slow coach of a preacher for not getting
subscribers for the Spectator fast enough; then a confidential hint to
the reader that he turn out and gather subscriptions--and forward the
money; then a puff of the Oakland Female Seminary; then a remark that
the Spectator's terms are cash; then a suggestion that the paper would
make a gorgeous Christmas present--the only joke in the whole paper,
and even this one is written with a fine show of seriousness; then a
complimentary blast for Bishop Pierce; then a column of "Personal Items"
concerning distinguished Confederates, chiefly; then something about
"Our New Dress"--not one of Ward's shirts for the editor, but the
paper's new dress; then a word about "our publishing house at Nashville,
Tenn.;" then a repetition of the fact that "our terms are cash;" then
something concerning "our head"--not the editor's, which is "level," but
the paper's; then follow two columns of religious news not of a nature
to drive one into a frenzy of excitement. On the outside is one of
those entertaining novelettes, so popular among credulous Sabbath-school
children, about a lone woman silently praying a desperate and
blood-thirsty robber out of his boots--he looking on and fingering his
clasp-knife and wiping it on his hand, and she calmly praying, till at
last he "blanched beneath her fixed gaze, a panic appeared to seize him,
and he closed his knife and went out." Oh, that won't do, you know. That
is rather too steep. I guess she must have scalded him a little. There
is also a column about a "remarkable police officer," and praising him
up to the skies, and showing, by facts, sufficient to convince me
that if he belonged to our force, Mr. Fitzgerald was drawing it rather
strong. I read it with avidity, because I wished to know whether it was
Chief Burke, or Blitz, or Lees, the parson was trying to curry favor
with. But it was only an allegory, after all; the impossible police
man was "Conscience." It was one of those fine moral humbugs, like some
advertisements which seduce you down a column of stuff about General
Washington and wind up with a recommendation to "try Peterson's aromatic
soap."

Subscribe for the vivacious Christian Spectator; C. A. Klose is
financial agent.

More Romance--The pretty waiter girls are always getting people into
trouble. But I beg pardon--I should say "ladies," not "girls." I learned
this lesson "in the days when I went gypsying," which was a long time
ago. I said to one of these self-important hags, "Mary, or Julia,
or whatever your name may be, who is that old slab singing at the
piano--the girl with the 'bile' on her nose?" Her eyes snapped. "You
call her girl!--you shall find out yourself--she is a lady, if you
please!" They are all "ladies," and they take it as an insult when they
are called anything else. It was one of these charming ladies who got
shot, by an ass of a lover from the wilds of Arizona, yesterday in the
Thunderboldt Saloon, but unhappily not killed. The fellow had enjoyed so
long the society of ill-favored squaws who have to be scraped before one
can tell the color of their complexions, that he was easily carried
away with the well seasoned charms of "French Mary" of the Thunderboldt
Saloon, and got so "spooney" in his attentions that he hung around her
night after night, and breathed her garlicky sighs with ecstasy. But
no man can be honored with a beer girl's society without paying for
it. French Mary made this man Vernon buy basket after basket of cheap
champagne and got a heavy commission, which is usually their privilege;
in the saloon her company always cost him five or ten dollars an hour,
and she was doubtless a still more expensive luxury out of it.

It is said that he was always insisting upon her marrying him, and
threatening to leave and go back to Arizona if she did not. She could
not afford to let the goose go until he was completely plucked, and so
she would consent, and set the day, and then the poor devil, in a burst
of generosity, would celebrate the happy event with a heavy outlay
of cash. This ruse was played until it was worn out, until Vernon's
patience was worn out, until Vernon's purse was worn out also. Then
there was no use in humbugging the poor numscull any longer, of course;
and so French Mary deserted him, to wait on customers who had cash--the
unfeeling practice always observed by lager beer ladies under similar
circumstances. She told him she would not marry him or have anything
more to do with him, and he very properly tried to blow her brains out.
But he was awkward, and only wounded her dangerously. He killed himself,
though, effectually, and let us hope that it was the wisest thing he
could have done, and that he is better off now, poor fellow.

Territorial Enterprise, December 16-17, 1865

[extract of original letter dated December 13--pertaining to theater
critics and the upcoming visit of Edwin Forrest]

San Francisco Letter

MANAGERIAL

These mosquitoes would swarm around him and bleed dramatic imperfections
from him by the column. With their accustomed shameless presumption,
they would tear the fabric of his well earned reputation to rags,
and call him a poor, cheap humbug and an overrated concentration
of mediocrity...They would always wind up their long-winded
"critiques"--these promoted newsboys and shoemakers would--with the
caustic, the cutting, the withering old stand-by which they have used
with such blighting effect on so many similar occasions, to wit: "If Mr.
Forrest calls that sort of thing acting--very well; but we must inform
him, that although it may answer in other places, it will not do
here..." Their grand final shot is always a six-hundred pounder, and
always comes in the same elegant phraseology: they would pronounce Mr.
Forrest a "bilk!" You cannot tell me anything about these ignorant asses
who do up what is called "criticism" hereabouts--I know them "by the
back."

Territorial Enterprise, December 1865

THIEF-CATCHING

One may easily find room to abuse as many as several members of Chief
Burke's civilian army for laziness and uselessness, but the detective
department is supplied with men who are sharp, shrewd, always on the
alert and always industrious. It is only natural that this should be so.
An ordinary policeman is chosen with especial reference to large stature
and powerful muscle, and he only gets $125 a month, but the detective is
chosen with especial regard to brains, and the position pays better than
a lucky faro-bank. A shoemaker can tell by a single glance at a boot
whose shop it comes from, by some peculiarity of workmanship; but to
a bar-keeper all boots are alike; a printer will take a number of
newspaper scraps, that show no dissimilarity to each other, and name the
papers they were cut from; to a man who is accustomed to being on
the water, the river's surface is a printed book which never fails to
divulge the hiding place of the sunken rock, or betray the presence of
the treacherous shoal. In ordinary men, this quality of detecting
almost imperceptible differences and peculiarities is acquired by long
practice, and goes not beyond the limits of their own occupation--but in
the detective it is an instinct, and discovers to him the secret signs
of all trades, and the faint shades of difference between things which
look alike to the careless eye.

Detective Rose can pick up a chicken's tail feather in Montgomery street
and tell in a moment what roost it came from at the Mission; and if the
theft is recent, he can go out there and take a smell of the premises
and tell which block in Sacramento street the Chinaman lives in who
committed it, by some exquisite difference in the stink left, and which
he knows to be peculiar to one particular block of buildings.

Mr. McCormick, who should be on the detective force regularly, but as
yet is there only by brevet, can tell an obscene photograph by the back,
as a sport tells an ace from a jack.

Detective Blitz can hunt down a transgressing hack-driver by some
peculiarity in the style of his blasphemy.

The forte of Lees and Ellis, is the unearthing of embezzlers and
forgers. Each of these men are best in one particular line, but at the
same time they are good in all. And now we have Piper, who takes a cake,
dropped in the Lick House by a coat-thief, and sits down to read it as
another man would a newspaper. It informs him who baked the cake; who
bought it; where the purchaser lives; that he is a Mexican; that his
name is Salcero; that he is a thief by profession--and then Piper
marches away two miles, to the Presidio, and grabs this foreigner, and
convicts him with the cake that cannot lie, and makes him shed his boots
and finds $200 in greenbacks in them, and makes him shuck himself
and finds upon him store of stolen gold. And so Salcero goes to the
station-house. The detectives are smart, but I remarked to a friend
that some of the other policemen were not. He said the remark was
unjust--that those "other policemen were as smart as they could afford
to be for $125 a month." It was not a bad idea. Still, I contend that
some of them could not afford to be Daniel Websters, maybe, for any
amount of money.

CAUSTIC

Ah, but Fitz Smythe can be severe when it suits his humor. He knocks
"Outcroppings" as cold as a wedge in his last "Amigo" letter to the Gold
Hill News, in a single paragraph--yet it cost you a whole page of the
Enterprise to express your disapprobation of that volume of poems. He
says, "The contents are of course suited to the capacity of children
only." This will make those Eastern papers feel mighty bad, because
several of them have spoken highly of the book and thought it was
written for men and women to read.

But I attach no weight to Smythe's criticisms, because he don't know
anything about polite literature; he has had no experience in it further
than to write up runaway horse items for the Alta and act as Private
Secretary to Emperor Norton. And even in the latter capacity he has
never composed the Emperor's proclamations; his duties extended no
further than to copy them for the Gold Hill News, and anybody could do
that. As for poetry, he never wrote but two poems in his life. One was
entitled, "The Dream of Norton I, Emperor," which was tolerably good,
but not as good as the "Chandos Picture," and the other was one which he
composed when the news came of the assassination of the President. This
latter effort was bad, but I do not really think he knows it, else why
should he feel so injured because it was not inserted in "Outcroppings"?
But perhaps it is not fair in me thus to pass judgment upon that poem,
when possibly I am no more competent to discern poetical merit or
demerit than I conceive him to be himself. Therefore, rather than do
Fitz Smythe an unintentional injustice, I will quote one verse from
the poem which I have called "bad," and leave the people to endorse my
criticism or reject it, as shall seem unto them best:

THE MARTYR

Gone! gone! gone!

Forever and forever! Gone! gone! gone! The tidings ne'er shall sever!
Gone! gone! gone! Wherever! Oh, wherever! Gone! gone! gone! Gone to his
endeavor!

( RECAPITULATION. )

Gone forever! To wherever! Ne'er shall sever! His endeavor! From our
soul's high recompense!

I consider that the chief fault in this poem is that it is
ill-balanced--lop-sided, so to speak. There is too much "gone" in
it, and not enough "forever." I will do the author the credit to say,
however, that there is in it a manifestation of genius of a high order.
It is a dangerous kind of genius, however, as two poets here, gifted
exactly similar, have lately demonstrated--they both transgressed laws
whereof the penalty is capital punishment. I have to be a little severe,
now, because I am a friend to "Outcroppings," and I do not like to see
you and Smythe trying to bring the book into disrepute.

Territorial Enterprise, December 1865

[dated December 20, 1865]

THE NEW SWIMMING BATH

The new swimming bath in South Park is attracting large crowds of
curious visitors, who are anxious to test its virtues, but as yet it is
not quite ready to be thrown open to the public. The great bath-house is
finished, however, and this morning they are ornamenting its ample front
with an immense painting, representing men swimming in all manner
of impossible attitudes. It is as full of gorgeous coloring as a
Presbyterian picture of hell, and is as good as a panorama to look at.
It promises to be a very popular institution. The North Beach and South
Park cars pass directly in front of it.

THE "ECCENTRICS"

The eccentric Fourteenth Regulars is the gayest crowd of lads that any
war ever did produce, I suppose. It is funny to read the accounts of
their doings in the papers every day. They are so supremely indifferent
to consequences--or public opinion--or law, or gospel, the police, the
devil, or anything else! Each happy Fourteener sallies forth in a gang
by himself, like Baxter's hog, and in the course of an hour he has
captured a horse, or waylaid a stagecoach, or carried off a showcase,
or devastated a dwelling, or snatched a policeman, or got a hundred and
fifty people corraled in a narrow court, where he guards the sole exit,
and entertains himself by charging on them with his bowie-knife from
time to time, and laughing in his hoarse, stormy way when they stampede.
Oh, they are gay!

I am really sorry to see that Col. Drumn is about to tone down the
exuberance of the Fourteeners, and I am satisfied that my grief is
shared by every reporter in town, for three months ago the press oozed
columns of the most insipid and resultless run-away beer-wagon items;
whereas lately it has scintillated with the most thrilling and readable
exploits and adventures of the Fourteeners. Col. Drumn recommends to the
Commander of the Department the limiting of passes to the issuance of
not more than two at a time--and Chief Burke, I have no doubt, will take
care that the whole police force turns out, armed to the teeth, to look
after these two. The Fourteeners have been accustomed to carnage and
battle in the Eastern wars so long, that they don't mind a small squad
of police at all--look upon such as only a troublesome interruption to
their amusements, but not a positive obstruction.

Territorial Enterprise, December 19-21, 1865

[portion of San Francisco Letter]

GRAND FETE-DAY AT THE CLIFF HOUSE

PERFORMANCE TO COMMENCE PRECISELY AT HIGH NOON.

The following celebrated artistes have been engaged at a ruinous
expense, and will perform the following truly marvelous feats:

PETE HOPKINS, the renowned Spectre of the Mountains, will walk a tight
rope--the artist himself being tighter than the rope at the time--from
the Cliff House to Seal Rock, and will ride back on the Seal known as
Ben Butler, or the Seal will ride back on him, as circumstances shall
determine.

JIM EOFF will exhibit the horse Patchen, and explain why he did not win
the last race.

HARRIS COVEY will exhibit Lodi and Jim Barton, and BILLY WILLIAMSON will
favor the audience with their pedigree and sketches of their history.
N.B.--This will be very entertaining.

JEROME LELAND will exhibit the famous cow, in a circus ring prepared for
the occasion, and perform several feats of perilous cowmanship on her
back.

COMMODORE PERRY CHILDS will take a drink--the weather permitting. This
was to have been done by another acrobat, but he is out of practice, and
Mr. Childs has kindly volunteered in his place.

MICHAEL REESE will dance the Stock Gallopade, in which fine exhibition
he will be assisted by several prominent brokers.

After which JUDGE BRYAN will sing two verses of "Neapolitaine"--by
request.

The whole to conclude with the grand tableau of the "Children in the
Wood"--Children in the Wood: Emperor Norton and the Spectre of the
Mountains.

Territorial Enterprise, December 22-23, 1865

MACDOUGALL VS. MAGUIRE

The talk occasioned by Maguire's unseemly castigation of Macdougall,
while the latter was engaged in conversation with a lady, was dying out,
happily for both parties, but Mr. Macdougall has set it going again by
bringing that suit of his for $5,000 for the assault and battery. If he
can get the money, I suppose that is at least the most profitable method
of settling the matter. But then, will he? Maybe so, and maybe not. But
if he feels badly--feels hurt--feels disgraced at being chastised, will
$5,000 entirely soothe him and put an end to the comments and criticisms
of the public? It is questionable. If he would pitch in and whale
Maguire, though, it would afford him real, genuine satisfaction, and
would also furnish me with a great deal more pleasing material for
a paragraph than I can get out of the regular routine of events
that transpire in San Francisco--which is a matter of still greater
importance. If the plaintiff in this suit of damages were to intimate
that he would like to have a word from me on this subject, I would
immediately sit down and pour out my soul to him in verse. I would tune
up my muse and sing to him the following pretty

NURSERY RHYME.

Come, now, Macdougall! Say--Can lucre pay For thy dismembered coat--
Thy strangulated throat--Thy busted bugle? Speak thou! poor W. J.!
And say--I pray--If gold can soothe your woes, Or mend your tattered
clothes, Or heal your battered nose, Oh bunged-up lump of clay!
No!--arise! Be wise! Macdougall, d--n your eyes! Don't legal quips
devise To mend your reputation, And efface the degradation Of a blow
that's struck in ire! But 'ware of execration, Unless you take your
station In a strategic location, In mood of desperation, And "lam" like
all creation This infernal Tom Maguire!

Territorial Enterprise, December 24 or 26, 1865

[portion of letter]

San Francisco Letter

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 22.

HOW LONG, O LORD, HOW LONG

[discusses recent problems with local judge--text not available]

EDITORIAL POEM.

The following fine Christmas poem appears in the Alta of this morning,
in the unostentatious garb of an editorial. This manner of "setting it"
robs it of half its beauty. I will arrange it as blank verse, and then
it will read much more charmingly:

"CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR."

"The Holidays are approaching. We hear Of them and see their signs every
day. The children tell you every morn How long it is until the glad New
Year. The pavements all are covered o'er With boxes, which have arrived
Per steamer and are being unpacked In anticipation sweet, of an unusual
demand. The windows of the shops Montgomery street along, Do brilliant
shine With articles of ornament and luxury; The more substantial goods,
Which eleven months now gone The place have occupied, Having been put
aside for a few revolving weeks, Silks, satins, laces, articles of gold
and silver, Jewels, porcelains from Sevres, And from Dresden; Bohemian
and Venetian glass, Pictures, engravings, Bronzes of the finest
workmanship And price extravagant, attract The eye at every step Along
the promenades of fashion. The hotels With visitors are crowded, who
have come From the ultimate interior to enjoy Amusements metropolitan,
or to find A more extensive market, and prices lower For purchases,
than country towns afford. Abundant early rains a prosperous year Have
promised--and the dry And sunny weather which prevailed hath For two
weeks past, doth offer Facilities profound for coming to the city, And
for enjoyment after getting here. The ocean beach throughout the day,
And theatres, in shades of evening, show A throng of strangers glad
residents as well. All appearances do indicate That this blithe time
of holiday In San Francisco will Be one of liveliness unusual, and
brilliancy withal!"

[Exit Chief Editor, bowing low--impressive music.]

I cannot admire the overstrong modesty which impels a man to compose
a stately anthem like that and run it together in the solid
unattractiveness of a leading editorial.

FACETIOUS.

This morning's Alta is brilliant. The fine poem I have quoted is
coppered by a scintillation of Fitz Smythe's in the same column. He
calls the thieving scalliwags of the Fourteenth Infantry "niptomaniacs."
That is not bad considering that it much more intelligently describes
their chief proclivity than "kleptomaniac" describes the weakness of
another kind of thieves. The merit of this effort ranks so high that it
is a mercy it is only a smart remark instead of a joke--otherwise Fitz
Smythe must have perished, and instantly. For fear that this remark may
be obscure to some persons I will explain by informing the public that
the soothsayers were called in at the time of Fitz Smythe's birth, and
they read the stars and prophecied that he was destined to lead a long
and eventful life, and to arrive to great distinction for his untiring
industry in endeavoring, for the period of near half a century, to get
off a joke. They said that many times during his life the grand end and
aim of his existence would seem to be in his reach, and his mission
on earth on the point of being fulfilled; but again and again bitter
disappointment would overtake him; what promised so fairly to be a joke
would come forth still-born; but he would rise superior to despair and
make new and more frantic efforts. And these wise men said that in the
evening of his life, when hope was well nigh dead with him, he would
some day, all unexpectedly to himself, and likewise to the world,
produce a genuine joke, and one of marvelous humor--and then his head
would cave in, and his bowels be rent asunder, and his arms and his
legs would drop off and he would fall down and die in dreadful agony.
"Niptomaniac" is a felicitous expression, but God be thanked it is not
a joke. If it had been, it would have killed him--the mission of Armand
Leonidas Fitz Smythe would have been accomplished.

MAYO AND ALDRICH.

The last news from Frank Mayo will be gratifying to his host of friends
and admirers in California and Nevada. His rank is "Stock Star," and
he plays the leading characters in heavy pieces, and, the Boston papers
say, plays them as well as is done by any great actor in America, and
make no exceptions. He traveled through the chief cities with the Keans,
starring by himself in afterpieces, and playing with the Keans when
there was no afterpiece--taking such parts as "Henry VIII." The
Philadelphia papers said the Keans were very well, but Mr. Mayo was the
best actor in the lot!

Louis Aldrich, in his new Boston engagement, will take high rank also,
and play "first old man" and such characters. He will do well in the
East. You never saw a man make such striding advances in professional
excellence as Aldrich has done since he first played in Virginia.
He "holds over" Mayo in one respect--he will study, and study hard,
too--and Mayo won't.

FINANCIAL.

In an editorial setting forth the palpable fact that California and
Nevada are cutting their own throats by their mistaken sagacity
in hanging on to their double-eagle circulating medium, instead of
smoothing the way for the adoption of greenbacks as our currency, the
Flag touches upon several matters of immediate interest to Washoe, and I
make an extract:

In the large city of Virginia, the San Francisco system of moneyed
exclusiveness prevails completely. Two or three usurers have taken
advantage of the necessities of the community and, upon loans at
exorbitant interest, obtained some sort of possession of nearly all of
the real estate and house property in the city. The Bank of
California through its various connections, has worked itself into
the proprietorship of the most valuable mines, and this has been
accomplished by first depreciating the stock and then buying it under
the stress of "a stock panic." Men who cannot sustain the depreciation,
maintain their credit and transact their business independent of a high
value of their mining stock, must yield in order to ease their fall, and
then, as they become ruined, they witness the outrage of their ruin, and
retire in despair from enterprise and competition. The stock market has
lately been unusually depressed. The California speculators and Specific
Contract fellows of the two States have caused the depression, and now,
having absorbed nearly all of the mining property, they are preparing to
create a "revival" of stock speculation whereby they will again deceive
the public, realize enormous sums and effect new ruin in every direction
but their own.

PERSONAL.

I do not know why I should head these two items from the Call
"personal," but I do:

THE "TERRITORIAL ENTERPRISE."--This admirably conducted paper has
entered on its eighth year of existence.

CHANGED.--The Virginia Union has changed from a morning to an evening
paper. It manifests a restlessness which may precede speedy dissolution.

MOCK DUEL--ALMOST.

A French broker on Montgomery street quarreled with his rival in a
tender affair, the other day, and a challenge passed, and was accepted.
The seconds determined to merely load the pistols with blank cartridges,
and have some fun out of the matter; but they got to drinking rather
freely, ran all night, and when the party arrived on the dueling ground,
at early dawn, the seconds were not sober enough to act their part
with sufficient gravity to carry their plan through successfully. The
principals discovered that they were being trifled with, and indignantly
left the ground. I could get no names. All I could find out was that the
seconds were two well-known "sports," that the challenge was sent and
accepted in good faith, and that one of the principals was a broker.

"MORE WISDOM"

The Alta is most unusually and astonishingly brilliant this morning. I
cannot do better than give it space and let it illumine your columns. It
lets off a level column of editorial to prove that bees eat clover;
mice eat bees; cats eat mice; cats bask in the sun; the spots on the sun
derange the electric currents; that derangement produces earthquakes;
earthquakes make cold weather; and the bees, and the mice, and the
cats, and the spots on the sun, and the electric currents, and the
earthquakes, and the cold weather, mingling together in one grand fatal
combination, produce cholera! Listen to the Alta:

We know that we have sometimes to go a long way around to trace an
effect to its cause. Darwin, in "The Origin of Species," states a fact
which may be used with advantage in illustration, viz.: The presence of
a large number of cats in a village is favorable to the spread of red
clover. The reader will at once exclaim--what on earth can cats have
to do with that species of the genus trifolium? The answer is--the
humble-bee, by a peculiarity of its organization, can alone extract
the nectar from the flower of the red clover. In passing from flower
to flower it conveys the pollen necessary for the fertilization and
consequent spread of the plant. The field mice prey upon the humble-bee,
break up its nests, and eat its stores of honey, while the cats destroy
the mice; hence it follows that in the natural propagation of the plant
in question, the feline tribe perform an important part. Bearing such
curious revelations as these in mind, it is easy enough to present a
theory to cover the case of mother earth at this time, namely: that the
spots on the face of the sun derange the electric currents of the earth;
that the derangement of the electric currents produces earthquakes; that
earthquakes contribute to cold weather, by permitting the escape of some
of the caloric of the interior of the globe, and that all these changes,
in some way, are the cause of the rinder-pest and cholera.

Solomon's wisdom was foolishness to this.

MARK TWAIN

Territorial Enterprise, December 26-27, 1865

[portion of San Francisco Letter written December 23, 1865]

ANOTHER ENTERPRISE

A Mr. P. M. Scoofy, of this city, has been raising oysters for two years
past, on the Mexican coast, and his first harvest--eight tons--arrived
yesterday on the John L. Stephens. They arrived in admirable
condition--finer and fatter than they were when they started; for
oysters enjoy traveling, and thrive on it; and they learn a good deal
more on a flying trip than George Marshall did, and nearly as much
as some other Washoe European tourists I could mention, but they are
dignified and do not gabble about it so much. I would rather have the
society of a traveled oyster than that of George Marshall, because
I would not hesitate to show my displeasure if that oyster were to
suddenly become gay and talkative, and say: "I was in England, you know,
by G--; I went up to Liverpool and there I took the cars and went
to London, by _____ _____; I been in Pall Mall, and Cheapside, and
Whitefriars, and all them places--been in all of 'em: I been in the
Tower of London, and seen all them d--d armors and things they used to
wear in an early day; I hired a feller for a shil'n', and he took me all
around there and showed me the whole hell-fired arrangement, you know,
by G--; and I give him a glass of of'n-of, as they call it, and he jus'
froze to me. You show one of them fellers the color of a bit, and he'll
stay with you all day, by _____ _____. And I went to Rome--that ain't
no slouch of a town, you know--and old? _____ _____! you bet your life.
There ain't anything like it in this country--you can't put up any idea
how it is; you can't tell a d--d thing about Rome 'thout you see it,
by. And I been to Paris--Parree, French call it--you never hear them say
Parriss--they would laugh if they was to hear any body call it Parriss,
you know. I was there three weeks. I was on the Pong-Nuff, and I been
to the Pal-lay Ro-yoll and the Tweeleree, all them d--d places, and the
Boolyver and the Boys dee Bullone. I stood there in the Boys dee Bullone
and see old Loois Napoleon and his wife come by in his carrage--I was as
close to him as from here to that counter there, by G--; I see him take
his hat off and bow to them whoopin' French bilks by _____ _____; I
stood right there that close--as close as that counter when he went by;
I was close enough to a spit in his face if I'd been a mind to, by Hell,
a feller might live here a million years, and what would he ever see,
by G-d. Parree's the place--style, there, you know--people got money,
there, by _____ _____. Let's take a drink, by G--." I wouldn't let a
traveled oyster inflict that sort of thing on me, you understand, and
refer to the Deity, and to the Savior by his full name, to verify every
other important statement. I would rather have the oyster's company than
Marshall's when his reminiscences are big within him, but the moment I
received the information that "I been to Europe, and all them places, by
G--," I would start that oyster on a journey that would astonish it more
than all the wonders of "Parree" and "all them d--d places" combined.

I have forgotten what I was going to say about Mr. Scoofy and his
Mexican oyster farm, but it don't matter. The main thing is that he
will hereafter endeavor to keep this market supplied with his delicious
marine fruit; and another great point is that his Mexican oysters are
as far superior to the poor little insipid things we are accustomed
to here, as is the information furnished by Alexander Von Humboldt
concerning foreign lands to that which one may glean from George
Marshall in the course of a brief brandy-punch tournament.

SPIRIT OF THE LOCAL PRESS

San Francisco is a city of startling events. Happy is the man whose
destiny it is to gather them up and record them in a daily newspaper!
That sense of conferring benefit, profit and innocent pleasure upon
one's fellow-creatures which is so cheering, so calmly blissful to the
plodding pilgrim here below, is his, every day in the year. When he gets
up in the morning he can do as old Franklin did, and say, "This day,
and all days, shall be unselfishly devoted to the good of my
fellow-creatures--to the amelioration of their condition--to the
conferring of happiness upon them--to the storing of their minds with
wisdom which shall fit them for their struggle with the hard world,
here, and for the enjoyment of a glad eternity hereafter. And thus
striving, so shall I be blessed!" And when he goes home at night, he can
exult and say: "Through the labors of these hands and this brain, which
God hath given me, blessed and wise are my fellow-creatures this day!

"I have told them of the wonder of the swindling of the friend of Bain,
the unknown Bain from Petaluma Creek, by the obscure Catharine McCarthy,
out of $300--and told it with entertaining verbosity in half a column.

"I have told them that Christmas is coming, and people go strangely
about, buying things--I have said it in forty lines.

"I related how a vile burglar entered a house to rob, and actually
went away again when he found he was discovered. I told it briefly, in
thirty-five lines.

"In forty lines I told how a man swindled a Chinaman out of a couple of
shirts, and for fear the matter might seem trivial, I made a pretense
of only having mentioned it in order to base upon it a criticism upon a
grave defect in our laws.

"I fulminated again, in a covert way, the singular conceit that
Christmas is at hand, and said people were going about in the most
unaccountable way buying stuff to eat, in the markets--52 lines.

"I glorified a fearful conflagration that came so near burning
something, that I shudder even now to think of it. Three thousand
dollars worth of goods destroyed by water--a man then went up and
put out the fire with a bucket of water. I puffed our fine fire
organization--64 lines.

"I printed some other extraordinary occurrences--runaway horse--28
lines; dog fight--30 lines; Chinaman captured by officer Rose for
stealing chickens--90 lines; unknown Chinaman dead on Sacramento
steamer--5 lines; several 'Fourteener' items, concerning people
frightened and boots stolen--52 lines; case of soldier stealing a
washboard worth fifty cents--three-quarters of a column. Much other
wisdom I disseminated, and for these things let my reward come
hereafter."

And his reward will come hereafter--and I am sorry enough to think it.
But such startling things do happen every day in this strange city!--and
how dangerously exciting must be the employment of writing them up for
the daily papers!

EXTRAORDINARY DELICACY

I spoke to you a day or two ago about the terrific panorama with
which the proprietors of the new swimming baths out at South Park have
glorified the ample front of their building by way of a sign. It
never entered my head that any one's modesty would be shocked by that
distressing caricature, but we live to learn, and I was mistaken. Some
of the citizens of that vicinage complain that the picture is obscene,
and they have taken steps to present it before the proper authorities as
a nuisance! Oh, but this is air-drawn delicacy!

The dreadful picture is about thirty feet long and eight or ten
feet wide. It is painted in defiance of all rules of art and the
possibilities of nature. It represents a square tank as large as a
plaza, and surrounded by long bulkheads of highly ornamental bath-room
doors, after the fashion of steamboat cabin architecture. At one end a
fountain squirts a vast spray of water into the air. Here and there men
are seen jumping from spring-boards into the great tank; other men are
swimming about in all sorts of attitudes except natural and passable
ones. Two bald-headed patriarchs are skylarking around a small boat
like a pair of schoolboys. Expensively dressed men are seen coming in
to bathe, and other expensively dressed gentlemen are seen leaving the
place after having performed their ablutions. The swimmers are the ones
the fastidious South Parkers object to. Yet they make exactly the same
appearance in that picture that daring equestrians and acrobats do in
the circus bills. They are dressed about the loins in an exceedingly
short pair of pantaloons, and the remainder of their bodies is naked
or clad in tights--it is impossible to determine which. Their legs look
like prize carrots, though this is not a good flesh color; wherefore I
think the bath man will be able to demonstrate, on his trial, that his
model artists are necessarily dressed in tights, since nature never
painted human legs of such a preposterous color. This will establish the
fact that his sign is not indelicate, and he will be allowed to go free
and be no further molested. You only need to look once at that barbarous
piece of mud-daubing to appreciate the absurdity of any one's modesty
being offended by it. I have no doubt all those who are complaining
of this sign went to see the Menken play Mazeppa in her much scantier
attire, and blushed not.

Territorial Enterprise, December 10-31, 1865

[portion of San Francisco Letter]

A GRACEFUL COMPLIMENT

One would hardly expect to receive a neat, voluntary compliment from so
grave an institution as the United States Revenue Office, but such has
been my good fortune. I have not been so agreeably surprised in many a
day. The Revenue officers, in a communication addressed to me, fondle
the flattering fiction that I am a man of means, and have got "goods,
chattels and effects"--and even "real estate!" Gentlemen, you couldn't
have paid such a compliment as that to any man who would appreciate it
higher, or be more grateful for it than myself. We will drink together,
if you object not.

I am taxed on my income! This is perfectly gorgeous! I never felt so
important in my life before. To be treated in this splendid way, just
like another William B. Astor! Gentlemen, we must drink.

Yes, I am taxed on my income. And the printed paper which bears
this compliment--all slathered over with fierce-looking written
figures--looks as grand as a steamboat's manifest. It reads thus:

"COLLECTOR'S OFFICE,

U. S. INTERNAL REVENUE, FIRST DIS'T. CAL.

Name--M. Twain

Residence--At Large

List and amount of tax--$31.25

Penalty--3.12

Warrant--2.45

Total amount--$36.82

Date--November 20, 1865.

C. ST GG,

Deputy Collector.

Please present this at the Collector's office."

Now I consider that really handsome. I have got it framed beautifully,
and I take more pride in it than any of my other furniture. I trust
it will become an heirloom and serve to show many generations of my
posterity that I was a man of consequence in the land--that I was also
the recipient of compliments of the most extraordinary nature from high
officers of the national government.

On the other side of this complimentary document I find some happy blank
verse headed "Warrant," and signed by the poet "Frank Soule, Collector
of Internal Revenue." Some of the flights of fancy in this Ode are
really sublime, and show with what facility the poetic fire can render
beautiful the most unpromising subject. For instance: "You are hereby
commanded to distrain upon so much of the goods, chattels and effects of
the within named person, if any such can be found, etc." However, that
is not so much a flight of fancy as a flight of humor. It is a fine
flight, though, anyway. But this one is equal to anything in Shakspeare:
"But in case sufficient goods, chattels and effects cannot be found,
then you are hereby commanded to seize so much of the real estate of
said person as may be necessary to satisfy the tax." There's poetry for
you! They are going to commence on my real estate. This is very rough.
But then the officer is expressly instructed to find it first. That is
the saving clause for me. I will get them to take it all out in real
estate. And then I will give them all the time they want to find it in.

But I can tell them of a way whereby they can ultimately enrich the
Government of the United States by a judicious manipulation of this
little bill against me--a way in which even the enormous national debt
may be eventually paid off! Think of it! Imperishable fame will be the
reward of the man who finds a way to pay off the national debt without
impoverishing the land; I offer to furnish that method and crown these
gentlemen with that fadeless glory. It is so simple and plain that a
child may understand it. It is thus: I perceive that by neglecting to
pay my income tax within ten days after it was due, I have brought upon
myself a "penalty" of three dollars and twelve cents extra tax for that
ten days. Don't you see?--let her run! Every ten days, $3.12; every
month of 31 days, $10; every year, $120; every century, $12,000; at the
end of a hundred thousand years, $1,200,000,000 will be the interest
that has accumulated...

Territorial Enterprise, December 1865

THE BLACK HOLE OF SAN FRANCISCO

If I were Police Judge here, I would hold my court in the city prison
and sentence my convicts to imprisonment in the present Police Court
room. That would be capital punishment--it would be the Spartan doom
of death for all crimes, whether important or insignificant. The Police
Court room, with its deadly miasma, killed Judge Shepheard and Dick
Robinson, the old reporter, and will kill Judge Rix, and Fitz Smythe
also. The papers are just now abusing the police room--a thing which
they do in concert every month. This time, however, they are more than
usually exercised, because somebody has gone and built a house right
before the only window the room had, and so it is midnight there during
every hour of the twenty-four, and gas has to be burned while all other
people are burning daylight.

That Police Court room is not a nice place. It is the infernalest
smelling den on earth, perhaps. A deserted slaughter-house, festering
in the sun, is bearable, because it only has one smell, albeit it is
a lively one; a soap-factory has its disagreeable features, but the
soap-factory has but one smell, also; to stand to leeward of a sweating
negro is rough, but even a sweating negro has but one smell; the salute
of the playful polecat has its little drawbacks, but even the playful
polecat has but one smell, and you can bury yourself to the chin in damp
sand and get rid of the odor eventually. Once enter the Police Court
though--once get yourself saturated with the fearful combination of
miraculous stenches that infect its atmosphere, and neither sand nor
salvation can ever purify you any more! You will smell like a polecat,
like a slaughter-house, like a soap-factory, like a sweating negro, like
a graveyard after an earthquake--for all time to come--and you will have
a breath like a buzzard. You enter the door of the Police Court, and
your nostrils are saluted with an awful stench; you think it emanates
from Mr. Hess, the officer in charge of the door; you say to yourself,
"Some animal has crawled down this poor man's throat and died"; you
step further in, and you smell the same smell, with another, still more
villainous, added to it; you remark to yourself, "This is wrong--very
wrong; these spectators ought to have been buried days ago." You go a
step further and you smell the same two smells, and another more ghastly
than both put together; you think it comes from the spectators on the
right. You go further and a fourth, still more powerful, is added to
your three horrible smells; and you say to yourself, "These lawyers are
too far gone--chloride of lime would be of no benefit here." One more
step, and you smell the Judge; you reel, and gasp; you stagger to the
right and smell the Prosecuting Attorney--worse and worse; you stagger
fainting to the left, and your doom is sealed; you enter the fatal blue
mist where ten reporters sit and stink from morning until night--and
down you go! You are carried out on a shutter, and you cannot stay in
the same room with yourself five minutes at a time for weeks.

You cannot imagine what a horrible hole that Police Court is. The
cholera itself couldn't stand it there. The room is about 24 x 40 feet
in size, I suppose, and is blocked in on all sides by massive brick
walls; it has three or four doors, but they are never opened--and if
they were they only open into airless courts and closets anyhow; it has
but one window, and now that is blocked up, as I was telling you; there
is not a solitary air-hole as big as your nostril about the whole place.
Very well; down two sides of the room, drunken filthy loafers, thieves,
prostitutes, China chicken-stealers, witnesses, and slimy guttersnipes
who come to see, and belch and issue deadly smells, are banked and
packed, four ranks deep--a solid mass of rotting, steaming corruption.
In the centre of the room are Dan Murphy, Zabriskie, the Citizen Sam
Platt, Prosecuting Attorney Louderback, and other lawyers, either of
whom would do for a censer to swing before the high altar of hell. Then,
near the Judge are a crowd of reporters--a kind of cattle that did never
smell good in any land. The house is full--so full that you have
to actually squirm and shoulder your way from one part of it to
another--and not a single crack or crevice in the walls to let in one
poor breath of God's pure air! The dead, exhausted, poisoned atmosphere
looks absolutely blue and filmy, sometimes--did when they had a little
daylight. Now they have only gas-light and the added heat it brings.
Another Judge will die shortly if this thing goes on.

Territorial Enterprise, December 1865

[written December 29, 1865]

INSPIRATION OF LOUDERBACK

Louderback, Prosecuting Attorney in the Police Court, has discovered
something at last. How it thrills me to think of it! For two long years
I have waited patiently for that man to discover something, and he never
could do it. He has always gone through with his same old formula, in
every case before the Court, and has never shown any inclination
to branch out into anything fresh. That formula was as follows: Mr.
Louderback addresses the witness:

"Did this all happen in the city'n county of San Francisco?"

Witness--"Yes."

L.--"You are sure of that, now?"

W--"Yes, sure."

L.--(With severity)--"Remember, you are on your oath--we can't have any
prevarication here. You are certain it all happened in the city'n county
of San Francisco?"

W--"Yes; certain. I know it did."

L.--(To witness)--"That'll do--set down" (To Judge)--"Your honor,
I don't think there is any use in hearing the evidence on the other
side--the defendant appears to be guilty."

As long as he flows along comfortably in that regular old groove of his,
Louderback is bound to succeed--is bound to succeed as well as he ever
has done. And why he should suddenly bulge out and go to "discovering"
things in this startling and unexpected manner, is a mystery to me, and
must be a source of distress and uneasiness to his nurse. But here is
what the Call says:

A practice has obtained in the Police Court, which will no doubt
convince the public that San Francisco practitioners are as shrewd as
'Philadelphia lawyers.' It is a habit certain attorneys have of engaging
to defend a person charged with some petty offense, and getting some
other person to represent them, while they state to the Court that
they are retained on behalf of the prosecution, and then have the Court
dismiss the case without investigation, by stating there is no prospect
of obtaining a conviction, and that the time of the Court would be
needlessly occupied. The Prosecuting Attorney has discovered the dodge,
and will hereafter resist all such motions.

"The Prosecuting Attorney has discovered the dodge"--the Prosecuting
Attorney discovered it! Good God!

Territorial Enterprise, December 31, 1865

[portion of San Francisco Letter written December 28, 1865]

CONVICTS

Some one (I do not know who,) left me a card photograph, yesterday,
which I do not know just what to do with. It has the names of Dan De
Quille, W. M. Gillespie, Alf. Doten, Robert Lowery and Charles A. Parker
on it, and appears to be a pictured group of notorious convicts, or
something of that kind. I only judge by the countenances, for I am not
acquainted with these people, and do not usually associate with such
characters. This is the worst lot of human faces I have ever seen. That
of the murderer Doten, (murderer, isn't he?) is sufficient to chill the
strongest heart. The cool self-possession of the burglar Parker marks
the man capable of performing deeds of daring confiscation at dead of
night, unmoved by surrounding perils. The face of the Thug, De Quille,
with its expression of pitiless malignity, is a study. Those of the
light fingered gentry, Lowery and Gillespie, show that ineffable repose
and self-complacency so deftly assumed by such characters after having
nipped an overcoat or a pair of brass candlesticks and are aware that
officers have suspected and are watching them. I am very glad to have
this picture to keep in my room, as a hermit keeps a skull, to remind me
what I may some day become myself. I have permitted the Chief of Police
to take a copy of it, for obvious reasons.

Territorial Enterprise, January 1866

NEW YEAR'S DAY

There was a good deal of visiting done here on New Year's Day. The air
was balmy and spring-like, and the day was in every way suited to that
sort of business. I say business, because it is more like business
than pleasure when you call at a house where all are strangers, and the
majority of one's New Year's Calls are necessarily of that description.
You soon run through the list of your personal friends--and that part of
the day's performances affords you genuine satisfaction--and then Smith
comes along and puts you through your paces before a hundred people who
treat you kindly, but whom you dare not joke with. You can be as easy
and comfortable as a mud-turtle astraddle of a sawyer, but you must
observe some show of decorum--you must behave yourself. It is irksome to
me to behave myself. Therefore, I had rather call on people who know
me and will kindly leave me entirely unrestrained, and simply employ
themselves in looking out for the spoons.

When I started out visiting, at noon, the atmosphere was laden with
a sweet perfume--a grateful incense that told of flowers, and green
fields, and breezy forests far away. But this was only soda-water
sentiment, for I soon discovered that these were the odors of the barber
shop, and came from the heads of small squads of carefully-dressed young
men who were out paying their annual calls.

I took wine at one house and some fruit at another, and after that I
began to yearn for some breakfast. It took me two hours to get it.
A lady had just given me the freedom of her table when a crowd of
gentlemen arrived and my sense of propriety compelled me to destroy
nothing more than a cup of excellent coffee. At the next house I got
no further than coffee again, being similarly interrupted; at the next
point of attack there were too many strange young ladies present, and
at the next and the next, something always happened to interfere with
my arrangements. I do not know, but perhaps it would be better to defer
one's New Year's calls until after breakfast. I did finally corral
that meal, and in the house of a stranger--a stranger, too, who was so
pleasant that I was almost tempted to create a famine in her house.

It used to be customary for people to drink too much in the course of
their annual visits, but few offended in this way on this occasion. I
saw one well-dressed gentleman sitting on the curb-stone, propping his
face between his knees, and clasping his shins with his hands; but he
was the only caller I saw so much discouraged during the whole day.
He said he had started out most too early, and I suppose he was right.
Wisdom teaches us that none but birds should go out early, and that not
even birds should do it unless they are out of worms. Some of the ladies
dressed "in character" on New Year's. I found Faith, Hope and Charity in
one house, dealing out claret punch and kisses to the annual pilgrims.
They had two kinds of kisses--those which you bite and "chaw" and
swallow, and those which you simply taste, and then lick your chops and
feel streaky. The only defect there was in the arrangement was that
you were not permitted to take your choice. Two other ladies personated
Mary, Queen of Scots, and Queen Elizabeth; I also found a Cleopatra and
a Hebe and a Semiramis and a Maria Antoinette; also a Beauty and the
Beast. A young lady, formerly of Carson, was the Beauty, and took the
character well; and I suppose Beecher was the Beast, but he was not
calculated for the part. I think those are very neat compliments for
both parties.

When it came to visiting among strangers, at last, I soon grew tired
and quit. You enter with your friend and are introduced formally to some
formal looking ladies. You bow painfully and wish the party a happy New
Year. You then learn that the party desire that a like good fortune may
fall to your lot. You are invited to sit down, and you do so. About this
time the door-bell rings, and Jones, Brown and Murphy bluster in and
bring the familiar fragrance of the barber shop with them. They are
acquainted. They inquire cordially after the absent members of the
family and the distant relatives of the same, and relate laughable
adventures of the morning that haven't got anything funny about them.
Then they cast up accounts and determine how many calls they have
made and how many they have got to inflict yet. The ladies respond by
exhibiting a balance sheet of their own New Year's Day transactions.
Yourself and your friend are then conducted with funeral solemnity into
the back parlor, where you sip some wine with imposing ceremony. If your
human instincts get the upper hand of you and you explode a joke,
an awful sensation creeps over you such as a man experiences when he
catches himself whistling at a funeral. It is time for you to go, then.

New Year's was pretty generally enjoyed here, up stairs and down. At one
place where I called, a servant girl was needed, for something, and the
bell was rung for her several times without effect. Madame went below
to see what the matter was, and found Bridget keeping "open house" and
entertaining thirteen muscular callers in one batch. Up stairs there had
been only eleven calls received, all told. One chambermaid notified her
mistress that extra help must be procured for New Year's Day, as she and
the cook had made arrangements to keep open house in the kitchen,
and they desired that their visitors should not be discommoded by
interruptions emanating from above stairs. I am told that nearly all
the Biddies in town kept open house. Some of them set finer tables than
their mistresses. The reason was because the latter did not consider
anything more than tea and coffee and cakes necessary for their tables
(being church members) but the former seized upon wines, brandies and
all the hidden luxuries the closets afforded. Some people affect to
think servant girls won't take liberties with people's things, but I
suppose it is a mistake.

[Reprinted in the Golden Era, JAN. 14, 1866.]

Territorial Enterprise, January 1866

[Dated January 8, 1866]

"WHITE MAN MIGHTY ONSARTAIN"

Nigger never spoke truer word. White man is mighty "onsartain." An
instance of it is to be found in the ingenious manipulation of a certain
recent speculation here by a white man whom I have in my mind's eye at
present.

A small swimming bath was constructed out yonder at North Beach, as a
sort of novel experiment, and everybody was surprised to see what a rush
was made to it and what a thriving speculation it at once became. Many a
smart man wished the idea had occurred to him, and then thought no more
about it. Others pondered over it and thought the experiment might
bear repetition, but then there was an uncomfortable possibility of
the reverse proving the case. Mr. Aleck Badlam, late a member of the
California Legislature, but latterly acting in the double capacity of
nephew and business agent to Mr. Samuel Brannan, belonged to the latter
class, but was rather more hopeful, more energetic and more fertile
in expedients than the rest. He went to work and got up a joint stock
association, composed of men with good bank accounts, and announced in
the public prints that this association would immediately commence the
construction of a colossal swimming bath, with all manner of admirable
conveniences and accommodations, away out in Third Street opposite South
Park. Many people went on swimming in the pioneer bath, and many others
in the Bay, and both parties said the new speculation would prove a
disastrous failure, and that they were sorry for the projectors of it,
etc., and then bothered no more about it. In a day or two the local
reporters fell heirs to a refreshing sensation and were made happy--a
genuine shark was harpooned in the Bay of San Francisco! It was brought
to town and was visited by crowds of timid citizens while it lay in
state in the market place. Mr. Badlam went at once to the various
newspaper offices and told the reporters, and was greeted with the
ancient formula: "That's bully--there's pen and ink, write it up for a
fellow, can't you?"--(you know if you walk a mile to accommodate one
of these thieves with an item, he will always impose upon you, with
infernal effrontery, the labor of writing it up for him, if you will
stand it). Mr. Badlam wrote up the shark item. A few days elapsed, the
sensation was cooling down and beginning to be forgotten, when another
shark was harpooned in the Bay and exposed to view in the market. People
shuddered again. Mr. Badlam went and told the reporters; the reporters
got him to write it up. In the course of three days another shark was
harpooned in the Bay and placed on exhibition. People began to show
signs of uneasiness. Mr. Badlam told the reporters and wrote it up.
The new swimming bath was being rushed forward to completion with all
possible dispatch. From this time on, for the next six weeks a
shark cashed in his checks every twenty-four hours in the Bay of
San Francisco. Mr. Badlam discontinued the ceremony of telling the
reporters, but he always came at 1 o'clock in the afternoon with several
slips of manuscript, laid one down on the reporter's table, said "Shark
item," and departed toward the next newspaper office on his regular
beat. People began to say "Why, blame these sharks, the Bay's full of
them--it ain't hardly as healthy to swim there as it used to was"--and
they stopped swimming there. Reporters got to depending on the customary
shark item pretty much as a matter of course, and the printers got to
making these items "fat" by keeping them "standing" and making such
unimportant alterations in them as the variations in the localities of
the shark-killing demanded.

The fact of the business was, that Mr. Badlam, that "onsartain white
man," had imported the old original shark from the coast of Mexico, and
paid some Italian fishermen to take him out in the Bay and harpoon him,
and then fetch him ashore and exhibit him in the market place. It was
all in the way of business; he wanted to discourage bathing in the Bay
and pave the way for the success of his great bath-house scheme at a
later day. It is but just to say that he did make bathing in the
Bay exceedingly unpopular. He imported all his sharks, and he kept
a detachment of shark-killers under regular pay. Sharks come pretty
high--sharks are very expensive and he economized occasionally by having
the same old shark harpooned and exhibited over and over again as long
as he would hang together; and when he had to bring on a fresh one he
would vary the interest in the thing by having the fish captured alive
and towed ashore and exposed to public view in all his native ferocity;
and once he got a number of young pigs killed and scraped clean, towed
a shark out in the Bay, fed the pigs to him, towed him back again and
landed him at the head of the Long Bridge when there were about two
thousand people promenading on it, got a multitude collected around the
spot, killed and cut the shark open, took several chunks of the delicate
white young pork out of its stomach, and then hid his face in his
handkerchief and said with manifest emotion: "Oh God, this fellow's been
eating a child--ah, how sad, how sad!" This culminating stroke of genius
crowned Mr. Badlam's patient, long-continued efforts with a splendid
success--no man has bathed in the Bay since Mr. B. wrote that item up
and travelled his regular newspaper route with it. His labors were over,
the bath-house was nearly finished, and he had nothing but easy sailing
before him from that time forward. In a few days his monstrous tank
was completed and the water turned on, and the very first day he opened
business with a hundred and fifty swimmers an hour on an average, and a
hundred and fifty more standing around in Menken costume waiting for
a chance. There is nothing like trying, you know; and all experience
teaches us that the best way to ascertain a thing is to find it. But
when it comes to believing all the shark items a sagacious strategist
favors you with in the papers, it is well to remember that the wise
nigger saith "white man mighty onsartain."

THE MINT DEFALCATION

The Alta of this morning publishes a correct statement of the
embezzlement by young Macy of $39,000 from the mint, and you can copy
it; but there are some little matters in the background which always
come within a correspondent's province in cases of this kind, but which
are usually omitted from the accounts in the local press, and these I
will talk about. Mr. Cheeseman is U.S. Sub Treasurer, and ex officio
treasurer of the mint. Macy, his brother in-law, was his paying
clerk--his cashier. He is a green, gawky young fellow about twenty-four
or--five years old; and by a glance at his gait and the shape of his
head and his general appearance, an experienced business man would judge
his capacity to be about equal to the earning of, say fifty dollars a
month. But he was the Sub-Treasurer's brother-in-law--he was a barnacle,
and had to be provided with a place in the Circumlocution Office,
whether he knew enough to come in out of the rain or not. So he was made
paying clerk, at a salary of $2,500 a year, and placed in a position
where twenty millions in gold coin and oceans of greenbacks passed
through his hands in the course of a year. Mr. Swain, the Superintendent
of the mint, did not fancy this appointment, but it was out of his
jurisdiction. Mr. Cheeseman has the appointing of his own clerks,
although all their reports must be made finally to the Superintendent,
and all their acts come under his supervision.

Naturally there was nothing bad about young Macy, but it is
believed--well, I might go so far as to say it was known--that some
mining speculators got around him and persuaded him to put mint funds
in stocks, promising to "stand behind him." He did so, and they stood
behind him until the crash in stocks warned them to stand some where
else and then they dropped him--having made what they could out of him,
no doubt. He had been speculating on the mint's money six months before
he was found out--the work men occasionally going without their wages
in the meantime because of the lack of supplies. Mr. Swain's suspicions
were first aroused by seeing him so frequently in company with
speculators and hearing so often on the street of his transactions in
heavy stocks. But Macy's books came out right every month and nothing
could be shown against him. One of his thefts was a bold one. The
coiner sent him three "melts" at different times--three batches of gold
coin--two of a hundred thousand dollars each and one of a hundred
and twenty thousand. Each had the usual "tag," describing the amount
contained. Macy removed and tore up the $120,000 "tag," and sent to
the coiner a message that he had lost the tag from one of the $100,000
batches--a thing which sometimes occurs. The coiner sent him the
necessary substitute, and he altered the date and placed the new tag on
the $120,000 "melt"; but he carried off the extra $20,000 first.

At the last quarterly examination the money and the books were all
right, but Macy displayed such distress and trepidation during the
examination that he excited the suspicions of more than one of the mint
officials; he had been shinning around the streets all day long, too,
and it was thought that he had been getting a temporary loan to make his
accounts straight with. Such a rigid surveillance was commenced then,
and so many informal examinations instituted, that Macy finally packed
and ran off. This was in December. The facts of this embezzlement
have only just come to light and its full extent only just now finally
ferreted out and made known to the public, but the Department at
Washington has been kept posted upon the subject by telegraph from time
to time during the last two or three weeks.

THE OPENING NIGHT

Saw two or three dozen invited guests in the new bath and a free
champagne blow-out served up for them in an ante-room. The water was
seven feet deep, and there was 300,000 gallons of it, heated to a
pleasant temperature, barring the cold streaks here and there. Each man
has a little stateroom to himself and a couple of towels. The price of
the baths is one for 25 cents or 3 for a dollar, and you can swim an
hour. Mr. Nash's swimming pupils pay $10 a month or $20 for 3 months,
and bathe whenever they please. There are spring boards, parallel bars,
rings, flying trapeze, ladders--a complete gymnasium--suspended over the
water. Among the swimmers were--but as these individuals are represented
in the panoramic sign on the front of the bath house, I will merely talk
of their portraits and say nothing of their swimming. It is my duty to
explain that sign, because many people imagine it is a fancy sketch, and
are distressed to think any artist would be so depraved as to paint such
impossible figures and faces and elevate the devilish libel in full view
without a word of apology.

THE PORTRAITS

In the bath-house sign are very correct likenesses of the chief
stockholders, and are as follows: The fleshy, smiling, bald-headed man
hanging to the middle of the little life boat, is Mr. O. P. Sutton, in
the banking interest. The bald headed man hanging on near the stern of
the boat, is Mr. Aleck Badlam, the shark-fancier. The man on the
left, who is just starting on the spring-board, is Col. Monstery, the
fencing-master. The inverted young man on the bow of the boat who is
performing some kind of extraordinary gymnastic feat and appears to have
got it a little mixed, is Captain McComb. The central figure, swinging
on the trapeze, is Mr. Edward Smith, of the banking interest. The
half-submerged figure diving head-foremost at the right of the central
fountain, is Mr. A. J. Snyder, the carpenter and builder, and is a very
correct portrait as far as it goes. The handsome fat man facing you
from the stateroom door on the extreme left, is Mr. Louis Cohn, and is
considered a masterpiece of portrait painting. I cannot recognize the
stockholder immediately under the spring board on the left, on account
of his truly extraordinary position. It may be Fitz Smythe. The
gentleman who is splashing himself behind the figure in the swing,
and [has] upon his countenance an expression of lively enjoyment, is
Professor Nash. The figure in the swing is most too many for me. It may
be Menken, or it may be Jeff. Davis, or it may be some other man or
some other woman. It is the very picture that so exasperates the South
Parkers. It has got baggy breasts like a squaw, and the hips have the
ample and rounded swell which belong to the female shape; but the head
is masculine. That figure has worried the ladies of South Park a good
deal, and it worries me just as much. I shall have to let this personage
swing on undisturbed, and leave it to a wiser head to determine the
sex and discover the name that belongs to it. It would be very
uncomfortable, now, if it should turn out that I have been mistaken, and
this remarkable picture should never have been intended for a collection
of portraits, after all--in which case I beg pardon.

Territorial Enterprise, January 1866

PRECIOUS STONES

I have seen some of the beautiful opals they find in Calaveras county
near Mokelumne Hill. Some of them are very handsome. A day or two ago I
was shown an Idaho diamond. It was very pure and brilliant, and was said
to be a genuine diamond, and of the first water. I compared it with
a couple of splendid twenty-five hundred dollar Brazilian diamonds in
Tucker's window which have been dazzling people's eyes and attracting
considerable attention for a few days past, and I could not swear to any
difference. That amounts to something although I am not an expert where
it comes to estimating the value and fineness of diamonds. And now they
are finding superb moss agates and other precious stones on the
river bank right up here at Martinez. This reminds me that there is a
hill-side down the gulch below Aurora, Esmeralda, which is covered with
round, hard, knotty-surfaced little boulders which display the most
beautiful agates when broken open. Might not the Esmeralda people find
it profitable to send a bushel or two of those things to the Eastern
markets? Nobody cared anything about them when I was there three years
ago.

Territorial Enterprise, January 1866

[dated January 11, 1866]

GORGEOUS NEW ROMANCE,

By Fitz Smythe!

The usual quiet of our city was rudely broken in upon this morning
by the appearance in the Alta of one of those terrible solid column
romances about the hair-breadth escapes and prodigies of detective
sagacity of the San Francisco police--written by the felicitous
novelist, Fitz Smythe. It is put up in regular chapters, with
sub-headings, as is Fitz Smythe's custom, when he fulminates a stunning
sensation.

Chapter I. is headed "The Koinickers"--dark and mysterious.

Chapter II. is headed "A New Koinicker in the Field!"--the plot
thickens.

Then comes Chapter IV.--"The Police after him!"--exciting times.

Chapter V.--"The Decoy Duck?--more mystery.

Chapter VI.--"The New Decoy!"--the red hand of crime begins to
show--somewhere.

Chapter VII.--"The Arrest! "--startling situation--thunder and
lightning--blue lights burning.

Chapter VIII.--"The 'Queer' Obtained!"--thrilling revelations.

Chapter IX.--"The Conviction!"--closing in, closing in; the wicked are
about to be punished, and the good rewarded.

Chapter X.--"Conclusion." The scattered threads are drawn together into
one woof; the bad characters are sent to prison, to go from thence to
[hell]; detective Lees marries detective Ellis; Chief Burke elevates his
eyes and hands over the two kneeling figures and says unctuously, "God
bless you my children--God bless you!" All the good characters are
happy, even down to Fitz Smythe and his horse--the former in a chance to
go through a Chinese funeral dinner, and the latter in the opportunity
of eating up a tank of warm asphaltum while the workmen are gone to
dinner.

Oh, but this is a lovely romance! And only think of the subject--the
police! Think of a man going among the police for the hero of a
novel!--unless he wanted a highwayman, or something of that kind.

The romance is gotten up with several objects in view. One is to show
how mean a thing it is to call for investigations of police affairs as
Dr. Rowell is doing; another is to try and bolster up the Grand
Jury's recent "vindication" of the Police Department--the other day--a
"vindication" which the public did not accept with as much confidence
as they would if it had come from Heaven; another is to show that the
stool-pigeon Ned Wellington--"Indian Ned"--who was appointed a special
officer by Burke, is no more of a thief or a rascal than many another
man on the force, and I think that is unjust to Wellington; and another
object--an eternal one with Fitz Smythe--is to glorify his god, the
police. This latter is a disease with him; it breaks out all over the
Alta every day; and it phazes Smythe worse than the small-pox. Even his
horse has become infected by the distemper, and will not bite a police
man.

The unfiligreed facts in Smythe's column romance--or at least the facts
in the case from which the romance was drawn--may be summed up in a
few words, by leaving out the customary adulation of the inspired
detectives: A counterfeiter named Farrell came here from the East; the
police got after him in their bungling style and seared him away; he
went to Virginia, and took $10,000 counterfeit money with him, and
buried it under a house, where your police discovered and captured it;
he returned here and a "decoy duck" was put on his track and appointed
a special policeman--Ned Wellington--or "Smith" as Fitz Smythe with
characteristic delicacy calls him in the romance, though why he should
is not very plain, since Wellington is more notorious than Fitz Smythe
himself. "Smith" was cunning, and trapped Farrell--though of course
Smythe gives all the credit to Lees and Ellis. But now comes more
trouble--"Smith" can show a commission--show that, "reposing especial
confidence in the honesty, integrity," etc., etc., the Police
Commissioners--one of whom was the Police Judge--had appointed him to a
responsible position in the service of the city, and yet his character
is so bad that it will not do to bring him on the stand to testify!
More evidence must be had. Another stool-pigeon is put to work with
"Smith"--one "Robert G. Crawford, the assumed name of a private clerk
of Chief Burke," as Smythe says. [This man's real name was T. B. Fargo,
alias Fogo, alias Howard, alias Crawford, and he was a grand rascal of
considerable note, notwithstanding he was Chief Burke's confidential
clerk.] The two pigeons worked the case through to a successful
conclusion. Farrell's counterfeit money was captured, and Farrell
himself sent to the Penitentiary. As is entirely proper, Fitz Smythe
gives the credit to detective Lees, and glorifies him to the skies.
There is the romance--all there is of it worth knowing or printing--yet
it is turned into a novel of ten distinct chapters, and occupies more
room and flames out with a grander sublimity in the Alta than did the
capture of Richmond and the Southern armies, as published in the same
paper. How marvelous are thy ways, O Lord!

ANOTHER ROMANCE

Why shouldn't I print a romance? Why shouldn't I lionize "Smith"
(Ned Wellington), and "Crawford" (T. B. Fargo)? Wouldn't they do for
specimens of our police? I should think so--especially since the
Grand Jury so triumphantly "vindicated" Wellington a few days ago. The
following romance is from the pen of ex-special policeman L. W. Noyes:

Ned Wellington, alias "Indian Ned," is a stool pigeon for Captain Lees,
of the police, and has a commission from the Police Commissioners, as
a secret detective, notwithstanding they all knew of his having been
arrested frequently for various offenses. Ned, with one T. B. Fargo,
[worked on the] case of Wm. Farrell, alias "Minnie Price," the
counterfeiter, who was arrested last January. During Farrell's trial,
in the County Court, Ned was a witness. While on the stand, on the 11th
March, he testified that he had a commission, as above stated, and that
Captain Lees recommended him; thus the commission was retained to
give him authority to carry a pistol for his own defense. On the 24th
December, 1864, Ned (being at the time convivious) shot at a man on Pike
street; he ran down Commercial street, and officer Blitz arrested him in
Con Mooney's, corner of Commercial and Kearny streets. He had thrown the
pistol away behind some barrels--went with Blitz and found it. He was
taken to the station house, where he was charged with assault with a
deadly weapon--bail forfeited. The Call of December 27th says the bail
was fixed at $500 (I wonder if it was found). Ned has said that he
intended to kill the man, and if he had he could have got out of it.
I think he could. On the 11th of March, the facts of Ned having a
commission having come out in Court, naturally worries some of the
police; the Grand Jury have been overhauling some of them. Next day,
the 12th March, Ned was arrested for being implicated in a robbery--was
liberated that night. Next day, the 13th, he left for New York on the
steamer, no doubt fearing that he might be put upon the stand in Grand
Jury rooms. Ned is very shrewd, and he keeps his commission as a sort of
fender to put in upon occasions. Ned's co-worker in the Farrell case (T.
B. Fargo, alias T. B. Faga, alias I. B. Howard) is another of the same
stripe; in the winter of 1864-5, he was an agent for Wells, Fargo &
Co., in some of the Western States, where he was a defaulter. He has
respectable connections East; his brother settled the matter for him,
and started him for California, where he arrived in June; on the passage
he gambled with one Winters and Baker, and lost [$7]00 in greenbacks;
from June until October he peddled Grant pictures; on the 1st of
October, with thirty-seven others, he donned the Police uniform, where
he remained as the Chief's confidential clerk until December 15, at
which time the Supervisors ordered the dismissal; but Fargo was kept
around until Farrell was taken, and I think under pay. All this time
he was living with one Hattie Shaw, a prostitute, at the corner of
Washington and Pike street; he used to wait upon her to the New York
Restaurant for meals, where she paid the bills. Sometimes he carried her
meals to her room. He borrowed some $300 from Hattie, telling her that
he had a draft on Wells, Fargo & Co. for $2,000 which he would get
cashed and pay her. Ned Wellington here comes in and tells Hattie that
he has seen the draft, and that Fargo is a gentleman, etc. But the draft
never came, and Hattie had to go home with him in order to get coin.

After leaving the police force, he, through Captain Lees' influence,
got a place with Donohue & Booth. Fargo represented to them that he was
actually starving, and borrowed $20. Next day he was out riding with
Hattie and got discharged, being there but a week or so. He then
got into Wells, Fargo & Co.'s, during Mr. McLane's sickness, but was
discharged as soon as he recovered.

During all this time the police were well aware of what kind of a man
Fargo was, and there is no reason why the Chief and Commissioners should
not know.

Mr. William McCaffry, who is well known in this city, took pains to tell
them of his doings.

On the 13th of June Fargo went East on the opposition steamer; he bought
tickets in the name of T.B. Howard, and Mrs. Howard, for himself and
Hattie. On the steamer he went by the name of Fargo, and claimed to be
a brother of Fargo, of Wells, Fargo & Co. So you see thieves have the
inside track with Burke & Co.

I think that last remark of my historian, Noyes, is rather severe, but
let it pass.

But I want Fitz Smythe to re-publish another flaming "chapter in the
history of the San Francisco Police," and add the above chapter to it,
and glorify the Chief's confidential clerk Mr. Fargo (not Crawford, Fitz
Smythe,) and Indian Ned Wellington (not "Smith," Fitz Smythe,) and also
Buckingham, whom you scarcely deigned to notice while he was on trial
for gobbling up the widow's jewelry. I don't want all the glory
fastened on the Captains and Chiefs and regulars, and the deeds of the
specials--the scallawags who really do all the work--left unsung. Tune
up another column of [praise of] them, and blast away, idolatrous Fitz
Smythe!

Territorial Enterprise, January 16-18, 1866

[portion of San Francisco letter]

FITZ SMYTHE'S HORSE

Yesterday, as I was coming along through a back alley, I glanced over a
fence, and there was Fitz Smythe's horse. I can easily understand, now,
why that horse always looks so dejected and indifferent to the things
of this world. They feed him on old newspapers. I had often seen Smythe
carrying "dead loads" of old exchanges up town, but I never suspected
that they were to be put to such a use as this. A boy came up while I
stood there, and said, "That hoss belongs to Mr. Fitz Smythe, and the
old man--that's my father, you know--the old man's going to kill him."

"Who, Fitz Smythe?"

"No, the hoss--because he et up a litter of pups that the old man
wouldn't a taken forty dol--"

"Who, Fitz Smythe?"

"No, the hoss--and he eats fences and everything--took our gate off and
carried it home and et up every dam splinter of it; you wait till he
gets done with them old Altas and Bulletins he's a chawin' on now, and
you'll see him branch out and tackle a-n-y-thing he can shet his mouth
on. Why, he nipped a little boy, Sunday, which was going home from
Sunday school; well, the boy got loose, you know, but that old hoss got
his bible and some tracts, and them's as good a thing as he wants, being
so used to papers, you see. You put anything to eat anywheres, and that
old hoss'll shin out and get it--and he'll eat anything he can bite,
and he don't care a dam. He'd climb a tree, he would, if you was to put
anything up there for him--cats, for instance--he likes cats--he's et up
every cat there was here in four blocks--he'll take more chances--why,
he'll bust in anywheres for one of them fellers; I see him snake a
old tom cat out of that there flower-pot over yonder, where she was
a sunning of herself, and take her down, and she a hanging on and a
grabbling for a holt on some thing, and you could hear her yowl and kick
up and tear around after she was inside of him. You see Mr. Fitz Smythe
don't give him nothing to eat but them old newspapers and sometimes a
basket of shavings, and so you know, he's got to prospect or starve, and
a hoss ain't going to starve, it ain't likely, on account of not wanting
to be rough on cats and sich things. Not that hoss, anyway, you bet you.
Because he don't care a dam. You turn him loose once on this town,
and don't you know he'd eat up m-o-r-e goods-boxes, and fences, and
clothing-store things, and animals, and all them kind of valuables? Oh,
you bet he would. Because that's his style, you know, and he don't care
a dam. But you ought to see Mr. Fitz Smythe ride him around, prospecting
for them items--you ought to see him with his soldier coat on, and his
mustashers sticking out strong like a catfish's horns, and them long
laigs of his'n standing out so, like them two prongs they prop up a
step-ladder with, and a jolting down street at four mile a week--oh,
what a guy!--sets up stiff like a close pin, you know, and thinks
he looks like old General Macdowl. But the old man's a going to
hornisswoggle that hoss on account of his goblin up them pups. Oh, you
bet your life the old man's down on him. Yes, sir, coming!" and the
entertaining boy departed to see what the "old man" was calling him for.
But I am glad that I met the boy, and I am glad I saw the horse taking
his literary breakfast, because I know now why the animal looks so
discouraged when I see Fitz Smythe rambling down Montgomery street on
him--he has altogether too rough a time getting a living to be cheerful
and frivolous or anyways frisky.

WHAT HAVE THE POLICE BEEN DOING?

Ain't they virtuous? Don't they take good care of the city? Is not their
constant vigilance and efficiency shown in the fact that roughs and
rowdies here are awed into good conduct?--isn't it shown in the fact
that ladies even on the back streets are safe from insult in
the daytime, when they are under the protection of a regiment of
soldiers?--isn't it shown in the fact that although many offenders
of importance go unpunished, they infallibly snaffle every Chinese
chicken-thief that attempts to drive his trade, and are duly glorified
by name in the papers for it?--isn't it shown in the fact that they are
always on the look-out and keep out of the way and never get run over
by wagons and things? And ain't they spry?--ain't they energetic?--ain't
they frisky?--Don't they parade up and down the sidewalk at the rate
of a block an hour and make everybody nervous and dizzy with their
frightful velocity? Don't they keep their clothes nice?--and ain't their
hands soft? And don't they work?--don't they work like horses?--don't
they, now? Don't they smile sweetly on the women?--and when they are
fatigued with their exertions, don't they back up against a
lamp-post and go on smiling till they break plum down? But ain't they
nice?--that's it, you know!--ain't they nice? They don't sweat--you
never see one of those fellows sweat. Why, if you were to see a
policeman sweating you would say, "oh, here, this poor man is going to
die--because this sort of thing is unnatural, you know." Oh, no--you
never see one of those fellows sweat. And ain't they easy and
comfortable and happy--always leaning up against a lamp-post in the sun,
and scratching one shin with the other foot and enjoying themselves?
Serene?--I reckon not.

I don't know anything the matter with the Department, but maybe Dr.
Rowell does. Now when Ziele broke that poor wretch's skull the other
night for stealing six bits' worth of flour sacks, and had him taken to
the Station House by a policeman, and jammed into one of the cells in
the most humorous way, do you think there way anything wrong there? I
don't. Why should they arrest Ziele and say, "Oh, come, now, you say you
found this stranger stealing on your premises, and we know you knocked
him on the head with your club--but then you better go in a cell,
too, till we see whether there's going to be any other account of
the thing--any account that mightn't jibe with yours altogether, you
know--you go in for confessed assault and battery, you know." Why should
they do that? Well, nobody ever said they did.

And why shouldn't they shove that half senseless wounded man into a cell
without getting a doctor to examine and see how badly he was hurt, and
consider that next day would be time enough, if he chanced to live that
long? And why shouldn't the jailor let him alone when he found him in
a dead stupor two hours after--let him alone because he couldn't wake
him--couldn't wake a man who was sleeping and with that calm serenity
which is peculiar to men whose heads have been caved in with a
club--couldn't wake such a subject, but never suspected that there was
anything unusual in the circumstance? Why shouldn't the jailor do so?
Why certainly--why shouldn't he?--the man was an infernal stranger. He
had no vote. Besides, had not a gentleman just said he stole some flour
sacks? Ah, and if he stole flour sacks, did he not deliberately put
himself outside the pale of humanity and Christian sympathy by that
hellish act? I think so. The department think so. Therefore, when
the stranger died at 7 in the morning, after four hours of refreshing
slumber in that cell, with his skull actually split in twain from front
to rear, like an apple, as was ascertained by post mortem examination,
what the very devil do you want to go and find fault with the prison
officers for? You are always putting in your shovel. Can't you find
somebody to pick on besides the police. It takes all my time to defend
them from people's attacks.

I know the police department is a kind, humane and generous institution.
Why, it was no longer ago than yesterday that I was reminded of
that time Captain Lees broke his leg. Didn't the free-handed, noble
Department shine forth with a dazzling radiance then? Didn't the Chief
detail officers Shields, Ward and two others to watch over him and nurse
him and look after all his wants with motherly solicitude--four of
them, you know--four of the very biggest and ablest-bodied men on
the force--when less generous people would have thought two nurses
sufficient--had these four acrobats in active hospital service that way
in the most liberal manner, at a cost to the city of San Francisco of
only the trifling sum of five hundred dollars a month--the same being
the salaries of four officers of the regular police force at $125 a
month each. But don't you know there are people mean enough to say that
Captain Lees ought to have paid his own nurse bills, and that if he had
had to do it maybe he would have managed to worry along on less than
five hundred dollars worth of nursing a month? And don't you know that
they say also that interest parties are always badgering the Supervisors
with petitions for an increase of the police force, and showing such
increase to be a terrible necessity, and yet they have always got to be
hunting up and creating new civil offices and berths, and making details
for nurse service in order to find something for them to do after they
get them appointed? And don't you know that they say that they wish to
god the city would hire a detachment of nurses and keep them where they
will be handy in case of accident, so that property will not be left
unprotected while policemen are absent on duty in sick rooms. You can't
think how it aggravates me to hear such harsh remarks about our virtuous
police force. Ah, well, the police will have their reward hereafter--no
doubt.

Territorial Enterprise, January 1866

THE KEARNY STREET GHOST STORY

Disembodied spirits have been on the rampage now for more than a month
past in the house of one Albert Krum, in Kearny street--so much so that
the family find it impossible to keep a servant forty-eight hours. The
moment a new and unsuspecting servant-maid gets fairly to bed and her
light blown out, one of those dead and damned scalliwags takes her by
the hair and just "hazes" her; grabs her by the waterfall and snakes
her out of bed and bounces her on the floor two or three time; other
disorderly corpses shy old boots at her head, and bootjacks, and
brittle chamber furniture--washbowls, pitchers, hair-oil, teeth brushes,
hoop-skirts--anything that comes handy those phantoms seize and hurl at
Bridget, and pay no more attention to her howling than if it were music.
The spirits tramp, tramp, tramp, about the house at dead of night, and
when a light is struck the footsteps cease and the promenader is
not visible, and just as soon as the light is out that dead man goes
waltzing around again. They are a bloody lot. The young lady of the
house was lying in bed one night with the gas turned down low, when a
figure approached her through the gloom, whose ghastly aspect and solemn
carriage chilled her to the heart. What do you suppose she did?--jumped
up and seized the intruder?--threw a slipper at him?--"laid" him with
a misquotation from Scripture? No--none of these. But with admirable
presence of mind she covered up her head and yelled. That is what she
did. Few young women would have thought of doing that. The ghost came
and stood by the bed and groaned--a deep, agonizing, heart-broken
groan--and laid a bloody kitten on the pillow by the girl's head. And
then it groaned again, and sighed, "Oh, God, and must it be?" and
bet another bloody kitten. It groaned a third time in sorrow and
tribulation, and went one kitten better. And thus the sorrowing spirit
stood there, moaning in its anguish and unloading its mewing cargo,
until it had stacked up a whole litter of nine little bloody kittens on
the girl's pillow, and then, still moaning, moved away and vanished.

When lights were brought, there were the kittens, with the finger marks
of bloody hands upon their white fur--and the old mother cat, that had
come after them, swelled her tail in mortal fear and refused to take
hold of them. What do you think of that? what would you think of a ghost
that came to your bedside at dead of night and had kittens?

[reprinted in the Golden Era, JAN. 28, 1866]

Territorial Enterprise, January 1866

BUSTED, AND GONE ABROAD

The term--"Busted"--applies to most people here. When a noted speculator
breaks, you all hear of it; but when Smith and Jones and Brown go
under, they make no stir; they are talked about among a small circle of
gratified acquaintances, but they industriously keep up appearances,
and the world at large go on thinking them as rich as ever. The lists of
rich stock operators of two years ago have quietly sunk beneath the wave
and financially gone to the devil. Smithers, who owned a hundred and
ninety-six feet in one of the big mines, and gave such costly parties,
has sent his family to Europe. Blivens, who owned so much in another
big mine, and kept such fast horses, has sent his family to Germany,
for their health, where they can sport a princely magnificence on fifty
dollars a month. Bloggs, who was high-you-a-muck of another great mine,
has sent his family home to rusticate a while with his father-in-law.
All the nabobs of '63 are pretty much ruined, but they send their
families foraging in foreign climes, and hide their poverty under a show
of "appearances." If a man's family start anywhere on the steamer now,
the public say: "There's the death rattle again--another Croesus has
gone in." These are sad, sad, times. We are all "busted," and our
families are exiled in foreign lands.

Territorial Enterprise, January 1866

THE CHAPMAN FAMILY


The old gentleman and the old lady must be seventy-five years old, now.
They used to play with Dan Marble in New Orleans, twenty five years ago;
earlier, they had a theatre built in a "broad horn," and floated down
the Ohio and Mississippi clear to the Belize, tying up every night
and knocking Richard III endways for the delectation of any number of
graybacks that chose to come, from a dozen to a thousand, and selling
tickets for money when they could, and taking Salt Lake currency when
they couldn't. They have played in Canada and all over California and
Washoe--played everywhere in North America, I may say, and lo! I come to
tell you that they still "keep up their lick." I have been honored
with a letter from the old lady, dated "Helena, Last Chance, Montana
Territory, December 16." She says that they are just five miles from the
Missouri river. I suppose they will build a raft in the spring and float
down the river, astonishing the Indians with Othello, Richard, Jack
Sheppard, etc., and the next thing we hear of them they will be in New
Orleans again. The old lady further says:

"We have a theatre and company of Denverites, and are doing well. It
is so cold that the quicksilver all froze, or I would tell you how many
degrees below zero. Provisions high; salt, $1 per lb; butter, $2.50;
flour, $30, and it would not do for you to be here, for tobacco is $6
a pound and scarce...So cold that 50 head of cattle and 2 men who were
herding them froze to death on the night of the 14th. Great deal of
suffering among miners who were out prospecting. This is a lively town;
adjoining camps deserted; everybody wintering here...I play the part of
Richard III tonight. Next week I appear as Mazeppa. We charge $1.50 for
all seats."

The idea of the jolly, motherly old lady stripping to her shirt and
riding a fiery untamed Montana jackass up flights of stairs and kicking
and cavorting around the stage on him with the quicksilver frozen in the
thermometers and the audience taking brandy punches out of their pockets
and biting them, same as people eat peanuts in civilized lands! Why,
there is no end to the old woman's energy. She'll go through with
Mazeppa with flying colors even if she has to do it with icicles a yard
long hanging to her jackass's tail.

Territorial Enterprise, January 1866

SABBATH REFLECTIONS

This is the Sabbath to-day. This is the day set apart by a benignant
Creator for rest--for repose from the wearying toils of the week, and
for calm and serious (Brown's dog has commenced to howl again--I wonder
why Brown persists in keeping that dog chained up?) meditation upon
those tremendous subjects pertaining to our future existence. How
thankful we ought to be (There goes that rooster, now.) for this sweet
respite; how fervently we ought to lift up our voice and (Confound that
old hen--lays an egg every forty minutes, and then cackles until she
lays the next one.) testify our gratitude. How sadly, how soothingly
the music of that deep toned bell floats up from the distant church!
How gratefully we murmur (Scat!--that old gray tom-cat is always
bully-ragging that other one--got him down now, and digging the hair out
of him by the handful.) thanksgiving for these Sabbath blessings. How
lovely the day is! ("Buy a broom! buy a broom!") How wild and beautiful
the ("Golden Era 'n' Sund' Mercry, two for a bit apiece!") sun
smites upon the tranquil ("Alta, Mon' Call, an' Merican Flag!") city!
("Po-ta-to-o-o-es, ten pounds for two bits--po-ta-to o-o-es, ten pounds
for quart-va dollar!" )

However, never mind these Sunday reflections--there are too many
distracting influences abroad. This people have forgotten that San
Francisco is not a ranch--or rather, that it ought not properly to be
a ranch. It has got all the disagreeable features of a ranch, though.
Every citizen keeps from ten to five hundred chickens, and these crow
and cackle all day and all night; they stand watches, and the watch
on duty makes a racket while the off-watch sleeps. Let a stranger get
outside of Montgomery and Kearny from Pacific to Second, and close his
eyes, and he can imagine himself on a well-stocked farm, without an
effort, for his ears will be assailed by such a vile din of gobbling of
turkeys, and crowing of hoarse-voiced roosters, and cackling of hens,
and howling of cows, and whinnying of horses, and braying of jackasses,
and yowling of cats, that he will be driven to frenzy, and may look to
perform prodigies of blasphemy such as he never knew himself capable of
before.

Sunday reflections! A man might as well try to reflect in Bedlam as in
San Francisco when her millions of livestock are in tune. Being calm,
now, I will call down no curse upon these dumb brutes (as they are
called by courtesy), but I will go so far as to say I wish they may all
die without issue, and that a sudden and violent death may overtake any
person who afterwards attempts to reinstate the fowl and brute nuisance.

Territorial Enterprise, January 1866

[dated January 24, 1866]

MORE OUTCROPPINGS!

I.

I find the following mysterious notice glaringly displayed in the
advertising columns of the Bulletin: OUTCROPPINGS!--The second volume,
compiled by W_____, will be issued next week.

Who is the publisher? There is no name mentioned, and I cannot
conjecture. But that is of small consequence--what interests us more is
to know who "W_____" is. Is it Wentworth (May Wentworth? ) or is it Wash
Wright? or is it Washington Second? or is it Winnemucca? or is it the
old original Whangdoodle? I shall have to inquire into this matter,
unless "W" comes forward with the information himself very soon. If the
volume were not promised "next week," we might suppose it was the first
of Bancroft's forthcoming nine volumes of California verse--but you know
we are not to look for any portion of that work before July. This second
volume of Outcroppings is a humbug of some kind or other, no doubt.

Territorial Enterprise, January 30-31, 1866

[portion of San Francisco Letter]

January 28, 1866

CLOSED OUT

The fine restaurant between Clay and Commercial, on Montgomery street,
has been sold at auction. It was fitted up three months ago at a cost of
thirty-six hundred dollars, and brought only fourteen hundred yesterday
under the hammer. At first it did a prosperous business--made money
fast. Everybody was glad of it, for the proprietor was an estimable
man, and was struggling to gather together by honest industry a small
independence, so that he might go back to the Fatherland of his daily
dreams, and clasp once more to his breast the wife who has waited and
watched for him through weary years, kiss once more his little ones, and
hear their innocent prattle, and their childish glee, and the music of
their restless little feet. But about that time Fitz Smythe went there
to board, and that let him out, you know. But such is human life. Here
to-day and gone to-morrow. A dream--a shadow--a ripple on the water--a
thing for invisible gods to sport with for a season and then toss idly
by--idly by. It is rough.

BEARDING THE FENIAN IN HIS LAIR

[Text partially reconstructed from The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County and Other Sketches]

Wishing to post myself on one of the most current topics of the day,
I hunted up an old friend, Dennis McCarthy, who is editor of the new
Fenian journal in San Francisco, The Irish People. I found him sitting
on a sumptuous candle-box, in his shirt-sleeves, solacing himself with
a whiff of the national dhudeen or caubeen or whatever they call it--a
clay pipe with no stem to speak of. I thought it might flatter him to
address him in his native tongue, and so I bowed with considerable grace
and said:

"Arrah!"

And he said, "Be jabers!"

"Och hone!" said I.

"Mavoureen dheelish, acushla machree," replied The McCarthy.

"Erin go bragh," I continued with vivacity.

"Asthore!" responded The McCarthy.

"Tare an' ouns!" said I.

"Bhe dha husth; fag a rogarah lums!" said the bold Fenian.

"Ye have me there, be me sowl!" said I, (for I am not "up" in the
niceties of the language, you understand; I only know enough of it to
enable me to "keep umy end up" in an ordinary conversation.)

NEODAMODE


What a comfort these reporters do take in that graveyard word! They
stick it at the head of an item, in all its native impenetrability, and
then slash away cheerfully and finish the paragraph. It is too many for
me--that word is, for all it is so handy. Sometimes they write up a fine
item about the capture of a chicken-thief--and head it "Neodamode"; or
an exciting story of an infant with good clothes on and a strawberry
on its little left arm, and a coat of arms stitched on its poor little
shirt-tail being left in a market basket on someone's doorstep--and head
it "Neodamode"; or an entertaining account of a crazy man going through
his family and making it exceedingly warm for the same--and head it
"Neodamode"; or an item about a large funeral; or a banquet; or a ball;
or a wedding; or a prayer-meeting--anything, no matter what--all the
same. They head it "Neodamode." It is the handiest heading I ever saw;
it appears to fit any subject you please to tack it to. Why here lately
they have even got to using it in items concerning the taking out
of naturalization papers by foreigners. There is altogether too much
Neodamy around to suit me. I would not mind it so much if it were not
quite such an ugly word, and if I had a sort of general notion of
what in the mischief it means. I would like to hear from one of the
Neodamites.

I have got to go now and report a sermon. I trust it will be pleasanter
work than writing a letter on Sunday, while the dogs and cats and
chickens are glorifying their Maker and raising the mischief.

Territorial Enterprise, February 4, 1866

AMONG THE SPIRITS

There was an audience of about 400 ladies and gentlemen present,
and plenty of newspaper people--neuters. I saw a good-looking,
earnest-faced, pale- red-haired, neatly dressed, young woman standing
on a little stage behind a small deal table with slender legs and no
drawers--the table, understand me; I am writing in a hurry, but I do not
desire to confound my description of the table with my description of
the lady. The lady was Mrs. Foye.

As I was coming up town with the Examiner reporter, in the early part of
the evening, he said he had seen a gambler named Gus Graham shot down in
a town in Illinois years ago, by a mob, and as probably he was the only
person in San Francisco who knew of the circumstance, he thought he
would "give the spirits Graham to chaw on awhile." (N. B. This young
creature is a Democrat, and speaks with the native strength and
inelegance of his tribe.) In the course of the show he wrote his old
pal's name on a slip of paper and folded it up tightly and put it in a
hat which was passed around, and which already had about five hundred
similar documents in it. The pile was dumped on the table and the medium
began to take them up one by one and lay them aside, asking "Is this
spirit present?--or this?--or this?" About one in fifty would rap, and
the person who sent up the name would rise in his place and question
the defunct. At last a spirit seized the medium's hand and wrote "Gus
Graham" backwards. Then the medium went skirmishing through the papers
for the corresponding name. And that old sport knew his card by the
back. When the medium came to it, after picking up fifty others, he
rapped! A committee-man unfolded the paper and it was the right one. I
sent for it and got it. It was all right. However, I suppose "all them
Democrats" are on sociable terms with the devil. The young man got up
and asked:

"Did you die in '51?--'52?--'53?--'54?--"

Ghost--"Rap, rap, rap."

"Did you die of
cholera?--diarrhea?--dysentery?--dog-bite?--small-pox?--violent
death?--"

"Rap, rap, rap."

"Were you hanged?--drowned?--stabbed?--shot?"

"Rap, rap, rap."

"Did you die in Mississippi?--Kentucky?--New York?--Sandwich
Islands?--Texas?--Illinois?--"

"Rap, rap, rap."

"In Adams county?--Madison?--Randolph?--"

"Rap, rap, rap."

It was no use trying to catch the departed gambler. He knew his hand and
played it like a Major.

I was surprised. I had a very dear friend, who, I had heard, had gone to
the spirit land, or perdition, or some of those places, and I desired
to know something concerning him. There was something so awful, though,
about talking with living, sinful lips to the ghostly dead, that I could
hardly bring myself to rise and speak. But at last I got tremblingly up
and said with low and reverent voice:

"Is the spirit of John Smith present?"

"Whack! whack! whack!"

God bless me. I believe all the dead and damned John Smiths between
hell and San Francisco tackled that poor little table at once! I was
considerably set back--stunned, I may say. The audience urged me to go
on, however, and I said:

"What did you die of?"

The Smiths answered to every disease and casualty that man can die of.

"Where did you die!"

They answered yes to every locality I could name while my geography held
out.

"Are you happy where you are?"

There was a vigorous and unanimous "No!" from the late Smiths.

"Is it warm there?"

An educated Smith seized the medium's hand and wrote:

"It's no name for it."

"Did you leave any Smiths in that place when you came away?"

"Dead loads of them!"

I fancied, I heard the shadowy Smiths chuckle at this feeble joke--the
rare joke that there could be live loads of Smiths where all are dead.

"How many Smiths are present?"

"Eighteen millions--the procession now reaches from here to the other
side of China."

"Then there are many Smiths in the kingdom of the lost?"

"The Prince Apollyon calls all newcomers Smith on general principles;
and continues to do so until he is corrected, if he chances to be
mistaken."

"What do lost spirits call their dread abode?"

"They call it the Smithsonian Institute."

I got hold of the right Smith at last--the particular Smith I was
after--my dear, lost, lamented friend--and learned that he died a
violent death. I feared as much. He said his wife talked him to death.
Poor wretch!

But without any nonsense, Mrs. Foye's seance was a very astonishing
affair to me--and a very entertaining one. The Examiner man's "old
pard," the gambler, was too many for me. He answered every question
exactly right; and his disembodied spirit, invisible to mortal eyes,
must have been prowling around that hall last night. That is, unless
this pretended spiritualism is only that other black art called
clairvoyance, after all. And yet, the clairvoyant can only tell what is
in your mind--but once or twice last night the spirits brought facts to
the minds of their questioners which the latter had forgotten before.
Well, I cannot make anything out of it. I asked the Examiner man what he
thought of it, and he said, in the Democratic dialect: "Well, I don 't
know--I don't know--but it's d___d funny." He did not mean that it
was laughable--he only meant that it was perplexing. But such is the
language of Democracy.

Territorial Enterprise, February 1866

MORE OUTCROPPINGS

Ward, the shirt man, has issued a pamphlet of poems--burlesques of some
of the poems in "Outcroppings," and purporting to be a second edition
of that work, I suppose, as it bears the same title. It is simply an
advertising affair, of course. It was written by "Trem." The burlesque
of James Linen's "I Feel I'm Growing Auld," is the most outlandish
combination of untranslatable Scotch phraseology I ever saw. I think it
is a pretty good take-off on the fashion some folks have of humbugging
Americans with poetry that defies criticism because its extravagant
Scotchiness defies comprehension. We have come to think, in our day and
generation, that every piece of Scotch verse which we cannot understand
is necessarily pure, sweet poetry, and that all prose which is spelled
atrociously is necessarily humorous and intensely funny. Perhaps you can
dig some meaning out of--

I FEEL I'M GROWING MIRK

by Jean Lining

I feel I'm growing mirk, gude wife, I feel I'm growing mirk, Unsicker
girns the graith an' doup, An' aye, the stound is birk. I've fash 'd
mysel' wi' creeshie rax O'er jouk an' hallan braw, An' now I'll stowlins
pit my duds An' gar sark white as snaw. I feel I'm growing mirk, gude
wife, I feel I'm growing mirk, An' wae an' wae the giglet jinks, Tis
wheep-ed wi' my dirk. My claes are mirk wi' howdie whangs, But still my
heart is fair, Though sconnered yowics loup an' blink, I'm nae so puir
in gear. I feel I'm growing mirk, gude wife, I feel I'm growing mirk,
The howdie bicker skeeps my een--Na mair the coof I'll shirk. I'll get
a Ward's Neat Fitting Shirt--They'll glint wi' pawky een, There's sax
score Ward's Shirts sold, gude wife, Since I called in yestreen.

Territorial Enterprise, February 6-7, 1866

[portion of San Francisco letter written February 3, 1866]

TAKE THE STAND, FITZ SMYTHE

Fitz Smythe ("Amigo," of the Gold Hill News) is the champion of the
police, and is always in a sweat because I find fault with them. Now
I don't find fault with them often, and when I do I sometimes do it
honestly; even Fitz Smythe will not have cheek to say he expresses his
honest opinions when he invariably and eternally slobbers them over with
his slimy praise and can never find them otherwise than pure and
sinless in every case. No man is always blameless--Fitz Smythe ought to
recollect that and bestow his praise with more judgment. Fitz knows he
would abuse them like pirates if they were all to die suddenly. I know
it, because he always abuses dead people. He was a firm, unswerving
friend of poor Barney Olwell until the man was hanged and buried, and
then look what hard names he called him in the last News. Fitz can ruin
the reputation of any man with a paragraph or two of his praise. I don't
say it in a spirit of anger, but I am telling it for a plain truth.
I have only stirred the police up and irritated them a little with my
cheerful abuse, but Fitz Smythe has utterly ruined their character with
his disastrous praise. I don't ask any man to take my evidence alone
in this matter--I refer doubters to the police themselves. But for Fitz
Smythe's kindly meant but calamitous compliments, the police of San
Francisco would stand as high to-day as any similar body of men in the
world. But you know yourself that you soon cease to attach weight to
the compliments of a man whose mouth is an eternally-flowing fountain of
flattery. Fitz Smythe praises all alike--makes no distinction. There is
that man Ansbro--I don't know him--never saw him, that I know of--but
I know, and so does Fitz Smythe, that he does twice as much work as any
other detective on the force--but does Fitz Smythe praise him any more
than he praises those pets who never do anything at all? Not he--he
makes no discrimination. And Chappell? but why argue the case? When
those officers do anything Fitz impartially rings in all the balance
of the force to share the credit, sometimes. Fitz, you won't do. I have
told you so fifty times, and I tell you again, that you won't do. I can
warm you up with ten sentences, and make you dance like a hen on a hot
griddle, any time, Fitz Smythe. I know your weak spot. I can touch you
on the raw whenever I please, make you lose your temper and write the
most spiteful, undignified things. You see you will always be a little
awkward with a pen, Fitz, because your head isn't sound--isn't well
balanced; you have good points, you know, but they are kept down
and crowded out by bad ones. You don't know that when a man is in a
controversy he is at a great disadvantage when he loses his temper. It
leaves him too open to ridicule, you know. And you can't stand ridicule,
Fitz; it cuts you to the quick; it just makes you howl; I know that as
well as you do, Fitz, and I am saying these things for your own good;
you are young, and you are apt to let the fire of youth drive you into
exceedingly unhappy performances. I do not mean that you are so young in
years, you know, but young in experience of the world. You ought to be
modest; the same wisdom which was so potent in Illinois and the wilds of
Texas does not overpower the people of a great city like it used to do
there, you know. Ah, no--they read you, attentively--because you write
with a certain attractiveness Fitz Smythe--but they say "Oh, this
prairie wisdom is too wide--too flat; and this swamp wisdom's too deep
altogether."

And they don't attach any weight to your praise of the police. They say,
"Oh, this fellow don't know--he ain't used to police--they don't have
'em in the wilds of Texas where this Ranger come from."

But you are certainly the most interesting subject to write about,
Fitzy--I never get hold of you but I want to stay with you and hang on
to you just as if you were a jug. I didn't intend to write two
lines this time, Fitz; I only wanted to get you, as Excuser and
Explainer-in-Chief to the Police, to go on the witness stand and inform
me when it is possible for a man to lug a prisoner about a mile
through the thickest settled portion of this city--clear to
the station-house--and never come across a policeman. Read this
communication from the Morning Call, Fitz--and it is a true version--and
then go on and explain it, Fitz--try it, you long-legged rip!

WHERE ARE THE POLICE?

EDITORS MORNING CALL:--On Thursday night a terrible onslaught was
made on the house of a peaceable citizen on Larkin street by a band
of soldiers. The man, awakened by this attempt to enter his dwelling,
called on his neighbors for help. One came to his aid, the soldiers
threatened to fire on the families, but, after a severe fight and long
chase, the citizen and his neighbor captured two of the rascals near the
Spring Valley School House. They have been held over to appear before
the County Court. The citizen, with his prisoner, came from the Presidio
Road, along Larkin, down Union, along Stockton, down Broadway to Kearny
street, before he met an officer. The neighbor, with his prisoner,
came from the same place, down Union to Powell, along that street to
Washington, and down to the lower side of the Plaza, before he met an
officer. This was between three and four, A. M. What I wish to know is,
where were the Police, and cannot we, in the remote parts, be protected
by at least one officer?

MORE CEMETERIAL GHASTLINESS

I spoke the other day of some singular proceedings of a firm of
undertakers here, and now I come to converse about one or two more
of the undertaker tribe. I begin to think this sort of people have no
bowels--as the ancients would say--no heart, as we would express it.
They appear to think only of business--business first, last, all the
time. They trade in the woes of men as coolly as other people trade in
candles and mackerel. Their hearts are ironclad, and they seem to have
no sympathies in common with their fellow men.

A prominent firm of undertakers here own largely in Lone Mountain
Cemetery and also in the toll-road leading to it. Now if you or I
owned that toll-road we would be satisfied with the revenue from a long
funeral procession and would "throw in" the corpse--we would let him
pass free of toll--we would wink placidly at the gate-keeper and say,
"Never mind this gentleman in the hearse--this fellow's a dead-head."
But the firm I am speaking of never do that--if a corpse starts to
Paradise or perdition by their road he has got to pay his toll or else
switch off and take some other route. And it is rare to see the pride
this firm takes in the popularity and respectability of their cemetery,
and the interest and even enthusiasm which they display in their
business.

A friend of mine was out at Lone Mountain the other day, and was moving
sadly among the tombs thinking of departed comrades and recalling the
once pleasant faces now so cold, and the once familiar voices now so
still, and the once busy hands now idly crossed beneath the turf, when
he came upon Mr. Smith, of the firm.

"Ah, good morning," says Smith, "come out to see us at last, have
you?--glad you have! let me show you round--let me show you round.
Pretty fine ain't it?--everything in apple pie order, eh? Everybody
says so--everybody says mighty few graveyards go ahead of this. We are
endorsed by the best people in San Francisco. We get 'em, sir, we get
the pick and choice of the departed. Come, let me show you. Here's
Major-General Jones- distinguished man, he was--very distinguished
man--highsted him up on that mound, there, where he's prominent. And
here's MacSpadden--rich?--Oh, my! And we've got Brigadier-General
Jollopson here--there he is, over there--keep him trimmed up and spruce
as a fresh "plant," all the time. And we've got Swimley, and Stiggers,
the bankers, and Johnson and Swipe, the railroad men, and m-o-r-e
Admirals and them kind of people--slathers of 'em! And bless you
we've got as much as a whole block planted in nothing but hundred
thousand-dollar fellows--and--"

(Here Mr. Smith's face lighted up suddenly with a blaze of enthusiasm,
and he rubbed his hands together and ducked his head to get a
better view through the shrubbery of the distant toll-road, and then
exclaimed):

"Ah! is it another? Yes, I believe it is--yes it is! Third arrival
to-day! Long procession! 'George this is gay! Well, so-long, Thompson, I
must go and cache this party!"

And the happy undertaker skipped lightly away to offer the dismal
hospitalities of his establishment to the unconscious visitor in the
hearse.

Territorial Enterprise, February 8-10, 1866

[portion of San Francisco Letter, written on February 6, 1866]

REMARKABLE DREAM

I dreamed last night that I was sitting in my room smoking my pipe and
looking into the dying embers on the hearth, conjuring up old faces in
their changing shapes, and listening to old voices in the moaning
winds outside, when there was a knock at the door and a man
entered--bowed--walked deliberately forward and sat down opposite me. He
was dressed in a queer old garb of I don't know how many centuries ago.
He said, with a perceptible show of vanity:

"My name's Ananias--may have heard of me, perhaps?"

I said, reflectively, "No--no--I think not, Mr. Anan

"Never heard of me! Bismillah! Och hone! gewhil--. But you couldn't have
read the Scriptures!"

I rose to my feet in great surprise: "Ah--is it possible?--I remember
now--I remember your history. Yes, yes, yes, I remember you made a
little statement that wouldn't wash, so to speak, and they took your
life for it. They--they bounced a thunderbolt on your head, or something
of that sort, didn't they?"

"Yes, but drop these matters and let's to business. The thief
sympathizes with the thief, the murderer with the murderer, the vagabond
with the vagabond: I, too, feel for my kind--I want to do something for
this Fitz Smythe--'

"Give me your hand!--this sentiment does you honor, sir, it does
you honor! And this solicitude of the Prince of Liars for the humble
disciple Fitz Smythe is well merited, it is indeed--for although, Sire,
his efforts may not be brilliant, they make up for that defect in bulk
and quantity; such steady persistence as his, such unwearying devotion
to his art, are deserving of the highest encomium."

"You know the man--I see that--and he is worthy of your admiration. As
you say, his lies are not brilliant, but they never slack up--they are
always on time. Some of them are awkward--very stupid and awkward--but
that is to be expected, of course, where a man is at it so constantly
and exhaustively as Fitz Smythe--or as we call him in hell, 'Brother
Smythe'--we all take the Alta. But they are strong!--they are awkward
and stupid, but they are powerful free from truth! You take his mildest
lie--take those he tells about Mark Twain, for instance (who is the only
newspaper man I have ever come across who wouldn't lie and couldn't lie,
shame to him,)--take those lies--take even the very mildest of them, and
don't you know they'd let a man out mighty quick in my time? Why there'd
have been more thunder and lightning after him in two seconds! If Fitz
Smythe had lived in my time and told that little lie he told about you
last--just that little one, even--he'd have been knocked from Jericho
to Jacksonville quick as winking! Lord bless you but they were mighty
particular in those days! Notice how they hazed me!"

"So they did, sir, so they did--they snatched you very lively indeed,
sir."

"But we'll come to business, now. No man's productions are more admired
in the regions of the damned than Fitz Smythe's. We have watched his
career with pride and satisfaction, and at a meeting held in Perdition
last night a committee of the most distinguished liars the world has
ever produced was appointed to visit the earth and confer upon our
gifted disciple certain marks of distinction to which we consider him
entitled--orders of merit, they are--honors which he has laboriously
earned. We wish to confer these compliments upon him through you, his
bosom friend. Now, therefore, I, Ananias Chief of Liars by Seniority,
do hereby create our worthy disciple Armand Leonidas Fitz Smythe Amigo
Stiggers, a Knight of the Grand Order of the Liars of St. Ananias, and
confer upon him the freedom of hell. And the symbol of this order being
a horse, I do hereby present him this noble animal, which manifests its
preference for falsehood over truth by devouring daily newspapers in
preference to any other food."

I looked at the horse, as he stood there chewing up my last Bulletin,
and recognized him as the beast Fitz Smythe rides every day. Ananias
now bade me good evening, and said his wife, another member of the
Committee, would now call upon me.

The door opened, and the ancient Sapphira, who was stricken with death
for telling a lie, ages ago, stood before me. She said:

"I have heard my husband; he has spoken well; it is sufficient. I do
hereby create Armand Leonidas Fitz Smythe Amigo Stiggers a Knight of
the Order of the Liars of St. Sapphira, and clothe him with the regalia
pertaining to the same--this pair of gray pantaloons--a sign and symbol
of the matrimonial supremacy which I have enjoyed in my household from
time immemorial."

And she left the gray pantaloons and departed, saying the next member
of the Committee who would appear would be the most noble the Baron de
Munchausen. The door opened and the world famed liar entered:

"I come to do honor to my son, the inspired Armand Leonidas Fitz Smythe
Amigo Stiggers. It ill beseemeth a father to boast at length of his own
offspring, wherefore I shall say no more in that respect, but proceed to
create him a Knight of the Noble Order of the Liars of St. Munchausen,
and invest him with the regalia pertaining to the same--this gray frock
coat--which hath been a symbol of depravity in all ages of the world."
And the great Baron shed a few tears of paternal pride and murmured,
"Kiss him for his father," and went away. As he disappeared he remarked
that the next and last member of the committee would now wait upon me,
in the person of Thomas Pepper. And in a moment the renowned Tom Pepper,
who was such a preposterous liar that he couldn't get to heaven and they
wouldn't have him in hell, was present! He said:

"I have watched the great Armand Leonidas Fitz Smythe Amigo Stiggers
with extraordinary interest. So we all have--but how heedless we are!
Those who were with you within this hour praised him without stint
and mentioned his excellencies--yet not one of them has discovered his
crowning grace--his highest gift. It is this--he always tells the truth
with such windy, wordy, blundering awkwardness that nobody ever believes
it, and so his truths usually pass for his most splendid falsehoods!
[I could not help acknowledging to myself that this was so.] A man with
such a talent as that is bound to achieve high distinction and do great
service in our ranks; and for this talent of his more than for his
wonderful abilities in distorting facts, I do hereby confer upon him the
Sublime Order of the Knights of the Liars of St. Pepper, and present
him with the symbol pertaining to the same--this grim, twisted,
sharply-projecting, sunburned mustache, whose fashion and pattern are
only permitted to be used by those noble knights whose nature it is to
war against truth wherever they find it, and to go a long, long way
out of their road to prospect for chances to lie. I am the only man
the world ever produced who was so wonderful a romancer that he could
neither get a show in heaven nor hell, and Fitz Smythe will be the
second one. It will be jolly. It is lonesome now, but when Smythe comes
we two will loaf around on the outside of damnation and swap lies and
be p-e-r-fectly happy. Good day, old Petrified Facts, good day." And Tom
Pepper, the most splendid liar the world ever gave birth to, was gone!

That was my dream. And don't you know that for as much as six hours
afterwards I fully believed it was nothing but a dream? But just before
three o'clock to-day I thought my hair would turn white with amazement
when I saw Amigo Fitz Smythe issue from that alley near the Alta office
riding the very horse Ananias gave him, and that horse eating a file of
the Gold Hill News; and wearing the same gray pantaloons Mrs. Sapphira
Ananias gave him; and the gray coat that Baron Munchausen gave him,
and with his pensive nose overhanging those two skewers--that absurd
sunburned mustache, I mean--which Tom Pepper gave him. So it was
reality. It was no dream after all! This lets me out with Fitz Smythe,
you know. I cannot associate with that kind of stock. I don't want the
worst characters in hell to be running after me with friendly messages
and little testimonials of admiration for Smythe, and blowing about his
talents, and bragging on him, and belching their villainous fire and
brimstone all through the atmosphere and making my place smell worse
than a menagerie. I have too much regard for my good name and my
personal comfort, and so this lets me out with Fitz Smythe.

MINISTERIAL CHANGE

The Rev. Richard F. Putnam, late Rector of the Episcopal Church at Grass
Valley, has assumed the pastorate of the Church of the Advent in this
City.--Call.

This gentleman, who was long connected with the editorial department of
the Territorial Enterprise, and was latterly employed on the Sacramento
Union, was one of the best men I ever knew. He was a man who could not
whistle hard tunes--could not whistle easy ones so as to make a person
wish him to keep it up long at a time. Some of the printers used to come
to listen when he begun, but the more cultured usually went out--but he
could swear and make up telegraph news with any man. He was a man who
could go down into a beer cellar in the shank of the evening, and curse
and swear, and play commercial seven-up with good average luck and
without chicanery till dewy morn, and drink beer all the while--all the
while. He was a man who was handy with his pen, and would write you a
crusher on any subject under the sun, no matter whether he knew anything
about it or not--and he would be growling at somebody or other all
through; and if everybody went away and left him he would sit there and
curse and swear at his lamp till it burned blue; and he cursed that boy
that cleaned that lamp till the constitution of the same was permanently
impaired. He was a man who would wade through snow up to his neck to
serve his friend, and would convey him home when drunk, and peel him and
put him to bed if it was a mile and a half. He was a man who was neck
and crop and neck and heels for his friends, and blood, hair and
the ground tore up to his enemies. Take him how you would, he was an
ornament to his species--and there is no man that is more sorry than
I am to see him forsake the pleasant fields he was wont to tread and
confine himself to a limited beat on the Gospel--to a beat in a town
which is small and where he cannot have full swing according to his
dimensions, if I may so speak in connection with matters pertaining to
the Scriptural line of business.

P.S.--But I find that this Putnam mentioned in the item above, is not
the Putnam I have been speaking of. I was talking of C. A. V. Putnam,
and I perceive that the above parson is Richard F. Well, I am glad--and
it is all the better as it is.

Territorial Enterprise, February 1866

MARK TWAIN A COMMITTEE MAN

I attended the seance last night. After the house was crowded with
ladies and gentlemen, Mrs. Foye stepped out upon the stage and said it
was usual to elect a committee of two gentlemen to sit up there and see
that everything was conducted with perfect honesty and fairness. She
said she wished the audience to name gentlemen whose integrity, whose
conscientiousness--in a word whose high moral character, in every
respect, was notorious in the community. The majority of the audience
arose with one impulse and called my name. This handsome compliment was
as grateful as it was graceful, and I felt the tears spring to my eyes.
I trust I shall never do anything to forfeit the generous confidence
San Francisco has thus shown in me. This touching compliment is none the
less grateful to me when I reflect that it took me two days to get it
up. I "put up" that hand myself. I got all my friends to promise to go
there and vote for me to be on that committee--and having reported a
good deal in Legislatures, I knew how to do it right. I had a two-thirds
vote secured--I wanted enough to elect me over the medium's veto, you
know. I was elected, and I was glad of it. I thought I would feel a
good deal better satisfied if I could have a chance to examine into this
mystery myself, without being obliged to take somebody else's word for
its fairness, and I did not go on that stand to find fault or make fun
of the affair--a thing which would not speak well for my modesty when I
reflect that so many men so much older and wiser than I am see nothing
in Spiritualism to scoff at, but firmly believe in it as a religion.

Mr. Whiting was chosen as the other committee man, and we sat down at a
little table on the stage with the medium, and proceeded to business. We
wrote the names of various departed persons. Mr. W. wrote a good many,
but I found that I did not know many dead people; however, I put in the
names of two or three whom I had known well, and then filled out the
list with names of citizens of San Francisco who had been distinguished
in life, so that most persons in the audience could tell whether facts
stated by such spirits concerning themselves were correct or not. I will
remark here that not a solitary spirit summoned by me paid the least
attention to the invitation. I never got a word out of any of them. One
of Mr. Whiting's spirits came up and stated some things about itself
which were correct. Then some five hundred closely folded slips of paper
containing names, were dumped in a pile on the table, and the lady began
to lay them aside one by one. Finally a rap was heard. I took the folded
paper; the spirit, so-called, seized the lady's hand and wrote "J. M.
Cooke" backwards and upside down on a sheet of paper. I opened the
slip I held, and, as Captain Cuttle would say, "J. M. Cooke" was the
"dientical" name in it. A gentleman in the audience said he sent up the
name. He asked a question or so, and then the spirit wrote "Would like
to communicate with you alone." The privacy of this ghost was respected,
and he was permitted to go to thunder again unmolested. "William Nelson"
reported himself from the other world, and in answer to questions asked
by a former friend of his in the audience, said he was aged 24 when he
died; died by violence; died in a battle; was a soldier; had fought both
in the infantry and cavalry; fell at Chickamauga; had been a Catholic on
earth--was not one now. Then in answer to a pelting volley of questions,
the shadowy warrior wrote: "I don't want to answer any more about it."
Exit Nelson.

About this time it was suggested that a couple of Germans be added to
the committee, and it was done. Mr. Wallenstein, an elderly man, came
forward, and also Mr. Ollendorf, a spry young fellow, cocked and primed
for a sensation. They wrote some names. Then young Ollendorf said
something which sounded like:

"Ist ein geist hierans?" (bursts of laughter from the audience.)

Three raps--signifying that there was a geist hierans.

"Vollensie schriehen?" (more laughter). Three raps.

"Einzig stollen, linsowftterowlickter-hairowfterfrowleineruback
folderol?" (Oh, this is too rough, you know. I can't keep the run of
this sort of thing.) Incredible as it may seem, the spirit cheerfully
answered yes to that astonishing proposition.

Young Ollendorf sprang to his feet in a state of consuming excitement.
He exclaimed:

"Laties and shentlemen! I write de name for a man vot lifs! Speerit
rabbing dells me he ties in yahr eighteen hoondert und dwelf, but he
yoos as live und helty as--"

The Medium--"Sit down, sir!"

Mr. O.--"But de speerit cheat!--dere is no such speerit--" (All this
time applause and laughter by turns from the audience.)

Medium--"Take your seat, sir, and I will explain this matter."

And she explained. And in that explanation she let off a blast which was
so terrific that I half expected to see young Ollendorf shoot up through
the roof. She said he had come up there with fraud and deceit and
cheating in his heart, and a kindred spirit had come from the land
of shadows to commune with him! She was terribly bitter. She said in
substance, though not in words, that perdition was full of just such
fellows as Ollendorf, and they were ready on the slightest pretext to
rush in and assume any body's name, and rap, and write, and lie, and
swindle with a perfect looseness whenever they could rope in a living
affinity like poor Ollendorf to communicate with! (Great applause and
laughter.)

Ollendorf stood his ground with good pluck, and was going to open his
batteries again, when a storm of cries arose all over the house. "Get
down! Go on! Speak on--we'll hear you! Climb down from that platform!
Stay where you are--Vamose! Stick to your post--say your say!"

The medium rose up and said if Ollendorf remained, she would not. She
recognized no one's right to come there and insult her by practicing
a deception upon her and attempting to bring ridicule upon so solemn a
thing as her religious belief.

The audience then became quiet, and the subjugated Ollendorf retired
from the platform.

The other German raised a spirit, questioned it at some length in his
own language, and said the answers were correct. The medium claims to be
entirely unacquainted with the German language.

A spirit seized the medium's hand and wrote "G. L. Smith" very
distinctly. She hunted through the mass of papers, and finally the
spirit rapped. She handed me the folded paper she had just picked up. It
had "T. J. Smith" in it. (You never can depend on these Smiths; you call
for one and the whole tribe will come clattering out of hell to answer
you.) Upon further inquiry it was discovered that both these Smiths were
present. We chose "T. J." A gentleman in the audience said that was his
Smith. So he questioned him, and Smith said he died by violence; he
had been a teacher; not a school-teacher, but (after some hesitation)
a teacher of religion, and was a sort of a cross between a Universalist
and a Unitarian; has got straightened out and changed his opinion since
he left here; said he was perfectly happy. Mr. George Purnell, having
been added to the committee, proceeded in connection with myself, Mrs.
Foye and a number of persons in the audience, to question this talkative
and frolicksome old parson. Among spirits, I judge he is the gayest of
the gay. He said he had no tangible body; a bullet could pass through
him and never make a hole; rain could pass through him as through vapor,
and not discommode him in the least (wherefore I suppose he don't know
enough to come in when it rains--or don't care enough); says heaven and
hell are simply mental conditions--spirits in the former have happy
and contented minds; and those in the latter are torn by remorse of
conscience; says as far as he is concerned, he is all right--he is
happy; would not say whether he was a very good or a very bad man on
earth (the shrewd old water-proof nonentity!--I asked the question so
that I might average my own chances for his luck in the other world,
but he saw my drift); says he has an occupation there--puts in his
time teaching and being taught; says there are spheres--grades of
perfection--he is making pretty good progress--has been promoted a
sphere or so since his matriculation; (I said mentally: "Go slow, old
man, go slow--you have got all eternity before you"--and he replied
not); he don't know how many spheres there are (but I suppose there must
be millions, because if a man goes galloping through them at the rate
this old Universalist is doing, he will get through an infinitude of
them by the time he has been there as long as old Sesostris and those
ancient mummies; and there is no estimating how high he will get in
even the infancy of eternity--I am afraid the old man is scouring along
rather too fast for the style of his surroundings, and the length of
time he has got on his hands); says spirits cannot feel heat or
cold (which militates somewhat against all my notions of orthodox
damnation--fire and brimstone); says spirits commune with each other
by thought--they have no language; says the distinctions of the sex are
preserved there--and so forth and so on.

The old parson wrote and talked for an hour, and showed by his quick,
shrewd, intelligent replies, that he had not been sitting up nights in
the other world for nothing, he had been prying into everything worth
knowing, and finding out everything he possibly could--as he said
himself, when he did not understand a thing he hunted up a spirit who
could explain it; consequently he is pretty thoroughly posted; and for
his accommodating conduct and its uniform courtesy to me, I sincerely
hope he will continue to progress at his present velocity until he
lands on the very roof of the highest sphere of all, and thus achieves
perfection.

I have made a report of those proceedings which every person present
will say is correct in every particular. But I do not know any more
about the queer mystery than I did before. I could not even tell where
the knocks were made, though they were not two feet from me. Sometimes
they seemed to be on the corner of the table, sometimes under the center
of it, and sometimes they seemed to proceed from the medium's knee
joints. I could not locate them at all, though; they only had a general
seeming of being in any one spot; sometimes they even seemed to be in
the air. As to where that remarkable intelligence emanates from which
directs those strangely accurate replies, that is beyond my reason. I
cannot any more account for that than I could explain those wonderful
miracles performed by Hindoo jugglers. I cannot tell whether the power
is supernatural in either case or not, and I never expect to know as
long as I live. It is necessarily impossible to know--and it is mighty
hard to fully believe what you don't know.

But I am going to see it through, now, if I do not go crazy--an
eccentricity that seems singularly apt to follow investigations of
spiritualism.

Territorial Enterprise, February 1866

THE FASHIONS

I once made up my mind to keep the ladies of the State of Nevada posted
upon the fashions, but I found it hard to do. The fashions got so
shaky that it was hard to tell what was good orthodox fashion, and
what heretical and vulgar. This shakiness still obtains in everything
pertaining to a lady's dress except her bonnet and her shoes. Some wear
waterfalls, some wear nets, some wear cataracts of curls, and a few
go bald, among the old maids; so no man can swear to any particular
"fashion" in the matter of hair.

The same uncertainty seems to prevail regarding hoops. Little
"highflyer" schoolgirls of bad associations, and a good many women of
full growth, wear no hoops at all. And we suspect these, as quickly and
as naturally as we suspect a woman who keeps a poodle. Some who I know
to be ladies, wear the ordinary moderate sized hoops, and some who
I also know to be ladies, wear the new hoop of the "spread-eagle"
pattern--and some wear the latter who are not elegant and virtuous
ladies--but that is a thing that may be said of any fashion whatever,
of course. The new hoops with a spreading base look only tolerably well.
They are not bell-shaped--the "spread" is much more abrupt than that.
It is tent-shaped; I do not mean an army tent, but a circus tent--which
comes down steep and small half way and then shoots suddenly out
horizontally and spreads abroad. To critically examine these hoops--to
get the best effect--one should stand on the corner of Montgomery and
look up a steep street like Clay or Washington. As the ladies loop their
dresses up till they lie in folds and festoons on the spreading hoop,
the effect presented by a furtive glance up a steep street is very
charming. It reminds me of how I used to peep under circus tents when
I was a boy and see a lot of mysterious legs tripping about with
no visible bodies attached to them. And what handsome vari-colored,
gold-clasped garters they wear now-a-days! But for the new spreading
hoops, I might have gone on thinking ladies still tied up their
stockings with common strings and ribbons as they used to do when I was
a boy and they presumed upon my youth to indulge in little freedoms in
the way of arranging their apparel which they do not dare to venture
upon in my presence now.

But as I intimated before, one new fashion seems to be marked and
universally accepted. It is in the matter of shoes. The ladies all
wear thick-soled shoes which lace up in front and reach half way to the
knees. The shoe itself is very neat and handsome up to the top of the
instep--but I bear a bitter animosity to all the surplus leather between
that point and the calf of the leg. The tight lacing of this legging
above the ankle-bone draws the leather close to the ankle and gives the
heel an undue prominence or projection--makes it stick out behind and
assume the shape called the "jay bird heel" pattern. It does not look
well. Then imagine this tall shoe on a woman with a large, round, fat
foot, and a huge, stuffy, swollen-looking ankle. She looks like she
had on an elbow of stove pipe. Any foot and ankle that are not the
perfection of proportion and graceful contour look surpassingly ugly in
these high-water shoes. The pretty and sensible fashion of looping up
the dress gives one ample opportunity to critically examine and curse an
ugly foot. I wish they would cut down these shoes a little in the matter
of leggings.

Territorial Enterprise, February 1866

FUNNY

Chief Burke's Star Chamber Board of Police Commissioners is the
funniest institution extant, and the way he conducts it is the funniest
theatrical exhibition in San Francisco. Now to see the Chief fly
around and snatch up accuser and accused before the commission when any
policeman is charged with misconduct in the public prints, you would
imagine that fearful Commission was really going to raise the very
devil. But it is all humbug, display, fuss and feathers. The Chief
brings his policeman out as sinless as an angel, unless the testimony be
heavy enough and strong enough, almost, to hang an ordinary culprit, in
which case a penalty of four or five days' suspension is awarded.

Wouldn't you call that Legislature steeped in stupidity which appointed
a father to try his own son for crimes against the State? Of course.
And knowing that the father must share the disgrace if the son is found
guilty, would you ever expect a conviction? Certainly not. And would
you expect the father's blind partiality for his own offspring to weigh
heavily against evidence given against that son. Assuredly you would.
Well, this Police Commission is a milder form of that same principle.
Chief Burke makes all these policemen, by appointment--breeds them--and
feels something of a parent's solicitude for them; and yet, if any
charge is brought against them, he is the judge before whom they are
tried! Isn't it perfectly absurd? I think so. It takes all three
of those commissioners to convict--the verdict must be
unanimous--therefore, since every conviction of one of the Chief's
offspring must in the nature of things be a sort of reflection upon
himself, you cannot be surprised to know that police officers are very
seldom convicted before the Police commissioners. Though the man's sins
were blacker than night, the chief can always prevent conviction by
simply with holding his consent. And this extraordinary power works both
ways, too. See how simple and easy a matter it was for the chief to say
to a political obstruction in his path: "You are dismissed, McMillan; I
know of nothing to your discredit as an officer, but you are an aspirant
to my position and I won't keep a stick to break my own back with." He
simply said "Go," and he had to shove! If he had been one of the Chief's
pets, he might have committed a thousand rascalities, but the powerful
Commission would have shielded and saved him every time. Nay, more--it
would have made a tremendous hubbub, and a showy and noisy pretense of
trying him--and then brought him out blameless and shown him to be an
abused and persecuted innocent and entitled to the public commiseration.

Why, the other day, in one of the commission trials, where a newspaper
editor was summoned as a prosecutor, they detailed a substitute for the
real delinquent, and tried him! There may be more joke than anything
else about that statement, but I heard it told, anyhow. And then it is
plausible--it is just characteristic of Star Chamber tactics.

You ought to see how it makes the Chief wince for any one to say a word
against a policeman; they are his offspring, and he feels all a father's
sensitiveness to remarks affecting their good name. It is natural that
he should, and it is wrong to do violence to this purely human trait
by making him swear that he will impartially try them for their crimes,
when the thing is perfectly impossible. He cannot be impartial--is it
human nature to judge with strict impartiality his own friends, his own
dependent, his own offspring?

But what I mean to speak of, if I ever get through with these
preliminary remarks, is the fact that the Flag yesterday said some thing
severe about the police, and right away the reporter was summoned to
stand before that terrible tribunal--the Police Commissioners--and prove
his charges. Poor innocent! Why, he never can prove anything. They will
come "Iowa justice" on him; he will swear he saw the prisoner do so and
so, and the Chief will say, "Captain Baker send up thirty-five policemen
to swear that they didn't see this thing done." They always manage to
have the bulk of testimony on their side, anyhow. If Pontius Pilate
was on the police he could crucify the Savior again with perfect
impunity--but he would have to let Barabbas and that other policeman
alone, who were crucified along with him, formerly.

There is a bill in the hands of a San Francisco legislator which
proposes to put the police appointing power in the hands of the Mayor,
the District Attorney, and the city and county attorney; and the trial
of policemen and power to punish or dismiss them, in the hands of the
county and police court prosecuting attorney. This would leave Chief
Burke nothing to do but attend to his own legitimate business of keeping
the police department up to their work all the time, and is just the
kind of bill that ought to pass. It would reduce the Chief from autocrat
of San Francisco, with absolute power, to the simple rank of Chief of
Police with no power to meddle in outside affairs or do anything but
mind his own particular business. He told me, not more than a week ago,
that such an arrangement would exactly suit him. Now we shall see if it
suits him. Don't you dare to send any log-rolling, wire-pulling squads
of policemen to Sacramento, Mr. Burke.

Territorial Enterprise, February 1866

SPIRITUAL INSANITY

I (together with the Bulletin) have watched, with deep concern, the
distress being wrought in our midst by spiritualism, during the past
week or two; I (like the Bulletin) have done all I could to crush out
the destroyer; I have published full reports of the seances of the
so called "Friends of Progress," and the Bulletin has left out
three columns of printed paragraphs pasted together by its New York
correspondent to make room for a report of the spiritualist Laura
Cuppy's lecture and I have followed in the Bulletin's wake and
shouted every few days "Another Victim of the Wretched Delusion called
Spiritualism!" and like that paper, have stated the number of persons it
took to hold him and where his mother resided.

In some instances which have come under my notice, these symptoms are
peculiarly sad. How touching it was, on Monday evening, in the Board of
Supervisors--a body which should be a concentration of the wisdom
and intellect of the city--to see Supervisor McCoppin, bereft of his
accustomed sprightliness, and subdued, subjugated by spiritualism, rise
in his place, and with bowed head, and stooping body, and frightened
eyes peering from under overhanging brows, ejaculate in sepulchral
tones:

FEE--FAW--FUM!

Great Heavens! to hear him say that and then sit down with the air of
a man who has settled a mooted question forever, and done the work in a
solid, substantial manner.

And it touched me to the very heart to see the Mayor of the city--a
man of commanding presence and solemn demeanor--get up and repeat the
following, as if it were a part of a litany:

Three blind mice, See--how they--run. The farmer's wife, She cut off
their tails With the carving knife, See--how--they run."

He then sat down and leaned his face in his hands, and Dr. Rowell got up
and said:

"Spiritual department--paid spiritual department, when I was a
Republican I poisoned rebels--now I am a Democrat, I poison Republicans.
Woe, woe, woe, unto the traducers of the new light! woe, woe, woe, to
the enemies of the new light! woe, woe, woe, unto them that hear
the Cuppy and the Foye and the ministering spirits that fan us with
invisible wings as they sweep by, and whisper eternal truths in our
ears--woe, woe, woe!"

"Woe-haw, woe-haw, woe-haw-Buck You Duke!" said Mr. Ashbury,
impressively.

Mr. McCoppin (counting on his fingers)--One ery--o'ery--ickery--Ann;
fillisy, fallallacy, Nicholas John; queevy, quavy, English
navy--stinklum, stanklum, Buck. Alas, my poor, poor country."

Mr. Shrader said, with deep feeling, but without gesticulation or
straining after effect:

"Let dogs delight to bark and bite, For 'tis their nature thus--Your
little hands were never made To tear out each other's eyes with."

My eyes filled with tears to see this body of really able men driveling
in this foolish way, and as I walked sadly out, I said "This is more
spiritualism; the Bulletin and I will soon have to record the departure
of the Board of Supervisors for Stockton. Poor creatures--to have kept
out of the asylum on one pretext or another so long, and then to fall at
last through so weak a thing as spiritualism."

[reprinted in the Golden Era, FEB. 18, 1866.]

Territorial Enterprise, February 1866

THE SIGNAL CORPS

Saw something the other night which surprised me more than my late
investigations of spiritualism. It was some examples of the methods the
United States Signal Corps to telegraph information from point to point
on the battle-fields of the rebellion. The Signal Corps "mediums" were
Colonel Wicker, of the Russian Telegraph Expedition, and Mr. Jerome,
Secretary of Mr. Conway of the same, both of whom were distinguished
officers of Signal Corps throughout the war. Besides these two gentlemen
there are only two other members of the corps on the coast.

In the late war a signal party was always stationed on the highest
available point on the battle-field, and by waving flags they could
telegraph any desired messages, word for word, to other signal stations
ten miles off. At night, when torches were used, these messages have
been read forty miles away, with a powerful glass. The flag, or torch,
is waved right, left, up and down, and each movement represents a letter
of the alphabet, I suppose, inasmuch as any villainous combination of
letters and syllables you can get up can be readily telegraphed in this
way with a good deal of expedition. These gentlemen I speak of sent
messages the other night with walking-sticks, with their hands, their
fingers, their eyes and even their moustaches! It is a little too deep
for me.

One sat on one side of a large room, and the other at the opposite
side. I wrote a long sentence and gave it to Jerome--he made a few rapid
passes with his right arm like a crazy orchestra leader, and Colonel
Wicker called off the sentence word for word. I confess that I
suspected there was collusion there. So I whispered my next telegram
to Jerome--the passes were made as before, and Colonel Wicker read them
without a balk. I selected from a book a sentence which was full of
uncommon and unpronounceable foreign words, pointed it out to Colonel
Wicker, and he telegraphed it across to Jerome without a blunder. Then
I gave Jerome another telegram; he placed two fingers on his knees and
raised up one and then the other for a while, and the Colonel read the
message. I furnished the latter with the following written telegram:

"General Jackson was wounded at first fire."

He went through with a series of elaborate winks with his eyes, and that
other signal-sharp repeated the sentence correctly. I wrote:

"Thirteen additional cases of cholera reported this morning."

The accomplished Colonel telegraphed it to his confederate by simply
stroking his moustache. There must be a horrible imposition about this
thing somewhere, but I cannot get at it. They say that when they are in
lecture rooms and parlors whence they are not close enough to speak
to each other, they telegraph their comment on the company with their
fingers, on their moustaches, or by gently refreshing themselves with a
fan.

The signal Corps was one of the most important arms of the military
service in the late war. It saved many a battle to the Union that must
otherwise have been lost. Yet many of the officers of the army did not
believe in its efficiency, regarded it as an ornamental innovation, and
bore it strong ill-will. At the battle of Winchester, the officer
in command after General Shields was wounded, had pressing need of
reinforcements. The reserve were in full view six miles away. The Acting
General asked a signal officer if he could order up a brigade. He said
he could. "Then do it," said the General; "but," said he, "to make
everything sure, I will dispatch an orderly for the reinforcements." The
signal officer set his flags waving, and telegraphed: "Send up a brigade
on the double-quick." Before the orderly was a hundred yards off, the
anxious General gazing through his field glass, saw a brigade wheel into
the plain, peel their coats and knapsacks off and throw them down, and
come sweeping across on the double-quick. "By G--. here they come!--send
back the orderly," said the General--"but I didn't think it could be
done."

[reprinted in the Golden Era, FEB. 18, 1866]

Territorial Enterprise, February 25-28, 1866

[This column has been partially reconstructed from the sketches that
were later reprinted in the first edition of The Celebrated Jumping Frog
of Calaveras County and Other Sketches.]

FROM OUR RESIDENT CORRESPONDENT

SAN FRANCISCO, February 23.

VOYAGE OF THE AJAX

The steamer Ajax returned from her pioneer trip to Honolulu yesterday
about noon, bringing forty or fifty passengers and a large quantity of
freight. She was fourteen days and four hours going down, and between
eleven and twelve days coming back. Her crowd of invited guests had a
delightful time at Honolulu visiting citizens and planters, dining out,
driving here and there, attending parties and prospecting all localities
of interest. The people neglected no opportunity of making the visit an
agreeable one to their guests, and even his Majesty the King gave them a
royal feast.

I was talking to one of the voyageurs a while ago, and he said that
in most respects--in nearly all respects, in fact--the trip was a
remarkably pleasant one, "but," said he, (and here he slowly shook his
head and sighed as one who recalls a sorrowful reminiscence,) "I copper
the down trip!" From what I can learn of the experiences of that stormy
passage, I am satisfied that they all "copper" that portion of the
excursion. The ship left San Francisco in the rain, and for twelve days
the excursionists heaved and tossed in the midst of a terrific tempest.
The first news that came back here said that the passengers on the Ajax
had spent most of the down trip on their knees in prayer. Today their
friends greeted them with a hearty handshake and then felt their
knees to see if they were "calloused." I refer only to the gentlemen
travelers, of course.

[The storm] tore her light spars and rigging all to shreds and
splinters, upset all furniture that could be upset, and spilled
passengers around and knocked them hither and thither with a perfect
looseness. For forth-eight hours no table could be set, and every body
had to eat as best they might under the circumstances. Most of the party
went hungry, though, and attended to their praying. But there was one
set of "seven-up" players who nailed a card table to the floor and stuck
to their game through thick and thin. Captain Fretz, of the Bank of
California, a man of great coolness and presence of mind, was of
this party. One night the storm suddenly culminated in a climax of
unparalleled fury; the vessel went down on her beam ends, and everything
let go with a crash--passengers, tables, cards, bottles--every thing
came clattering to the floor in a chaos of disorder and confusion. In
a moment fifty sore distressed and pleading voices ejaculated, "O God!
help us in our extremity!" and one voice rang out clear and sharp above
the plaintive chorus and said, "Remember, boys, I played the tray for
low!" It was one of the gentlemen I have mentioned who spoke. And the
remark showed good presence of mind and an eye to business.

Lewis Leland, of the Occidental, was a passenger. There were some savage
grizzly bears chained in cages on deck. One night, in the midst of a
hurricane, which was accompanied by rain and thunder and lightning, Mr.
Leland came up, on his way to bed. Just as he stepped into the pitchy
darkness of the deck and reeled to the still more pitchy motion of
the vessel, (bad,) the captain sang out hoarsely through his
speaking-trumpet, "Bear a hand aft, there!" The words were sadly marred
and jumbled by the roaring wind. Mr. Leland thought the captain said,
"The bears are after your there!" and he "let go all holts" and went
down into his boots. He murmured, "I knew how it was going to be--I
just knew it from the start--I said all along that those bears would
get loose some time; and now I'll be the first man that they'll snatch.
Captain! captain!--can't hear me--storm roars so! O God! what a fate! I
have avoided wild beasts all my life, and now to be eaten by a grizzly
bear in the middle of the ocean, a thousand miles from land! Captain! O
captain!--bless my soul, there's one of them--I've got to cut and run!"
And he did cut and run, and smashed through the first stateroom he came
to. A gentleman and his wife were in it. The gentleman exclaimed, "Who's
that?" The refugee gasped out, "O great Scotland! those bears are loose,
and just raising merry hell all over the ship!" and sank down exhausted.
The gentleman sprang out of bed and locked the door, and prepared for a
siege. After a while, no assault being made, a reconnoissance was made
from the window and a vivid flash of lightning revealed a clear deck.
Mr. Leland then made a dart for his own stateroom, gained it, locked
himself in, and felt that his body's salvation was accomplished, and
by little less than a miracle. The next day the subject of this memoir,
though still very feeble and nervous, had the hardihood to make a joke
upon his adventure. He said that when he found himself in so tight a
place (as he thought) he didn't bear it with much fortitude, and when
he found himself safe at last in his state-room, he regarded it as the
bearest escape he had ever had in his life. He then went to bed, and
did not get up again for nine days. This unquestionably bad joke cast
a gloom over the whole ship's company, and no effort was sufficient to
restore their wonted cheerfulness until the vessel reached her port, and
other scenes erased it from their memories.

The Ajax is advertised to sail for Honolulu again on the 1st of March.

PLEASING INCIDENT

The splendid band of the old U. S. Second Artillery, so long under the
late General DeRussey when he was at the head of the Engineer Corps of
the United States and stationed at Fortress Monroe, kindly cherishing
the memory of their beloved old commander, went out to South Park, last
night, after the ceremonies and festivities of Washington's birthday
were over, and serenaded Mrs. DeRussey and her family. It was a graceful
and touching tribute, and showed how well the lads esteemed the old
soldier who was always so proud of them. No music could have been imbued
with more tender expression than they breathed into their first piece:

"Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never brought to mind?"

There is moving pathos in speech and eloquence sways the feelings with a
mighty power, but music goes straight to the heart after all.

The first thing the Second Artillery did when they landed here from the
East a month or two before the old General died, was to come out here
with their band and serenade him. He was in tolerable health, then, and
sat up in his parlor in uniform and listened to their martial music,
the proudest man in San Francisco. Such marks of regard from "his boys"
always touched him and gratified him.

OFF FOR THE SNOW BELT

Colonel Conway and his junior officers and assistants leave to-day
in the steamer Active to resume operations in British Columbia on his
division of the Russian Telegraph expedition. He will take a vast
amount of wire and telegraphic traps of various kinds [remainder of this
passage is missing].

A NEW BIOGRAPHY OF WASHINGTON

This day, many years ago precisely, George Washington was born. How full
of significance the thought! Especially to those among us who have had
a similar experience, though subsequently; and still more especially to
the young, who should take him for a model and faithfully try to be
like him, undeterred by the frequency with which the same thing has
been attempted by American youths before them and not satisfactorily
accomplished. George Washington was the youngest of nine children, eight
of whom were the offspring of his uncle and his aunt. As a boy he gave
no promise of the greatness he was one day to achieve. He was ignorant
of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie. But
then he never had any of those precious advantages which are within the
reach of the humblest of the boys of the present day. Any boy can lie,
now. I could lie before I could stand--yet this sort of sprightliness
was so common in our family that little notice was taken of it. Young
George appears to have had no sagacity whatever. It is related of him
that he once chopped down his father's favorite cherry tree, and then
didn't know enough to keep dark about it. He came near going to sea,
once, as a midshipman; but when his mother represented to him that he
must necessarily be absent when he was away from home, and that this
must continue to be the case until he got back, the sad truth struck
him so forcibly that he ordered his trunk ashore, and quietly but firmly
refused to serve in the navy and fight the battles of his king so long
as the effect of it would be to discommode his mother. The great rule
of his life was, that procrastination was the thief of time, and that
we should always do unto others. This is the golden rule. Therefore, he
would never discommode his mother.

Young George Washington was actuated in all things, by the highest and
purest principles of morality, justice and right. He was a model in
every way worthy of the emulation of youth. Young George was always
prompt and faithful in the discharge of every duty. It has been said of
him, by the historian, that he was always on hand, like a thousand of
brick. And well deserved was this noble compliment. The aggregate of
the building material specified might have been largely increased--might
have been doubled--even without doing full justice to these high
qualities in the subject of this sketch. Indeed, it would hardly be
possible to express in bricks the exceeding promptness and fidelity of
young George Washington. His was a soul whose manifold excellencies were
beyond the ken and computation of mathematics, and bricks are, at the
least, but an inadequate vehicle for the conveyance of a comprehension
of the moral sublimity of a nature so pure as his.

Young George W. was a surveyor in early life--a surveyor of an inland
port--a sort of county surveyor; and under a commission from Gov.
Dinwiddie, he set out to survey his way four hundred miles through a
trackless forest, infested with Indians, to procure the liberation of
some English prisoners. The historian says the Indians were the most
depraved of their species, and did nothing but lay for white men, whom
they killed for the sake of robbing them. Considering that white men
only traveled through their country at the rate of one a year, they were
probably unable to do what might be termed a land-office business in
their line. They did not rob young G. W.; one savage made the attempt,
but failed; he fired at the subject of this sketch from behind a tree,
but the subject of this sketch immediately snaked him out from behind
the tree and took him prisoner.

The long journey failed of success; the French would not give up the
prisoners, and Wash went sadly back home again. A regiment was raised
to go and make a rescue, and he took command of it. He caught the French
out in the rain and tackled them with great intrepidity. He defeated
them in ten minutes, and their commander handed in his checks. This was
the battle of Great Meadows.

After this, a good while, George Washington became Commander-in-Chief of
the American armies, and had an exceedingly dusty time of it all through
the Revolution. But every now and then he turned a jack from the bottom
and surprised the enemy. He kept up his lick for seven long years, and
hazed the British from Harrisburg to Halifax--and America was free! He
served two terms as President, and would have been President yet if he
had lived--even so did the people honor the Father of his Country. Let
the youth of America take his incomparable character for a model and
try it one jolt, anyhow. Success is possible--let them remember
that--success is possible, though there are chances against it.

I could continue this biography, with profit to the rising generation,
but I shall have to drop the subject at present, because of other
matters which must be attended to.

Territorial Enterprise, February 1866

LETTER FROM SACRAMENTO

[possibly written or published on February 25, 1866]

I arrived in the City of Saloons this morning at 3 o'clock, in company
with several other disreputable characters, on board the good steamer
Antelope, Captain Poole, commander. I know I am departing from usage
in calling Sacramento the City of Saloons instead of the City of the
Plains, but I have my justification--I have not found any plains, here,
yet, but I have been in most of the saloons, and there are a good many
of them. You can shut your eyes and march into the first door you come
to and call for a drink, and the chances are that you will get it. And
in a good many instances, after you have assuaged your thirst, you can
lay down a twenty and remark that you "copper the ace," and you will
find that facilities for coppering the ace are right there in the back
room. In addition to the saloons, there are quite a number of mercantile
houses and private dwellings. They have already got one capitol here,
and will have another when they get it done. They will have fine
dedicatory ceremonies when they get it done, but you will have time to
prepare for that--you needn't rush down here right away by express. You
can come as slow freight and arrive in time to get a good seat.

THE "HIGH GRADE" IMPROVEMENT

The houses in the principal thoroughfares here are set down about eight
feet below the street level. This system has its advantages. First--It
is unique. Secondly--It secures to the citizen a firm, dry street in
high water, whereon to run his errands and do her shopping, and thus
does away with the expensive and perilous canoe. Thirdly--It makes the
first floors shady, very shady, and this is a great thing in a warm
climate. Fourthly--It enables the inquiring stranger to rest his elbows
on the second story window sill and look in and criticize the bedroom
arrangements of the citizens. Fifthly--It benefits the plebeian
second floor boarders-at the expense of the bloated aristocracy of the
first--that is to say, it brings the plebeians down to the first floor
and degrades the aristocrats to the cellar. Lastly--Some persons call
it a priceless blessing because children who fall out of second story
windows now, cannot break their necks as they formerly did--but that
this can strictly be regarded in the light of a blessing, is, of course,
open to grave argument.

But joking aside, the energy and the enterprise the Sacramentans have
shown in making this expensive grade improvement and raising their
houses up to its level is in every way creditable to them, and is a
sufficient refutation of the slander so often leveled at them that they
are discouraged by the floods, lack confidence in their ability to
make their town a success, and are without energy. A lazy and hopeless
population would hardly enter upon such costly experiments as these when
there is so much high ground in the State which they could fly to if
they chose.

BRIEF CLIMATE PARAGRAPH

This is the mildest, balmiest, pleasantest climate one can imagine. The
evenings are especially delightful--neither too warm nor too cold. I
wonder if it is always so?

The LULLABY OF THE RAIN

I got more sleep this morning than I needed. When I got tired, very
tired, walking around, and went to bed in room No. 121, Orleans Hotel,
about sunrise, I asked the clerk to have me called at a quarter past 9
o'clock. The request was complied with, punctually. As I was about to
roll out of bed I heard it raining. I said to myself, I cannot knock
around town in this kind of weather, and so I may as well lie here and
enjoy the rain. I am like everybody else in that I love to lie abed and
listen to the soothing sound of pattering rain-drops, and muse upon
old times and old scenes of by-gone days. While I was a happy, careless
schoolboy again, (in imagination,) I dropped off to sleep. After a while
I woke up--still raining. I said to myself, it will stop directly--I
will dream again--there is time enough. Just as (in memory) I was caught
by my mother clandestinely putting up some quince preserves in a rag to
take to my little sweetheart at school, I dropped off to sleep again,
to the soft music of the pattering rain. I woke up again, after a while.
Still raining! I said. This will never do. I shall be so late that
I shall get nothing done. I could dream no more; I was getting too
impatient for that. I lay there and fidgeted for an hour and a half,
listening with nervous anxiety to detect the least evidence of a
disposition to "let up" on the part of the rain. But it was of no use.
It rained on steadily, just the same. So, finally, I said: I can't stand
this; I will go to the window and see if the clouds are breaking, at any
rate. I looked up, and the sun was blazing overhead. I looked down--and
then I "gritted my teeth" and said: "Oh, d__n a d __d landlord that
would keep a d__d fountain in his back yard!"

After mature and unimpassioned deliberation, I am still of the opinion
that that profanity was justifiable under the circumstances.

I TRY TO OUT "SASS" THE LANDLORD--AND FAIL

I got down stairs at ten minutes past 12, and went up to the land lord,
who is a large, fine-looking man, with a chest on him which must
have made him a most powerful man before it slid down, and said, "Is
breakfast ready?"

"Is breakfast ready?" said he.

"Yes--is breakfast READY?"

"Not quite," he says, with the utmost urbanity, "not quite; you have
arisen too early, my son, by a matter of eighteen hours as near as I can
come at it."

Humph! I said to myself, these people go slow up here; it is a wonder to
me that they ever get up at all.

"Ah, well," said I, "it don't matter--it don't matter. But, ah--perhaps
you design to have lunch this week, some time?"

"Yes," he says, "I have designed all along to have lunch this week, and
by a most happy coincidence you have arrived on the very day. Walk into
the dining room."

As I walked forward I cast a glance of chagrin over my shoulder and
observed, "Old Smarty from Mud Springs, I apprehend."

And he murmured, "Young Lunar Caustic from San Francisco, no doubt."

Well, let it pass. If I didn't make anything off that old man in the way
of "sass," I cleaned out his lunch table, anyhow. I calculated to get
ahead of him some way. And yet I don't know but the old scallawag
came out pretty fair, after all. Because I only staid in his hotel
twenty-four hours and ate one meal, and he charged me five dollars for
it. If I were not just ready to start back to the bay, now, I believe I
would go and tackle him once more. If I only had a fair chance, that old
man is not any smarter than I am. (I will risk something that it makes
him squirm every time I call him "that old man," in this letter. People
who voted for General Washington don't like to be reminded that they
are old.) But I like the old man, and I like his hotel too, barring the
d---- barring the fountain I should say.

MR. JOHN PAUL'S BAGGAGE

As I was saying, I took lunch, and then hurried out to attend to
business--that is to say, I hurried out to look after Mr. John Paul's
baggage. Mr. John Paul is the San Francisco correspondent of the
Sacramento Union, and "goes fixed." I was down at the wharf when the
Antelope was about to leave San Francisco, and Captain Poole came to
me and said Mr. Paul was going up with him, and he knew by the way he
talked that he was going to travel with a good deal of baggage, and it
would be quite a favor if I would go along and help look after a portion
of it. The Captain then requested Mr. Asa Nudd, and Lieutenant Elhs, and
Mr. Bill Stephenson, treasurer of Maguire's Opera House, to keep an eye
on portions of Mr. Paul's baggage, also. They cheerfully assented. And
by and by Mr. Paul made his appearance, and brought his baggage with
him, on a couple of drays. And it consisted of nothing in the world but
a toy carpet-sack like a woman's reticule, and had a pair of socks and
a tooth-brush in it. We saw in a moment that all that talk of Mr. Paul's
had been merely for effect, and that there was really no use in all of
us going to Sacramento to look after his baggage; but inasmuch as we
had already shipped for the voyage, we concluded to go on. We liked Mr.
Paul, and it was a pleasure to us to humor his harmless vanity about
his little baggage. Therefore when he said to the chief mate, "Will you
please to send some men to get that baggage aboard?" we proceeded
to superintend the transportation with becoming ceremony. It was as
gratifying to us as it was to Mr. Paul himself, when the second mate
afterward reported that the boat was "down by the head" so that
she wouldn't steer, and the Captain said, "It's that baggage, I
suppose--move it aft." We had a very pleasant trip of it to Sacramento,
and said nothing to disabuse the passengers minds when we found that
Paul had disseminated the impression that he had three or four tons of
baggage aboard. After we landed at Sacramento there was the infernalest
rumbling and thundering of trunks on the main deck for two hours that
can be imagined. Finally a passenger who could not sleep for the jarring
and the noise, hailed Mr. Bill Stephenson and said he wondered what all
the racket was about. Mr. Stephenson said, "It'll be over pretty soon,
now--they've been getting that there John Paul's baggage ashore."

I have made this letter so long that I shall have to chop it in two at
this point, and send you the remainder of it to-morrow.

Territorial Enterprise, October 30 or 31, 1866

[Enterprise Staff report on upcoming Twain lecture]

Tomorrow night our citizens will be afforded an opportunity to
gratify their curiosity and offer a fitting testimonial to their
fellow-townsman, Mark Twain, who will do up the Sandwich Islands at the
Opera House on that occasion.

The enthusiasm with which his lecture was everywhere greeted is still
ringing throughout California, and now that his foot is in his native
heath, we expect to see the very mountains shake with a tempest of
applause.

Our state can justly claim Mark Twain as its own peculiar production.
It was while a resident here and associated with the Enterprise that he
assumed the name of Mark Twain and developed that rich and inexhaustible
vein of humor which has made the title famous. True he has since
warmed his fancy in tropical climes and expanded his thought by ocean
pilgrimage and heated his eloquence in volcanic fires; but all these
rest upon the solid foundation which was originally laid in our native
alkali and sagebrush.

From present appearances he will receive an ovation seldom if ever
equalled in our city and it is pleasing to know that such an event will
be equally gratifying to the audience and speaker.

Territorial Enterprise, November 1 or 2, 1866

[Enterprise Staff report on Mark Twain's lecture]

One of the largest and most fashionable audiences that ever graced
the Opera House was in attendance last evening on the occasion of Mark
Twain's lecture on the Sandwich Islands. The entire dress circle and the
greater portion of the parquette were filled with ladies while all the
available space for extra seats and standing room was occupied. It was a
magnificent tribute to the lecturer from his old friends. Of the lecture
itself we can only speak in general terms as its points are too numerous
and varied to admit of special mention.

Combining the most valuable statistical and general information with
passages of drollest humor, all delivered in the peculiar and inimitable
style of the author in the lecture, it constitutes an entertainment of
rare excellence and intelligence. The lecture will be delivered in the
principal towns throughout the state, but we are unable at present to
mention definitely any time or place.

In a day or two the entire programme will be arranged. Meanwhile our
neighboring towns can well afford to wait patiently in anticipation of a
rare treat.

Territorial Enterprise, November 4, 1866

CARD FROM MARK TWAIN.

The following characteristic card from Mark Twain is in reply to a
general invitation of the residents of Carson extended to him to visit
the State Capital and deliver his lecture on the Sandwich Islands:

CARD.

VIRGINIA, November 1.

His Excellency H. G. Blasdel, Governor, and Messrs. A. Helm, O. A. F.
Gilbert, H. F. Rice and others:

Gentlemen: Your kind and cordial invitation to lecture before my old
friends in Carson has reached me, and I hasten to thank you gratefully
for this generous recognition--this generous toleration, I should
say--of one who has shamefully deserted the high office of Governor of
the Third House of Nevada and gone into the Missionary business, thus
leaving you to the mercy of scheming politicians--an act which, but for
your forgiving disposition, must have stamped my name with infamy.

I take a natural pride in being welcomed home by so long a list of old
personal friends, and shall do my level best to please them, hoping at
the same time that they will be more indulgent toward my shortcomings
than they would feel called upon to be toward those of a stranger.

Kindly thanking you again, gentlemen, I gladly accept your invitation,
and shall appear on the stage of the Carson Theatre on Saturday evening,
November 3d, and disgorge a few lines and as much truth as I can pump
out without damaging my constitution.

Yours sincerely,

MARK TWAIN.

Ex-Gov. Third House, and late Independent Missionary to the Sandwich
Islands.

P.S.--I would have answered yesterday, but I was on the sick list, and I
thought I had better wait a day and see whether I was going to get well
or not.

M.T.

Territorial Enterprise, Sunday, November 11, 1866.]

[written after Twain was a victim of a practical joke robbery]

CARD TO THE HIGHWAYMEN.

Last night I lectured in Gold Hill, on the Sandwich Islands. At ten
o'clock I started on foot to Virginia, to meet a lot of personal friends
who were going to set up all night with me and start me off in good
shape for San Francisco in the morning. This social programme proved my
downfall. But for it, I would have remained in Gold Hill. As we "raised
the hill" and straightened up on the "Divide," a man just ahead of us
(Mac, my agent, and myself), blew an ordinary policemen's whistle, and
Mac said, "Thunder! this is an improvement--they didn't use to keep
policemen on the Divide." I coincided. The infernal whistle was only a
signal to you road agents. About half a minute afterwards, a small man
emerged from some ambuscade or other and crowded close up to me. I was
smoking and supposed he wanted a light. But this humorist instead of
asking for a light, thrust a horrible six-shooter in my face and
simply said, "Stand and deliver!" I said, "My son, your arguments are
powerful--take what I have, but uncock that infamous pistol." The young
man uncocked the pistol (but he requested three other gentlemen to
present theirs at my head) and then he took all the money I had ($20 or
$25), and my watch. Then he said to one of his party, "Beauregard, go
through that man!"--meaning Mac--and the distinguished rebel did go
through Mac. Then the little Captain said, "Stonewall Jackson, seat
these men by the roadside, and hide yourself; if they move within five
minutes, blow their brains out!" Stonewall said, "All right, sire." Then
the party (six in number) started toward Virginia and disappeared.

Now, I want to say to you road agents as follows:

My watch was given to me by Judge Sandy Baldwin and Theodore Winters,
and I value it above anything else I own. If you will send that to me
(to the Enterprise office, or to any prominent man in San Francisco)
you may keep the money and welcome. You know you got all the money Mac
had--and Mac is an orphan--and besides, the money he had belonged to me.

Adieu, my romantic young friends.

MARK TWAIN.

Territorial Enterprise, December 22, 1867

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS FROM WASHINGTON.

NUMBER I.

WASHINGTON, December 4, 1867

EDS. ENTERPRISE:--To write "EDS. ENTERPRISE" seems a good deal like
coming home again--a good deal like coming home again--but in a dream
wherein your hand takes hold of the same old gate and opens it in the
same old way, and you enter and find the homestead as you left it:
flowers under window, shrubbery in the front yard, old bottles in the
retiracy of the corners. But one never finds home just exactly as he saw
it in a dream; and by the same token, although (as you will observe by
the slashing way in which I have dashed off that "EDS. ENTERPRISE,") I
open the gate as familiarly as ever. I suppose I won't be likely to find
any of the other well-remembered ornaments about your front yard but the
old bottles. That sounds unkind, may be, but behold, truth is stranger
than fiction, and one should be just, before he is generous.

Scurrilous Weather.

I have been here a matter of ten days, but I do not know much about the
place yet. There is too much weather. There is too much of it, and yet
that is not the principal trouble. It is the quality rather than the
quantity of it that I complain of; and more than against its quantity
and its quality combined am I embittered against its character. It is
tricky, it is changeable, it is to the last degree unreliable. It has
catered for a political atmosphere so long that it has come at last to
be thoroughly imbued with the political nature. As politics go, so goes
the weather. It trims to suit every phase of sentiment, and is always
ready. To-day it is a Democrat, to-morrow a Radical, the next day
neither one thing nor the other. If a Johnson man goes over to the other
side, it rains; if a Radical deserts to the Administration, it snows; if
New York goes Democratic, it blows--naturally enough; if Grant expresses
an opinion between two whiffs of smoke, it spits a little sleet
uneasily; if all is quiet on the Potomac of politics, one sees only the
soft haze of Indian summer from the Capitol windows; if the President is
quiet, the sun comes out; if he touches the tender gold market, it
turns up cold and freezes out the speculators; if he hints at foreign
troubles, it hails; if he threatens Congress, it thunders; if treason
and impeachment are broached, lo, there is an earthquake!

If you are posted on politics, you are posted on the weather. I cannot
manage either; when I go out with an umbrella, the sun shines; if I
go without it, it rains; if I have my overcoat with me, I am bound to
roast--if I haven't, I am bound to freeze. Some people like Washington
weather. I don't. Some people admire mixed weather. I prefer to take
mine "straight."

So I have hardly been anywhere. If you were to bet on a storm and
"copper" an earthquake, and lost; and then bet on an earthquake and
"coppered" the storm, and lost again, you would let the next deal go
by, maybe. You would not want to back your judgment any more for the
present. That is about the way I feel. I am waiting for my luck to
change.

The Capitol and Congress

I have been to the Capitol, several times, to look at it--almost to
worship it; for surely it must be the most exquisitely beautiful edifice
that exists on earth to-day. True, there are many buildings that are
grander, and statelier, and half a dozen times as large, but if there
is one that is so symmetrical, so graceful, so fascinating to the eye, I
have not heard of it--unquestionably I have not seen it. A man could
no more get tired of looking at it than he could tire of sunset in the
mountains or moonlight on the sea.

I have been within, among the law-makers, also. They look well--both
houses. I was here fourteen years ago, and remember what I saw then,
perfectly well. I saw in the House Mr. Douglas and a few other great
men. The mass of the remainder seemed to be a mob of empty headed
whipper-snappers that had only come to Congress to make incessant
motions, propose eternal amendments, and rise to everlasting points of
order. They glances at the galleries oftenor [sic] than they looked at
the Speaker; they put their feet on their desks as if they were in a
beer-mill; they made more racket than a rookery, and let on to know more
than any body of men ever did know or ever could know by any possibility
whatsoever.

But the House I find here now is composed chiefly of grave, dignified
men beyond the middle age, and look worthy of their high position.
General Banks is the handsomest member, perhaps. General Butler is the
homeliest. In his comeliness, Banks has competitors. Some of the members
embellish a desk with a book, occasionally, but not frequently. Many of
them pay only questionable attention while the Chaplain is on duty,
but they never catch flies while he is praying. I noticed that,
particularly, and was deeply touched by it; I was gratified more than
tongue can tell; for the sake of my country, I was proud of it.

The Senate is a fine body of men, and averages well in the matter of
brains. Strangely enough, the two Nevada Senators are the handsomest men
in the company--the handsomest men in Congress, indeed, for Governor
Nye is handsomer than General Banks; and Stewart is handsomer than the
balance of the tribe.

A Mining College Proposed.

Which reminds me that Stewart has just introduced a bill for the
founding of a national mining school. If it carries, in its present
shape, it will be a most excellent thing for the whole mining community,
from Pike's Peak to the Pacific, and from the northern gold fields clear
down to Mexico. Because, it ultimately entirely removes the Government
tax upon bullion. That tax foots up $300,000, now ($100,000 of it comes
out of Nevada's pocket alone), and it must augment, year by year. It is
proposed to devote all of next year's tax to the buildings, etc., for
the school; after that (say 4 or 5 years), half the tax will be spent on
the school and the other half invested in United States securities for
the benefit of the school, until the fund shall be large enough to yield
sufficient interest to carry on the institution without touching
the principal. Then, the Government tax on bullion will be abolished
altogether.

The mining school will be free to all. Assays will be made for anybody,
at a cost of a few cents, instead of dollars. The mining knowledge of
all countries will be gathered together here, tested, classified, and
diffused through our mining communities by means of inspections of the
mines and free lectures to the miners by the faculty of the college,
etc. The Secretary of the Treasury thinks the expense of mining will be
materially lessened and the yield of bullion vastly increased by means
of such a school as Mr. Stewart has proposed. It is suggested that the
institution be located somewhere in your vicinity, on the Truckee, on
the line of the Pacific Railroad. Whether the measure will carry or not,
no man can tell. That it should carry, every man on the "coast" will
unquestionably desire.

The First Effects of the Message.

The President's Message is making a howl among the Republicans--serenity
sits upon the brow of Democracy. The Republican Congressmen say it is
insolent to Congress; the Democrats say it is a mild, sweet document,
free from guile. But one thing is very sure: the message has weakened
the President. Impeachment was dead, day before yesterday. It would
rise up and make a strong fight to-day if it were pushed with energy
and tact. But it won't be done, I suppose. I foresee that the weather is
going to throw some double summersets, now, right away. It will keep up
with these convulsions in politics or wear out the elements trying. I
must stand by with parasols, umbrellas and overcoats until the weather
is reconstructed.

Personal.

S. T. Gage of your Internal Revenue service, is here on business
connected with his office. He is a little off color as to his overcoat,
but his pantaloons are up to regulation. He looks well, and is attending
strictly to business and behaving himself.

John Allman is here also, looking up business in the mail contract line.

I have seen your former Congressman, Harry Worthington. He dresses
mighty well for a white man in these universal suffrage times. His home
is at Omaha--Omaha the Sublime. When New York and other great States
went Democratic, Omaha went handsomely Republican. They say it was
because Harry was there. Burke is here, now, attending to business. He
has contracts for feeding a tribe of Indians out there on the Plains.
He has a great opportunity, now, to teach us what high, unselfish
patriotism--and he knows it. He will do it. He will feed those Indians
with his country's interest ever in his heart, and his worshipping eyes
turned always toward her shrine--and when he gets done feeding them,
behold not a devil of a redskin in all his gang will be in a condition
to go on the warpath in the spring! Harry Worthington is a first rate
fellow, and takes a joke kindly, and we all want to see him prosper. He
is going to do well out of this thing. I feel certain of it. Of course
he don't want it mentioned, outside of your own circle, but his main
business here is to get one more tribe, because, the way he is averaging
the rations now, the tribe he has got won't be likely to hold out long,
and of course he wants something to fall back on. He thinks he will be
perfectly safe if he can get another tribe.

There are plenty more Nevadians here. I will attend to them in my next.

MARK TWAIN.

Territorial Enterprise, January 7, 1868

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS FROM WASHINGTON.

NUMBER II.

(SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE ENTERPRISE.)

WASHINGTON, December 16, 1867

J. ROSS BROWNE'S REPORT.

It is voluminous, and has remarks and statistics concerning all the
mines of any importance--figures that will show at a glance what each
has done, what it is doing, and what it has cost and is costing to do
it; what the profits are, what the losses are, etc. It contains as
good information as could be got concerning new districts and their
prospects. To get this varied information and these manifold statistics
Mr. Browne had to employ persons residing in the several mining
localities to furnish them. These gentlemen have performed their duties
pretty faithfully, but of course they have yielded to the natural mining
instinct to glorify the leads of their part of the country with weighty
adjectives; we were all prone to do that in our day and generation. They
speak of "prodigious veins" and "magnificent deposits" and "wonderful
richness," etc., and behold their tongues are touched with inspiration
and they prophecy! They reveal the things that shall come to pass, with
the easy confidence of Elishas newly invested with the enchanted mantle.
They trench upon the jurisdiction of the Almighty, and disclose
the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven to Congress with a comfortable
indifference to consequences that could originate nowhere on earth save
in the placid breast of an honest miner. I understand this thing--we all
do, that have been miners. For all miners are, by nature and instinct,
prophets.

We understand it, but Congress wouldn't. So it has been necessary to
drive a pen straight through all these revelations of the things that
are to come. The most shining prophecies are to be utterly extinguished.
In truth, all the prophecies that are not manifestly authorized from on
high, will be pitilessly expunged. Mr. Brown[e] wishes the report to be
received with the utmost good faith by the world, and to bear upon its
face the evidences that it is worthy of such a reception. Consequently
it will not do to bring suspicion upon it with prophecies in this age of
skepticism. The rich deposits or adjectives that occur all through the
sub-reports will be expunged also, and for the same reason that the
words of prophecy are condemned. No "puffs" will be allowed to remain,
lest they impair the confidence of the public in the truthfulness of the
book. Therefore, you can now understand that, voluminous as the work is,
it must all be re-written, and thoroughly weeded of its defects. This is
a vast labor, and much time and patience will have to be devoted to it.
The book will not be ready for the press for some time yet. The reports
from all the great mines--I mean statistics of their yield of ores in
tons, and the result of the same in bullion, etc., will be brought up
to about the present time, and the book be thereby made as complete as
possible.

The moral of this long report--the verdict of it--may be summed up in a
few sentences: Save in the great underground gravel channels, "placer"
mining is finished--is dead. Nothing but deep mining--vein mining--will
do now. The muscle mining of the pan and shovel must give place to
critical science. Miners must adjourn from the exhausted hillsides to
the chemist's laboratory and be educated to the higher grades of their
profession. Therefore, the proposed National School of Mines is become a
necessity. Such is the verdict.

PERSONAL.

Hovey is here. General Hovey of Nevada. He is a member of the Senate, I
think. I recollect that he ran for that position.

Mr. Stowe is here, also--Stowe of Carson City--once Sergeant-At-Arms of
the Legislature. The nation gets along better, now.

There are other Nevadians in Washington. Thomas D. Julien of Humboldt,
John S. Mayhugh of Esmeralda (in Maryland just at present), George T.
Terry of Austin, Robert M. Howland and wife are expected.

Julien is looking after his Indian affairs. He has claims. His prospects
promise well.

S. T. Gage has gone to Ohio. He thinks of returning to Nevada overland.
He desires that no mention shall be made of it.

Judge McCorkle of your city is here and will sail for the Pacific in the
course of a week or two. He has been visiting his home in Ohio.

S. E. Huse of Gold Hill is here, also. He has been looking at lands in
Virginia and Iowa, with a view to investing; likes Iowa best. He will
return to Nevada very shortly, to stay a while.

J. M. Walker comes to Washington occasionally. He looks well, and is
prosperous. I hear that he is speculating in lands and one thing
or another in Virginia, and that he has bought him a homestead at
Binghamton, New York, for which he paid $25,000.

Pat Hickey of the city of Virginia and other places in Nevada, was here
the other night, so I am told. I am sorry I failed to see him. But I
hear that he is flourishing, and, from what I can gather, he was feeling
well. His toast was the same one ("Be kind to your friends," and he had
fifty to drink it) that beat Beggs that snowy night that Beggs and I
got the school report especially for the Virginia Union, and somehow
it appeared in the ENTERPRISE in the most mysterious manner the next
morning and failed to appear where it was intended to appear. But if
it were the last act of my life I would affirm that it was through no
connivance of mine. The scrub who had charge of the public school would
not let me have the report for the ENTERPRISE, because it had said he
was an ass, which was true, and if he had been half a man he would have
been flattered by it. But he would give it to Beggs, because he had
nothing against the Union particularly. I found Beggs at 8 o'clock in
the evening. He had his little dark lantern. That looked badly. Because
whenever Beggs got out his lantern there was going to be trouble. We
went down and got the report, and, coming back through the driving snow,
we met Pat Hickey, and went in and drank "Be kind to your friends." It
took forty minutes to do it properly, and then Beggs proposed, himself,
to go to the ENTERPRISE and leave a copy of the report, which was done.
It was duly copied, and he took the original and started to go to
the Union with it. At midnight, when we were going home, we passed
McCluskey's and heard a familiar voice. We went in, and Beggs was
standing on a table reading the manuscript school report by the light
of his lantern to a crowd of mellow but singularly appreciative
and enthusiastic Cornishmen from the Ophir nightshifts, who didn't
understand a word of it, but seemed to like it all the better on that
account. They cheered all the pauses, with the strictest impartiality.
John Church entered at the same moment we did--looking angry, Beggs
stopped, and smiled down upon Church his smile of naive suavity--a smile
that was gilded all over with honest pride, with conscious merit--with
triumph!--and said: "I ain't (e-uck!) I ain't to be depended on when I
carry my lantern, ain't I! By G--, I've had this old report four hours!"
And so he had. That was why the Union was obliged to go to press
without it. Beggs was a good fellow; and no one can say that I ever
intentionally helped him to get into trouble. I wish I could have
seen Pat Hickey the other night. They say he had all Williards' Hotel
responding to his, "Be kind to your friends" till well along toward
day-break.

E. A. Pretois, formerly of Virginia and Sacramento, is Senator Stewart's
private secretary, now.

"COAST" MATTERS

Mr. Stewart made a speech in the Senate a day or two ago in reply to
Garritt Davis of Kentucky. Davis's was a carefully prepared manuscript
speech wherein he attempted to show that the tendency of legislation
at present could have but one result if persisted in--the result of
investing the negro with the power to rule over white men and dictate
the course they should pursue. Stewart's reply was extemporaneous, and
consequently had more fire in it, perhaps, than polish. The point it
made was the manifestly strong one that one negro cannot rule or dictate
to ten white men; and that as long as the two colors are divided in that
proportion in the country, the devil raised up in Mr. Davis's prophetic
visions could never amount to much of a devil practically. There was
nothing about one negro that ten white men need to fear. The speech met
with a flattering reception by the Senate.

Senator Nye and Stewart have both just introduced bills of great
importance to Nevada. Nye's is declaratory of the purpose of the Nevada
town site law passed by Congress early in 1867. Secretary Browning,
although aware that that law was one which had been greatly desired by
the citizens of Virginia, at least, did not feel at liberty to execute
it while the law of 1864 remained unrepealed and must in some cases
interfere with its operation. If passed, Governor Nye's bill will
straighten the matter out.

Senator Stewart's bill gives Nevada the privilege of locating the public
lands according to her wherever she pleases--on the sections along the
railroad that alternate with those belonging to the railroad company if
she chooses. It gives her the privilege of locating the lands donated to
the Public Building Fund, and issuing scrip upon them at once. It also
makes the salt springs and mines of Nevada the property of the State. If
the bill should pass in its present shape it would bring some $50,000 or
$60,000 into the State Treasury.

THE HOLIDAYS

Are approaching. Congress will adjourn on Friday for a couple of weeks.
Washington will be deserted the next day. I shall help desert it. I
suppose, of course, I shall stay in New York till the national wisdom
congregates again. If I hear anything while I am gone I will report it
to you.

MARK TWAIN.

Territorial Enterprise, January 11, 1868

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS FROM WASHINGTON.

NUMBER III.

(SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE ENTERPRISE.)

WASHINGTON, December 20, 1867

THE LOST CHIEF FOUND

Colonel Ely Parker, Chief of the Six Nations, and staff officer to
General Grant, was to have been married last Tuesday morning to Miss
Sacket, an accomplished girl of 17, highly connected, and worthy of the
best man in the country. General Grant was to have given away the bride,
and the wedding ceremony was to have taken place in great state at the
Church of the Epiphany, whose parlor has a monopoly of all the marriages
that pay. Truly it has been said, "Ye know not when the bridegroom
cometh"--more particularly when the bridegroom don't come at all. And he
didn't come in this instance--or, as General Grant gravely expressed
it, he failed to qualify. The five foolish virgins that had oil in their
lamps were no better off than the two hundred and fifty foolish cues
that hadn't, for lamps, howsoever well they may be supplied with oil,
cannot discover a bridegroom that is not present but on the contrary is
far away with a conspiring and malignant Indian. The wedding party went
swearing and sorrowing home, wondering what could have become of the
Grand Sachem of the Six Nations?--what could keep him away at such a
time?--what he could possibly mean by "such conduct as these." They
wondered for full twenty-four hours, and then the defendant came to
light--the lost bridegroom was found--the Prodigal Son rose up and
returned to his own precinct.

He explained his absence. He said that after he had borrowed a shirt--I
should say a scarf--from General Grant on Saturday evening, he saw some
friends, and afterwards, an hour or two later, went off to take a walk
alone. An Indian of his confederation met him and said he had important
things to say to him; walked with him to a convenient room, gave him
a glass of wine and opened the conversation. But almost immediately
Colonel Parker felt strangely, and lay down on the bed. He remembered
nothing that occurred after that, save that he awoke out of a deep
sleep, apparently in the middle of a dark night--he does not know which
night it was--and by his bedside, never flitting, still was sitting,
still was sitting, that ghastly, grim and ancient Indian from the
night's Plutonian shore--only he, and nothing more. Quoth the Indian,
Nevermore. Then this ebon bird beguiling the Colonel's sad soul into
smiling, by the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it bore,
"Bird or fiend," he cried, upstarting, (wrathful to his heart's hot
core). "What's the time of night, I wonder?--tell me that thou son of
thunder, from the night's Plutonian shore. How long have I in dreams
been soaring?--how long been wheezing, gagging, snoring?--how long in
savage nightmares roaring, since I lay down before?" Quoth the buck,

"An hour or more. You've been sick and may be sicker, because of late
you've stopped your liquor, a thing you've never done before; here's
some stuff the doctor sent ye--of your folly quick repent ye--take it,
Chief, and seek nepenthe--rememb'ring grief no more."

"Bird," the Colonel cried, upstarting. "Bird or fiend," he cried,
upstarting. "Bird or fiend!" as if his soul in that one phrase he did
outpour: "Pass that stuff the Doctor sent me--move the frame thy God
hath lent thee--take thy form from off my door. Take thy beak from
out my jug--go on take thy bust outside my door." Quoth the Choctaw,
"Nevermore."

Colonel Parker took the medicine, and immediately the fatal drowsiness
came upon him again. He fell asleep, and never woke again till Wednesday
morning--a day after General Grant assembled himself at the church to
assist at his nuptials. It may be all very funny, lightly considered,
but seriously regarded it is sad enough. It has brought into unpleasant
newspaper notoriety a soldier who has fought bravely and faithfully
throughout the long war, and was honored with the confidence and esteem
of the first General of our day; and it has also given the same unhappy
notoriety to a modest, retiring young girl, and has caused her the
extremest suffering. The bridegroom's is the easiest case, for whether
he be blameless or not, he is a man and a soldier, and can bear untoward
fortune and the gossip of idle tongues with soldierly fortitude.

Colonel Parker's friends are well satisfied that his community of
Indians are at the bottom of the whole affair; that they are jealous of
foreign marriage complications; that they wish him to wed with a woman
of his own race, and that they conspired to stave off his marriage
with the white girl and break off the match if possible. The Indian who
drugged him was gone when he awoke the last time, and has not been seen
since. General Grant has taken the matter into his own hands and will
sift the mystery to the bottom. If it comes out straight, Colonel Parker
will fare well; if it does not, it will be farewell to Colonel Parker.

A Voluminous Telegram.

A telegram for the Government, consisting of 6,480 words, was received
here to-night from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. It is the
full report of that body in favor of and urging the ratification of the
Sandwich Islands treaty. I think its strongest argument is, that with
such a treaty in force, the Government would have a fair pretext for
resisting by military power, the occupation of the Islands by England
or France. If we can't get the property, it is at least wise to see that
they don't. We certainly cannot get it. The King will not sell; we shall
not seize it of course. Its free use is indispensable to our Pacific
commerce. Hence we should take care that that free use shall be secured
to us. The reciprocity treaty blocks the game on all obstacles to this.
Nothing else can.

I know of no objection to the treaty except that it will decrease our
national revenue by $150,000 a year--but inasmuch as the Pacific coast
has but to pay that, in the form of increased prices charged for sugar
to cover the duties, perhaps the Government had better tax the coast
people to that amount on something else and secure to itself the
valuable freedom of the islands through the reciprocity treaty.

Still, it would be just like these Solons here to forget all judgment in
the desire to save that trifle of revenue. They give $100,000,000 to
the Pacific Railroad, and $500,000 a year to the China mail, and now it
would be exceedingly like them to forget the Sandwich Islands are just
as much a necessary part of the grand highway they are creating between
New York and China as Damascus is a necessary part of the legitimate
route from a sinful world to the devil. It would be like them. It would
so accord with their policy of saving at the spigot while they lose at
the bung.

Yesterday, the Senate shut off the stationery supplies of its members!
That was the meanest thing, the smallest business, the cheapest fraud I
ever heard of. I know nothing of it. I wrote an order for four reams of
fancy foolscap and got a blind lunatic to sign Charles Sumner's name
to it (no man can counterfeit the genuine signature unless there is
something awful the matter with him), and went up to the Senate and
presented it. They said it would not do. I asked if they meant to
insinuate anything against the soundness of the signature. They said
no; they could see by the general horribleness of it that some member of
Congress wrote it, but that was not the idea--and then they told me
of that poor little swindle of a "retrenchment." It is nothing but
a blind--nothing but a miserable little ten thousand dollar blind to
deceive the people with. Those parties are generating something--they
are sitting--silent--spreading themselves--hatching. Under cover of that
little dab of retrenchment which they have thrown into the people's eyes
they are getting ready to steal about four hundred millions of dollars,
and then you will hear them cackle. I suppose I shall have to go back to
writing letters on old blotting paper again shortly.

The more I think of it the more indignant I become. Here some time ago
we bought an iceberg for $7,000,000 and lately we bought a volcano and
an infernal nest of earthquakes for $17,000,000, and now we are shutting
off a dray-load of stationery and six bits worth of sugar revenues to
get even again. Bother such "retrenchment!"

California Senator.

The news arrived to-day by telegraph that the California Legislature has
elected Eugene Casserly to be United States Senator to succeed Hon. John
Conness. He will succeed one of the pleasantest men, socially, and one
of the best hearted that exists; and by the same token a man that has
worked hard for the coast, done his duty faithfully, and accomplished
all that any man could have done. Do you know what particular stripe of
Democracy Mr. Casserly is variegated with? Had I better support him with
the Administration, or had I better hoist out my paint and get ready to
go on the warpath? But perhaps you fail to catch my drift. What I mean
is, is his Democracy of the poetical stripe, as set forth in bombastic
platforms, or is it of the practical stripe that looks to the most goods
to the greatest number? In plain English, how is Casserly on stationery?
For behold, even as a man is on stationery, so shall he be concerning
the greater things of the covenant. Would it be agreeable to Casserly
for me to collect his mileage for him, do you think?

For President.

Associate Justice Field of the Supreme Bench is widely talked of,
latterly, as the Democratic candidate for President of the United
States--an able man, a just one, and one whose judicial and political
garments are clean--a man well fitted for the place. No man can tell
what an hour may bring forth--especially if the politicians have leased
that hour--but just at the present moment the Presidential contest bids
far to take a particularly "sporting" shape--for verily is there not
a "field" on the one side and a "chase" on the other? Now, therefore,
where is the fox that shall fly the Chase, cross the Field in safety,
and gain the cover of the White House?

Adjournment.

Congress adjourned yesterday. I don't know whether they have done
anything or not. I don't think they have. However, let us not
forget that they have "retrenched." They have passed the stationery
resolution--they have eased up some on one thousand millions of
debt--they have smitten the Goliath of gold with a pebble--they have
saved the country. God will bless them. Let the new David bring the head
of the monster to the foot of the throne, and go after more. I tremble
to think they may abolish the franking privilege next.

The Ark has rested on Ararat. The most of the animals have gone away to
New York and elsewhere. But I believe the Pacific delegation propose to
remain here during the vacation and get ready for business--for stirring
times are at hand.

MARK TWAIN.

Territorial Enterprise, January 30, 1868

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS FROM WASHINGTON.

NUMBER IV.

WASHINGTON, January 10, 1868

PUBLIC STEALING.

That is the polite term now. What are we coming to when language like
that is freely launched at the great officers of the Government? Not in
the street alone, and in private conversation, but, in a barely modified
form, in the Senate Chamber of the United States. They almost speak in
that way of the Secretary of the Treasury. The country seems to have
become satisfied that his department is rotten with swindling and
rascality, that at last even the Senate has partly awakened to the
importance of doing something or saying something. It is a slow body,
and timid. Andrew can scare it with a growl. All those Senators believe,
and have believed for weeks, that through the improper and unlawful
conduct of the Treasury officers, the Government has been swindled out
of $200,000,000 a year, through whisky and cotton frauds, but they
dared not say anything, until their silence at last began to breed the
impression among the people that Congress was in the "ring" too, along
with the Treasury! That has stirred them up a little and two or three
Senators have lately made a sort of show of wanting to know something
about these frauds. One charge against Mr. McCullouch is peculiar. Laws
were passed in 1862, '63, and '64, providing for the sale of cotton and
other confiscated property seized during the war, and establishing a
Court of Claims for the examination of cases where it might be alleged
that some of these seizures were unjust--a Court with power to restore
such property as might be proven to have been taken by mistake from
staunch Union men, etc. Under these laws sales amounting to $36,000,000
net were made. It is alleged now that $10,000,000 of this sum has been
restored to parties claiming to have been Union men, and restored,
too, on the individual responsibility of the Secretary of the Treasury,
without any adjudication whatever by the proper tribunal, the Court
of Claims. To prove this true, would be to prove a curious thing
surely--that the Secretary, a mere citizen, like anybody else, has the
presumption to put himself above the supreme of the land! He coolly
overrides that law and serenely plans and executes as if there were no
such law in existence! A feeble effort was made in the Senate, three
weeks ago, to inquire into this matter, but many of the members
hesitated to meddle with it, and Mr. Fessenden, with persistent
solicitude, warred against the movement day after day. He argued that
it was not worthwhile to trouble the Court of Claims with its own
legitimate business, when the Secretary of the Treasury had all
the necessary information in his possession and could transact it
himself--albeit there was no law authorizing him to so transact it! Ours
is a funny Government in some respects.

A dark mystery still hangs over that $200,000,000 per annum business.
Also the Secretary's continual over-estimates of expenses and vast
under-estimates of receipts, which have had the effect of inducing
Congress to increase the burden of taxation enormously to meet the
imaginary demands of his Department, have exasperated the people
exceedingly. The Secretary's "contraction" system, at the time when the
industrial interests of the country are not able to bear the increased
pressure it entails, is regarded with high disfavor by all engaged in
commerce and manufactures. Mr. Stewart, of Nevada, went into this war
against the Secretary of the Treasury, yesterday, with more vim and
spirit than any other Senator has yet ventured upon, and his speech is
much commented upon in political circles, and applauded. In the course
of it he read a letter from a Detroit manufacturer, which was ably
written and bitingly statistical--a letter which showed by plain
figures that a large amount of taxation now imposed upon our industrial
interests could be easily removed and that its continuance is not
warranted in any way by the necessities of the Treasury Department. The
letter also says that a charge of falsification (in the matter of absurd
and injurious estimates) could unquestionably be maintained against the
Secretary; and further, that "in any other country, if the head of the
Treasury should be so outrageously incorrect, he would be compelled by
a deceived people to resign." Stewart's speech was upon the bill to
suspend further reductions of the currency, a bill which is considered
to be of the nature of a vote of censure and want of confidence in the
Secretary of the Treasury. During the debate Senator Nye also made a few
remarks, and as they give the effect of the Secretary's operations in a
nutshell, I copy them:

I have a vague recollection of a law being passed authorizing the
Secretary of the Treasury, as the compound interest notes became due,
to issue three per cent. certificates, or securities of some kind, to
supply the deficiency thus created. I was told in New York the other day
that during the two months preceding the election there were $53,000,000
of compound interest notes retired, together with $8,000,000 of United
States notes, making $61,000,000, and at the same time a circular was
issued to the banks to keep good their reserve. The banks that had been
holding those $53,000,000 had to get in legal tenders to supply their
places. The effect of this was to contract the currency some $61,000,000
at once, which raised the price of money in New York from five to eight
per cent., and in Chicago to as much as sixteen percent., and prevented
the obtainment of the means for bringing forward the vast products of
the West. That is what I was told.

Before they get through with this bill of censure it is likely that
Congress will rouse up and shake off its sleepiness and make a row
that will discover to the world whether there is any rascality in the
Treasury Department or not, and if so, about how much.

The Worrell Sisters

Were still playing at the New York Theatre in New York when I was there
spending the holidays the other day. I did not see them, but I heard the
young men talk about them--the young men seem as if they are not going
to get over the fascination those girls have inspired them with. Another
"Worrell Brigade" is being found. If gossip is in order, I will mention
that Sophy was to sail for Havana with her mother and a Mr. Lovell,
about 10 days ago. Mr. Lovell is a bachelor, 45 and rich--but
consumption has its grip upon him, and it is believed he cannot recover.
His journey to Havana was undertaken for his health. He thinks the world
of Sophy, and would like to marry her, but she will not consent, of
course. Lovell has been kind to the family, however, and of service to
them in every way that he could, and their appreciation of these has
moved them to care for and assist him to their utmost upon this his
last journey. It is said he has no heirs, and insists upon leaving his
fortune to Sophy.

Old Curry

Is here--old Abe Curry. And he is gotten up "regardless." He is the
observed of all observers. I think Curry is the best dressed man in
Washington. He has a plug hat with a bell crown to it--it is of the
latest Paris style, and has a rim that is curled up at the sides. It is
the shiest hat in Washington. And he wears black broadcloth pants, with
straps to them, while Marseilles vest, and a blue claw-hammer coat with
a double row of brass buttons on it, like a Major General. His cravat
is perfectly stunning; it looks like it might have come off the end of a
rainbow. His moustache is turning out handsomely, and he swings a rattan
stick and wears lemon-colored kid gloves. He also has a superb set of
false teeth, but he has to carry them in his pocket most of the time,
because he can't swear good when he has them in. He goes browsing around
the President's and the departments trying to talk French--because he
is playing himself for a foreign Duke, you know. N.B.--I may have
exaggerated my old friend's costume and performances a little, but then
this is the man that detained my baggage in Carson once and gave me that
infamous account of the Hopkins massacre, and I can never, never forgive
him for it. He says he is here to get seeds from the Patent Office for
Tredway and Jim Sturtevant. A likely story. He wants to get another
appropriation to put another layer of stone on that Mint, I guess. I
expect I had better find out what Curry is about and keep an eye on
him--he will be wanting to run this Government next.

Clagett has been here during the past few days, on Montana and Nevada
business, visiting relatives, etc.

The Town-Site Bill

In the Senate on Thursday, Mr. Stewart's bill concerning town-sites
in Nevada, which has for its object to afford a relief to Virginia and
other Nevada towns which Secretary Browning said he could not afford
himself the way the old law stood (I have spoken of this bill in a
former letter), was taken up, and so amended as to make the operation
of the law general upon all the lands of the Union, and in this shape
it was ordered to be engrossed and filed for a third reading. There is
little question that it will become a law.

MARK TWAIN

P.S. I lectured here last night.

Territorial Enterprise, February 18, 1868

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS FROM WASHINGTON.

NUMBER V.

WASHINGTON, January 11, 1868.

THE POLITICAL STINK-POTS OPENED.

They are opened, and awful is the smell thereof! Millions of politicians
have suddenly begun to prate, with unprecedented energy, even for their
tribe, and they foul all the air with their corrupt and suffocating
breath. It is all about reconstruction. The truth is, that the more
Congress reconstructs, the more the South goes to pieces. But Congress
is in for it, now, and goes bravely on, hoping at last to get the
reconstruction bull where they can hold him. Every morning, after
breakfast, Congress passes a brand-new Reconstruction Act; after
luncheon they amend it and put some Constitution in it; when it is time
to go to dinner, they repeal it, and get ready to start fresh in the
morning. If they keep on stacking up talent on reconstruction as they
have been doing, they will run out of material before they get their
great mission accomplished. You see, they started in to build a good,
substantial reconstruction house, but there were some sandy places under
it which did not look well. They thought maybe they might not be as
risky as they looked, however, and concluded to chance them. But it was
not a good idea. The house was hardly built, before one corner began to
sink a little, and they had to jackscrew it up and put in an amendment
prop. Then another corner began to sink, and they had to put in a
similar prop there. Next the chimney began to lean, and they had to prop
that mighty quick with a powerful brace; right away the kitchen began
to cave in and the gable end to bulge out, and immediately some more
jackscrews and braces had to be called into use. It is a nice new house,
but some part of it lets down every day, and has to be fixed--till at
last we have the curious spectacle of a mansion bright with new paint
and dazzling with gilding, looking bleary and bloated, limber and
leaning and bulging in all directions, and with unpainted and unsightly
spars and braces canted against it and straddling about every which
way--an allegorical, elegant gentleman of the first water and most
fashionable attire, drunk as a piper, subjugated, demoralized and gone
in generally, reeling home on crutches enough for six! Such is the new
house, and such the efforts made to save it. And of course it never
rains but it pours--in the midst of all this vexation, along comes the
Grand Jury, otherwise the Supreme Court, to examine it, and the owners
and builders in fancy already hear the disastrous fiat: "Gentlemen, she
won't do; she will have to come down; there is too much sand and not
enough Constitution under her!"

I am not writing a political article; I am not trying to write a
palatable article; I am merely writing the truth--simply photographing a
straight-out fact. Thaddeus Stevens and many other prominent Republicans
have said all along that the Reconstruction Acts were "outside the
Constitution;" Congress itself has said it. Yet they still go on trying
to patch up that old house, with that fatal defect in it, instead of
wisely pulling it down and doing all over again and doing it right. The
defect looked small at first, and Congress seems to have thought that it
could not amount to a great deal--and yet, patch and repair and improve
as they will, that little defect invariably obtrudes itself again and
disarranges everything. It reminds me of a circumstance. That great
Claflin house in New York, sold forty millions of dollars worth of goods
in the year 1866. I visited their immense establishment in January '67,
to see its wonders, and found the head bookkeeper in a sweat. I asked
what the matter was. He said that for two terrible days he and his 48
sub-bookkeepers had been turning themselves gray with anxiety chasing a
ten cent piece through a cart load of ledgers--there was a discrepancy
of ten cents in the cash account for the year--the awful cash account
wouldn't balance! I just said, indignantly, "Well that is about the
smallest piece of business I ever heard of! Here, I'll give you ten
cents myself. You and Claflin go to bed and get some rest!"

But he smiled a green, despairing, ghastly smile, and shook his head. He
said that wasn't the idea. It wasn't the ten cents they cared for, but
the terrible truth that that miserable trifle might stand for millions
of dollars? Until that defect was hunted out and rectified, they
couldn't tell whether they had lost millions or made them. "The cash
books," he said, "must balance!"

It is just the idea with reconstruction. There is a trifling discrepancy
somewhere, and nothing is safe about the building till it shall be
rooted out. There is ten cents worth of Constitution lacking in it
somewhere, and there will be no security, no salvation for it till the
thing is rectified. There is no use trying to tinker it up--the builders
must go straight through the edifice, and never rest till its accounts
balance with the cashbook of the Constitution!

I wrote that speech for a Democratic member of Congress, but he couldn't
pay me anything but whisky, and so we couldn't trade. I said I would
rather confer it on a good Republican newspaper as a fair and honest
exhibit of the Democratic side of the most exciting question before the
nation, to the end that Republicans might have a chance to read both
sides and thereby better inform themselves.

But Congress is worried. A decision rendered by the Supreme Court,
rendered some time ago, seemed plainly to indicate that five of the
Judges considered the Reconstruction Acts unconstitutional against three
who believed the opposite. The famous McCardle case threatens to bring
the constitutionality of those Acts to a test before the Court right
away, and Congress to-day proposes to do what it can to circumvent the
disaffected five, by passing a bill ordaining that the concurrence of
six of the Judges shall be necessary to constitute a decision in all
cases involving constitutional questions. But unhappily Congress did
not make the Supreme Court, and doubtless it will transpire that it has
about as much jurisdiction over its affairs as it has over the weather.
The Court makes its own rules, and is entirely independent of Congress.
Its custom is to decide by a majority vote, and if it chooses, will no
doubt continue to do so. If McCardle gains his case, negro suffrage
and the Reconstruction Acts will be dissipated into thin air for the
present. No wonder Congress is troubled. It fears that if it can't fix
things so as to enable three Judges to out vote five, it will have to go
to work and build that Reconstruction House all over again, from cellar
to roof. Isn't it a splendid sensation? The principal Republican papers
are growling savagely at Congress for getting itself into this scrape by
its innocent stupidity.

Republicans, both in and outside claim that though the Reconstruction
Acts and the proposed bill to prescribe rules for the Judges are a
little unconstitutional, they are necessities--the state of the country
demands them; that if the rebels were admitted to power they would hang
Union men upon any and every pretext, or upon none at all; that to admit
them to power, unreconstructed and unrestrained, would be to acknowledge
that the war for the Union was an iniquity, a crime. General Sheridan
says he is interested in this business; if the war was wrong, he thinks
he is a particularly bad murderer. I suppose he had a chance to be; he
was in eighty-four battles, and had a hand in a good deal of killing. He
says if he was in the right, he would like it if Congress would go ahead
and so decide it; if he was in the wrong, and was only a murderer, he
would like to know that, also. He is satisfied of one thing--that he
cannot live under rebel rule; and thinks, from at least a military
point of view, that the rebel conquered have no right to dictate to the
victors--no right to say under what terms they will come in. Congressmen
say that everything that stands in the way must go to the wall--if the
Supreme Court obstructs the regeneration of rebeldom, it must go, too.
This would be good enough reasoning, possibly, but for one thing: the
President will veto the bill making rules for the Judges, and it can
hardly be passed over his veto. And even if it were, the Court would
simply annul it, and then, no doubt, go on and annul the Reconstruction
Acts by the liberation of McCardle. A telegraphic report to-day says
that General Meade has suspended the Governor and Treasurer of Georgia
from office, and this has created great rejoicing among Republicans
here. So the political cauldron boils. Let her boil.

It is believed that Secretary Stanton will be reinstated in the War
Office within a few days, whether the President likes it or not.
Congress is on its mettle now--Stanton, the President, Treasury frauds,
reconstruction--it has a good deal of business on its hands, but it is
fighting furiously at last. Even Wendell Phillips ought to be satisfied
now. How the cauldron does boil. Let her boil.

STEWART'S SPEECH.

It is the fashion, now, to write speeches. Congressman Brooks said at
the Press Banquet, last night, that the day of eloquence is over in
America--killed by newspapers, telegraphs, and phonographers. No man has
a chance to carefully write out a speech for publication, now, after it
has been delivered. It is forever too late--the short-handers have got
it, the telegraph has flashed it to the ends of the earth, the daily
press has petrified it into print with all its imperfections before the
words were cold upon his lips. He said that Webster and Clay could not
be orators, now--their crude extemporaneous efforts would appall them in
print, and they would fall into the safer new fashion, and write cold,
glittering, chastely worded sentences that could warm no listener into
enthusiasm when he heard them.

Mr. Stewart has written, and written carefully, an elaborate speech upon
the mining interests of the Pacific coast. It is by far the best and the
ablest effort of the kind that ever has seen the light in this region.
If he never does anything else to be proud of while he lives, this ought
to be sufficient to satisfy him. It ought to be sufficient to kill him,
too. For I never knew a man to do his constituents a great service, or
do his whole duty by them honestly and well, that they didn't put him
on the shelf and send some ass to represent them that was of no use
whatever under God Almighty's Heaven but to get up and "blat" about
niggers and politics and American flags and other bosh that he didn't
know any more about than a bull knows about mathematics. California
has shelved Conness, and served him right. He worked too hard for her
interests--he was too faithful to his trust--he was too good and too
tireless a servant.

Mr. Stewart is the only man that ever stood in either house of Congress
that knows all about mines and mining--knows it from A to Zed--knows it
in all its needs, in all its possibilities, in all its details. He
knows what laws are wanted to nurture, and protect, and endow it with
prosperity, and he knows how to frame them. He sees into his subject
with a surer and a clearer vision than any man on this coast--it would
be safe to say, or upon yours either. I was satisfied of this before. I
know it now, after reading his speech. But it will do this for him--it
will show his constituents that they have sent a man here who knows his
business to a fraction, and is exactly the man they need here to keep
Congress from eternally impoverishing them by passing absurd laws to
cripple mining and disgust every man engaged in it, and then you will
send some brainless idiot here--some quacking numskull--some bladder of
wind that some browsing elephant, in the inscrutable providence of
God, ought to step on and burst. That is what you will do. If I were in
Nevada next fall I wouldn't want anything better than to take stump
for Stewart and "norate" it to you. Can a man put a bill through the
Congress like Stewart's that freed your mines from Government ownership
and opened the markets of the world for their sale--dare a man to do
so priceless a service as that for his people and ever hope to see the
United States again? Not while republics are ungrateful, I reckon, and
a clattering tongue with a piece of an idiot hung to it can be found in
his place. You are hearing me toot my horn!

MARK TWAIN.

Territorial Enterprise, February 19, 1868

MARK TWAIN IN NEW YORK.

(SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE ENTERPRISE)

[NUMBER VI.]

NEW YORK, January 20

I have run up here every now and then to get rid of the dullness of
Washington; but I cannot tarry long, for I have to clear out again
to keep from being crazed by the terrible activity of New York. They
complain that New York is excessively dull, now, and so it must
be, compared to the bewildering energy it displays in its busiest
seasons--but even as it is now it is able to make provincial brains
grow dizzy with its noise, and bustle, and excitement. It is a wonderful
city. Two persons died last night of hunger, cold and exposure; they
were people who could get nothing to do, and could not make a living
begging. The bodies were displayed at the Morgue to-day, and among the
idle spectators was a man who has nothing in life to accomplish but the
spending of four hundred thousand dollars a year. I was in a tenement
house yesterday which contained two hundred persons, all crowded
together in little cramped chambers, where was lack of everything but
dirt and rags; there were remnants of hats for window-panes; doors hung
by one hinge; fragments of quilts and blankets, bestowed in corners, did
duty as beds; there were a few battered pots and pans, but nothing to
cook in them, and no fire to do it with, either; there was occasionally
a broken chair and part of a table, but as a general thing these rooms
were not so sumptuously furnished; there were small ridges of snow on
some of the floors--it had blown in through cracks and broken windows;
the human occupants were cadaverous, and pale, hollow-eyed and savage
with hunger, or dumb with a misery that was next of kin to despair. One
woman with five children (it is proper to call her a woman, I suppose,
though she would have averaged very well as rags, all through), said she
washed for a living formerly, but she got sick and lost her custom; then
she peddled apples and oranges until a general financial crisis that
prostrated all commerce and broke up many a staunch old firm reduced
her to peanuts; but trouble still followed her; an investment of four
dollars at the very top of the market, followed immediately by an
unusual business depression, compelled a sacrifice of the whole venture
and she went to protest. She retired from commerce, a bankrupt. She
struggled on, doing what she could to make a livelihood by begging, but
she was very nearly discouraged. For 24 hours she had not eaten. She
swore to it. One of the philanthropists in our party advanced funds
enough to set her up in business again.

There was want and suffering all about us. There was a man there--a poor
decrepit starveling of 60--who had been the clown in a circus in
his palmy days--had been royally tricked out in paint, and brilliant
spangles, and ribbons and gold lace, instead of the gunny sack he wore
about his shoulders now and the shredded latticework of rags that hung
about his legs. He had been the admiration of the school-boys; had been
the man of all men they envied most and most longed to be like. But
nobody envied him now; nobody admired him; the day of his greatness was
over. He mentioned it with feeling, and sighed when he spoke of it. He
told how the audience used to applaud when he capered into the ring
and made his bow; he said he was the "star" of the troupe, and his
name alone on the bills was a sufficient guarantee for a full house. He
compared himself with the "celebrated" clowns, Messrs. So-and-So, whom
we had not heard of before, and pointed out wherein he had been superior
to them. Then he piped out some execrable jokes in the old familiar
clownish way (I was not aware before that they were so old), and told
how boisterous the laughter and applause used to be. The fact is he had
forgotten for the moment that he was a mendicant, and imagined himself
a clown again, in the zenith of his glory. He even got so carried away
with his happy reminiscences as to attempt his favorite comic song for
us, but his poor reedy falsetto broke down and his splendid day-dream
vanished. He was an unspangled mendicant again. He told how he came down
gradually but surely from the dizzy height of his prosperity to be a
magic-lantern exhibitor, then a door-keeper, then a Roman soldier in
a theatre, then a mere "supe," afterwards a vendor of cheap soap and
ballads, and finally a rag-picker and a searcher after old bones and
broken bottles. He was hungry, but he was not thinking of that; he was
cold, but he was not thinking of that, either; his friends were all
gone, years ago, and it was plain that he had no home--but none of these
things stood first in his mind. All he wanted was to shine once more
in the ring, in glittering spangles, and get off some more of those
infernal jokes, and hear the blessed music of applause, and then die.
But we could not give him an engagement, as we had no circus, and so we
left him to his want, his rags and his dreams.

There was a girl in that house, about fourteen years old, who supported
her father and mother and two young sisters by her work. She sold
newspapers about the streets in the daytime, and played the tambourine
and collected the pennies for an organ grinder at night. She was
prosperous, and full of ambition. She reveled in her gorgeous dreams,
and dared to look forward to a day when she should rise to the dignity
of peanuts, and have a regular stand on the corner. This girl had a good
deal of human nature about her. Straightened as her circumstances were,
she kept a Sunday dress--a dress that must have cost as much as three or
four dollars, years ago, when it was new. She took it down from a nail
and showed it to us. She had had a waterfall once, she said, but the
rats got it. There was considerable human nature in some of those small
children, too. They got out some rusty rag dolls--wretched affairs
with arms pulled out, and features defaced, and bran oozing from their
legs--they got these melancholy monstrosities out and flourished them
about where we could admire them, but pretending all the while that they
had no such end in view, and were even unconscious that those dolls were
in any respect proper objects of admiration. I have seen other children
go through the same fraudulent performance with costlier playthings,
pretending all the while that they were not courting notice and
commendation.

Ah, the want and suffering that we saw yesterday! We passed from the
tenement house to a mansion up town where one of our party had a call to
make, and there we saw human misery in its saddest form. Here was a poor
devil living in a vast brownstone front, whose income had suddenly come
toppling down from six thousand a month to four. He was consequently in
deep distress, and all that he said was touched with melancholy. Trouble
never comes singlehanded. One of his finest horses had gone lame, and
his most precious dog was very sick and like to die. His champagne and
his sherry did not suit his taste, and his tailor was so slow with his
work as to drive him to the verge of distraction sometimes. This heart
bowed down by weight of woe, wrought upon my sympathies as suffering
never did before. And yet no man can fully appreciate misery like
his until he has tried it. Unhappily, I had never tried it, and I
was obliged to compassionate him only in a degree far inferior to the
magnitude of his grief. The ex-clown suffered, but I could not see that
he suffered as much as this man.

But this distressing subject suggests a fact. In this city, with its
scores of millionaires, there are to-day a hundred thousand men out of
employment. It is an item of threatening portent. Many apprehend bread
riots, and certainly there is serious danger that they may occur.
If this army of men had a leader, New York would be in an unenviable
situation. It has been proposed in the Legislature to appropriate
$500,000 to the relief of New York poor, but of course the thing is
cried down by everybody--the money would never get further than the
pockets of a gang of thieving politicians. They would represent the
"poor" to the best of their ability, and there the State's charity would
stop.

New York is always bustling and lively, but there are degrees in even
its liveliness. In that net-work of great business streets that occupies
the section between Broadway and the Brooklyn ferries, and the City Hall
and Castle Garden, one may cross and recross the thoroughfares, now,
with hardly a fear of being run over, and may make a reasonable progress
along pavement still crowded, but not crammed. But a year ago it was so
different. To attempt to cross one of those streets then, with its long
array of massed and struggling vehicles, was to take your life in your
own hands; and to get anywhere on foot along the sidewalks necessitated
an exasperating elbow-fight for the whole distance you wished to go.
They used to talk of dull times then. What do they think of it now?

MARK TWAIN.

Territorial Enterprise, February 27, 1868

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS FROM WASHINGTON.

NUMBER VII.

WASHINGTON, January 30, 1868

More Westonism.

Sergeant Gilbert H. Bates of Wisconsin is the last candidate for
pedestrian notoriety. He has made a bet that he will walk, alone,
unarmed, without a cent in his pocket, and bearing aloft the American
flag, through the late Southern Confederacy, from Vicksburg to
Washington. He is already on his way, and the telegraph is noting his
progress. The Mayor and a large portion of the population of Vicksburg
ushered him out of that city with a grand demonstration. He proposes to
sell photographs of himself at 25 cents apiece, all along his route, and
convert the proceeds into a fund to be devoted to the aid and comfort of
widows and orphans of soldiers who fought in the late war, irrespective
of flag or politics. And then, I suppose, when he gets a good round sum
together, for the widows and orphans, he will hang up his flag and go
and have a champagne blow-out.

I don't believe in people who collect money for benevolent purposes and
don't charge for it. I don't have full confidence in people who walk
a thousand miles for the benefit of widows and orphans and don't get a
cent for it. I question the uprightness of people who peddle their own
photographs, anyhow, whether they carry flags or not. In my opinion a
man might as well start his name with an initial and spell his middle
name out and hope to be virtuous.

But this fellow will get more black eyes, down there among those
unconstructed rebels than he can ever carry along with him without
breaking his back. I expect to see him coming into Washington some day
on one leg and with one eye out and an arm gone. He won't amount to more
than an interesting relic by the time he gets here and then he will have
to hire out for a sign for the Anatomical Museum. Those fellows down
there have no sentiment in them. They won't buy his picture. They will
be more likely to take his scalp.

Now the next ass that turns up will be wanting to carry a Confederate
flag through the North, and wouldn't he have a cheerful time of it? What
a pity it is that that insufferable fool, George Francis Train, did not
think of that. He would have tried it, in a minute, and got hanged, and
it would have been a blessing to the country. It would have transferred
that tiresome gab of his to the other world, and from that time forward
there never would have been any peace in hell any more. When the English
found what a poor, clattering frog they had flattered with imprisonment,
they were ashamed of themselves, and turned him loose. And ever
since then he has been squandering his substance in sending
bombastic telegrams over here about his suing the British crown for
[pounds]500,000 (money enough to buy a sane man with); and about his
protesting officially against this, that and the other thing; and about
"Derby" threatening boastfully, but "trembling" (at such a sputtering
bladder of gas as Train!); and about his going to "stump Ireland."

Was there ever such a world of egotism stuffed into one carcass before?
Surely there is no room left in him for bowels. Do you know that that
idiot is aspiring to the Presidency of the United States? He honestly
is. He said in a farewell speech on shipboard, as he left New York--a
speech slobbering adulation and nauseating buncombe over half a dozen
Irishmen out of business, that in due time he would be the People's
President. However, the same God that made George Francis Train made
also the mosquitoes and the rats, and in His infinite wisdom He knows
what He did it for. Human beings don't, though. Train established a
newspaper in New York (the Revolution) to keep his notoriety alive while
he wagged his ears in Europe. Last week, in New York, I saw six young
girls walking up Broadway in single file, arrayed in showy uniform
dresses of red merino, with white bodies, and on their heads they wore
blue caps--red, white and blue, do you observe?--and each girl had a
belt about her waist with "Revolution" painted on it, and had also a
bundle of Revolution newspapers under her arm. Isn't that absurdity just
like Train? I suppose that paper will advocate Female Suffrage,
Free Love, Miscegenation, Burglary, Arson, Spiritualism, Southern
Superiority, and general compounding with sin on earth and repudiation
of damnation hereafter. When they speak contemptuously of worthless,
fussy people in England they call them baggage. They have applied this
happy epithet to Train. So our blowing, shrieking, ranting lightning
express has degenerated into a poor, homely inconsequential
baggage-Train after all.

Judge McCorkle.

They report that this homely old friend of mine--this ancient denizen
of California and Nevada--the wrinkled, aged, knock-kneed, ringboned
and spavined old war-horse of the Plains is to be married shortly to a
handsome young Ohio widow worth Three Hundred Thousand Dollars. Well.
What is the world coming to, anyhow? If any man had told me a week ago
that any woman in her right mind and under 70 would be willing to marry
that old fossil!--that old tunnel--that old dilapidated quartz mill--I
would never, never have believed it. He is a splendid man, you know, but
then he must be as much as 92 or 93 years old. He is one of my nearest
personal friends, but what of that? I would remain a bachelor a century
before I would marry such a rusty, used up old arastra as he is. I have
always considered that I ought to fairly expect to marry about seventeen
thousand dollars, but I think differently now. If McCorkle ranges at
three hundred thousand in the market, I will raise my margin to about a
million and a half.

IMPEACHMENT.

It is on hand again. Congress has said it is going to boss this
Government, in spite of everything and everybody, and it is keeping
its word. It has held its grip now for more than a month, without ever
flinching. And so it is forcing from the people that respect which pluck
always inspires, whether it be displayed by one man or a multitude. It
has never given up its impeachment scheme, but foiled in one attempt
it straightway essays another. The new bill, just introduced into the
Senate by Mr. Edmunds, of Vermont, proposes to get rid of the obnoxious
President on easy terms. It simply provides that when a civil officer is
arraigned before the Senate on articles of impeachment preferred by
the House, said officer shall be suspended from service pending the
examination of his case. The examination of Mr. Johnson's case, so
arraigned would never take place at all. He would remain harmlessly
suspended until his duly elected successor arrived at the White House
on the 4th of next March. It is specified in the bill that the army, if
necessary, shall enforce such suspension. No one can tell, of course,
what this measure may result in, but it is possible that through it
Congress may yet gain its point and tie the hands of the President.

Harry Worthington

Has been nominated for U. S. District Judge for Nebraska, and henceforth
will cease to decimate the Indians with his short rations. But he
performed good service for his country while he remained in the Indian
feeding department of the Government. He started out to unfit a couple
of tribes for the war-path, and I think he must have done it, for no
man has ever heard of them since. Works like those are bound to receive
their reward at the hands of a grateful nation. He is a Judge, now (or
rather, I trust he soon will be), and can rest upon his Indian laurels,
and grant injunctions and hang people. It is good to be a Judge. The
New York papers say Harry Worthington used to be a U. S. Senator from
California--but I guess that is a mistake, isn't it? But New York papers
don't know everything.

And speaking of Western people, I will mention that C. H. Webb ("Inigo")
arrived here for a short sojourn to-day. He is going to do up fashions
and such matters for Harper's Bazaar and the Tribune, I hear. This town
seems to me to be pretty well stocked with California newspaper men, and
so is New York--and all at work, too, which is flattering, certainly,
considering the number of idle pens there are. I am on the Tribune staff
yet, and also on the regular staff of the New York Herald and likewise
that of the Chicago Republican. I think the boys are all satisfied with
their Eastern positions and with Eastern pay; and I am sure ought to
be. They treat us houseless strangers well in the East. Thomas Nast,
the clever artist of Harper's Weekly is exhibiting a collection of great
caricatures of national subjects in New York and wants me to do the
lecturing for his show. I would, if I hadn't so many irons in the fire.
I would like it right well for a change, but then changes are risky.
I must hunt around for a handsome Pacific coaster to take the
berth--because I suppose it is personal loveliness Nast is after.

MORMONISM.

Mr. Hooper, delegate from Utah, is to have the seat in the House of
Representatives contested by Mr. McGrorty. The papers in the case cover
the whole ground of the legality of the government of that Territory as
administered by the Mormons. This is said to furnish the first occasion
for bringing the whole question of Mormon laws and authority properly
before Congress. I suppose we may look for a general ventilation, now,
of the happy civil and religious code which permits a man to marry a
whole family, grandmother and all, if it is particularly fancy stock, or
if he can't make up his mind which of the ladies he likes best.

Pardon Todds has been nominated for the post of Indian Agent of Utah.
That is the homeliest of all the homely Puritan names I have stumbled on
yet, except that of famous Praise-God Barebone. How could a man write an
obituary on Pardon Todds, if he died, without making it intensely funny?
That man will never survive his mission. The Indians will put up with
a good deal, but they will never put up with an Agent with a name like
that. Toddy, you are going to get scalped. That is what is in store for
you.

MARK TWAIN.

[Related item that Mark Twain wrote for the New York Tribune on GEORGE
FRANCIS TRAIN.]

The New York Tribune, January 22, 1868

INFORMATION WANTED.

To the Editor of The Tribune.

SIR: If you can, I wish you would give me some information of a man by
the name of George Francis Train. It is for an uncle of mine that I
want it. My uncle has had a pretty hard time of it, and if any man does
deserve sympathy, and if any man would appreciate that sympathy, it is
he. He is in the decline of life, and he wants to be quiet; but you
know he tried Walrussia, and the bears ousted him; and then he tried St.
Thomas, and the earthquakes ousted him; and so he hung up his fiddle, so
to speak, and concluded he would wait and look around awhile, till the
Government bought some more property. And while he was waiting, somebody
recommended him to hunt up this gentleman, Mr. Train. They said Mr.
Train was a slow, quiet sort of a body, and had no isms or curious
notions about him, and that he was going over to the old country to buy
Ireland for those persons they call the Fenians. They said he was very
popular with the English Government, and that if the English Government
would sell to anybody, they would to Mr. Train. They said that if Mr.
Train concluded to take it, my uncle have an excellent chance to buy
into a quiet locality in Cork, or Tipperary, or one of those calm,
religious regions there, by speaking to him early.

So my uncle went after Mr. Train, but he was building a couple of
railroads out West, somewhere, and before my uncle got there he had
finished those railroads and was making Democratic speeches in the East.
It was a considerable disappointment, but my uncle always had a great
idea of doing business with a slow, quiet man, and so he came East.
But he came the last part of the journey in a canal-boat (it being his
nature to prefer quiet and safety to speed), and so he missed that
man again. Mr. Train had got the Democratic party reorganized and all
straight, and was out in the middle of the Rocky Mountains clearing
off a place and driving away the buffaloes, so that he could build a
metropolis there. But my uncle went in an ox wagon, and he missed that
man again. Mr. Train had finished that metropolis and paved it with the
Nicolson pavement, and started a couple of daily newspapers, and was
gone East again with another lady to lecture on female suffrage.

It was a little discouraging, but my relative rested about a week and
started after him again. He caught him this time, because Mr. Train had
sprained his ankle and was obliged to remain quiet until he could get
the leg removed and a reliable patent wooden one put on in its place
that could not sprain. So he mentioned his business to Mr. Train, and he
replied:

"You are all right, Sir. Put your trust in me. I'll buy Ireland, and you
shall have as good a chance as any man. I am going to sail right away.
You will hear about me as soon as I touch the Emerald shores. I shall
get out some advertisements and make my presence known. I make no
pretensions, but you will see pretty soon that I shall be heartily
welcomed there and promptly cared for."

Since that time my uncle has not heard of Mr. Train. He has confidence
in him, but he thinks that maybe he is too quiet a man to make much of
a stir, and has not been heard of on that account. But have you heard
anything of Mr. Train? Do you know if he got out any advertisements? And
do you know if they received him heartily there, and more especially if
they took care of him? This last is the main thing with my relative. If
they took care of Mr. Train, it is all he cares for. He has said to me
repeatedly that all that he is afraid of is that he has been neglected
and not taken care of. If he were to hear that Mr. Train is there, in
a strange land, without any place to stay, it would nearly break his
heart. If you could only inform us that Mr. Train is safe, and has been
received hospitably, and has a good tranquil place to board in, suitable
to a quiet man like him, it would be a great comfort to the old man.

MARK TWAIN.

Territorial Enterprise, March 1, 1868

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS FROM WASHINGTON.

NUMBER VIII.

[SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE ENTERPRISE.]

WASHINGTON, February 5, 1868

OFFICE-HUNTING.

Another man has arrived here who comes to get the berth of Postmaster of
San Francisco. This makes thirty-seven. The new applicant is not posted
in office-seeking; he has not had a ripe experience. He is a good
enough man, and may get the place, but it will cost him more trouble and
vexation than he is promising himself, no doubt. He says he can't see
that there is anything to be done but get the President to appoint and
the Senate to ratify. Certainly that is all, truly enough. It was all
that was to be accomplished by the thirty-six. He says he means to show
the President what the Pacific coast papers say about him, and he means
also to tell him all about how the Post Office has heretofore been
managed and how he would improve that management the moment he got into
office. But he don't say he would swear by Andrew Johnson and labor for
his behest alone--which is much more important. And he don't take into
consideration that the moment he gets the President in his favor the
Senate will be down on him for it, and that if he gains the Senate's
affections first, the President will be down on him. He only proposes
to stay here a week. He says he don't care anything about making an
extended stay in Washington--he only wants to get the appointment, and
look around the great public buildings a little, and then he is off.

They told him a story, yesterday, but I do not know whether he saw the
point of it or not. It was a little story that has been related with
great spirit many thousands of times to office-seekers and claim-hunters
who were only going to tarry a few days in Washington. It was about

THE MAN WHO STOPPED AT GADSBY'S.

It was a long time ago--thirty long years ago--when Gadsby's was the
great hotel. It was snowing. A gentleman in the very prime of life drove
gallantly up to Gadsby's with a spanking coach-and-four. The servants
ran out to put up his horses, but he said no, he was only going to stop
an hour, and was going right on again; he only wished to get a little
claim cashed at one of the Departments. And so he blanketed his horses
and hitched them, and went away. A week after that he was still in
Washington. He sold one of the horses. After a month or two had rolled
by he sold another. He said he did not wish to part with the others,
because he was going back home as soon as his claim was cashed. Another
month or two elapsed, and he sold the carriage and bought a light
two-horse buggy with a small part of the money. About four months after
that, he sold one of the remaining horses; and after another month or
so had gone by, he sold the buggy and bought a saddle. He said he could
ride horseback well enough, considering that the roads were likely to be
good enough for a week or two to come. But the lingering weeks dragged
by, and finally he sold the saddle and concluded to ride bare-back. At
last--at last--he sold the other horse, and said that when his claim
settled he would walk. He is seventy years old, now, poor old man, and
his hair is white, his clothes are threadbare, and his head is bowed
with many troubles. But he says it is not for long--he is only waiting a
little while to get his claim settled, and then he is going home to see
his people again and be happy.

I think No. 37 had better tie his horses up at Gadsby's.

MRS. LINCOLN.

It is reported that Mrs. Lincoln, long threatened with insanity, has
really fallen a victim to it at last. The information comes by private
letters from Chicago. She is said to be living in a house which is empty
of furniture, she having sold it all. She labors under the delusion that
she is going to come to want, and she sells everything she can lay her
hands on. She is under guard of two old men. It is to be hoped that
now, at least, this most unfortunate woman will be spared the pitiless
slanders that have assailed her ever since she first entered the White
House, and which even the crushing affliction of the murder of her
husband was only sufficient to check for a little while.

Can it be possible that she is deserted by her friends and left to the
sole charge of the "two old men?"--she whose friendship was so precious
and whose society was so coveted a few years ago, when a good word from
her was half an aspiring man's ambition gained?

FELIX O'BYRNE.

I was striding up Broadway, in the face of a driving snow storm, the
other evening in New York, when a man seized me by the hand with
a crushing grip and said: "How are you, Mark?" I said I was well
enough--it was the weather that most invited solicitude. He said he
was very, very glad to see me. I intimated that I was saturated with
felicity to see him. But all the time I was wondering who the mischief
the fellow was. He said he had always remembered me for saying a
merciful word in print for him when he was being so sorely hunted by the
press of San Francisco. I never recollected saying a merciful word for
anybody, and so I was still in suspense. Finally he said he wished I
would call and see him at his offices. ("Offices" sounded sumptuous, and
I warmed to him.) He was dealing in steamships; that is, he was engaged
in furnishing complements of passengers to them; any business I might
happen to have with the great steamer lines he would be happy to conduct
for me. I knew the chirping voice then; I remembered the complacent
countenance; I recalled the cheerful spirit that never yet had been
bowed down by any possible weight of woe; I recognized the royal
presence that always, by a destiny, clad in the outward semblance of
poverty, was yet always a millionaire within: Felix O'Byrne! Who else,
in all the world, would be smiling so blithely out from a gallant
costume in ruins and chirping about his offices and his steamships?

Nothing can crush Felix O'Byrne finally and conclusively. Truth and
Felix O'Byrne crushed to earth will rise again. Thus there is a marked
similarity between Truth and Felix O'Byrne. I hereby locate a discovery
claim of four hundred feet on this fact. Felix arrives on the Pacific
coast in poverty; shortly he is the honored contributor to Victoria
newspapers and the guest of Governors. Next he turns up in San
Francisco, poor and accused of a grave offense against the laws; he
is wearing diamonds next, and wielding a mighty influence in politics.
Crushed again--degraded, disgraced--he disappears from public life, and
it is discovered that the notes he gave for clothing, and the baggage he
left at first-class hotels, are equally fanciful as to value. Suspected
by the police, worried by landlords of low boarding houses, snubbed
at third-rate free lunches, he blooms out all at once in a bright, new
uniform, as a lieutenant in the 8th California Volunteers. When the
mystery of the transformation is solved, it transpires that poor,
despised and shunned, the tireless energies of the man have been at
work, steady and serenely as ever--and characteristically, their aim
was high; let Felix's body be where it would, his soul was always in
the clouds! It transpires that he has procured his soldierly position by
means of a petition to the Governor, signed by a number of the foremost
gentlemen of San Francisco! The confidence, the persistence, the
effrontery, and the dazzling successes of this man were bound to provoke
some admiration in any soul but an infinitesimally mean one. But the
newspapers showed Felix up, immediately, and it was plain to be seen
that he was hardly the man to augment the respectability of the military
service. He had the glory of a public military trial, though, and the
distinction of being the head and front of the chief sensation of San
Francisco for nine days, in print, and the principal lion on the street
when he went forth to show his uniform. Then he was dismissed, and
forthwith sank, down, down, down--clear out of sight. He was out of
sight a good while--and also out of mind. But not to stay. The first
bubble that rose from the vasty depths of Fenianism brought Felix to the
surface. He wrote; he lectured; he stumped the State; he aspired to lead
the movement; and lo! in the fullness of time, he bloomed again--this
time as high chief editor of the Irish People newspaper. His career
was brief but gorgeous. The Fenians got after him, and so did his
subscribers. His creditors assaulted him again. He was busted. The waves
of oblivion swept over him once more. He ceased to be talked about or
even remembered. He sailed for the East, glorified with a parting blast
from all the newspapers. After many days we heard of him achieving
a precarious living by adventurous ways--unknown, uncourted,
poverty-stricken. But so surely as the sun rises out of the night,
so surely Felix O'Byrne blazes up out of obscurity in his appointed
seasons. The news came that he was gone to Ireland, a lordly
commissioner, empowered to disburse three millions of dollars among the
Fenians! Everybody said, Alas, for the Fenians! He was in the States
again, when we heard of him next, with his periodical poverty upon him.
And next he was stumping the State of New York for a great political
organization, and spending its money with a lavish hand--for Felix was
always free with money of his own, and just as free with it when it
belongs to his friends. And afterwards we heard of him dining with the
President of the United States and the great officers of the Government,
a trusted adviser in the national policy. And next he was leaving his
baggage behind him again at the hotels and disappointing landlords as to
the quality of its contents. His next year's career was more damaging
to his good name than any that had gone before, perhaps, but it is not
necessary to give the particulars of it. He is in the mire of poverty
once more, now, as to his body, but his regal soul dwells in "offices,"
and hath dealings with no meaner matters than the nation's great
steamship lines. But be patient. The Phenix O'Byrne will rise from his
ashes yet again, and perch upon the Temple of Fame! That restless
brain of his, so prolific in invention, and those busy hands of his, so
cunning in execution, will create new surprises for the public, and a
new celebrity and prosperity for himself. What a mine of splendid talent
is in this man! what industry, what hopefulness, what perseverance,
what ingenuity! Felix would have been a power in the land if his rare
intellectual forces had been under the guiding control of principle. The
lack of that one quality is his ruin. If I had any principle to spare,
I would give it to him as cheerfully as to any man, for I bear him no
malice.

STEWART'S SPEECH.

Senator Stewart made a long speech and a very able one on the vexed
question of reconstruction, a couple of days ago. It is highly praised
by Republicans. The whole speech was good, but one of the happiest
points in it, perhaps, was toward its close, where he turned a favorite
Democratic whine against that party and sang its own tune to it with
a different style of words. I speak of that everlasting whine about
"conciliating the South"--if there were not rather a properer call
to conciliate the North! The North must suffer all the exasperating
distresses of a war brought on by the South, yet stand by and see the
fact that she can have anything to be conciliated about coolly ignored!
I insert a paragraph from the speech:

Again we are appealed to to conciliate the South. What further
concessions are we called upon to make? Have we not tried conciliation
from the foundation of the Government? Have we not sacrificed justice
and humanity to appease the vile passions, prejudice and tyranny
of slaveholders long enough? Are not our statute books black with
enactments to rivet the bonds of the slave? Are not the reports of
the highest judicial tribunal disfigured with elaborate defenses of
slaveholders' pretensions? Have we not submitted long enough to be
slave-catchers for the South? Have we not bowed low enough in the dust
in vain attempts to allay their royal displeasure? And after all
this were we not required to make a sacrifice of life and property
unparalleled in modern history to restrain the wrath of these haughty
rebels, engendered only by the election of Abraham Lincoln as President
of the United States? When I reflect upon the crimes committed because
of his first election, and when I reflect upon the manner of his death
because of his second election, and the fearful results that have
followed the commission of that crime, I sometimes feel that the power
of conciliation was then exhausted.

Continuing the subject, the Senator launches the following pregnant
paragraph at the conciliation-shrieking Democracy. It puts the matter
altogether in a new light, and shows that the North has a little
unsettled conciliation bill itself that needs liquidation:

But we did not stop at the death of Abraham Lincoln--we tried further
measures of conciliation, and offered oblivion for the past and a full
restoration in the Union on terms so liberal and magnanimous as to
astonish the civilized world, and were again repulsed and defied. And
still the Democratic party ask us to conciliate their rebel friends.
They say it is impossible to harmonize the conflicting opinions in
this country without conciliation. Let loyalty then be conciliated.
Let something be done to soothe the bereaved and sorrow-stricken in the
North. The passions of the human heart are not monopolized by those who
sought to destroy the Government. Let the rebels make some atonement for
the barbarities of Andersonville and Libby prison! Let them, at least
give a pledge in the shape of a constitutional amendment that the
widows and orphans of those who have fallen shall not be robbed of their
pensions by repudiation of the Federal debt through the instrumentality
of rebel votes! Let the world see by their conduct and bearing that
they were not victorious in the war and do not propose to humiliate our
soldiers or make loyalty odious. Let the rebel press cease to discharge
its venom in vile abuse of everything sacred to justice and honor. When
force is agitated let the strong be conciliated. When the President
betrays his party and, as he tells us "deliberates much upon the very
serious and important question" of resistance to the laws for the
restoration of the Union, let the scarred veterans of Grant, Sherman
and Sheridan, be conciliated. Let those conservatives who cry "keep the
peace" conciliate an insulted and outraged people. Those who suppressed
the rebellion will secure the fruits of victory--peaceably if they
can--forcibly if they must. Let those who believe the people are
actuated only by prejudice of race against race re-echo the rebel war
cry of "negro equality," "negro supremacy," and bend the pregnant hinges
of the knee to haughty rebels for office and power; but let them take
warning that they will fall where Buchanan fell, that they will not only
merit but receive the contempt of mankind.

Hon. Mr. Axtell, member of the House from California, has also placed
himself on record upon reconstruction, in a brief speech a day or two
ago, on the Democratic side of the question, and Senator Nye on the
Republican.

MARK TWAIN.

Territorial Enterprise, March 7, 1868

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS FROM WASHINGTON.

NUMBER IX.

[SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE ENTERPRISE.]

WASHINGTON, February, 1868

WASHINGTON RASCALITY.

Right here in this heart and home and fountain-head of law--in this
great factory where are forged those rules that create good order
and compel virtue and honesty in the other communities of the land,
rascality achieves its highest perfection. Here rewards are conferred
for conniving at dishonesty, but never for exposing it. I know several
cases that come under this head; persons who have lived here longer and
are better acquainted, know of a great many. I meet a man in the Avenue,
sometimes, whose history most residents of the city are acquainted with.
He was a clerk of high grade in one of the Departments; but he was a
stranger and had no rules of action for his guidance except some effete
maxims of integrity picked up in Sunday school--that snare to the feet
of the unsophisticated!--and some unpractical moral wisdom instilled
into him by his mother, who meant well, poor soul, but whose teachings
were morally bound to train up her boy for the poor-house. Well, nobody
told this stranger how he ought to conduct himself, and so he went
on following up those old maxims of his, and acting so strangely
in consequence, that the other clerks began to whisper and nod, and
exchange glances of commiseration--for they thought that his mind was
not right--that his brain had been touched by sorrow, or hard fortune,
or something. They observed that he never stole anything; by and by they
noticed that people who came to bribe him went away with an expression
of disappointment in their faces; finally it became apparent that he
worked very hard, and performed his tasks well, and never "shirked."
Then they grew a little afraid of him. They said he was very quiet and
peaceable, but then there was no telling when a lunatic was going to
get one of those spells on him and scalp somebody. Finally the young man
caught the high grand sachem of a great bureau perpetrating a flagrant
swindle on the Government! What did he do?--call for a division of the
proceeds, like an intelligent being? No! He went, like an ignorant,
besotted ass, and told the Secretary of the Department! The Secretary
of the Department said he would look into the matter; and added, "By the
way, what business is it of yours?" And the next thing the foolish
young man knew, he found himself discharged and the intelligent sachem
promoted. Then he went and told the Senators from the State all about it
and asked them to get him another place, and they told him very properly
that he had ruined himself, and that the official doors would all be
closed against him now. He soon found out that that was the truth. He
soon found out that you can't educate a boy in a Sunday school so as
to make him useful to his country. That young man is idle to this day.
Nobody has tried harder to get employment than he, but they all know his
story; and they always refuse him. Everybody shuns him because everybody
knows he is afflicted with a loathsome leprosy--the strange, foreign
leprosy of honesty--and they are afraid they might catch it. There isn't
any danger, maybe, but then they don't like to take any chances.

Why, no one would ever imagine the absurdities that imbecile was guilty
of before he discovered what a mistake his education had been. When he
found out that they admit bad women into private rooms in one of the
Departments at all hours of the night he went and told people about it,
as if he had discovered some great thing. He was always carrying around
some old stale piece of news like that. And when he found out that in
the basement of another Department they feed and lodge and pay salaries
to 120 New York election sharps who do nothing in the world, and that
their names are set down in the record books, not as Michael O'Flaherty,
Dennis O'Flannigan, Patrick O'Dougherty, and so on, but always simply as
"FIRE AND LIGHTS," he went and told that also. And when he learned
that one of the heads of the Printing Bureau hires bindery girls with
especial reference to their unchastity, and that it was proved by
Government investigation and duly published in a book that he sometimes
sleeps with two of them at a time and has the free run of his harem to
choose from, and that he flourishes around Washington, now, the best
dressed and gallantest officer the Government has, he even thought that
trifle a matter of sufficient importance to run around and talk about.
Why, when the Tice meter was covertly foisted upon the public by the
Government, and every distiller in America peremptorily commanded to
come forward and buy one at from $600 to $1,500, when a better machine
could have been furnished for just half the money, he said he believed
there was a ten million dollar swindle behind all that, and that certain
high officials were privy to it and reaping a vast profit from it--which
was no doubt true as gospel, but where is the wisdom in talking about
these dangerous topics?

I stopped in at a fine boarding-house last night to see a friend, and
the landlady came in to collect her bill. She mentioned the fact that
she had two handsomely furnished apartments which she would like to rent
to someone. I said I knew of several Senators and Congressmen who would
be glad to have them. She said she would not venture to risk that kind
of people! I thought she was jesting, but she was not. A gent of a
Senator had called and engaged those rooms for him two months before he
was to arrive--with the understanding that he was to occupy them during
the whole session. He came, and said they were perfectly satisfactory.
After a while he wanted some more furniture added--which was done, at
a cost of two hundred dollars. He staid two months, said he was still
perfectly satisfied with the apartments, and could have no desire
to leave them, but for the fact that some friends had taken up their
residence in another part of the town, and he wished to be near them--so
he was going to move. He did not deny that the agent's contract was
duly authorized, but he said, "Have you any writing to show for it?" She
hadn't. He said, "Well!"--and left. The law does not permit members of
Congress to be sued. So there was no redress. The breached contract had
to remain breached.

She rented the rooms to a Territorial delegate, but refused to let him
have them unless he would take them for the remainder of the session,
because she had a chance at the moment to rent them to a gentleman for
a month or two, and she would rather have a gentleman than a Congressman
because Congressmen kept such late hours and burned so much fuel and
gas. He occupied the rooms twenty-four hours, expressed himself entirely
pleased with them, but had found lodgings which were cheaper and would
do him as well. And he moved. He moved first, when nobody was watching,
and said that afterward. He did not deny his contract either, but
refused to fulfill it or give any redress. The law cannot touch the
delegate. Isn't this a curious state of things? Isn't it refreshing to
see men break laws so coolly whose sole business is law-making? I wonder
if all the Congressmen are so unreliable? If they are, I think I could
subscribe to this landlady's suggestive remark that it is pleasanter to
have a "gentleman" around than a Congressman.

I said I would be glad to have her general opinion of Washington
probity; and she said her opinion was that it did not exist in a
very great degree. She believed that the whole city was polluted with
peculation and all other forms of rascality--debauched and demoralized
by the wholesale dishonesty that prevails in every single department of
the Washington Government, great and small. She said that false weights
were used in the market, the grocery stores, the butcher shops and all
such places. The meat a butcher sells you for seven pounds can never be
persuaded to weigh more than five and a half in your kitchen scales at
home; a grocer's pound of butter usually weights only three-quarters in
scales that are unconscious and have no motive to deceive. They paint
rocks and add them to your coal; they put sand in your sugar; lime in
your flour; water in your milk; turpentine in your whisky; clothespins
in your sausages; turnips in your canned peaches; they will rather cheat
you out of ten cents than make a dollar out of you by honest dealing.
That was her opinion. What little I have seen of Washington in the short
time I have been here, leads me to think it must be correct.

The Delegation.

Senator Nye is absent, temporarily. I see by the telegrams that he
was to be one of the speakers at a grand Grant mass meeting at Cooper
Institute, a night or two ago. Mr. Ashley is attending to his duties as
usual in the House. Senator Stewart is working hard, on Nevada matters
of various kinds, particularly, and on everything of importance that
comes before the Senate, in a general way. He is about he hardest
working man in Congress I believe. Mr. Stewart has just reported back
from committee a bill to straighten out all public land entanglements
in Nevada, which will place Nevada's lands in such a shape that she can
handle them with facility instead of finding her hands constantly tied
by disabling rulings of the Interior Department. Stewart's School of
Mines has received high commendations from all persons interested
in mining interests, and there appears to be no opposition to it of
consequence in Congress. It is very likely to pass, shortly. Somebody
got up a counter bill to establish a Bureau of Mines in Washington,
instead, and put it under the control of that poor, decrepit,
bald-headed, played-out, antediluvian Old Red Sandstone formation
which they call the Smithsonian Institute. What the mischief would that
drowsing old National Ass do with as live a thing as a mining interest?
Just as usual, it would go after the "palezoic formation," and if it
found that there wasn't any palezoic formation about first class mines,
it wouldn't ever care a cent about those mines. It is a cussed old
palezoic formation itself, and has no business going around her in its
shroud among living men at this day of the world. Its Bureau of Mines
died early.

Mines! The idea of the Smithsonian Institute meddling with mines; and
with shafts and tunnels and whims; and with swarms of workmen; and with
the stir and bustle and blasphemy of teamsters; and with steam engines
and the clatter and crash of desperate forty-stamp mills! The idea of
a toothless old grandmother going to war! Read what it is that this
venerable Palezoic Formation is worrying itself about now--from its last
annual report:

"QUESTIONS IN ISSUE--1. What classifications may be adopted for the
discoveries made in Belgium and neighboring countries of objects
anterior to the Carlovingian era?

"2. Is the ogival style to be considered as the natural and complete
development of the Roman style?

"3. What is conclusively known respecting the different kinds of
horseshoes found in Gallo-Roman mines, and the manner of using them?

"4. Should churches be made to front toward the east?

"5. To determine the age of objects in allex from their degree of
elaboration."

If they gave the dreaming Institute supervision of our mines out there,
it would spend the first twenty-five years prospecting for Gallo-Roman
horseshoes, and the next twenty-five trying to find out how the
Gallo-Romans of the rabbit-skin robe and the grasshopper diet used
such jackass shoes as they might come across in abandoned shafts on the
Divide. Let her stick to her palezoic formation. That is her best hold.

The question on the admission of Mr. Thomas, of Maryland, to a seat in
the Senate, has been the main subject of debate for some time, now, next
to reconstruction. Thomas was always a rebel in opinion and sympathy,
but as he couldn't go into the field himself, he gave his son a hundred
dollars and started him to the Confederacy to join its armies. These
things will in all probability send him back to his constituents minus
his Senatorial seat. Mr. Steward has made two good speeches on the
question. An extract from his last will not be out of place here:

Mr. President, I do not wish to detain the Senate or to prolong this
debate; but I desire to make a single remark. I wish to ask the Senate
how this gentleman would appear if he were defending his property from
a suit in the South for confiscation? They confiscated in the South the
property of men who were loyal to this Government.

Not let me see where he would stand before a rebel Court in such a case;
or before a rebel Congress, if he were applying there for admission to
a seat. Suppose he had moved over there, and was elected to their
Congress, and they had a rule preventing any one who had been faithful
to this Government from taking a seat with them. What kind of a plea
could he make then? Could he not remind them of the fact that when the
war commenced he took his position with Jeff Davis, with Cobb, with
Toombs, and the rest of them, that there was no power in this Government
to sustain itself, and so declared in a letter in which he resigned an
important office, so as to give his indorsement to the movement they
were about to inaugurate! Could he not say, "I associated with your
patriotic leaders; I was a friend in the darkest hour of the rebellion
of Jefferson Davis; I, too, resigned a high office under the Government
of the United States to give aid and countenance to your movement?"
Could he not say that after the rebellion had been inaugurated, after he
had resigned this high office, he went to Maryland and there associated
with rebels; that he gave them his moral support; that he denied any
sympathy or aid to the Union men of this State; that he refused even to
vote under the Yankee Government; that he refused to take any of their
oaths of loyalty; that he refused to recognize the late United States in
any form? Could he not say further, "I do more than that. Being myself
past the age to do military duty, I furnish my only son to aid you in
gaining your independence; although poor, I gave him $100--all the money
I could raise--to send him, my only son, to you to aid you in achieving
your independence. Will you, therefore, take from me my property? Was
I disloyal to you? Have I not aided you?" Would not the argument be
answerable?

But it is said by the Senator from Pennsylvania that we must tolerate
differences of opinion. Sir, there are some differences of opinion that
we cannot tolerate and will not tolerate. We will not tolerate any man
in the opinion that this Government has no power to maintain its own
existence. We will not tolerate the opinion that the Union ought to
be dissolved. We will not tolerate secession. We will not tolerate the
opinion that secession is a constitution right. We fought against this
doctrine, and we fought against those who acted upon it. The verdict of
the war has established, if it has established any fact, that no such
opinion shall exist in this country.

The Postmaster.

That candidate for the Postmastership in San Francisco I spoke of in my
last, has "tied his horse up at Gadsby's." Well, I thought he would.

IMPEACHMENT.

It is dead for good, now, I suppose. It promised so fairly, two months
ago, that everybody boldly turned prophet and said it would certainly
succeed. But it didn't. Nobody's prophecies concerning Washington
matters ever come out right. Isaiah himself would be a failure here.
Hon. Thad. Stevens, the bravest old ironclad in the Capitol, fought hard
for impeachment, even when he saw that it could not succeed. He is not
choice in his language when he speaks on this subject, concerning his
fellow-committeemen and Congress generally. He simply says the whole
tribe of them are "Damned Cowards." It is the finest word painting any
Congressional topic has produced this session.

RECIPROCITY.

The Sandwich Islands Reciprocity treaty, having been reported back
favorably from the Committee on Foreign Relations, remains now to be
acted upon by the Senate. General McCook has visited every Senator
and talked with him, and almost all of them have expressed themselves
satisfied with the treaty and willing to vote for it. As he has done
all he can possibly do for the treaty, and as he is necessarily tired
of Washington by this time, General McCook proposes to leave for San
Francisco and the Islands in the steamer of March 1.

Miscellaneous.

The man who is here contesting Hon. Mr. Hooper's seat as delegate from
Utah, is a Mr. McGrorty, who was run for delegate as a practical joke.
McGrorty got 105 votes, and Hooper got a little over 15,000. This small
discrepancy don't worry McGrorty, however. He says the 15,000 would have
voted for him but were afraid of the bishops of the church. The fact is,
the contest will never come off. One hates to make a positive statement
about Washington affairs, but I venture to make that one because:
McGrorty did not serve a notice of contest on Hooper within 30 days
after the election, stating the grounds of the contest. United States
law makes this imperative. Congress will hardly go behind its own acts.
Therefore, I have ventured to say that the contesting in Congress of
this seat is a thing that will hardly get further than an inquiry by a
committee and die.

HAY.

Hay is somewhat cheaper than a week or two ago. It is now retailed at
five cents per pound and is to be had by the wagon load in this city at
about $75 or $80 per ton. Several loads of hay of an excellent quality
arrived here yesterday from St. Clair's Station on the Overland
route.--Territorial Enterprise.

In my time, hay items were a great moral stand-by. I thought you might
make some use of this one. I have known Dan de Quille to follow
a hay-wagon all over town, and write a new lie about it on every
corner--and make twelve distinct items about the same wagon, and fetch
it from every locality in the Territory of Nevada from which a hay-wagon
could by any possibility hail from. The driver's name might be stated
correctly enough, in the first one, to be Smith, but the eleven aliases
that marched their disastrous course through the succeeding ones,
infallibly caused that driver to be looked upon with the gravest
suspicion forever after.

WOOD.

Firewood is at present rather scarce. It sells in this city at $25
per cord for Washoe, and $30 for nut pine. It is a little cheaper--so
business men say--to buy of the Chinese wood peddlers.--Territorial
Enterprise

In my time, also, when the morning inquest failed, and other matters
were scarce, it was considered good jurisprudence to fall back on wood.
Wood is a subject that is able to stir the souls of any community.
Wood is a thing that can always be safely elaborated. If I had all the
wood-piles of my conscience, that I stole from Daggett and Tom Fitch
with no other object than that Dan might discourse learnedly to the
public about the damnable quality of the wood that was being imposed
upon an outraged public by the satraps of Washoe Valley, I would be
a happier man than I am. I do not know what satraps is, and I do not
suppose that Dan knew what satraps was, either, but he always considered
it to be a crusher, anyway. He always regarded it as a word to be
resorted to only in the extremest emergencies.

ROUGH.--Several large quartz wagons upset yesterday on the road leading
from this city to Gold Hill, but we heard of no accident to life or limb
nor serious damage to any of the wagons.--Territorial Enterprise.

I am just as well satisfied as I am of anything, that that disaster
never occurred. In my time it was never looked upon as any trick at all
to turn over a lot of quartz wagons on the Divide to fill out a local
column with. To find a petrified man, or break a stranger's leg, or cave
an imaginary mine, or discover some dead Indians in a Gold Hill tunnel,
or massacre a family at Dutch Nick's, were feats and calamities that
we never hesitated about devising when the public needed matters of
thrilling interest for breakfast. The seemingly tranquil ENTERPRISE
office was a ghastly factory of slaughter, mutilation and general
destruction in those days.

These old ENTERPRISE fabrications about wood and hay and suffering
quartz wagons, read more pleasantly to me, now, than any amount of
poetry. And when I come across items about Jack Perry, and Birdsall,
and Steve Gillis, and those other highway robbers who practice upon
unoffending traveling showmen on the Divide, they are full of interest
to me, especially if it appears that the parties have got into any
trouble. I do not see their names often, now--which encourages me to
think they have pretty much all got into the Penitentiary at last,
maybe.

I was at a banquet given to the honorable "Society of Good Fellows,"
last night, and it was a particularly cheerful affair. I mention
this subject more particularly, because I wish to introduce in
this connection what I consider to be a genuine uncompromising and
unmitigated "first-rate notice." Let the Washington Express be your
model in matters of this kind hereafter. The question being on the
fourth regular toast:

Fourth. Woman:

"All honor to woman, the sweetheart, the wife;

The delight of the fireside by night and by day.

Who never does anything wrong in her life,

Except when permitted to have her own way."

"To this toast the renowned humorist and writist, Mark Twain, responded
and it is superfluous to say that while he stood upon the floor
declaiming for the fair divinities, all that banqueting crew laid down
with laughter. His sliding scene; his trials and tribulations; those
he had paid for--and not; his valentine; his sublime inspirations and
humorous deductions set the very table in a roar. He's a phunny fellow
and no mistake, and blessed, indeed, were the G.F.'s with the honor of
his company."

There isn't anything very mild about that, is there? I hadn't a just
appreciation of how infernally funny I had been in that speech until I
read that notice. I had an idea that the New York Herald and the Tribune
had complimented me fully up to my deserts several times, but I guess
not--I like the wild enthusiasm of the Express better.

It was a very, very jolly entertainment throughout. I observe one
thing on this side that is as it should be. At such banquets as I have
attended here and in New York, I noticed that among the regular toasts
they always had a couple for "The Pacific Coast" and "The Press of the
Pacific," and that they give them prominence. To the one last named Lord
Fairfax of the New Orleans Picayune responded in the happiest terms last
night.

MARK TWAIN.

Territorial Enterprise, March 13, 1868

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS FROM WASHINGTON.

NUMBER X.

[SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE ENTERPRISE.]

THE GRAND COUP D'ETAT

WASHINGTON, February 22.

This birthday of Washington was historical before; it is doubly so now.
Yesterday the news spread abroad over the town that the President had
sent General Thomas to eject Secretary Stanton from the War Office
and assume the duties of the post himself. It was an open defiance
of Congress--a kingly contempt for long settled forms and customs--a
reckless disregard of law itself! It was the first time, in the history
of the nation, that the Chief Magistrate had presumed to dismiss a
Cabinet officer without the consent of the Senate while that body was in
season.

The excitement was intense, and it steadily augmented as night
approached. Hotels and saloons were crowded with men, who moved
restlessly about, talking vehemently and accompanying their words with
emphatic gestures. The sidewalks were thronged with hurrying passengers,
and everywhere the sound of trampling feet and a discord of angry voices
was in the air. Old citizens remembered no night like this in Washington
since Lincoln was assassinated.

Strangely enough, the men who should have been most concerned about the
storm were the only souls that rode serenely above it. Mr. Seward and
the President sat at a state dinner in the White House, cheery and
talkative among distraught and pensive guests; General Grant was at the
theatre; Stanton made his bed in the peaceful War Office, and General
Thomas capered gaily among fantastic maskers at a carnival fandango!
Meanwhile the tempest swept the continent on the wings of the telegraph.

The Senate sat at night, and multitudes flocked to the Capitol to stare
and listen. The House resolved to make Saturday a working day for once,
and both bodies decreed that for the first time since Washington's death
Congress should transact business on the anniversary of his birthday.

This morning "impeachment" was in everybody's mouth; Thomas' arrest
was discussed in the streets and in the hotels; Stanton was lauded by
Republicans for sleeping in the War Office and holding the political
fortress--and cursed by the Democrats; that Hon. Judd and Schenck
watched with him till 3 A. M., and that Hon. Thayer remained all night,
brought those gentlemen a fair share likewise, of the praise and the
blame.

By 9 o'clock--full three hours before the sitting of Congress, long
processions of men and women were wending their way toward the Capitol
in the nipping winter air, and all vacant spaces about the doors were
packed with people waiting to get in. When I reached there at noon, it
was difficult to make one's way through the wide lobbies and passages,
so great was the throng. There was not a vacant seat in the galleries,
and all the doorways leading to them were full of tiptoeing men and
women, with a swarm of anxious citizens at their backs, eagerly watching
for such scanty crumbs of comfort as chance opportunities of glancing
between their shoulders or under their arms. I went immediately to the
reporters' gallery--it was about full, too, and excited doorkeepers
and sentinels were challenging all comers and manfully resisting an
assaulting party of men, women and children who were the fathers,
brothers, wives, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, schoolmates, admirers
of editors, correspondents, reporters, members of Congress, Cabinet
officers and the President of the United States--and consequently they
demanded to know why they couldn't go into the reporters' gallery! That
was it--why couldn't they? Some people are unreasonable, and some don't
know anything; these parties belong pretty exclusively to the one or the
other of these classes. They were all--every one of them--going to
have the doorkeeper discharged. They said so. [Surely such exceedingly
influential people would not threaten what they could not perform.] But
they did not get in. But others had got seats who were not strictly of
the press, I suspect; twenty perhaps--among them several ladies. They
were a good deal in the way, but they did not mind that. I was glad to
see that it did not discommode them.

The scene within was spirited--it was unusual, too. The great galleries
presented a sea of eager, animated faces; above these, more were massed
in the many doorways; below, in the strong light, a few members walked
nervously up and down, outside the rows of seats; a very few were
writing--telegrams no doubt; the great majority had their heads together
in groups and couples, talking earnestly; in every countenance strong
feeling was depicted; a member from Maine was making a speech about a
patent cooking stove, but never a soul was listening to him. Some
said the stove business was gotten up by the Democrats to stave off
impeachment; others said the Radicals got it up to gain time and give
the Reconstruction Committee a chance to make up its report. Everybody
waited impatiently, and watched the door sharply--they wanted to see
that Committee come. By and by Mr. Paine entered and there was a buzz;
but it was a disappointment--he only spoke a word to a colleague and
went out again. The tiresome stove man finished. It was a relief to the
galleries, who somehow seemed to look upon this trifling about cooking
stoves as a fraud upon themselves, and a sort of affront, as well,
thrust forward, as it was, at a time when any idiot ought to know that
impeachment was the order of the day!

No committee yet. Something must be done. Motion to adjourn, "in honor
of Washington." Amendment--to read Washington's Farewell Address. Both
were voted down. Ayes and nays called on both, and the long, tedious,
monotonous calling of names and answering followed. The vote was
no--everybody knew what it would be before. Before the roll call was
finished, Boutwell came in [sensation]; afterwards, at intervals,
Bingham [sensation], Paine [sensation], several other committee men,
and finally Thad. Stevens himself. [Super-extraordinary sensation!] The
haggard, cadaverous old man dragged himself to his place and sat down.
There was a soul in his sunken eyes, but otherwise he was a corpse that
was ready for the shroud. He held his precious impeachment papers in his
hand, signed at last! In the eleventh hour his coveted triumph had come.
Richelieu was not nearer the grave, Richelieu was not stirred up by a
sterner pride, when he came from his bed of death to crown himself with
his final victory.

The buzzing and whispering died out, and an impressive silence reigned
in its stead. The Speaker addressed the galleries in a clear voice
that reached the farthest recesses of the house, and warned the
great concourse that the slightest manifestation of approbation or
disapprobation of anything about to be said, would be followed by the
instant expulsion of the offending person from the galleries; he
read the rules, at some length, upon the subject, and charged the
Sergeant-at-Arms and his subordinates to perform their duty without
hesitation or favor. Then Mr. Stevens rose up and in a voice which was
feeble but yet distinctly audible because of the breathless stillness
that hung over the great audience like a spell, he read the resolution
that was to make plain the way for the impeachment of the President of
the United States!

The words that foreshadowed so mighty an event sent a thrill through the
assemblage, but there was no manifestation of the emotion save in the
sudden lighting of their countenances. They ventured upon no applause,
nor upon any expression of dissent. Mr. Brooks of New York took the
floor, and in a frenzied speech protested against impeachment, and
threatened civil war if the measure carried. Mr. Bingham made an able
speech in favor of the movement. The ball was fairly opened now, and
speech followed speech from 2 in the afternoon till almost midnight.
During all that time the galleries were filled with people, and their
excited interest showed no symptoms of abatement. The House adjourned to
meet at 10 A. M. on Monday, instead of at noon. It has been a tremendous
day. The nation has seen few that were so filled with ominous signs and
bodings of disaster.

When it was moved to-day to read Washington's Farewell Address, Mr.
Ingersoll inquired of a neighbor if it would not be more appropriate to
read Andrew Johnson's Farewell Address! In this connection I will remark
that the following was picked up in one of the lobbies. It was entitled

"ANDREW JOHNSON'S FAREWELL ADDRESS.

"Soft you; a word or two before you go. I have done the State some
damage, and they know it; No more of that:--I pray you, in your letters,
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am; some
things extenuate, But set down naught in malice; then must you speak
Of one that ruled not wisely nor too well; Of one, easily jealous, and,
being wrought, Perplexed in the extreme, did Like the base Judean, throw
a pearl away, Richer than all his tribe!" How the Delegations

From the Pacific coast will stand on impeachment, no man can tell till
Monday. You know as well as I, that the Oregon delegation will be likely
to favor it; that the Nevada and California Senators will be likely to
favor it; that Ashley and Higby in the House will be likely to favor it,
and Johnson and Axtell be apt to oppose. But these gentlemen cannot be
seen to-night, and it would be hard to guess what effect the flood of
telegrams may have that will roll in upon us tomorrow from all parts of
the country.

MARK TWAIN.

Territorial Enterprise, April 7, 1868

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS FROM WASHINGTON.

NUMBER XI.

WASHINGTON, March 20, 1868

The Mining School

Dwinelle's curious resolution concerning Senator Stewart's proposed
mining school has reached here--and will be laid before Congress and in
all human probability will be tabled there. It is a funny document,
take it as you will. It has two clauses in it that are especially
entertaining, and would be still more so if they were set to music.
One of them proposes to exclude all foreigners from the school--which
proposition is narrow enough in policy, and ungenerous enough, withal,
to have been resurrected from the dark ages. We that have benefitted so
much from the labors and discoveries of Europe's men of science; we that
have to send to her so often for teachers; we that are as welcome in her
great mining schools as her own citizens, and are freely according every
privilege which they enjoy and upon the same terms, ought to be ashamed
of so selfish, so poor-spirited a measure as this. The Freiburg school
is full of Americans. They will not be pleased to learn how America
proposes to show her appreciation of open-handed German hospitality.
Measures like Dwinelle's are not the things that made the Californian
name a synonym for liberality and generosity.

The other clause I have spoken of proposes to divide the revenue from
the mines among a number of States and let them endow with it as many
mining departments in as many colleges. The idea is threadbare and old.
The Japanese astrologer, Prof. Blake, who knows so much more than it is
lawful for any one man to know, is here, now, trying to get the
revenues from the mining States conferred upon Columbia College, for the
establishing of a mining department in that institution.

Two hundred and eighty other colleges are begging for the same revenues
for the same purpose--and Dwinelle comes in at this late day with the
same old impracticable idea. Why, even the poor purblind, broken-winded,
Old Red Sandstone palezoic saurian, the Smithsonian Institute, has
awakened from its ancient dream of Roman horseshoes, Grecian funeral
processions, and pre-Adamite ferns and turnips, and it wants the
revenues to endow a Mining Bureau with! And why shouldn't the old
drowser have its Mining Bureau to fossilize along with its mastodon
jaw-teeth, its Egyptian mummies, its pickled Indians and its
Agricultural Department that never raises anything? Why shouldn't it
have it and so save some old century plant of science from starvation
by giving him the professorship? No greater good would be done by
Dwinelle's diffusive process.

Dwinelle should have gotten up something original, anyhow. Even the
intelligent contrabands are ahead of him in this thing.

A negro in a Mississippi Convention wants the mining revenues to
establish a Mining Bureau in his district school with, and has been
making speeches on the subject. He says they have no mine, but they can
build one for purposes of practical instruction, as the Czar has done
in St. Petersburg. He says his shaft would be full of water most of the
time, on account of the ground being swampy, but then mines have to have
pumps anyhow, cannot be complete without them, and where would be the
use of pumps if there were no water to pump? How like are the ideas of
wise men! This fellow wants to exclude whites from the school! He is no
more liberal with American whites than Dwinelle is with foreigners.

They want a mining department in New Jersey. They haven't any mines
either. They want it in Indiana, in Florida and the icebergs of Maine (I
suppose there are icebergs in Maine--I have never been there). They want
it in Texas, and next the Indians and the Chinamen will be clamoring for
it, no doubt.

If this little revenue of a quarter of a million is to be divided up
and frittered away as proposed by the resolution of Dwinelle, let the
Mississippi contrabands have a share to "build a mine" with. Surely a
quarter of a million dollars ought to accomplish more good when divided
up among a quarter of a million colleges than it could when concentrated
in one school. The Smithsonian Institute makes a strong appeal in its
usual lucid style, but I can only give an extract, wherein it shows
its peculiar competency in the matter of--God only knows what--reducing
silver ores, maybe. Read:

"It has already been remarked, that in these bypodendrous, the disurion
of the laminar cantoid is preceded by the formation of a quadrilateral
hexahedron, which is converted into super-palezoic spherules; now the
same is the case in the disruption of all the other laminar dioramics,
just as in the constricted unduloid, until the rupture of equilibrium
occurs and thus therefore makes the welkin ring."

Well, I should say so. I always had that same idea myself, but some
how I never could express it, you know. I knew just as well as I knew
anything, that it would fetch the welkin if I ever could get at it
right, but then the hexahedron palezoic cantenoids were always too many
for me. For good moral, unexciting light literature for the home circle,
commend me to the official documents of the Smithsonian Institute.

Such unpracticable schemes as those proposed in the California
resolutions obstruct and delay legislation and accomplish no good. It
would be much better to write Congressmen and suggest amendments to
pending bills then clog their way with memorials which must be discussed
in Congress and valuable time thereby lost.

A Good Job in Danger.

The firm of Kellogg, Hueston & Co., assayors, of San Francisco, have
been endeavoring to get an ingeniously worded bill through Congress to
give them the monopoly of assaying and refining for the Branch Mint
and take that service entirely out [of] the hands of the Mint. The
prodigious job occupies small room in the bill, and is crushed into
seeming insignificance by a great display of other matters of pretended
importance, but it will probably fail. A large amount of lobbying has
been done in its favor, but some prominent New York Californian firms
have protested so strongly against the measure that there is every
reason to believe it will be killed. It is thought that the committee
will report in favor of taking the assaying and refining of gold and
silver bullion away from the Mint and giving it to assayers generally.
Whether this will improve matters or not, remains to be seen. It is
hardly likely that it will.

Another One.

The Goat Island scheme of the Western Pacific Railroad Company looks
dubious. It promises to fail in the House. It proposes to give the
company a portion of Yerba Buena Island for a depot, with the condition
that in time of war the Government may take and occupy the premises and
the buildings as long as may be necessary, and pay the company such sum
as shall be fair and reasonable for such use and occupation. The House
Committee are not disposed to report the measure favorably.

Governmental Blasting. "On ye fifth day of November Guy Fawkes he did
aspire To blow up Kings and Parlement Wi' dreadful gun powdire."

And four days ago, as every one believed, a modern Guy Fawkes aspired to
blow up Capitol and Congress wi' dreadful glycerine. But so far he has
not succeeded. The news that 180 pounds of glycerine had been stolen in
New York and was doubtless then under the foundations of the Capitol,
set Washington in a flutter. It was enough glycerine to blow up the
United States, let alone the Capitol. Sir Christopher Wren shook the
massive walls and towers of Old St. Paul's to "pi" with 18 pounds of
blasting powder. Then who would be willing to be in the District of
Columbia when 180 pounds of nitro-glycerine were touched off? I sat
at my window, 500 yards from the Capitol, all day, and waited for the
gorgeous show. In fancy I could see the vast dome shot suddenly toward
the zenith, like a giant's helmet, and a chaos of shattered columns,
tiles and capitals whizzing after it with here and there a Senator going
end over end, among the fragments, the half of a Representative gaining
on a Supreme Judge with his legs stove up, a gallery full of "niggers"
sailing toward the sun, mutilated lobbyists whistling aloft like
rockets, but still hitched to chairmen of committees by the buttonhole
process, and a gallery of reporters chasing the general wreck through
the air, serene in the contemplation of so sublime an item!

But the exhibition did not come off--postponed on account of the
weather, maybe. Visitors to the Capitol that day fidgeted around
uneasily for a few minutes and then left the building; and it was
observed that when they walked through the lower corridors, they
walked very fast. Congressmen looked uncomfortable; their speeches were
rambling and disjointed, and the usual squabble over adjournment was
omitted. There was some excuse for a scare. There are men in Washington
who would blow up the Capitol fast enough if they could achieve an
illustrious name, like Booth, by doing it and be worshipped as Booth is
worshipped. All they want is the nitro-glycerine and the opportunity.
A newspaper hint that the glycerine telegram was an advertising dodge,
helped to destroy belief in the blasting conspiracy, and the fact that
several days have elapsed without disaster, has about finished it.

IMPEACHMENT.

A few days ago, everybody was entirely satisfied that the President
would be impeached and removed with all possible dispatch. To-day nobody
has a settled opinion about the matter. The Democrats do not howl about
impeachment much now, a fact that awakens suspicion. Maybe they are
satisfied that to martyr the President would make a vast amount of
Democratic capital for the next election. Martyrdom is the coveted
thing, now, by everybody. The Republicans show a disposition to quit
talking about the impeaching of a President on stern principle for
a contemptuous violation of law and his oath of office; they show a
disposition to drop the high moral ground that such a precedent must not
be sent down to hamper posterity, and they already openly talk about the
"impolicy" of impeaching. It would be curious to hear a Court talking of
the "impolicy" of convicting a man for murder in the first degree. This
everlasting compelling of honesty, morality, justice and the law to
bend the knee to policy, is the rottenest thing in a republican form
of government. It is cowardly, degraded and mischievous; and in its own
good time it will bring destruction upon this broad-shouldered fabric of
ours. I believe the Prince of Darkness could start a branch hell in the
District of Columbia (if he has not already done it), and carry it
on unimpeached by the Congress of the United States, even though the
Constitution were bristling with articles forbidding hells in this
country. And if there were moneyed offices in it, Congress would take
stock in the concern, too, and in less than three weeks Fessenden and
Washburne would fill it full of their poor relations. What a rotten,
rotten, and unspeakable nasty concern this nest of departments is, with
its brainless battalions of Congressional poor-relation-clerks and their
book-keeping, pencil-sharpening strumpets.

In Abeyance.

M. H. Farley's confirmation as Surveyor General of California is still
in abeyance in the Senate. He comes well recommended, but latterly the
Senate has been thinking more of impeachment than Executive sessions.

If Ross Browne could rush his Ministership to China before the Senate
right away, he might secure a confirmation; but if the matter is delayed
till Mr. Burlingame arrives there will be chances against him. Mr.
B.'s voice will have great weight, and his late letter to the State
Department evidences that he has a man to suggest for the place--Dr.
Wells, no doubt, the distinguished Secretary to the China mission.

The gentleman who came here to get the San Francisco Postmastership
still "keeps his horse tied up at Gadsby's." I took a vast amount of
trouble to secure that horse in that position for the future, because I
thought Upton was to have the Postmastership; but it seems the President
not only promised the gentleman I requested to go to him that he would
cancel the horse-man's appointment, but with aggravated generosity said
he believed he would not appoint anybody at all for the present. That
was drawing it unnecessarily fine. I think I must go and have a "Talk
with the President" myself, like "J.B.S." and "Mack," and those other
newspaper correspondents.

Later.

I, even I, have had a most important "Talk with the President"--this
evening at the general reception. I said:

"How is your health, Mr. President?" And he said:

"It cannot be of any particular consequence to you, young man. I keep a
doctor."

How do you think that will be likely to affect the political complexion
of the times? It will complicate things some, won't it?

MARK TWAIN.

Territorial Enterprise, April 24, 1868

[written by Enterprise Staff]

MARK TWAIN

This celebrated humorist, after having visited the Holy Land and all the
principal cities of the old world, will again once more press his
foot upon his native sagebrush this morning. We received the following
telegram from him last night dated at Coburn's: "I am doing well, having
crossed one divide without getting robbed anyway. Mark Twain."

Owing to the dissatisfaction of many in regard to the smallness of the
hall [Athletic Hall], in which it was at first proposed that Mark should
lecture, arrangements have been made by which the Opera House is secured
for this Monday and Tuesday nights: the Webb sisters having very kindly
given their consent to release the house to him for those two nights.
This arrangement having been made, he will not lecture on Saturday night
as was advertised--he will have enough to do for three or four days to
shake hands and swap yarns with his old friends. The box office will
open on Monday from 10 o'clock A.M. till 4 o'clock P.M. when seats may
be secured for both nights.

Territorial Enterprise, late April 1868

[written by Enterprise Staff]

Mark Twain we have a right to claim as a Washoe humorist, and claiming
him let us not fail to do what we can to encourage him by showing him
that we appreciate his efforts to amuse and instruct us. He comes back
to us after many wanderings by sea and land in foreign countries, with
his mind and portfolio enriched with choice collections of fact and
fancy gleaned in places holy and not holy. He is a living budget of not
the jokes of all nations but of jokes upon all nations, suggested by
their peculiarities of manners, customs, and appearance. We predict for
him the most crowded and brilliant audience of the season. All who
have ever seen or heard of Mark Twain and his genius as a brilliant
descriptive writer, wit, and humorist--and who has not?--will desire to
go with him aboard the Quaker City, carpet bag in hand, and gaze on the
sleek faces and heads of the pious pilgrims to the Holy Land, all as yet
unafflicted with the wilting nausea of sea-sickness, and looking forward
with godly and courageous eyes toward the sacred soil and cities of the
country in which scriptures were born; all will wish to accompany Mark
to Palestine and ramble with him among the musty old palaces, churches,
and tombs--in short, all will wish to follow him wherever he goes.
As his followers will be many, let those who do not desire to be left
behind on the voyage go early tomorrow and secure seats for the through
trip.



THE SAN FRANCISCO DAILY MORNING CALL

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, June 7, 1864

BURGLAR ARRESTED

John Richardson, whose taste for a cigar must be inordinate, gratified
it on Saturday night last by forcing his way into a tobacconist's on
Broadway, near Kearny street, and helping himself to fourteen hundred
"smokes." In his hurry, however, he did not select the best, as the
stolen tobacco was only valued at fifty dollars. He was congratulating
himself last evening in a saloon on Dupont street, in having secured
weeds for himself and all his friends, when lo! a Rose bloomed before
his eyes, and he wilted. The scent of that flower of detectives was too
strong even for the aroma of the stolen cigars. Richardson was conveyed
to the station-house, where a kit of neat burglar's tools was found on
his person. He is now reposing his limbs on an asphaltum floor--a bed
hard as the ways of unrighteousness.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, June 11, 1864

ANOTHER CHAPTER IN THE MARKS FAMILY HISTORY

Samuel Marks had Dora Marks and Henry Wood before the Police Court
yesterday, charged with assault and battery. The plaintiff said that
Dora and Henry came into his shop, on Washington street, last Tuesday,
and, without saying a word as to how they came there, knocked him into
a senseless condition by blows on his head. Henry testified that he saw
the fair Dora enter Samuel's shop, and shortly after he heard a clatter
as if heaven and earth were bumping together, and running down to
Samuel's doorway, and standing by the door-sill because he had no right
to enter the premises, he saw Samuel hit the lamb-like Dora a slap on
the sconce with a tailor's press board, and instantly after a huge pair
of shears came flying at him. Before he could dodge them, they partially
scalped his cranium, causing a plentiful flow of the ruby, and he
thought that he had better prospect in other diggings, not so dangerous,
and left. The meek and war-worn Dora sat like a penitent Magdalen, and
had nary word to say, and the austere decision of the Judge was that the
respective defendants, Henry and Dora, do appear in that Court this day,
and receive sentence for their crimes.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, June 15, 1864

PETTY POLICE COURT TRANSACTIONS

It is surprising to notice what trifling, picayune cases are frequently
brought before the Police Judge by parties who conceive that their
honor has been attacked, a gross outrage committed on their person
or reputation, and they must have justice "though the heavens fall."
Distinguished counsel are employed, witnesses are summoned and made
to dance attendance to the successive steps of the complaints, and
the patience of the Judge and Reporters is severely tested by the time
occupied in their investigation which, after a close examination of
witnesses, cross-questioning by the counsel, and perhaps some brilliant
peroration at the close, with the especial injunction to the Court that
it were better that ten guilty men should escape punishment rather than
one innocent (one eye obliquely winking to their client) person should
suffer; with a long breath of satisfaction that the agony is over
about a hair pulling case, a lost spoon or a broken window, the Judge
dismisses the case, and, (if we must say it) the lawyers pocket their
fees, and the client pockets his or her indignation that the defendant
escaped the punishment which to their view was so richly deserved. Thus,
yesterday, William Towerick, a deaf old man, complained that a woman
struck him with a basket, on Mission street. The good looking German
interpreter almost woke up the dead in his efforts to shout in the
plaintiff's auricular appendage the respective questions propounded by
counsel, but had eventually to give it up as a bad job and let the
old lady the plaintiff's wife, try. Case dismissed. Then comes
another complainant with a long chapter of grievances against one Rosa
Bustamente, who didn't like her little poodle dog. Bad words from both
parties and a flower pot thrown at somebody, bursting five panes of
glass valued at twenty-five cents each. Court considered that plaintiff
and defendant stood on nearly equal footing, and ordered the case
dismissed.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, June 23, 1864

ANOTHER OF THEM

At five minutes to nine o'clock last night, San Francisco was favored by
another earthquake. There were three distinct shocks, two of which were
very heavy, and appeared to have been done on purpose, but the third
did not amount to much. Heretofore our earthquakes--as all old
citizens experienced in this sort of thing will recollect--have been
distinguished by a soothing kind of undulating motion, like the roll of
waves on the sea, but we are happy to state that they are shaking her
up from below now. The shocks last night came straight up from that
direction; and it is sad to reflect, in these spiritual times, that they
might possibly have been freighted with urgent messages from some of
our departed friends. The suggestion is worthy a moment's serious
reflection, at any rate.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, June 25, 1864

A TRIP TO THE CLIFF HOUSE

If one tire of the drudgeries and scenes of the city, and would breathe
the fresh air of the sea, let him take the cars and omnibuses, or,
better still, a buggy and pleasant steed, and, ere the sea breeze sets
in, glide out to the Cliff House. We tried it a day or two since. Out
along the railroad track, by the pleasant homes of our citizens, where
architecture begins to put off its swaddling clothes, and assume form
and style, grace and beauty, by the neat gardens with their green
shrubbery and laughing flowers, out where were once sand hills and
sand-valleys, now streets and homesteads. If you would doubly enjoy
pure air, first pass along by Mission Street Bridge, the Golgotha of
Butcherville, and wind along through the alleys where stand the whiskey
mills and grunt the piggeries of "Uncle Jim." Breathe and inhale deeply
ere you reach this castle of Udolpho, and then hold your breath as long
as possible, for Arabia is a long way thence, and the balm of a thousand
flowers is not for sale in that locality. Then away you go over paved,
or planked, or Macadamized roads, out to the cities of the dead, pass
between Lone Mountain and Calvary, and make a straight due west course
for the ocean. Along the way are many things to please and entertain,
especially if an intelligent chaperon accompany you. Your eye will
travel over in every direction the vast territory which Swain, Weaver &
Co. desire to fence in, the little homesteads by the way, Dr. Rowell's
arena castle, and Zeke Wilson's Bleak House in the sand. Splendid road,
ocean air that swells the lungs and strengthens the limbs. Then there's
the Cliff House, perched on the very brink of the ocean, like a castle
by the Rhine, with countless sea-lions rolling their unwieldy bulks on
the rocks within rifle-shot, or plunging into and sculling about in
the foaming waters. Steamers and sailing craft are passing, wild fowl
scream, and sea-lions growl and bark, the waves roll into breakers, foam
and spray, for five miles along the beach, beautiful and grand, and
one feels as if at sea with no rolling motion nor sea-sickness, and the
appetite is whetted by the drive and the breeze, the ocean's presence
wins you into a happy frame, and you can eat one of the best dinners
with the hungry relish of an ostrich. Go to the Cliff House. Go ere the
winds get too fresh, and if you like, you may come back by Mountain Lake
and the Presidio, overlook the Fort, and bow to the Stars and Stripes as
you pass.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, June 25, 1864

CHARGE AGAINST A POLICE OFFICER

William H. Winans made a complaint in the Police Court, yesterday,
against Officer Forner, for assault and battery. From the testimony it
appeared that Forner had had an arrest of two persons and then delivered
them to the care of another officer. While the latter officer was
taking the men to the Station house, the plaintiff went up to one of
the prisoners to speak to him concerning his bail, when, as he alleges,
Forner took him by the collar, pushed him away, and struck him. The
Judge remarked that officers must not go beyond the law in the discharge
of their duties. It was not unfrequently the case that they displayed
abundant zeal concerning arrests that were wholly unjustifiable,
alluding more particularly to their making arrests without a warrant,
on the mere say-so of outside parties. They must either be an actual
witness of the offence or make an arrest by a warrant specially issued
for the purpose. After Forner had delivered his prisoners to another
officer his control over them ceased, and he had no right to exercise
the conduct alleged against him, and it should require him to appear
to-day for sentence.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, June 28, 1864

CHARGES AGAINST AN OFFICER

Lewis P. Ward prefers the following charges against Officer Forner,
and Judge Shepheard has issued subpoenas for the witnesses: Using
unnecessary violence in making an arrest; making the arrest without
authority, (without a warrant and merely upon the say-so of an
interested party); maltreating two private citizens where there was no
call for such conduct on his part; and being off his beat and drinking
in the "Flag" Saloon, when he should have been at his post. The Board of
Police Commissioners will take the matter into consideration on Thursday
afternoon at two o'clock. These charges are of a grave character, and
will receive the strict examination to which their importance entitles
them.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, June 28, 1864

MISSIONARIES WANTED FOR SAN FRANCISCO

We do not like it, as far as we have got. We shall probably not fall so
deeply in love with reporting for a San Francisco paper as to make it
impossible ever to wean us from it. There is a powerful saving-clause
for us in the fact that the conservators of public information--the
persons whose positions afford them opportunities not enjoyed by others
to keep themselves posted concerning the important events of the city's
daily life--do not appear to know anything. At the offices and places
of business we have visited in search of information, we have got it in
just the same shape every time, with a promptness and uniformity which
is startling, perhaps, but not gratifying. They all answer and say unto
you, "I don't know." We do not mind that, so much, but we do object to
a man's parading his ignorance with an air of overbearing egotism which
shows you that he is proud of it. True merit is modest, and why should
not true ignorance be? In most cases, the head of the concern is not at
home; but then why not pay better wages and leave men at the counter
who would not be above knowing something? Judging by the frills they
put on--the sad but infallible accompaniment of forty dollars a year and
found--these fellows are satisfied they are not paid enough to make it
an object to know what is going on around them, or to state that their
crop of information has failed, this century, without doing it with an
exaggeration of dignity altogether disproportioned to the importance of
the thing. In Washoe, if a man don't know anything, he will at least go
on and tell you what he don't know, so that you can publish it in
case you do not stumble upon something of more vital interest to the
community, in the course of the day. If a similar course were pursued
here, we might always have something to write about--and occasionally a
column or so left over for next day's issue, perhaps.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, June 29, 1864

THE KAHN OF TARTARY

Lena Kahn, otherwise known as Mother Kahn, or the Kahn of Tartary, who
is famous in this community for her infatuated partiality for the
Police Court as a place of recreation, was on hand there again yesterday
morning. She was mixed up in a triangular row, the sides of the triangle
being Mr. Oppenheim, Mrs. Oppenheim, and herself. It appeared from the
evidence that she formed the base of the triangle--which is to say, she
was at the bottom of the row, and struck the first blow. Moses Levi,
being sworn, said he was in the neighborhood, and heard Mrs. Oppenheim
scream; knew it was her by the vicious expression she always threw into
her screams; saw the defendant (her husband) go into the Tartar's house
and gobble up the partner of his bosom and his business, and rescue her
from the jaws of destruction (meaning Mrs. Kahn,) and bring her forth to
sport once more amid the _____. At this point the lawyer turned off Mr.
Levi's gas, which seemed to be degenerating into poetry, and asked him
what his occupation was? The Levite said he drove an express wagon. The
lawyer--with that sensitiveness to the slightest infringement of the
truth, which is so becoming to the profession--inquired severely if
he did not sometimes drive the horse also! The wretched witness, thus
detected before the multitude in his deep-laid and subtle prevarication,
hung his head in silence. His evidence could no longer be respected,
and he moved away from the stand with the consciousness written upon his
countenance of how fearful a thing it is to trifle with the scruples
of a lawyer. Mrs. Oppenheim next came forward and gave a portion of her
testimony in damaged English, and the balance in dark and mysterious
German. In the English glimpses of her story it was discernible that
she had innocently trespassed upon the domain of the Khan, and had been
rudely seized upon in such a manner as to make her arm turn blue, (she
turned up her sleeve and showed the Judge,) and the bruise had grown
worse since that day, until at last it was tinged with a ghastly green,
(she turned up her sleeve again for impartial judicial inspection,) and
instantly after receiving this affront, so humiliating to one of gentle
blood, she had been set upon without cause or provocation, and thrown
upon the floor and "licked." This last expression possessed a charm for
Mrs. Oppenheim, that no persuasion of Judge or lawyers could induce
her to forego, even for the sake of bringing her wrongs into a stronger
light, so long as those wrongs, in such an event, must be portrayed in
language less pleasant to her ear. She said the Khan had licked her,
and she stuck to it and reiterated with unflinching firmness. Becoming
confused by repeated assaults from the lawyers in the way of badgering
questions, which her wavering senses could no longer comprehend, she
relapsed at last into hopeless German again, and retired within the
lines. Mr. Oppenheim then came forward and remained under fire for
fifteen minutes, during which time he made it as plain as the disabled
condition of his English would permit him to do, that he was not in
anywise to blame, at any rate; that his wife went out after a warrant
for the arrest of the Kahn; that she stopped to "make it up" with the
Kahn, and the redoubtable Kahn tackled her; that he was dry-nursing the
baby at the time, and when he heard his wife scream, he suspected, with
a sagacity which did him credit, that she wouldn't have "hollered 'dout
dere vas someding de matter;" therefore he piled the child up in a
corner remote from danger, and moved upon the works of the Tartar; she
had waltzed into the wife and finished her, and was already on picket
duty, waiting for the husband, and when he came she smacked him over
the head a couple of times with the deadly bludgeon she uses to
elevate linen to the clothes-line with; and then, stimulated by this
encouragement, he started to the Police Office to get out a warrant for
the arrest of the victorious army, but the victorious army, always on
the alert, was there ahead of him, and he now stood in the presence of
the Court in the humiliating position of a man who had aspired to be
plaintiff, but overcome by strategy, had sunk to the grade of defendant.
At this point his mind wandered, his vivacious tongue grew thick with
mushy German syllables, and the last of the Oppenheims sank to rest at
the feet of justice. We had done less than our duty had we allowed this
most important trial--freighted, as it was, with matters of the last
importance to every member of this community, and every conscientious,
law-abiding man and woman upon whom the sun of civilization shines
to-day--to be given to the world in the columns, with no more
elaboration than the customary "Benjamin Oppenheim, assault and battery,
dismissed; Lena Oppenheim and Fredrika Kahn, held to answer." We
thought, at first, of starting in that way, under the head of "Police
Court," but a second glance at the case showed us that it was one of
a most serious and extraordinary nature, and ought to be put in such
a shape that the public could give to it that grave and deliberate
consideration which its magnitude entitled it to.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 1, 1864

HOUSE AT LARGE

An old two-story, sheet-iron, pioneer, fire-proof house, got loose
from her moorings last night, and drifted down Sutter street, toward
Montgomery. We are not informed as to where she came from or where she
was going to--she had halted near Montgomery street, and appeared to
be studying about it. If one might judge from the expression that hung
about her dilapidated front and desolate window, she was thoroughly
demoralized when she stopped there, and sorry she ever started. Is there
no law against houses loafing around the public streets at midnight?

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 1, 1864

SCHOOLCHILDREN'S REHEARSAL

The pupils of the Public Schools assembled in strong force at the
Metropolitan Theatre yesterday afternoon, to rehearse their portion of
the Fourth of July ceremonies. The dress-circle was a swarming hive of
small boys in an advanced state of holiday jollity, and the parquet was
filled with young girls impatient for the performance to begin. There
were but fourteen benches left vacant in the pit, and three in the dress
circle. At the call to order by Mr. Elliott, a solemn silence succeeded
the buzzing that had prevailed all over the house. He announced that one
School was still absent, but it was too late to wait for its arrival.
The pupils, led by the orchestra, then sang a beautiful chant--"The
Lord's Prayer"--the girls doing the best service, the boys taking only a
moderate amount of interest in it. However, the boys came out strong
on the next chorus--"The Battle Cry of Freedom." Without prompting,
the voices of the children broke forth with one accord the moment the
orchestra had finished playing the symphony, which was pretty good proof
that the pupils of all the Schools are accustomed to strict discipline.
The next song--"The Union"--was sung with thrilling effect, and was
entered into by both boys and girls, with a spirit which showed that it
was a favorite with them. It deserved to be, for it had more music in
it than any tune which had preceded it. "Oh, Wrap the Flag Around Me,
Boys," was sung by the girls, and the boys joined in the chorus. It is
a lugubrious ditty, and sadness oozed from its every pore. There was
a pardonable lack of enthusiasm evinced in its execution. "America"
(applause from the boys) was sung next, with extraordinary vim. The
exercises were closed with this hymn, and the Schools then left the
theatre and departed for home. Just as the rear rank was passing out
at the door, the missing School--the lost tribe--came filing down the
street, moved two abreast into the theatre without halting, and
took possession of the stage. It proved to be the Rincon School, so
distinguished for the numerous promotions from its ranks to the High
School. The large stage was almost filled by the newcomers, and had they
arrived sooner there would not have been a vacant seat in the house.
The lost tribe rehearsed the songs in regular order, just as their
predecessors had done, and did it in an entirely creditable manner,
after which they marched in procession up Montgomery to Market street.
Even if everything else fails on the Fourth, we are satisfied that
the Public Schools can be depended on to carry out their part of the
programme faithfully and in the best possible style. The Schools will
assemble at the Metropolitan Theatre about noon on the Fourth, where,
in addition to their singing, the following exercises may be expected:
Music, by the band; Prayer, by the Rev. Mr. Kittredge; Reading of the
Declaration of Independence, by W. H. L. Barnes; Poem, by Mr. Bowman;
Oration, by the Rev. H. W. Bellows.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 1, 1864

THE OLD THING

We conversed yesterday with a stranger, who had suffered from a game
familiar to some San Franciscans, but unknown in his section of the
country. He was going home late at night, when a sociable young man,
standing alone on the sidewalk, bade him good evening in a friendly way,
and asked him to take a drink, with a fascination of manner which he
could not resist. They went into Johnson's saloon, on Pike street,
but instead of paying promptly for the drinks, the sociable young man
proposed to throw the dice for them, which was done, and the stranger
who was a merchant, from the country, lost. Euchre was then proposed,
and two disinterested spectators, entirely unknown to the sociable young
man--as he said--were invited to join the game, and did so. Shortly
afterwards, good hands were discovered to be plenty around the board,
and it was proposed to bet on them, and turn the game into poker. The
merchant held four kings, and he called a ten dollar bet; but the luck
that sociable young man had was astonishing--he held four aces! This
made the merchant suspicious--he says and it was a pity his sagacity was
not still more extraordinary--it was a pity it did not warn him that it
was time to quit that crowd. But it had no such effect; the sociable man
showed him a check on Wells, Fargo &; Co., and he thought it was safe to
"stake" him; therefore he staked his friend, and continued to stake him,
and his friend played and lost, and continued to play and lose, until
one hundred and ninety dollars were gone, and he nothing more left
wherewith to stake him. The merchant complained to the Police,
yesterday, and officer McCormick hunted up the destroyer of his peace
and the buster of his fortune, and arrested him. He gave his name as
Wellington, but the Police have known him well heretofore as "Injun
Ned;" he told the merchant his name was J. G. Whittaker. Wellington
Whittaker deserves to be severely punished, but perhaps the merchant
ought to be allowed to go free, as this was his first offence in being
so criminally green.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 1, 1864

POLICE COMMISSIONERS

Lewis P. Ward brought several charges against Policeman Forner,
yesterday, before the Board of Police Commissioners. One was for
maltreating two citizens who were not under arrest, and whom he had
no business to lay his hands on anyhow. This charge was summarily
dismissed; the offence involved being one of no consequence, as anyone
can see. Still, the Board might have thought the officer sufficiently
punished for it already in the Police Court, where he was fined five
dollars, which he paid in green-backs, if he is a loyal man. The second
charge was for arresting a man without any authority for doing it. This
was also dismissed--for good and sufficient reasons, maybe--but anyhow
it was dismissed. The third charge against Officer Forner was for being
off his beat when he should have been on it, instead of drinking in the
"Flag" saloon. Several witnesses substantiated this charge, and we are
informed that no evidence was produced against it. The Commissioners
took it into consideration, and will render a decision in the matter
shortly, perhaps.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 4, 1864

ORIGINAL NOVELETTE

The only drawback there is to the following original novelette, is, that
it contains nothing but truth, and must, therefore, be void of interest
for readers of sensational fiction. The gentleman who stated the case
to us said there was a moral to it, but up to the present moment we
have not been able to find it. There is nothing moral about it. Chapter
I.--About a year ago, a German in the States sent his wife to California
to prepare the way, and get things fixed up ready for him. Chapter
II.--She did it. She fixed things up, considerably. She fell in with
a German who had been sent out here by his wife to prepare the way for
her. Chapter III.--These two fixed everything up in such a way for their
partners at home, that they could not fail to find it interesting to
them whenever they might choose to arrive. The man borrowed all the
money the woman had, and went into business, and the two lived happily
and sinfully together for a season. Chapter IV.--Grand Tableau. The
man's wife arrived unexpectedly in the Golden Age, and busted out the
whole arrangement. Chapter V.--Now at this day the fallen heroine of
this history is stricken with grief and refuses to be comforted; she has
been cruelly turned out of the house by the usurping, lawful wife, and
set adrift upon the wide, wide world, without a rudder. But she doesn't
mind that so much, because she never had any rudder, anyhow. The noble
maiden does mind being adrift, though, rudder or no rudder, because she
has never been used to it. And so, all the day sits she sadly in the
highway, weeping and blowing her nose, and slinging the result on the
startled passers-by, and careless whether she lives or dies, now
that her bruised heart can never know aught but sorrow anymore. Last
Chapter.--She cannot go to law to get her property back, because her
sensitive nature revolts at the thought of giving publicity to her
melancholy story. Neither can she return to her old home and fall at the
feet of the husband of her early love, praying him to forgive, and bless
and board her again, as he was wont to do in happier days; because when
her destroyer shook her, behold he shook her without a cent. Now what is
she to do? She wants to know. We have stated the case, and the thrilling
original novelette is finished, and is not to be continued. But as to
the moral, a rare chance is here offered the public to sift around and
find it. We failed, in consequence of the very immoral character of the
whole proceeding. Perhaps the best moral would be for the woman to go to
work with renewed energy, and fix things, and get ready over again for
her husband.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 6, 1864

FOURTH OF JULY

GRAND PROCESSION, FIREWORKS, ETC.--In point of magnificence, enthusiasm,
crowds, noise, wind and dust, the Fourth was the most remarkable day San
Francisco has ever seen. The National salute fired at daylight, by the
California Guard, awoke the city, and by eight o'clock in the morning
the sidewalks of all the principal streets were packed with men,
women and children, and remained so until far into the afternoon. All
able-bodied citizens were abroad, all cripples with one sound leg and
a crutch and all invalids who were not ticketed for eternity on that
particular day. The whole city was swathed in a waving drapery of
flags--scarcely a house could be found which lacked this kind of
decoration. The effect was exceedingly lively and beautiful. Of course
Montgomery street excelled in this species of embellishment. To the
spectator beholding it from any point above Pacific street, it was no
longer a street of compactly built houses, but simply a quivering
cloud of gaudy red and white stripes, which shut out from view almost
everything but itself. Some houses were broken out all over with flags,
like small-pox patients; among these were Brannan's Building, the
Occidental Hotel and the Lick House, which displayed flags at every
window.

THE PROCESSION.--The chief feature of the day was the great Procession,
of course, and to the strategic ability and the tireless energy and
industry of Grand Marshal Sheldon, San Francisco is indebted for the
completeness and well ordered character of the splendid spectacle. He
performed the great work assigned him in a manner which entitles him to
the very highest credit.

Toward ten o'clock the streets began to be thronged with platoons,
companies and regiments of schools, soldiers, benevolent associations,
etc., swarming from every point of the compass, and marching with music
and banners toward the general rendezvous, like the gathering hosts of a
mighty army. By eleven the Procession was formed and began to move, and
in half an hour it was drifting past Portsmouth Square, rank after rank,
and column after column, in seemingly countless numbers. Afterwards
(on level ground) it was an hour and twenty minutes in passing a given
point; coming down hill, through Washington street, the time was an hour
and five minutes; therefore the Procession must have been two miles long
at any rate, unless those composing it were remarkably slow walkers;
many adjudged it to be over two and a half miles in length.

GRAND MARSHAL AND AIDS.--The Grand Marshal, in purple sash, studded with
stars, led the van, attended by thirteen Aids, in white and gold...

The military presented a fine appearance, with their handsome uniforms
and brightly burnished arms. They were sufficiently numerous to occupy
thirteen minutes in passing a given point.

A squad of twelve or fifteen little drummer boys, in uniform,
accompanying the Sixth Regiment, attracted a good deal of attention.

In the military part of the procession, borne by the First Regiment,
was a stained and ragged flag, pierced by nine bullet-holes and one
bayonet-thrust, received at the bloody battle of Ball's Bluff. It was
carried by Corporal Wise, who fought under it there.

CIVIL DEPARTMENT.--The civil department of the Procession was headed by
carriages containing the President, Orator, Chaplain, Poet, and Reader
of the Day, foreign Consuls, and foreign and domestic naval and military
guests, in splendid uniforms, as a general thing. Following these came
State, city and county officers, also in carriages.

The Society of California Pioneers and the Eureka Typographical Union
were followed by a number of tradesmen's wagons, tastefully ornamented
and bearing appropriate mottoes and devices.

The San Francisco Fire Department came next, headed by Chief Engineer
Scannell and his Aides...

The Butchers' Union Association came next, headed by a wagon containing
a huge living buffalo, and followed by several gaily caparisoned fat
cattle; following these was a soldierly platoon of infantry butchers,
armed with cleavers, who were observed to obey the solitary command
to "Shoulder arms!" with military precision and promptness. They
were followed by about twenty open wagons, filled with members of the
fraternity. One of these wagons bore the motto, "We Kill to Cure!"

After a glue factory wagon, bearing the motto, "We stick fast to the
Union," came seven more butchers' wagons, followed by a fine array of
mounted butchers, riding three abreast. The uniform of the fraternity
was check shirts and black pantaloons, and it was distinguished in the
civil department of the Procession for its exceeding neatness.

The Cartmen's Union Association, riding two abreast, in blue shirts
and black pants--a stalwart, fine looking body of men, came next in the
Procession, and rode with the Draymen and Teamsters' Associations.
A fine regiment or so of cavalry might be constructed out of these
materials.

SCHOOLS.--One of the most notable features of the great Procession was
the public schools. The boys are all accustomed to military discipline,
and they marched along with the order and decorum of old soldiers. Each
school had its uniform, its own private music, and its multitude of
flags and banners, and in the matter of numbers and general magnificence
they did not fall much behind the Army of California at the other end of
the Procession. There were twelve schools in the ranks...

Some of the mottoes inscribed upon the banners borne by the School
children were as follows: "Knowledge is Power;" a globe, with the
device, "We move the World;" "Children of the Union;" "We are Coming,
Father Abraham;" "Our Public Schools, the Lever that moves the
World--Give us more Leverage!" The Mason Street School carried silken
banners, upon which were painted the arms of all the States. The boys of
Rincon School, three hundred in number, were dressed in a sort of naval
uniform, (two gold bands around their caps, and a gold stripe down
the leg of their pants,) and each boy carried a flag. The girls of the
Rincon School, numbering three hundred also, left the School in eight
large furniture cars, but we saw only a few of these cars in the
Procession. A pretty little girl in the first car was gorgeously
costumed as the Goddess of Liberty. A beautiful banner, presented to
the School early in the morning, was carried by the girls, and bore
the suggestive inscription, "Our Country's Hope," (in case she becomes
depopulated by the war, probably.)

BENEVOLENT SOCIETIES.--In uniform, and carrying flags and banners, were
a long array of Benevolent and Protective Associations...

After these followed numberless carriages, containing citizens, and in
their wake came the rear guard of citizens on foot, which finished up
the almost interminable Procession.

AT THE THEATRE.--After marching through the several streets marked down
for it in the programme, the Procession filed down Montgomery street,
and disbanded in the vicinity of the Metropolitan Theatre, where the
concluding ceremonies of the celebration were to take place.

The Schools were admitted to the theatre first, and a sufficient number
were taken from the multitude of citizens outside to fill up the room
left vacant--which was not much, of course. The place was so densely
packed that we could not find comfortable standing or breathing room,
and left, taking it for granted that the following programme would be
carried out all the same, and just as well as if we remained:

National Airs by the Bands.

Chant, the Lord's Prayer, by the Children of the Public Schools.

Prayer, by the Rev. Mr. Kittredge.

Reading of the Declaration of Independence, by W. H. L. Barnes, Esq.

"The Battle-Cry of Freedom," by the Children of the Public Schools.

Poem, by J. F. Bowman.

"The Union," by Children of the Public Schools.

Oration, by the Rev. H. W. Bellows.

"O wrap the flag around me, boys," by Children.

"America," by the Children.

Benediction.

THE FIREWORKS.--The huge framework for the pyrotechnic display was set
up at the corner of Fifth and Harrison streets, and by the time the
first rocket was discharged, every vacant foot of ground for many a
square around was closely crowded with people. There could not have
been less than fifteen thousand persons stretching their necks in that
vicinity for a glimpse of the show, and certainly not more than thirteen
thousand of them failed to see it. The spot was so well chosen, on such
nice level ground, that if your stature were six feet one, a trifling
dwarf with a plug hat on could step before you and shut you out from the
exhibition, as if you were stricken with a sudden blindness. Carriages,
which no man might hope to see through, were apt to drive along and stop
just ahead of you, at the most interesting moment, and if you changed
your position men would obstruct your vision by climbing on each others'
shoulders. The grand discharges of rockets, however, and their bursting
spray of many-colored sparks, were visible to all, after they had
reached a tremendous altitude, and these gave pleasure and brought
solace to many a sorrowing heart behind many an untransparent vehicle.
Still we know that the fireworks on the night of the Fourth, mottoes,
temples, stars, triangles, Catherine wheels, towers, pyramids, and,
in fact, every department of the exhibition, formed by far the most
magnificent spectacle of the kind ever witnessed on the Pacific coast.
The reason why we know it is, that that infamous, endless, Irish giant,
at Gilbert's Museum, stood exactly in front of us the whole evening, and
he said so, and a terrific cannonade of fire crackers, kept up all night
long, finished the festivities of this memorable Fourth of July in San
Francisco.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 8, 1864

SWILL MUSIC

As a general thing, when we visit the City Prison late at night, we
find one or two drunken vagabonds raving and cursing in the cells, and
sending out a pestilent odor of bad whiskey with every execration. Last
night the case was different. Mrs. Ann Holland was there, very drunk,
and very musical; her gin was passing off in steaming gas, to the tune
of "I'll hang my harp on a willow tree," and she appeared to be enjoying
it considerably. The effect was very cheerful in a place so accustomed
to powerful swearing and mute wretchedness. Mrs. Holland's music was
touchingly plaintive and beautiful, too; but then it smelled bad.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 8, 1864

ARRESTED FOR BIGAMY

Isaac Hingman has been bigamized. He was arrested for it yesterday, by
Officer W. P. Brown, on a complaint sworn to by his most recent wife,
that he has a much more former wife now living in another part of the
State. The wife that makes the complaint, and who drew a blank, in the
eye of the law, in the husband lottery, married the prisoner on the 24th
of June, in this city. A man is not allowed to have a wife lying around
loose in every county of California, as Isaac may possibly find to his
cost before he gets through with this case. He might as well make up his
mind to shed one of these women.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 8,1864

THE BIGAMIST

We have mentioned elsewhere in our present issue the arrest of Isaac
Hingman, on a charge of bigamy. The woman he married last, went to the
station-house last night to see him. She says she worked for two years
in lager beer cellars here, and, during that time, had saved six hundred
and fifty dollars. Hingman got this from her. He said he was going down
on the Colorado to open a Saloon, and she was to go with him. They
were to leave to-day on a schooner, and he took her stove, her beds and
bedding, and all her clothing, and put them on board the vessel. He told
her he had been living with a woman at Auburn, and he would have to send
her some money in order to get rid of her and her three children. The
new wife gave him one hundred and thirty dollars for this purpose, and
he went off and telegraphed his Auburn family to come down and go to
the Colorado with him instead. The duped beer girl got the answering
dispatch sent by the Auburn wife, in which she acceded to the proposal,
and said she would arrive by the boat last night. Sergeant Evrard, of
the Police, saw the dispatch. The woman said Hingman told her, in the
station-house, that the lucky Auburn woman was his lawful wife. Officer
Evrard sent a policeman, disguised, to wait for the up-country wife
at the Sheba Saloon, last night, and find out what he could from her
affecting the case. The story of the illegal wife is plausible, and if
it is true, Mr. Hingman ought to be severely dealt with. But not too
severely--we go in for moderation in all things, and, considering all
the circumstances of this case, it might be a questionable application
of power to do more than hang him. To hang him a little while--say
thirty or forty minutes--ought to be about the fair thing, though. He
wants to marry too many people; and he needs treatment that will tend to
check this propensity.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 9, 1864

OPIUM SMUGGLERS

The ingenuity of the Chinese is beyond calculation. It is asserted that
they have no words or expressions signifying abstract right or wrong.
They appreciate "good" and "bad," but it is only in reference to
business, to finance, to trade, etc. Whatever is successful is good;
whatever fails is bad. So they are not conscience-bound in planning
and perfecting ingenious contrivances for avoiding the tariff on opium,
which is pretty heavy. The attempted swindles appear to have been
mostly, or altogether, attempted by the Coolie passengers--the Chinese
merchants, either from honorable motives or from policy, having dealt
honestly with the Government. But the passengers have reached the brains
of rascality itself, to find means for importing their delicious
drug without paying the duties. To do this has called into action the
inventive genius of brains equal in this respect to any that ever lodged
on the top end of humanity. They have, doubtless, for years smuggled
opium into this port continuously. The officers of Customs at length got
on their track, and the traffic has become unprofitable to the Coolies,
however well it has been paying the officials through the seizures made.
The opium has been found concealed in double jars and brass eggs, as
heretofore described, brought ashore in bands around the body, and by
various other modes. The latest dodge detected was sausages, Bolognas,
as it were, filled with opium; and yesterday we saw a tin can, with a
false bottom about one third the distance from the base, the lower third
of the can filled with opium, the rest with oil. John himself will have
to be opened next--he is undoubtedly full of it.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 9, 1864

YOUNG OFFENDER

While we were lounging in the City Jail yesterday afternoon, Officer
Cook brought in a little girl, not more than seven or eight years old,
whom he had arrested for stealing twenty-five dollars from a man in an
auction-room the day before. She gave her name as Amelia Brown Wascus,
and seemed to be a half breed Indian or negro--probably the latter,
if one may judge by the kind of taste she displayed in laying out the
stolen money, for she had spent a portion of it in the purchase of a
toy hand organ with limited accomplishments, and those of a marked
contraband tint--the same being indexed on the back of the plaything
as "Buffalo Gals," and "My Pretty Yaller Gals." She had expended about
fifteen dollars for various trinkets, and the balance of the money had
been recovered by Officer Cook from the child's mother. Amelia cried
bitterly all the time she was in the station-house, but she said
nothing, and appealed for no compassion save in the pleading eloquence
of her tears. She was taken to the Industrial School, and her
accomplice--for it seems she had one of about her own age and sex will
follow her if she can be found

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 9, 1864

UNITED STATES CIRCUIT COURT

Judges Field and Hoffman were occupied all day yesterday in hearing
evidence in the case of Captain Josiah N. Knowles, of the ship Charger,
indicted for manslaughter, in not stopping to pick up a sailor named
Swansea, who fell from the royal yard arm of that ship, on the 1st
of last April, during a voyage from Boston to San Francisco. From the
testimony, it would appear that there was a heavy sea on at the time,
and a stiff breeze blowing, and consequently it would not have been safe
to send a boat after the man, while at the same time it would have been
useless to shorten sail and put the ship about, because of the great
length of time that would necessarily be consumed in the operation.
Swansea fell one hundred and twenty feet, and one witness--the second
officer of the ship thought he struck the "main channels" in his
descent, and was a dead man when he reached the water. The Charger was
on a quick trip, and was making over ten knots an hour at the time
of the accident. The evidence was almost completed yesterday, and the
arguments of counsel will be commenced to-day.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 9, 1864

BURGLARY--THE BURGLAR CAUGHT IN THE ACT

A bold robbery was attempted, last evening, in the second story of
the premises owned by Janson, Bond & Co., corner of Battery and Pine
streets, occupied as a fancy goods importing house, but which, owing
to the vigilance of one of the clerks who slept in the store, and the
promptitude of Special Officer Sweeney in answering his alarm, was
frustrated. About half-past eleven, as the clerk was about retiring, he
heard a suspicious noise and raised the cry of "Watch!" Officer Sweeney
immediately ran in the direction, and met a man running hastily away. He
asked him what the matter was, and he replied "Somebody has lost a
watch round the corner." Sweeney ordered him to stop; in reply he made
a desperate lunge at the officer with a bowie knife. Sweeney then struck
him over the head with his night lantern and brought him to reason. He
was then taken to the station-house, where, on being searched, four gold
watches, three revolvers, a bowie knife, and two bunches of gold rings
were found on his person. He stated his name as William Johnson, and
further that he had accomplices, and the name of one was McCarty.
Officers Minson and Greenwood then repaired to the scene of the
attempted robbery and thoroughly searched the place. They found on the
sidewalk, just under the window, where it had been let down by Johnson
to his confederates, a bag containing fifteen pistols, five bowie-knives
and two pairs of bullet moulds. Up to a late hour last evening, the
accomplices of Johnson had not been captured. A box containing four
hundred dollars in silver escaped the notice of the robbers. It is
probable this gang is the same that were concerned in the recent
attempted safe robberies. It is somewhat significant, taken in
connection with matters transpiring in the interior of the State, that
the purpose of these scoundrels seemed to be to get hold of all the
arms they could, comparatively ignoring some valuable jewelry, and other
articles, of which they might have possessed themselves.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 10, 1864

THE BIGAMIST

The old original Auburn wife of the bigamist Hingman, arrived by the
boat night before last, but her whereabouts were not discovered until
last night, when she was found in one of the up-town hotels, with her
three children, and subpoenaed to appear as a witness in the impending
trial of her husband for bigamy.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 12, 1864

CHINESE SLAVES

Captain Douglass and Watchman Hager boarded the ship Clara Morse, on
Sunday morning, the moment she arrived, and captured nineteen Chinese
girls, who had been stolen and brought from Hongkong to San Francisco
to be sold. They were a choice lot, and estimated to be worth from one
hundred and fifty to four hundred dollars apiece in this market. They
are shut up for safe-keeping for the present, and we went and took a
look at them yesterday; some of them are almost good-looking, and none
of them are pitted with small pox--a circumstance which we have observed
is very rare among China women. There were even small children among
them--one or two not two years old, perhaps, but the ages of the
majority ranged from fourteen to twenty. We would suggest, just here
that the room where these unfortunates are confined is rather too
close for good health--and besides, the more fresh air that blows on
a Chinaman, the better he smells. The heads of the various Chinese
Companies here have entered into a combination to break up this
importation of Chinese prostitutes, and they are countenanced and
supported in their work by Chief Burke and Judge Shepheard. Now-a-days,
before a ship gets her cables out, the Police board her, seize the girls
and shut them up, under guard, and they are sent back to China as soon
as opportunity offers, at the expense of the Chinese Companies, who also
send an agent along to hunt up the families from whom the poor creatures
have been stolen, and restore to them their lost darlings again. Our
Chinese fellow citizens seem to be acquiring a few good Christian
instincts, at any rate.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 12, 1864

THE BIGAMY CASE

The bigamy case came up in the Police Court yesterday morning, and Judge
Shepheard dismissed it, because the charge could not be substantiated,
inasmuch as the only witnesses to be had were the two alleged wives of
the defendant--or rather, only one, the ephemeral lager-beer wife as
the old original wife, the first location, or the discovery claim on the
matrimonial lead, could not be compelled to testify against her husband,
and thereby also knock the props from under her own good name and her
eternal piece of mind. The injured and deserted relocation now proposes
to have Hingman arrested again and tried on a charge of assault and
battery. This unfortunate woman seems to have been very badly treated,
and it is to be hoped she may get some little soothing satisfaction out
of her assault and battery charge to reconcile her to her failure in the
bigamy matter.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 12, 1864

UNITED STATES CIRCUIT COURT

The case of Captain Knowles, late of the ship Charger, indicted for
manslaughter, in not attempting to rescue a sailor, named Swansea, who
had fallen overboard, was ably argued by Messrs. Hall McAllister and the
District Attorney, yesterday, and a verdict returned by the jury of "Not
guilty as charged in the indictment." The jury were charged that if they
had any doubt of the man's having been alive after he struck the water,
to give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt. That little doubt saved
Captain Knowles, as, in the opinion of at least one member of the jury,
he was guilty of a criminal indifference as to the fate of his lost
sailor. He seized the wheel after the steersman had begun to put the
ship about, put her on her course again, and then coolly marched down to
finish his breakfast. He did not even throw over a chicken-coop for the
poor fellow to rest upon while he watched the disappearing ship with his
despairing eyes. The prisoner has been discharged from custody, and the
witnesses also, who have been drearily awaiting the trial of the case,
in prison, for the past two months.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 12, 1864

POLICE COURT TESTIMONY

If there is anything more absurd than the general average of Police
Court testimony, we do not know what it is. Witnesses stand up here,
every day, and swear to the most extravagant propositions with an
easy indifference to consequences in the next world that is altogether
refreshing. Yesterday--under oath--a witness said that while he was
holding the prisoner at the bar so that he could not break loose, the
prisoner "pushed my wife with his hand--so--tried to push her over and
kill her!" There was no evidence to show that the prisoner had anything
against the woman, or was bothering himself about anything but his
scuffle with her husband. Yet the witness surmised that he had the
purpose hidden away in his mind somewhere to take her life, and he stood
right up to the rack and swore to it; and swore also that he tried to
turn this noble Dutchwoman into a corpse, by the simple act of pushing
her over. That same woman might be pushed over the Yo Semite Falls
without being killed by it, although it stands to reason that if she
struck fair and bounced, it would probably shake her up some.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 14, 1864

RUNAWAY

Yesterday morning, a horse and cart were carelessly left unhitched and
unwatched in Dupont street. The horse, being of the Spanish persuasion
and not to be depended on, finally got tired standing idle, and ran
away. He ran into Berry street, ran half a square and upset the cart,
and fell, helplessly entangled in the harness. The vehicle was somewhat
damaged, but two or three new wheels, some fresh sides, and a new
bottom, will make it all right again. Considering the fact that little
short narrow Berry street contains as many small children as all the
balance of San Francisco put together, it is strange the frantic horse
did not hash up a dozen or two of them in his reckless career. They all
escaped, however, by the singular accident of being out of the way at
the time, and they visited the wreck in countless swarms, after the
disaster, and examined it with unspeakable satisfaction. The driver is
a man of extraordinary intellect and mature judgment--he set his cart on
its legs again as well as he could, and then whipped his horse until it
was easy to see that the poor brute began to comprehend that something
was up, though it is questionable whether he has yet cyphered out what
that something was, or not. The driver, as we said before, was not in
his wagon at the time of the accident, which accounts for the misfortune
of his not being hurt in the least.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 14, 1864

CALABOOSE THEATRICALS

Anna Jakes, drunk and disorderly, but excessively cheerful, made her
first appearance in the City Prison last night, and made the dreary
vaults ring with music. It was of the distorted, hifalutin kind, and
she evidently considered herself an opera sharp of some consequence.
Her idea was that "Whee-heeping sad and lo-honely" was not calculated
to bring this cruel war to a close shortly, and she delivered herself
of that idea under many difficulties; because, in the first place, Mary
Kane, an old offender, was cursing like a trooper in a neighboring cell;
and secondly, a man in another apartment who wanted to sleep, and
who did not admire anybody's music, and especially Anna Jakes',
kept inquiring, "Will you dry up that infernal yowling, you
heifer?"--swinging a hefty oath at her occasionally--and so the cruel
war music was so fused and blended with blasphemy in a higher key, and
discouraging comments in a lower, that the pleasurable effect of it was
destroyed, and the argument and the moral utterly lost. Anna finally
fell to singing and dancing both, with a spirit that promised to last
till morning, and Mary Kane and the weary man got disgusted and withdrew
from the contest. Anna Jakes says she is a highly respectable young
married lady, with a husband in the Boise country; that she has been
sumptuously reared and expensively educated; that her impulses are good
and her instincts refined; that she taught school a long time in the
city of New York, and is an accomplished musician; and finally, that her
sister got married last Sunday night, and she got drunk to do honor to
the occasion--and with a persistency that is a credit to one of such
small experience, she has been on a terrific bender ever since. She will
probably let herself out on the cruel war for Judge Shepheard, in the
Police Court, this morning.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 14, 1864

INSPECTION OF THE FORTIFICATIONS

Yesterday, General McDowell, accompanied by his Staff and many military
officers, officials and civilians, made a tour of inspection of the
harbor defences about the Bay of San Francisco. Many gentlemen had been
invited to be of the party, and many answered by their presence. Besides
Major General McDowell and Staff, were Brigadier General Wright and
Staff, Brigadier-General Mason, Captain Van Vost, Provost Marshal, and
other officers of the Army; Commander Woodworth of the Navy; Governor
Low and suite; Mr. Redding, Secretary of State; Judges Field and
Hoffman, of the U.S. Court; the Collector of the Port, Colonel James;
Mr. Farwell, Naval officer; Dr. McLean, Surveyor of the Port; Captain
Chenery, Navy Agent; Mayor Coon; Postmaster Perkins; Hon. Mr. Benton,
Judge Lake, General Allen, General Carpenter, Wm. T. Coleman, and many
other citizens whose names are not just now recollected, and several
members of the Press, last but not least, always around where items are
to be picked up, shells to be exploded, or corks to be drawn. A little
after nine o'clock the "Goliah" left Broadway wharf with her precious
freight. We could not help reflecting, should she blow up or sink,
what a suit with bright buttons Neptune might wear, and how Army,
Navy, Executive, Judiciary, Customs, Municipal and Civil Services would
suffer. Away went the pleasant company, steaming down the Bay towards
Fort Point. The company--those not before acquainted--were introduced to
General McDowell, and each and all seemed delighted with his frank and
genial manner, his quietly social disposition, his soldierly appearance
and bearing, and the facility with which he at once put every one at
ease.

FORT POINT.--At the Fort he was received with his appropriate salute.
The different parts of the fortifications were inspected by the General
and his guests. To the eye of a civilian, the works and their warlike
appliances appeared formidable and in excellent condition for service.
There was but one exception. From the barbette, some shell practice
was had, the target being on the opposite shore, at Lime Point. But the
fuses proved imperfect, the shells exploding almost immediately upon
starting on their journey. This of course will be at once remedied.
After the shelling, the troops were drawn up within the Fort and
were reviewed by General McDowell and Governor Low; the Band playing
appropriate music. The officer of the day in command of the troops, is
a gentleman who won his commission by meritorious service in eleven
battles at the East. We regret that we have not his name. The party then
returned to the steamer and started across the Bay towards that famous
spot of which all have heard not a little for years past--

LIME POINT.--The steamer ran close along the northern shore for a
considerable distance, allowing an excellent opportunity for judging of
the superior qualities the formation affords for a strong fortification.
It can readily be transformed into a second Gibraltar. The position is
needed by Government, which should take it, and leave the consideration
of pay to the future. Next the steamer was headed up the Bay, and the
company invited below to partake of a lunch. That this interesting
incident was all that could be desired will appear evident by saying
that it was prepared at the "Occidental," and that Leland himself was
present to see that chicken salad and champagne were properly dispensed.
Soon the steamer reached the wharf at

ANGELS' ISLAND.--Here another salute greeted the General, who, with his
guests, inspected the fortifications there fast growing into formidable
proportions and condition. The little valley lying between the Point at
the entrance of Raccoon Straits, on which is a battery destined to guard
that passage, and the high point to the south, where there is another
new work, nearly ready for use, bears the appearance of a pleasant
little village, with white houses and fixings, indicative of officers'
families, soldiers' barracks, and domestic life. From this abode of the
Angels the company proceeded through Raccoon Straits--beautiful sheet of
water--around Angels' Island, and as they were passing the eastern
end, all of a sudden found themselves saluted by scores of white
handkerchiefs on shore, which was answered in kind, and with splendid
music by the fine band of the Ninth infantry. A picnic party were on
shore, and gave this very pleasing incident to the excursion. Passing
the Point, the company had an opportunity to view the preparations for
the battery there, apparently nearly ready for mounting its guns and
then steamed across, and landed at

ALCATRACES, under a thundering salute from the southern batteries. A
general examination of the whole Island and its defences followed; then
a partaking of the hospitalities of Capt. Winder, Commandant of the
Post, and shell practice from the northwestern battery. The shells
here were in better condition, and the practice more satisfactory. The
reported number of guns on the Island now, and to be, differs, ranging
from ninety to one hundred and eighty. The exact number is not material.
There are enough to knock any fleet that can ever come within reach into
splinters. Leaving Alcatraces, after an inspection of the forces there,
with another salute, the steamer's prow was pointed toward Yerba Buena
Island--a look was had, while passing, at the positions yet to be
fortified--and she passed up the Bay to the mouth of Mission Creek,
past the Aquila--of which ship some of our readers have heard
occasionally--and then back along the city front, the band playing
national and other airs, to Broadway wharf, the place of starting. The
General knows whether the inspection was satisfactory in a military
light. We do not. But it may be said that the trip was exceedingly
pleasant and satisfactory to all the guests of the gallant soldier to
whose courtesy they were indebted for the delightful excursion.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 16, 1864

A GROSS OUTRAGE

Yesterday noon, Sansome street was witness of one of those feats so
common to New York city, among the butcher boys, of racing through the
public streets. The driver of Clark's furniture and Express wagon and
some other Expressman, getting their mettle up as to the relative speed
of their respective plugs, let out, both laying on the whip plentifully,
until they overtook Crosky's grocery wagon, which Clark's vehicle (No.
2,859) unceremoniously knocked into "pi," landing driver, groceries and
other Sundries in the street. These outrages are becoming too frequent
in our thickly-populated streets, and need the strict attention of
our city authorities. Eye-witnesses to this race at full speed up
the railroad track, freely expressed themselves that if any ladies or
children had been unfortunate enough to be on the street at the time,
nothing could have saved them from being ridden down.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 16, 1864

MOSES IN THE BULRUSHES AGAIN

On Thursday evening, officers John Conway and King had their attention
attracted by the crying of a child at the Catholic Orphan Asylum door;
where, upon examination, they discovered an infant, apparently but a
few days old, wrapped up in a shawl. It was delivered to the care of the
benevolent Sisters at the Institution. It appeared to be a good enough
baby--nothing the matter with it--and it has been unaccountable to all
who have heard of the circumstance, what the owner wanted to throw it
away for.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 16, 1864

THE "COMING MAN" HAS ARRIVED

And he fetched his things with him.--John Smith was brought into the
city prison last night, by Officers Conway and Minson, so limbered up
with whiskey that you might have hung him on a fence like a wet
shirt. His battered slouch-hat was jammed down over his eyes like an
extinguisher; his shirt-bosom (which was not clean, at all,) was spread
open, displaying his hair trunk beneath; his coat was old, and short
waisted, and fringed at the edges, and exploded at the elbows like a
blooming cotton-boll, and its collar was turned up, so that one could
see by the darker color it exposed, that the garment had known better
days, when it was not so yellow, and sunburnt, and freckled with grease
spots, as it was now; it might have hung about its owner symmetrically
and gracefully, too, in those days, but now it had a general hitch
upward, in the back, as if it were climbing him; his pantaloons were of
coarse duck, very much soiled, and as full of wrinkles as if they
had been made of pickled tripe; his boots were not blacked, and they
probably never had been; the subject's face was that of a man of forty,
with the sun of an invincible good nature shining dimly through the
cloud of dirt that enveloped it. The officers held John up in a warped
and tangled attitude, like a pair of tongs struck by lightning, and
searched him, and the result was as follows: Two slabs of old cheese; a
double handful of various kinds of crackers; seven peaches; a box of lip
salve, bearing marks of great age; an onion; two dollars and sixty-five
cents, in two purses, (the odd money being considered as circumstantial
evidence that the defendant had been drinking beer at a five-cent house;
) a soiled handkerchief; a fine-tooth comb; also one of coarser pattern;
a cucumber pickle, in an imperfect state of preservation; a leather
string; an eye-glass, such as prospectors use; one buckskin glove; a
printed ballad, "Call me pet names;" an apple; part of a dried herring;
a copy of the Boston Weekly Journal, and copies of several San Francisco
papers; and in each and every pocket he had two or three chunks of
tobacco, and also one in his mouth of such remarkable size as to render
his articulation confused and uncertain. We have purposely given this
prisoner a fictitious name, out of the consideration we feel for him as
a man of noble literary instincts, suffering under temporary misfortune.
He said he always read the papers before he got drunk; go thou and
do likewise. Our literary friend gathered up his grocery store and
staggered contentedly into a cell; but if there is any virtue in the
boasted power of the press, he shall stagger out again to-day, a free
man.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 17, 1864

THE COUNTY PRISON

A visit to the County Prison, in Broadway above Kearny street, will
satisfy almost any reasonable person that there are worse hardships
in life than being immured in those walls. It is a substantial-looking
place, but not a particularly dreary one, being as neat and clean as a
parlor in its every department. There are two long rows of cells on
the main floor--thirty-one, altogether--disposed on each side of an
alley-way, built of the best quality of brick, imported from Boston, and
laid in cement, which is so hard that a nail could not be driven into
it; each cell has a thick iron door with a wicket in its centre for the
admission of air and light, and a narrow aperture in the opposite wall
for the same purpose; these cells are just about the size and have the
general appearance of a gentleman's state room on a steamboat, but are
rather more comfortable than those dens are sometimes; a two-story bunk,
a slop-bucket and a sort of table are the principal furniture; the walls
inside are white-washed, and the floors kept neat and clean by frequent
scrubbing; on Wednesdays and Saturdays the prisoners are provided with
buckets of water for general bathing and clothes-washing purposes, and
they are required to keep themselves and their premises clean at all
times; on Tuesdays and Fridays they clean up their cells and scrub the
floors thereof. In one of these rows of cells it is pitch dark when the
doors are shut, but in the other row it is very light when the wickets
are open. From the number of books and newspapers lying on the bunks, it
is easy to believe that a vast amount of reading is done in the County
Prison; and smoking too, we presume, because, although the rules forbid
the introduction of spirituous liquors, wine, or beer into the jail,
nothing is said about tobacco. Most of the occupants of the light cells
were lying on the bunks reading, and some of those in the dark ones were
standing up at the wickets similarly employed. "Sick Jimmy," or James
Rodgers, who was found guilty of manslaughter a day or two ago, in
killing Foster, has been permitted by Sheriff Davis to occupy one of the
light cells, on account of his ill health. He says his quarters would
be immensely comfortable if one didn't mind the irksomeness of the
confinement. We could hear the prisoners laughing and talking in the
cells, but they are prohibited from making much noise or talking from
one cell to another. There are three iron cells standing isolated in the
yard, in which a batch of Chinamen wear the time away in smoking
opium two hours a day and sleeping the other twenty-two. The kitchen
department is roomy and neat, and the heavy tragedy work in it is done
by "trusties," or prisoners detailed from time to time for that duty. Up
stairs are the cells for women; two of these are dark, iron cells, for
females confined for high crimes. The others are simply well lighted and
ventilated wooden rooms, such as the better class of citizens over in
Washoe used to occupy a few years ago, when the common people lived in
tents. There is nothing gorgeous about these wooden cells, but plenty
of light and whitewashing make them look altogether cheerful. Mesdames
O'Reefe, McCarty, Mary Holt and "Gentle Julia," (Julia Jennings,) are
the most noted ladies in this department. Prison-keeper Clark says the
quiet, smiling, pious looking Mrs. McCarty is just the boss thief of
San Francisco, and the misnamed "Gentle Julia" is harder to manage, and
gives him more trouble than all the balance of the tribe put together.
She uses "awful" language, and a good deal of it, the same being against
the rule. Mrs. McCarty dresses neatly, reclines languidly on a striped
mattress, smiles sweetly at vacancy, and labors at her "crochet-work"
with the serene indifference of a princess. The four ladies we have
mentioned are unquestionably stuck after the County Prison; they reside
there most of the time, coming out occasionally for a week to steal
something, or get on a bender, and going back again as soon as they
can prove that they have accomplished their mission. A lady warden
will shortly be placed in charge of the women's department here, in
accordance with an act of the last Legislature, and we feel able to
predict that Gentle Julia will make it mighty warm for her. Most of the
cells, above and below, are occupied, and it is proposed to put another
story on the jail at no distant day. We have no suggestions to report
concerning the County Jail. We are of the opinion that it is all right,
and doing well.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 17, 1864

INDEPENDENT CANDIDATE FOR STOCKTON

Officer Forner arrested and brought into the City Prison, at noon
yesterday, a wanderer named Patrick O'Hara, who had been sleeping in the
sand-hills all night and tramping dreamily about the wharves all day,
with a bag containing nearly seven hundred dollars in gold sticking
suggestively out of his coat pocket. He looked a little wild out of his
eyes, and did not talk or act as if he knew exactly what he was about.
He objected to staying in the Jail, and he was averse to leaving it
without his money, and so he was locked up for the present safety and
well-being of both. He begged hard for his worshipped treasure, and
there were pathos and moving eloquence in the poor fellow's story of
the weary months of toil and privation it had cost him to gather it
together. He said he had been working for a Mr. Woodworth on a ranch
near Petaluma, and they set two men to watching him, and when he found
it out he wouldn't stay there any longer, but packed up and came down
here on the boat night before last. He also said they had given him an
order on Mr. Woodworth here for forty dollars, for a month's work, but
when he got on the boat he found it was dated "1833," and he threw it
overboard. He brought a carpet-sack with him, and left it at some hotel,
but he can't find the place again. He says he wants to go and stay a
while with some priest--and if he can get a chance of that kind, he
had better take it and keep away from the wharves and the sand-hills;
otherwise somebody will "go through him" the first thing he knows.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 17, 1864

JUVENILE CRIMINALS

Two children, a boy fourteen years old, and his sister, aged sixteen,
were brought before the Police Court yesterday, charged with stealing,
but the hearing of the case, although begun, was not finished. Judge
Shepheard, whose official dealing with ancient criminals has not yet
hardened his heart against the promptings of pity for misguided youth,
said he would examine the prisoners at his chambers, to the end that he
might only sentence them to the Industrial School if it were possible,
and thus save them from the shame and the lasting stigma of imprisonment
in a felon's cell for their crime. He said there was crime enough in the
land, without driving children to its commission by heaping infamy and
disgrace upon them for their first transgression of the law. He was
right: it is better to save than to destroy, and that justice is most
righteous which is tempered by mercy.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 19, 1864

ASSAULT

Mrs. Catherine Moran was arraigned before Judge Cowles yesterday, on a
charge of assault with an axe upon Mrs. Eliza Markee, with intent to do
bodily injury. A physician testified that there were contused wounds
on plaintiff's head, and also a cut through the scalp, which bled
profusely. The fuss was all about a child, and that is the strangest
part about it--as if, in a city so crowded with them as San Francisco,
it were worth while to be particular as to the fate of a child or two.
However, mothers appear to go more by instinct than political economy in
matters of this kind. Mrs. Markee testified that she heard war going
on among the children, and she rushed down into the yard and found
her Johnny sitting on the stoop, building a toy wagon, and Mrs. Moran
standing over him with an axe, threatening to split his head open.
She asked the defendant not to split her Johnny. The defendant at once
turned upon her, threatening to kill her, and struck her two or three
times with the axe, when she, the plaintiff, grabbed the defendant by
the arms and prevented her from scalping her entirely. Blood was flowing
profusely. Mr. Killdig described the fight pretty much as the plaintiff
had done, and said he parted, or tried to part the combatants, and that
he called upon Mr. Moran to assist him, but that neutral power said the
women had been sour a good while--let them fight it out. Another witness
substantiated the main features of the foregoing testimony, and said the
warriors were all covered with blood, and the children of both, to the
number of many dozens, had fled in disorder and taken refuge under the
house, crying, and saying their mothers were killing each other. Mrs.
Murphy, for the defence, testified as follows: "I was coomun along, an'
Misses Moran says to me, says she, this is the red wood stick she tried
to take me life wid, or wan o' thim other sticks, Missis Murphy, dear,
an' says I, Missis Moran, dairlin',"--Here she was shut off, merely
because the Court did not care about knowing what Mrs. Moran told
her about the fight, and consequently we have nothing further of
this important witness's testimony to offer. The case was continued.
Seriously, instead of a mere ordinary she-fight, this is a fuss of some
consequence, and should not be lightly dealt with. It was an earnest
attempt at manslaughter--or woman-slaughter, at any rate, which is
nearly as bad.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 19, 1864

REAL DEL MONTE

In the Fourth District Court, yesterday, an order was granted to the
plaintiff in the suit of J. J. Robbins vs. Real del Monte Gold and
Silver Mining Company et al., requiring the defendants to show cause why
they should not be enjoined from selling stock for the collection of an
assessment levied for the purpose of further improving their mine. It
appears that stockholders are becoming dissatisfied with the management
of the concern, and want to see the end of assessments for "further
improvements." It is an idea entertained by some inconsiderate persons,
that a mine should at some period of the world's history begin to pay
its own expenses. Rolling into prosperity on the wheels of assessments
may do for a while, but there's a time when dividends should relieve
the drain on the individual's private resources, and he looks forward
expectantly, but "hope deferred maketh the heart sick," etc.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 20, 1864

A STAGE ROBBER AMONGST US

Alman Glasby, (or Gillespie,) one of the Placerville stage-robbers, was
brought up from San Jose yesterday by Sheriff Van Eaton, and lodged in
the station house until the Sacramento boat left. He was captured at
Hall's Tavern, between San Jose and the New Almaden mines, after a
severe fight, on the night that the Sheriff's party killed his two
comrades. He confesses that he belonged to an organized band of robbers,
under the command of Ingram, who held a Captain's commission in the
Confederate army, signed by Jeff. Davis, and says they were armed and
equipped by Secessionists throughout the State, among whom he mentioned
several who are well known in Santa Clara county, and two in this city.
He says he is only nineteen years old; but to a disinterested spectator
he looks older by two or three years.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 21, 1864

AMAZONIAN PASTIMES

Mollie Livingston and two friends of hers, Terese and Jessie, none of
whom are of at all doubtful reputation, cast aside their superfluous
clothing and engaged in a splendid triangular fist fight in Spofford
Alley about seven o'clock yesterday evening. It was a shiftless row,
however, without aim or object, and for this reason officers Evrard and
McCormick broke it up and confined the parties to it in the City Prison.
It originated in whiskey.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 21, 1864

DETECTIVE ROSE AGAIN

As foolish a thing as a man can do is to steal anything while officer
Rose is in town. A Mrs. Ashley, who lives in Bush between Powell and
Mason streets, was robbed of a gold belt-buckle, some silver spoons,
etc., on Saturday, the 9th, and yesterday she laid the matter before one
of our Police officers, who told her to find officer Rose and give
him charge of the matter. She found him, but she was too late for
her information to be of any use--he had already recovered the stolen
property and tracked the thief to his den also. It is said he follows
people by the foot-prints they make on the brick pavements.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 22, 1864

THE BOSS EARTHQUAKE

When we contracted to report for this newspaper, the important matter of
two earthquakes a month was not considered in the salary. There shall
be no mistake of that kind in the next contract, though. Last night, at
twenty minutes to eleven, the regular semi-monthly earthquake, due the
night before, arrived twenty-four hours behind time, but it made up for
the delay in uncommon and altogether unnecessary energy and enthusiasm.
The first effort was so gentle as to move the inexperienced stranger to
the expression of contempt and brave but very bad jokes; but the second
was calculated to move him out of his boots, unless they fitted
him neatly. Up in the third story of this building the sensation we
experienced was as if we had been sent for and were mighty anxious to
go. The house seemed to waltz from side to side with a quick motion,
suggestive of sifting corn meal through a sieve; afterward it rocked
grandly to and fro like a prodigious cradle, and in the meantime several
persons started downstairs to see if there were anybody in the street so
timid as to be frightened at a mere earthquake. The third shock was not
important, as compared with the stunner that had just preceded it.
That second shock drove people out of the theatres by dozens. At the
Metropolitan, we are told that Franks, the comedian, had just come on
the stage, (they were playing the "Ticket-of-Leave Man,") and was
about to express the unbounded faith he had in May; he paused until the
jarring had subsided, and then improved and added force to the text by
exclaiming, "It will take more than an earthquake to shake my faith in
that woman!" And in that, Franks achieved a sublime triumph over the
elements, for he "brought the house down," and the earthquake couldn't.
From the time the shocks commenced last night, until the windows had
stopped rattling, a minute and a half had elapsed.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 22, 1864

GOOD EFFECTS OF A HIGH TARIFF

We are pleased to hear of the prosperous condition of the Dashaway
Society. Their ranks, we are assured, are constantly filling up. The
draught with them is working well, causing many to volunteer. The bounty
they receive is sobriety, respect and health, and the blessings of
families. We will not attribute all these new recruitings to the high
tariff, and the difficulty of obtaining any decent whiskey. But some
who join give this as their reason. They fear strychnine more than
inebriation. They find it impossible to exhaust all the tarantula juice
in the country, as they have been endeavoring to do for a long while, in
hopes to get at some decent "rum" after all the tangle-leg should have
been swallowed, and so conclude to save tariff on liquors and life by
coming square up to the hydrant. Their return to original innocence
and primitive bibations will be gladly welcomed. Water is a forgiving
friend. After years of estrangement it meets the depraved taste with
the same friendship as before. Water bears no enmity. But it must be
a strange meeting--water pure and the tongues of some of our solid
drinkers of Bourbon and its dishonest relations. Alkali water to the
innocent mouths of cattle from the waters of the Mississippi could not
seem stranger nor more disagreeable at first. But it will come around
right at last. Success to the tariff and the Dashaways.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 22, 1864

A SCENE AT THE POLICE COURT--THE HOSTILITY OF COLOR

A long file of applicants, perhaps seventy-five or eighty, passed in
review before the Police Commissioners yesterday afternoon, anxious to
be employed by the city in Snatching drunks, burglars, petty larcenors,
wife-whippers, and all offenders generally, under the authority of a
star on the left breast. One of the candidates--a fine, burly specimen
of an Emeralder--leaned negligently against the door-post, speculating
on his chances of being "passed," and at the same time whiffing
industriously at an old dhudeen, blackened by a thousand smokes. He
was smoking thus thoughtfully when a contraband passed him, conveying a
message to some official in the Court.

"There goes another applicant," said a wag at his elbow.

"What?" asked the smoker.

"A darkey looking for a sit on the Police," was the reply.

"An' do they give nagurs a chance on the Polis?"

"Of course."

"Then, be J-s," said Pat, knocking the ashes out of his pipe and stowing
it away, "I'm out of the ring; I wouldn't demane mesilf padrowling
o'nights with a nagur."

He gave one glance at the innocent and unsuspecting darkey, and left the
place in disgust.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 22, 1864

ROUGH ON KEATING

All of a sudden, we have imbibed a most extravagant respect for
Grand Juries. Judge Cowles fined a man two hundred and fifty dollars,
yesterday, and sentenced him to five days imprisonment in the County
Jail, for cherishing a sentiment of the opposite character. Otto Keating
was summoned before the Grand Jury for the May term, and refused to
answer one or two of the questions asked him. Judge Cowles hauled him up
for contempt, but let him go without punishment. He was again called
for by the Grand Jury, when he answered the questions he had declined to
answer before, but refused to answer some new ones that were asked him.
The punishment we have mentioned was the result. The great popularity
of Judge Cowles with the people of San Francisco rests upon two rare
judicial traits, which are strongly developed in his character, viz: The
quality of mercy, with the quality of discerning where it is proper
to exercise it; and the quality of fearlessly administering red-hot
penalties that make a transgressor fairly waltz, when he deserves it. An
innocent man is safe enough in the County Court, but if he is guilty, he
ought always to do what he honestly can to get a change of venue.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 22, 1864

ARREST OF A SECESH BISHOP

Rev. H. H. Kavanaugh, represented as a Bishop of the M. E. Church South,
whose home until quite recently has been in Georgia, but who for
some time past has been travelling around in this part of the State
organizing Churches and preaching the Gospel as the M. E. Church South
understand it, to many congregations of Rebel sympathizers, was on
Monday arrested by Captain Jackson, United States Marshal for the
Southern District of this State. The arrest was made at Black's ranch,
Salt Spring Valley, Calaveras county, whilst the Bishop was holding a
camp-meeting. By the Reverend gentleman's request, he was granted his
parole until he could preach a sermon, on promise to report himself at
this city yesterday for passage on the San Francisco steamer, which he
did accordingly. We cannot state the precise charges on which he was
arrested.

Getting military information is about the slowest business we ever
undertook. We clipped the above paragraph from the Stockton Independent
at eleven o'clock yesterday morning, and went skirmishing among the
"chief captains," as the Bible modestly terms Brigadier Generals, in
search of further information, from that time until half past seven
o'clock in the evening, before we got it. We will engage to find out who
wrote the "Junius Letters" in less time than that, if we have a mind to
turn our attention to it. We started to the Provost Marshal's office,
but met another reporter, who said: "I suppose I know where you're
going, but it's no use--just come from there--military etiquette and
all that, you know--those fellows are mum--won't tell anything about
it--damn!" We sought General McDowell, but he had gone to Oakland. In
the course of the afternoon we visited all kinds of headquarters and
places, and called on General Mason, Colonel Drum, General Van Bokkelen,
Leland of the Occidental, Chief Burke, Keating, Emperor Norton, and
everybody else that would be likely to know the Government's business,
and knowing it, be willing to impart the coveted information for a
consideration such as the wealthy fraternity of reporters are always
prepared to promise. We did finally get it, from a high official source,
and without any charge whatever--but then the satisfaction of the thing
was all sapped out of it by exquisite "touches on the raw"--which means,
hints that military matters were not proper subjects to branch out on
in the popular sensational way so palatable to the people, and mild but
extremely forcible suggestions about the unhappy fate that has overtaken
fellows who ventured to experiment on "contraband news." We shall not go
beyond the proper limits, if we fully appreciate those suggestions, and
we think we do. We were told that we might say the military authorities,
hearing where the Bishop had come from, (and may be what he was
about--we will just "chance" that notion for a "flyer,") did send
Captain Jackson to simply ask the Bishop to come down to San Francisco;
(he didn't arrest the Bishop, at all--but most anybody would have come
on a nice little invitation like that, without waiting for the formal
compliment of an arrest: another excessively smart suggestion of ours,
and we do hope it isn't contraband;) the Captain only requested the
Bishop to come down here and explain to the authorities what he was up
to; and he did--he arrived here night before last--and explained it
in writing, and that document and the Bishop have been taken under
advisement, (and we think we were told a decision had been arrived at,
and that it was not public property just yet--but we are not sure, and
we had rather not take any chances on this part of the business.) We
do know, however, that the Bishop and his document are still under
advisement as far as the public are concerned, and we would further
advise the public not to get in a sweat about it, but to hold their grip
patiently until it is proper for them to know all about the matter. This
is all we know concerning the Bishop and his explanation, and if we
have branched out too much and shed something that trenches upon that
infernal "contraband" rule, we want to go home.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 23, 1864

DEMORALIZING YOUNG GIRLS

Yesterday, in the Police Court, George Lambertson and Ralph Doyle, one
a full-grown man and the other a boy of fourteen, pleaded guilty to the
charge of exhibiting obscene pictures. Officers Lees, Evrard and Rose,
some time since, got on the track of a regular system of prostituting
young girls, which was being carried on by a number of men and boys who
had banded themselves together for the purpose, and their efforts
have resulted in the arrest of the two persons above named, and the
unearthing of two more of the boys and two or three men, who are
probably all captured by this time. The name of one of the men is Emile
Buffandeau; two of the boys are Harry Fenton and George Ayres. The men
made use of the boys to decoy the girls to their rooms, where their
ruin was effected. These rooms were well stocked with obscene books and
pictures. The officers say that the further they probe the matter
the more astounding are the developments, and the more widespread the
operations of this infamous association are discovered to be. The names
of some fifteen of these debauched girls have already been ascertained,
and others are suspected of properly belonging on the list. Some of
them are members of families of high respectability, and the balance,
as young Doyle phrases it, are "baldheaded," that is, unbonneted street
girls. The ages of the lot vary from ten or twelve to fifteen. Ralph
Doyle says that he and the other two boys, Ayres and Fenton, were
"confidants," but that he knows of no "gang," nor confederation of men
and boys together, in the wretched business. He is aware, however,
that a large number of men and boys and young girls are in the habit of
visiting each other's rooms, but on their own individual responsibility
only, he thinks. He says the girls showed him the obscene pictures,
instead of his being guilty of that sort of conduct with them, and he is
further of the opinion that they have done the seducing in most of the
other cases, as they did in his. He is a fine, handsome, manly little
fellow, uses excellent language, and his bearing is quiet and perfectly
well-bred. He tells his story the same way every time, and we believe he
tells the truth. All his revelations, however, will not do to print.
The boys concerned in this extraordinary affair will be sent to the
Industrial School, as they are all very young, and it is to be hoped
that the law will be stretched to its utmost tension for the punishment
of the men...Since the above was in type, we have learned that the
terrible developments detailed above, were brought to light through
the energy and industry of the master of one of the Schools. He had
ascertained the names and addresses of a great number of men and boys
not mentioned in this article, who were implicated in these villainous
transactions, and was in a fair way of securing their apprehension,
but the premature disclosure of the facts and their publication in the
evening papers, it is feared, will put the scoundrels on their guard,
and prevent their capture. Furthermore, according to our latest
information, there are thirty names of debauched young girls on the
list. The man Lambertson, by whom a poor orphan girl of fifteen has
become enceinte, has made over to her, in the hope of escaping the
penitentiary, such property as he owned in the city. We are also very
glad to learn, from the best authority, that Ralph Doyle, so far from
being a leader among the miscreants, as has been said of him, was the
most innocent in the party, and that it is not in his nature to do an
unworthy action when left to the guidance of his own good instincts.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 23, 1864

FALSE PRETENCES

A few days ago, L. Kahn bought ten thousand cigars from a man named
Cohen, promising to pay twenty dollars per thousand in gold for them on
delivery. He had them taken and left in a cellar, and told the plaintiff
to call in an hour or so afterwards and get his money. When the man
called, according to appointment, Kahn was absent and so were the
cigars; and finally, when he did succeed in corralling his debtor, the
fellow tendered green-backs in payment of his bill. The result was a
charge preferred in the Police Court against Kahn, for obtaining goods
under false pretences. After a patient hearing of the case, Judge
Shepheard said he would send it up to the County Court (placing
defendant under one thousand dollars' bonds,) and if they felt there
as he did, Kahn would certainly be punished for the crime he had been
charged with, or perhaps even for grand larceny, which was the real
spirit of the offence. He said Kahn's conduct was based in fraud, and
carried out in fraud; there was fraud in its conception and fraud in its
execution; and he considered the man as guilty as the occupant of any
jail in the country. The counsel for defendant said if there was any
fraud in the matter, it probably lay in the issuance of the green-backs
in the first place. Judge Shepheard said, "I am aware that you are a
Union man, Sir, but notwithstanding that, I will permit no more such
language as that to be used in this Court; and I will punish any man who
repeats the offences here, for contempt, or imprison him for treason,
for I regard it as nothing more nor less than treason. It is your duty
and mine, Sir, to uphold the Government and forbear to question the
righteousness of its acts." The lawyer protested his innocence of any
intention to commit the chiefest among crimes, and quiet was restored
again.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 23, 1864

RAPE

Night before last, Miss Margaret McQuinn complained to Captain Lees
that she had been raped by the driver of hack No. 28, and officer Blitz,
whose duty it is to attend to the followers of that occupation, was
deputed to ferret out the criminal and arrest him, which he did. The
man's name is Barney Gillan. The woman is large and strongly built, and
about thirty years of age. From her story--all of which it is not by
any means necessary to publish--it would seem that she is supernaturally
green. She says she arrived here from Manchester, New Hampshire, last
Monday, in the Constitution, and since then three different hackmen have
endeavored to entrap her. Day before yesterday, Gillan, under pretence
of hunting a situation as a servant for her among some respectable
families in the country with whom he represented himself as being very
popular, took her to some out-of-the-way den kept by a Frenchman, near
the Mission, and ruined her by force, as above stated. She returned to
town with him, and then excused herself and went and laid the matter
before the detective department. There is a charge of this kind brought
against some hackman or other about once every five or six months, and
it is fully time an example were made that would forever put a stop to
such villainy on their part. Gillan has been admitted to bail in the sum
of one thousand dollars.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 24, 1864

A MERITED PENALTY

We chronicle the usual visitations of justice upon those persons whose
errors are venial, and the result of an unfortunate appetite, or temper,
always with a feeling of regret that the well-being of society demands
inflexibly a judgment "according to the law and the testimony." We can
compassionate the man whose domestic troubles, or business reverses,
drive him to drink frenzy from the bowl, or who, in a momentary heat,
retaliates on wanton injury, or insult, or errs through ignorance; but
there are instances where the only regret is that the power of the
Judge to punish is limited to a penalty not at all commensurate with
the magnitude of the offence. In the case of George Lambertson, who was
arrested for infamous demoralizing practices with young school girls,
and who pleaded guilty in the Police Court, Judge Shepheard inflicted
upon the miscreant the heaviest penalty prescribed by the law for his
crime. Lambertson receives a term of three months in the County Jail,
and a fine of five hundred dollars, (which fine will extend the term
of imprisonment until the full amount is served out, at the rate of two
dollars per day, in addition to the three months aforesaid,) is a part
of the penalty.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 26, 1864

CONCERNING HACKMEN

At the next meeting of the Board of Supervisors, Mr. Cummings, member
from the Tenth District, will introduce an ordinance requiring all
drivers of hacks, as well as hack-owners, to take out license, to the
end that the eternal dodging of responsibility by that class of
the community may be checkmated. One plan of extorting money from
passengers, which is followed by hackmen under the present loose system,
might be frustrated, perhaps, by Mr. Cummings' proposed bill. The plan
we refer to is this: A stranger takes a hack at the steamboat landing,
and makes a bargain for his transportation to a hotel; on the road,
the driver's confederate takes the reins, delivers the passenger at the
hotel, and charges him double, swearing he knows nothing of the previous
contract. We were under the impression that the owner of the hack was
responsible in cases of illegal charging, but those whose business it is
to know, tell us it is not so. It ought to be, at any rate. It doesn't
even require horse-sense to know that much. And while the subject is
before the Board, an ordinance is to be framed requiring the hackmen
around Portsmouth Square to stay where they belong, and not collect
in squads, obstructing the sidewalks, and making a general nuisance of
themselves. So far, Signor Blitz, and the Police Court, and the Board
of Supervisors, all put together, have not been able to keep the
hackmen straight. One of the fraternity, Barney Gillan, is up to-day
for committing a rape on a defenceless young woman, thirty-five years of
age, and they will probably make him sweat for it.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 30, 1864

TROT HER ALONG

For several days a vagrant two story frame house has been wandering
listlessly about Commercial street, above this office, and she has
finally stopped in the middle of the thoroughfare, and is staring
dejectedly towards Montgomery street, as if she would like to go down
there, but really don't feel equal to the exertion. We wish they
would trot her along and leave the street open; she is an impassable
obstruction and an intolerable nuisance where she stands now. If they
set her up there to be looked at, it is all right; but we have looked at
her as much as we want to, and are anxious for her to move along; we are
not stuck after her any.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 30, 1864

MRS. O'FARRELL

This faded relic of gentility--or, rather, this washed-out relic, for
every tint of that description is gone--was brought to the station-house
yesterday, in the arms of Officers Marsh and Ball, in a state of beastly
intoxication. She cursed the Union and lauded the Confederacy for half
an hour, and then she cast up part of her dinner; during the succeeding
half hour, or perhaps it might have been three-quarters, she continued
to curse the Federal Union and belch fuming and offensive blessings
upon the Southern Confederacy, and then she cast up the balance of her
dinner. She seemed much relieved. She so expressed herself. She observed
to the prison-keeper, and casually to such as were standing around,
although strangers to her, that she didn't care a d--n. She said it
in that tone of quiet cheerfulness and contentment, which marks the
troubled spirit at peace again after its stormy season of unrest. So
they tackled her once more, and jammed her into the "dark cell," and
locked her up. To such of her friends as gentle love for her may
inspire with agonized suspense on her account, we would say: Banish your
foreboding fears, for she's safe.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 30, 1864

END OF THE RAPE CASE

Barney Gillan, the hackman against whom a charge of rape was preferred
some days since, had an examination yesterday before Judge Shepheard.
At first the tears and apparent distress of the victim of the alleged
outrage, while occupying the witness's stand, were calculated to move
the hearts of those present and unacquainted with the facts; but as the
examination progressed the matter began to assume a very questionable
phase, and it was soon apparent that if there had been any rape
committed at all, it was of a very modified type. True, the lady did
enter her protest, and had a notion to halloo, when Gillan was about
taking undue liberties with her; but she sought a refuge and assuaged
her grief that night at the Portsmouth Hotel, in the embraces of a
benevolent person with whom she had met for the first time that day. He
protected her injured innocence until seven o'clock the next morning,
when she sallied forth to seek another protector. The case was
discharged

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 30, 1864

MORE SANITARY MOLASSES

The bark Yankee arrived from Honolulu yesterday, bringing another
hundred barrels of molasses to Rev. H. W. Bellows, contributed by
Captain Makee, and to be sold for the benefit of the Sanitary Fund. We
noticed a like donation from the same distant patriot a day or two ago,
which was sold here and netted upwards of twelve hundred dollars to the
fund. Captain Makee's sugar plantation, on one of the Hawaiian Islands,
whence this molasses comes, is rather extensive. He has seven hundred
acres of cane growing, and this area will be increased during the next
few months to nine hundred or a thousand acres. There is no water on
the plantation, and irrigation has to be resorted to. Even the water
required for the steam engine and other purposes in the manufacture
of sugar, has to be brought from a spring on a mountain, three miles
distant, through iron pipes; yet, so rich is the land that six tons of
sugar have been made on a single acre, and the average is about three
tons. At his own mill, Captain Makee manufactures from eight thousand
to ten thousand pounds of sugar a day. During the present year, his
plantation has been very successful, and promises to produce the
largest amount of sugar yet obtained from any one estate in the Hawaiian
Islands. Its product will probably realize, at present rates, this year,
over one hundred thousand dollars; and, altogether, its chances, in a
business point of view, may be regarded as rather a "deader thing" than
Gould & Curry. The estate is expected to yield over two million pounds
of sugar next year. Captain Makee has invented a "molasses pan" and
a "double cane cart," which are spoken of as great triumphs of Yankee
genius.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 31, 1864

DISGUSTED AND GONE

That melancholy old frame house that has been loafing around Commercial
street for the past week, got disgusted at the notice we gave her in the
last issue of the CALL, and drifted off into some other part of the city
yesterday. It is pleasing to our vanity to imagine that if it had not
been for our sagacity in divining her hellish designs, and our fearless
exposure of them, she would have been down on Montgomery street to-day,
playing herself for a hotel. As it is, she has folded her tents like the
Arabs, and quietly stolen away, behind several yoke of oxen.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 31, 1864

ANOTHER LAZARUS


The lamented Lazarus departed this life about a year ago, and from that
time until recently poor Bummer has mourned the loss of his faithful
friend in solitude, scorning the sympathy and companionship of his
race with that stately reserve and exclusiveness which has always
distinguished him since he became a citizen of San Francisco. But, for
several weeks past, we have observed a vagrant black puppy has taken
up with him, and attends him in his promenades, bums with him at the
restaurants, and watches over his slumbers as unremittingly as did
the sainted Lazarus of other days. Whether that puppy really feels an
unselfish affection for Bummer, or whether he is actuated by unworthy
motives, and goes with him merely to ring in on the eating houses
through his popularity at such establishments, or whether he is one of
those fawning sycophants that fasten upon the world's heroes in order
that they may be glorified by the reflected light of greatness, we can
not yet determine. We only know that he hangs around Bummer, and snarls
at intruders upon his repose, and looks proud and happy when the old dog
condescends to notice him. He ventures upon no puppyish levity in the
presence of his prince, and essays no unbecoming familiarity, but in all
respects conducts himself with the respectful decorum which such a puppy
so situated should display. Consequently, in time, he may grow into high
favor.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 31, 1864

BURGLARY

On Friday morning, Catherine Leary, who lives in Waverley Place, got
up and found all the doors in her house open, and a silk dress worth
seventy-five dollars missing, and also an alarm clock, said to be worth
ten dollars; but we beg to be left unmolested in the opinion that it
isn't worth six bits, if it didn't know enough to give the alarm when
the house was full of thieves. Officer Rose, of the Detective Police,
recovered the silk dress yesterday, and the imbecile clock, and also
the Chinaman who is supposed to have committed the burglary. Hoping the
accused may prove innocent, we prefer not to blast his reputation by
publishing his name yet, which is Ah Chum.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 31, 1864

CUSTOM HOUSE RESIGNATIONS

Yesterday afternoon, the Deputy Collector, Auditor, and fifteen other
Custom House officers sent in their resignations, assigning as a reason
for doing so, that with green-backs at the present rates, (forty cents,)
their wages were less than those received by day laborers, and being
inadequate to defray the expense of living, they were compelled to
resign. Custom House salaries are not very heavy, even when paid in
gold. We are informed that the Collector telegraphed to Washington at
once concerning the matter.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 31, 1864

THE CAMANCHE

Work on the Camanche is progressing rapidly. The foreman observed
yesterday, with the air of a man who is satisfied his listener is
an uncommonly intelligent man, and knows all about things, that the
"garboard streak" had been up some time. It is not possible to conceive
the satisfaction we derived from that information. She must be all right
now, isn't she? One of those gunboats is generally all right when she
has her "garboard streak" up, perhaps. Such has been our experience.
It is limited, but that is of no real consequence, probably. We looked
around a little, and noticed that there was another streak up, also,
running fore-and-aft, and several streaks running crossways, and enough
old iron lying around to make as many more streaks as they want, if it
holds out. It was excessively cheerful and gratifying. The public may
rest easy--work on the Camanche is streaking along with extraordinary
velocity.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 2, 1864

SOMBRE FESTIVITIES

All day yesterday the cars were carrying colored people of all shades
and tints, and of all sizes and both sexes, out to Hayes' Park, to
celebrate the anniversary of the emancipation of their race in England's
West Indian possessions years ago. They rode the fiery untamed steeds
that are kept for equestrian duty in the grounds; they practised pistol
shooting, but abstained from destroying the targets; they swung; they
promenaded among the shrubbery; they filled themselves up with beer and
sandwiches--all just as the thing is done there by white folks--and they
essayed to dance, but the effort was not a brilliant success. It was
interesting to look at, though. For languid, slow-moving, pretentious,
impressive, solemn, and excessively high-toned and aristocratic dancing,
commend us to the disenthralled North American negro, when there is no
restraint upon his natural propensity to put on airs. White folks of
the upper stratum of society pretend to walk through quadrilles, in a
stately way, but these saddle-colored young ladies can discount them in
the slow-movement evidence of high gentility. They don't know much about
dancing, but they "let on" magnificently, as if the mazes of a quadrille
were their native element, and they move serenely through it and tangle
it hopelessly and inextricably, with an unctuous satisfaction that is
surpassingly pleasant to witness. By the middle of the afternoon
about two hundred darkies were assembled at the Park; or rather, to
be precise, there was not much "darky" about it, either; for if the
prevailing lightness of tint was worth anything as evidence, the noble
miscegenationist had been skirmishing considerably among them in days
gone by. It was expected that the colored race would come out strong in
the matter of numbers (and otherwise) in the evening, when a grand ball
was to be given and last all night.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 2, 1864

ENLISTED FOR THE WAR

If ever you want to find Ellen Quinn, or Gentle Julia, or Mary Holt,
or Haidee Leonard, or Annie Berry, please call at the County Jail,
upstairs. Mary Holt has spent most of her time there for the past
fourteen years, it is said, and the most inexperienced of this company
of choice spirits (gin) has sojourned there chiefly for the last three
years. Mary Holt has just enlisted again for the County Jail for fifty
days, and next time she comes out she will probably enlist for the war.
Following is the record of service of these old soldiers for the past
twelve months: Out of the 365 days, Ellen Quinn spent 240 in the County
Jail; Gentle Julia, 210 in the station house and County Jail together;
Mary Holt, 190 in the County Jail alone; Haidee Leonard, 106 in the
County Jail; Annie Berry, 111 in the County Jail. The balance of the
year these fellows have spent in the stationhouse, for the most part,
for they suffer arrest and confinement there three times, with about two
days imprisonment for each arrest, before they can pass muster and
get into the County Jail. The veteran Mary Holt commenced fighting the
prisons in 1849 or '50.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 2, 1864

REFUSED GREENBACKS

Last Saturday, eleven inspectors in the barge office of the Custom House
received a call from the Poll tax Collector, and they tendered
their indebtedness in the kind of money their salaries are paid
in--green-backs. The Collector said he was not allowed to take anything
but coin, and the inspectors said they would suffer imprisonment before
they would pay in anything but green-backs. The soundness of this
position will be appreciated when you come to reflect that they only get
four dollars a day, anyhow, and when that sum is mashed into green-backs
at present rates, it only amounts to about a dollar and a half a day.
Now, estimating their actual living expenses at a dollar and forty-five
cents a day--and it cannot fall below that while they continue to eat
anything--how long would it take one of those inspectors to pay this
oppressive Poll-tax in coin out of the clear profits of his labor? Why,
it would take two months and three weeks, as nearly as you could come at
it; as the amount of the tax is four dollars.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 3, 1864

ATTEMPTED SUICIDE

Last night, a young man by the name of John Ferguson went to the drug
store of Mr. Riley, on the corner of Mission and Second streets, and
asked for strychnine, as he said, to kill a dog. He got ten grains. He
went into Mission street, took the poison, and was soon met by a friend,
to whom he said that he was sick, had taken poison, and was dying. A
doctor was called at once, who administered mustard and warm water,
which caused nausea and vomiting, which relieved him by freeing the
stomach of the poison. Hopes are entertained of his recovery. The cause
of this attempt upon his own life is said to be depression from loss of
employment and pecuniary difficulties.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 3, 1864

A MOVEMENT IN BUCKEYE

"How's stocks this morning?" "Movement in 'Buckeye.'" This little
characteristic salutation, a few days since, prefaced a breach of the
peace on Montgomery street, thus: Mr. Green, who is learned in the
matter of stocks, was authorized to purchase fifty shares of "Buckeye"
at four dollars and a half. Mr. Jazinski, also talented in the
same line, had a quantity for sale at five dollars, the same having
previously been purchased by his principal at twenty-one dollars,
showing conclusively that stocks are sometimes up and at other times
very much down. Mr. G., the author of the second remark in the above
brief dialogue, said he would see whether his principal would give five
dollars, and departed for that purpose. Mr. J. waited expectantly for a
long time, say a matter of several hours, but in the interval saw G. a
number of times and was by him informed that the person who wanted the
stock was for the time being distinctly invisible to the naked eye.
During this invisibility, "Buckeye" depreciates, and the seller becoming
impatient, at last insists that Mr. Green should take the stock at five
dollars, himself, without reference to his principal, laying down the
proposition that the latter gentleman had inaugurated the transaction
in the character of principal himself, and that he held him for it.
Mr. Green took issue on this point, and declared that there had been no
purchase. Mr. J. said there had--Mr. G. said there hadn't. The mutual
contradiction grew positive, with expletives and profane adjectives,
amounting to a mutual impeachment of veracity, upon which Mr. Green
smote the countenance of the other broker, thereby breaking up the
negotiations and breaking the peace at the same time. A blow at sea may
be a breeze, a gale or a tempest, but a blow on land is very likely to
be an assault and battery. Of this latter kind was the blow given by
Mr. Green, and in consequence thereof he was yesterday ordered by Judge
Shepheard to appear this morning for sentence.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 3, 1864

MORE STAGE ROBBERS AND THEIR CONFEDERATES CAPTURED

Under-Sheriff Hall, of Santa Clara county, and Messrs. Hume and Van
Eaton, Under and Deputy Sheriffs of El Dorado county, arrived from San
Jose by the cars, yesterday evening, with the following splendid haul of
Placerville stage robbers, captured by them in the vicinity of San Jose,
early yesterday morning: Henry Jarbo, George Cross, J. A. Robinson,
Wallace Clendening, Joseph Gamble, Joseph Jordan, Thomas Freer, James
Freer, John Ingraham, Gately and Hodges--eleven. Sheriff Hall also
brought down another of the robber gang named Wilson, whom he caught
a week ago. He has been upon the track of all these men, and has been
"spotting" them for the past three months. The confession of young
Glasby confirmed his suspicions concerning them. The prisoners are
farmers, for the most part, and resided round about San Jose; they are
all Constitutional Democrats. They are not all charged with having taken
part in the stage robbery, but some of them did, and the others were
members of the robber organization, and accessories to the robbery
before and after the fact. The organization dates back to the first of
May, and the process of forming it was under way a good while before
that. Its object was to raise men for the Confederate service, and they
were to furnish themselves with equipments and supplies by guerrilla
practice on the highway. Its ramifications are supposed to be very
extensive, and they are known to have received aid and comfort from many
prominent citizens. Some of the men arrested are well-to-do farmers. We
are told by a resident of Santa Clara county that the prisoner Robinson
is a brother-in-law of the editor of the Stockton Democratic organ, the
Beacon. It is not known whether the men recruited for the Confederate
service were to do duty only in this State, or elsewhere. The
headquarters of the gang were at the house of a man named Hodges, who
lives in the mountains east of San Jose. The six who robbed Wells, Fargo
and Co's stage, started from Hodges'. Under-Sheriff Hall arrested this
man at the "Willows," near San Jose, early yesterday morning, where he
had unsuspectingly come on business. Two of the prisoners in this new
haul are believed to have taken a hand in the late robbery of Langton's
Express. Grant, Baker, and Captain Ingram, of the gang, have escaped,
and left for parts unknown. Baker and Ingram were kept in hiding for a
day or two by one Green Duff at his house near San Jose, and the latter
furnished Baker a horse to escape on. Mr. Hall arrested a man at Duff's
house, yesterday morning. The man is a good Constitutional Democrat. The
rumor prevalent here yesterday, that there was a terrific fight in San
Jose the night before, with the stage robbers, was groundless; there was
no fight. Colonel Jackson telegraphed for one thousand rounds of ball
cartridge yesterday morning--in order to be prepared for an emergency,
perhaps, in case one should arise--and the militia of San Jose were
called together the night before and provided with a signal for the same
purpose; they went further than was required, and lay on their arms in
anticipation of trouble. Out of these ominous circumstances the rumor we
have spoken of probably grew. Sheriff Hall also brought up with him
last night three State prisoners, viz: Henry Hoffman, Charles Buford
and Antonio Leiva, all sentenced for one year for grand larceny; he will
take them to San Quentin to-day, and the El Dorado officers will depart
with the Secesh stage robbers on the Sacramento boat this evening. No
blood was spilled in arresting the robber gang. One posse of men under
Sheriff Hall, and another under officers Hume and Van Eaton, left San
Jose before daylight yesterday morning, and travelled in different
directions; the former made six of the arrests, and the latter five.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 3, 1864

DEMOCRATIC MEETING AT HAYES' PARK

The Democratic Indignation Meeting at Hayes' Park, last evening,
amounted to a very short row of small potatoes, with few in the hill.
The whole number present certainly did not exceed four hundred, of whom
at least one-half were Union men, or supporters of the Administration,
drawn thither by curiosity and the cars. The meeting was called to order
by Col. Phelps. Vociferous calls for Beriah Brown brought him to the
platform, and he delivered himself of a few remarks substantially as
follows:

Gentlemen:--We have assembled here to-night as American citizens--(Great
noise in the hall here, and the speaker's voice was inaudible for
several moments.) We meet here to offer no opposition to the Government;
but we meet here to discuss, the question of our rights as citizens. We
ask for no rights but what each individual is entitled to; to do as we
would be done by under all circumstances--at the same time we do not
propose to surrender our rights as American citizens. (Applause.)This, I
understand, is the object of the meeting. The first business, gentlemen,
is to hear the report of the Committee appointed to draft resolutions.

The following resolutions were then handed Mr. Brown, who had previously
been appointed Chairman of the meeting, which were as follows. (We omit
giving the preamble at length, as it all amounted simply to a renewal
of fidelity to the Constitutions of the State and United States, and
a declaration of intention to maintain the laws and yield a willing
support to all just and legally constituted authorities in the
administration thereof, etc.; and to the best of our ability to support
whatever good citizens may rightfully do, to maintain domestic peace
and promote general welfare. That they demand nothing but a uniform
and faithful administration of the laws, and no privilege but what
is clearly and indisputably guaranteed by the Constitutions of our
Government. It also declared that where there is no law there is no
freedom, and contained the usual declaiming against the abridgment of
the freedom of speech and the press.)

Resolved, That we regard with alarm all exercise of power by the United
States Government, or its agents, not specifically delegated to that
Government, and in derogation of the reserved rights of States, and in
abridgment of the constitutional guarantees to the people, as tending to
central despotism and the subjugation of popular liberty.

Resolved, That, whenever through fear of spies or informers, or the
power of military commanders to arrest and imprison American citizens,
they shall be deterred from peaceably assembling together and freely
expressing their approval or disapproval of measures of public policy,
the point is reached beyond which submission merges the free man into a
slave.

Resolved, That the spotless reputation of Bishop Kavanaugh, and
the well-known patriotism and devotion of Charles L. Weller, to the
Constitution and the Union, justify the belief that the arrest of these
gentlemen was procured by the perjury of mercenary spies and informers,
or by persons actuated solely by personal malice, and we can but express
the sentiments of all honorable men in denouncing the employment of
those degraded wretches, an offence to civilization, and a disgrace to
humanity.

After the passage of the resolutions, the band discoursed a National
air.

Dr. Wozencraft was then introduced by the chairman. His speech was
simply a rehash of all the whinings and hypocrisy of Copperheads since
the conflict began. He had much to say about the imminence of our danger
of becoming involved in scenes such as are now being witnessed in the
Southern States, from a determination on the part of large numbers to
resist with force the arbitrary and unconstitutional measures that were
being inaugurated in our midst. "The record of the Democratic party
is but a record of the Nation's power and glory; while that of the
Abolition party is a record of her shame and disintegration." He said
there are but two parties--the Democratic party, whose mission is to
sustain the Union, and the Abolition party, which is seeking to destroy
it. There is no hope for Union, peace and prosperity, only through a
Conservative Democratic Administration. The North was unanimous in their
opposition to the idea of Secession. To the support of the Government
in suppressing the Rebellion, there was not a dissenting voice until the
war was made one of subjugation, abolition and confiscation. Democrats
were law-abiding and constitutional people, and the present supporters
of the Administration are the Secessionists. Jeff. Davis and his
followers are simply their allies in the work of destroying the
Government. The speaker predicted that "so soon as we get control of the
Federal Government, which by the help of God we hope to do at the coming
election, they (the Republicans) will declare that the Pacific States
will withdraw and form themselves into a separate Republic." Here he
read an extract from a speech of Mr. Seward's, and continued for about
twenty minutes in the usual strain of his ilk.

At the close of his speech the band made more music. After which, Zach.
Montgomery, of Marysville, appeared on the stand. He commenced by saying
that he would speak from the record, (thereby meaning that he would read
his speech from a manuscript, which he did.) They had assembled there
to consider how they should preserve the liberties of the people of
California, and avert the horrors of civil war. Then followed the
inevitable tirade against the measures of the Administration and its
appointed agents, for suppressing treason and taking seditious persons
into custody. He said that there is no use to try to disguise the fact
that there is danger of civil war in this State, and intimated that a
certain party, chafing under the discipline of Abraham Lincoln, was on
the verge of outbreak, and the smothered volcano might burst out at any
moment, and that we were nearer the scenes which our brethren in the
older States were now witnessing than many might imagine. There were but
two roads before us; the one leads to civil war, the other to peace.
He declared in so many words that the Administration were determinedly
pursuing the former road. Its acts were all in direct violation of the
Constitution, and every blow struck at that instrument only drove us
deeper into the danger of civil war and its attendant horrors. He spoke,
as did Wozencraft, like a man who was in the secret of an organization
existing in our midst, with the sole object of resisting by force and
arms, all disciplinary, police or administrative measures which, in
their estimation, might be deemed unconstitutional or oppressive; and
they are to be the judges. Like the other speakers, he also referred to
them in terms which might, without much distortion, be construed into an
approval of their patriotic purpose. The speaker dwelt at great length
on this danger, hidden from unprivileged eyes, and ready to create a
storm--a general disruption in our very midst--ere we were aware of the
least danger. In a word, if General McDowell arrests any more noisy and
treasonable babblers, or insidious enemies to the Government, why we may
look out for guns and a fight.

Mr. Montgomery's enunciation was very impassioned, and he seemed
extremely fearful that the infatuation of the Administration would yet
inevitably, and at no distant period, transfer to our own California
all the horrors of the Eastern battle-fields. In conclusion, he
conjured all, both Republicans and Democrats, to respect and obey the
Constitution and the laws under it, as the only means of averting the
terrible catastrophe, to the brink of which we have been brought; the
only pacificator of that secret element, that is now only resting in a
temporary lull, while preparing for the great and sudden effort which is
to follow the next persistent attempt of the administrative authorities
to enforce an "arbitrary measure."

After a little music to soften down the lion which Montgomery had
roused, (within himself,) Tod Robinson was presented, and with all the
blandishments of an adept at honey-fugling, he proceeded to tell the
people of the wrongs they were suffering at the hands of the present
Administration. He also knows something of their hidden danger, this
secret-steel trap which is to catch all infernal Abolitionists and send
them to perdition without benefit of clergy. He prefaced his speech by
stating the fact that he was born under the behests of freedom, and held
no right nor privilege by the tenure of any man's will. A recapitulation
of his speech would fall on the ear much like the repetition for the
thousandth time of an old thread bare story. Every Californian knows Tod
Robinson by heart, and nobody believes anything he says. We left while
he was speaking, in company with a good Democrat, who said he wasn't
"going to listen to such a d--d rascal as Tod Robinson." Though he
rather favored some of the other speakers, he couldn't go Tod Robinson.
So we all departed, and the meeting shortly after broke up, with the
close of Robinson's speech.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 4, 1864

RECOVERED

The young man, John Ferguson, whose attempt to poison himself by
strychnine we recorded in yesterday morning's CALL, is beyond danger.
This gratifying result is due to the exertions of Dr. De Castro, who
was summoned after the first-called physician had abandoned the case and
declared recovery impossible. The Doctor remained with the patient until
the effects of the poison had been completely subdued. Ferguson, we
understand, is a moulder by trade, and was lately in the employ of Ira
P. Rankin. He lost his situation through no fault of his own; but simply
because, with others of his craft, he asked an advance of fifty cents
per day on his wages to meet increased expenses of living. For this
presumption he was thrown out of employment, and it weighed upon his
spirits to the extent of suicide. With some money-getters fifty cents
have more importance than many lives.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 4, 1864

FRUIT SWINDLING

Last Saturday morning, a man named Cheesman, proprietor of a fruit store
at the corner of Market and Second streets, purchased quantities of
fruit from different dealers, and in the afternoon, after taking
an inventory of his wares, sold out his whole establishment for one
thousand dollars. In order to avert suspicion, he paid a month's advance
on his room rent on Friday, and conducted himself in all respects as if
he had made up his mind to remain in San Francisco a century. However,
notwithstanding his subtle diplomacy, his creditors began to suspect him
of an intention to defraud them, and when the places which knew him
once got to knowing him no more, shortly they grew alarmed and fell to
searching for him. They sought him from Saturday night until Tuesday,
and finally found him. He began to play himself for an honest man, at
once, and declared his willingness to pay his debts. They took him to
Justice Cornwall's office, and made him disgorge the money he had with
him, seven hundred and fifty dollars, after which, by authority of a
writ served for that purpose, they submitted him to a rigid examination.
The seven hundred and fifty dollars was deposited in Court; he went
there yesterday morning, with his lawyer, and tried to substitute
green-backs for the amount, but the Judge refused to permit it, and said
it must remain as it was, for distribution among the creditors. Suits
have been commenced against Cheesman by those who loved him and trusted
him, and got burnt at it. They do not love him so much now. He owes
about twelve hundred dollars for fruit, and six hundred dollars borrowed
money. His indebtedness for fruit is distributed among a large number
of dealers, in bills ranging from three dollars up to two hundred and
thirty dollars.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 4, 1864

OTIUM CUM DIGNITATE

Secretary Chase's private offices at Washington are fitted with
Axminster carpets, gilded ceilings, velvet furniture, and other
luxurious surroundings which go to hedge about a Cabinet Minister with a
dignity quite appalling to the unaccustomed outsider.

Five minutes after a Custom House clerk had read this item, and with
the recollection of it still upon him, he was paid his monthly salary
in greenbacks, and the consequence was he lost his temper, and became
profane to a degree approaching lunacy.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 5, 1864

SOLDIER MURDERED BY A MONOMANIAC

ESCAPE AND SUBSEQUENT ARREST OF THE MURDERER

Just before three o'clock yesterday morning, a soldier named Simon
Kennedy, while under the influence of a temporary hallucination, killed
a fellow-soldier named Fitzgerald, who was confined in the guard-house
with him, at Black Point, by stabbing the unfortunate man twelve or
fifteen times with a bayonet. The shrieks of the struggling victim
attracted the attention of the sentinel, who opened the door, when the
murderer rushed out and escaped in the darkness, followed by three or
four terrified prisoners. Captain Winder turned out his whole force to
pursue Kennedy, but they found neither him nor any trace of him, save a
bloody towel under the bank near the Bensley Water Works, where he had
evidently washed the blood from his clothing. About seven o'clock a
soldier arrived here with a message from Capt. Winder to Chief Burke,
announcing the murder, and the latter left at once for Black Point,
after giving orders for half a dozen members of the Police force to
mount and follow him. He also requested Captain Van Vost, of the Provost
Department, to detail an equal number of mounted men, to aid in the
search for Kennedy, which request was promptly complied with. Arrived at
Black Point, the Chief procured a description of Kennedy, and acquainted
himself with his habits and antecedents. He was told that the man was a
lunatic, but from the fact of his having wit enough about him to guard
against detection by washing himself, it was evident that he was not
stupidly mad, at any rate. Further inquiries elicited the information
that Kennedy had requested several times, lately, to be taken to Father
Cotter, in Vallejo street, and had once been there, a day or two ago,
in charge of a soldier. The Chief thought it possible that he might
have gone there after his escape, and sent officers Clark and Hoyt to
ascertain if such were the case. The surmise proved correct, and Father
Cotter was at once relieved of his dangerous guest--and dangerous enough
he was, too, as he still had his bayonet with him, bloody and bent by
the murderous thrusts inflicted with it upon the body of Fitzgerald. The
best information concerning this tragedy goes to show that Kennedy is a
sane man upon all subjects except one--that of hanging. He is quiet and
sensible enough until halters and scaffolds are mentioned, and then he
becomes a madman. Some of the causes of this are recent, and some date
far back in the past. He is an extraordinary swimmer, and it is said he
once swam the Mississippi at a point where it was more than a mile and
a half wide, and his bare head being exposed so long to the burning rays
of the sun, the strength and vigor of his brain were impaired by it, and
at intervals since then he has seemed a little flighty. He enlisted in
Davis street, here, and was sent with his company to Alcatraz, where
they remained some time, and were finally transferred to Black Point.
While at Alcatraz, Kennedy was swimming in the Bay with a comrade, upon
one occasion, when the latter was seized with cramps and was drowned.
The men used to tell Kennedy he murdered his comrade, and that he would
be hanged for it; they kept it up until finally the poor wretch got to
brooding over the fate predicted for him until he began to suspect
his brother soldiers of an intention to hang him. He went twice to his
Captain for protection against them. A day or two ago, at Black Point,
the soldiers pestered him again about his chances of being hanged, and
he says the Captain put him in the guard-house for safe keeping. The
supposition is that during the night the horrors came upon him that his
fellow-prisoners were going to hang him, and he seized the bayonet and
fought desperately to save himself. Kennedy told us what he knew about
the murder, but his statements were confused, and he said he did not
recollect much about it. He only knew that three or four men came in the
guard-house to hang him, and said they were going to do it at once; one
of them seized and tried to choke him, and he snatched a bayonet from
the wall, where it was hanging above a dark-colored cap, and struck
out wildly with it in self-defence. He was not certain whether he hit
anybody, but he thought he did. Afterward, he said it was likely he took
the bayonet away from the man who was trying to choke him--and then he
showed wounds on his hands, as if he had a vague notion that they were
evidence of how he came into possession of the weapon. His person and
his clothing were as black as a coal heaver's; he said he changed his
clothes on his way to town, and left his uniform lying in the road. If
he did, the latter was not found. When speaking of the murder, Kennedy
gazes upon the visitor with a fixed, vacant stare, and looks like a man
who is absorbed in trying to recollect something. The body of Fitzgerald
lay at the Coroner's office yesterday; the breast, shoulders, stomach,
hip and arms were covered with little triangular red spots, where
the bayonet had entered. The inquest will be held to-day, so we were
informed. The murderer and his victim were both members of Company D,
Third Artillery. Fitzgerald was a married man; his widow resides in this
city. Since the above was written, a soldier in the regular army has
informed us how the bayonet happened to be in the guard-house within
reach of a prisoner popularly considered to be insane. He says Captain
Mears makes his prisoners do guard duty, and after they are relieved,
their instructions are to take their muskets to the guard-room and clean
them during confinement. He further says the members of Fitzgerald's
Company are incensed at this conduct of permitting deadly weapons to be
carried within reach of the lunatic imprisoned with their comrade.
He says that when a prisoner does guard duty, it is usual for a
noncommissioned officer to go with him and see that he cleans his musket
at the quarters, and leaves it there, and then takes him back to be
locked into the guard-house, unarmed. The soldier says Kennedy first
attacked a man named McDonald, with the bayonet, and then assaulted
Fitzgerald, who was asleep at the time. When he attacked McDonald, he
first put his hand on his breast and asked him if he had a heart,
and where it was situated, and then, without waiting for the desired
information, made a stab at him. It was a wretched piece of business to
let a deadly weapon be taken into a guard room where a man in Kennedy's
condition was confined, and unmilitary people yesterday were wondering
that weapons should be placed within reach of prisoners under any
circumstances.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 6, 1864

ANOTHER OBSCENE PICTURE KNAVE CAPTURED--HE SOLICITS THE CUSTOM OF SCHOOL
GIRLS

A scoundrel named George R. Powers has been detected in the obscene book
trade and captured. He has been carrying on the trade after a fashion of
his own. Over the signature of "Mrs. Amelia Barstow," he writes chatty,
familiar letters to young girls in the California seminaries, soliciting
patronage for his infamous books and pictures. He made a mistake,
though, when he addressed the following epistle to a school girl
of fourteen years of age, for her home teachings had not been of a
character to enable her to appreciate it, and she sent it at once to her
father. From him it passed to Judge Coon, who handed it to Chief Burke
to be disposed of. The Chief took a lively enough interest in the matter
to take officer Hess from his regular duties in the Police Court and
keep him on the track of Mrs. Barstow for a week and a half, with
Officer Pike to assist him. We suppress the name of the young lady and
that of the school she belongs to, of course:

San Francisco July 21st, 1864.

MISS ______:--I have just received from New York a large number of the
most delightful books you can imagine. To refined young ladies of an
amorous temperament, they are "just the thing." For five dollars sent
to me through the Post Office, in two separate enclosures of two
dollars and a half each, I will forward you two different volumes, each
containing five tinted engravings. Accompanying the package will also
be a beautiful life photograph, entitled "* * * * * * *." The strictest
secrecy will be observed, which may be heightened by your transmitting a
fictitious address, in case you reply to

MRS. AMELIA BARSTOW.

(We suppress the title of dear Amelia's "life photograph," as being
somewhat too suggestive.--REPORTER.)

Officer Hess suggested the policy of writing an answer to Amelia's note,
and getting it sent through the Post Office to her, as coming from the
young girl she had addressed. He framed the following note, putting in
punctuation marks with great liberality where they did not belong, and
leaving them out where they did, and mimicking school-girl simplicity of
phraseology, and proneness to tautology, with great ingenuity. The Chief
having approved of it, a lady copied it in the microscopic chirography
of sweet fourteen, and it was ready for mailing, as set forth here
below. We suppress the girl's name, and that of the Post Office:

* * * * *, July 27, 1864.

MRS. AMELIA BARSTOW--Dear Madame:--I received your letter which you sent
on the 21st of this month and I am glad, for I have been wishing for
something nice to read for a long time. Father has not given me much
money this month and I cannot send this time the amount you say; but
if you will send me one book by sending two dollars and a half, please
write and tell me so, and by return mail I will send it. A number of the
girls in my class wants some books also, and if you will send one book
for two dollars and a half some four or five others will send for some
also. Please direct to Charles Harris for if directed to a Miss or Mrs.
some of the teachers may get the letter.

Yours truly, * * * * * *

The letter was put into the hands of Postmaster Perkins, who at once
entered into the work of entrapping the miserable Mrs. Barstow with as
much alacrity and earnestness as if the insulted girl had been his own
child. He enclosed the decoy letter in a department envelop to the Post
master of ____, with instructions to postmark and send it back through
the mail to Mrs. Amelia Barstow at once. He also instructed the Post
Office clerks to give Officer Hess and his assistant every facility for
corralling the masculine miscreant who was doubtless passing himself for
a woman in his nefarious correspondence; (no female had ever applied for
letters under the name of Mrs. Amelia Barstow.) The decoy letter came
back in due time, and was taken out by Mr. Powers while Mr. Hess was
absent at lunch, but the clerk who officiates in the ladies' department
at the Post Office took such a minute mental photograph of him, that the
officer had no difficulty in following after and detecting his man in
the street, from the description given of him. After walking around town
for some time, Powers finally opened the letter, read it, and replaced
it in his pocket. Hess entered into conversation with him, and in answer
to certain questions, the fellow said he had no appointment to meet
Mrs. Barstow at any particular place--expected to stumble on her in the
street; said he had no particular occupation; was in the habit of taking
her letters from the Post Office for her. It took him but a short time
to discover that he was in the hands of an officer, and then his replies
became decidedly non-committal. Hess asked him if he wrote the letter
signed "Mrs. Aurelia Barstow." Powers said, "If I were to say I did,
what would be done with me? what could you make out of it?" When asked
if Mrs. Barstow would come and clear him of suspicion if she knew he was
about to suffer for an offence committed by her, he caught at the idea,
and said she would; the thoughtless numskull even eagerly wrote her a
note, which the officer was to deliver to her after accomplishing the
hopeless task of finding her. That act furnished the officer all the
information he lacked, and enabled him to "rest his case," but it ruined
the unthinking Powers--for behold, the first words of the note, "MRS.
AMELIA BARSTOW," were a perfect facsimile of the name signed to the
letter to the school-girl, and fully convicted him of being the writer
of it. Powers will be tried this morning for offering to sell obscene
pictures, and perhaps for opening other people's letters, and the
chances are that he will be severely dealt with. He deserves it, for any
one acquainted with the impressible nature of young girls, shut out from
the world and doomed to irksome and monotonous school-life, knows
the heightened charm and excitement they find in amusements that are
contraband and have to be secured by risky evasions of the rules, and
is also aware that a whole school might be corrupted by the circulation
among them of a single volume of the lecherous trash dealt in by Mr.
Powers.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 6, 1864

THE FITZGERALD INQUEST

Last evening, in the absence of Coroner Sheldon, Justice Tobin held
an inquest at the office of the Coroner, to inquire into the facts
connected with the death of James Fitzgerald, private in Company D,
Third Artillery, who was killed by a fellow-soldier named Kennedy, at
Black Point, early on the morning of Thursday, the 3d instant. Three
witnesses were examined who were on the spot at the time. The facts were
substantially as stated in yesterday's Call, except that not so much was
said about his insanity. A simple statement of the facts adduced on
the inquest would be about as follows: About half-past one o'clock on
Thursday morning, Fitzgerald was placed in the guard-house, Kennedy
having been there for some time previous. Fitzgerald being without his
blankets, Kennedy told him to come and share his. Deceased, however,
went and laid down on the floor. The room was almost perfectly dark.
About two o'clock in the morning, Fitzgerald got up and went to where
one Michael Condol (also under guard) was lying, and whispered in his
ear, telling him to turn over, he wanted to feel him; at the same time,
he drew his hand across Condol's throat. Condol told him to go to his
own bunk. Kennedy then placed his hand on Condol's breast, and raised
something over him which in the darkness Condol took to be a dagger; he
seized it and discovered that it was a bayonet. A struggle commenced, in
which Kennedy succeeded in planting a thrust into Condol's arm. He cried
out that he was stabbed, and called for a light, but the inmates of the
room had become panic-stricken and crowded off to the corners. In the
struggle with Kennedy, Condol kicked him, forcing him over towards
the wall. He fell on Fitzgerald (deceased) and commenced stabbing him.
Deceased cried out, "I'm murdered." The corporal outside hearing the
noise, rushed to the guard-room, and as he opened the door, Kennedy
and two other prisoners forced their way out, throwing him down on the
ground. He went in with a light and saw deceased lying on the floor in a
dying condition. He had twelve wounds on the body and four on the head.
Of four of those on the body, penetrating the heart, lungs, liver,
stomach, and large and small intestines, either one would have produced
death; the rest were flesh wounds. One of the fatal wounds was made on
the thigh, severing the femoral artery. Kennedy was generally considered
a sensible and harmless man, though he seemed rather disposed to shun
his comrades. On one occasion, about a month since, while at Alcatraz,
he expressed an apprehension that he was going to be hanged. On one
or two other occasions he made "curious remarks." The day prior to the
killing he broke out of the guard-house and ran down to Captain Winder's
quarters. He said he wanted to see a clergyman, and must go to town. He
was not generally considered insane, though he had curious ways, and
the Corporal said he did not think he was altogether right. It was about
half past three o'clock in the morning when Fitzgerald died. Deceased
was a native of Limerick, Ireland, and aged about thirty-six years.

The jury returned a verdict in accordance with the facts.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 7, 1864

HOW AMONG THE DOCTORS

There is a nice little breeze between the practitioners who were called
on in the case of Ferguson, said to have taken strychnia, lately, to end
his life, but was prevented by Dr. De Castro. Dr. Elliott, as a cloud of
witnesses state, was first called, and gave up the case, saying "he
(the patient) was a dead boy;" in other words, recovery was hopeless.
De Castro was then called, and as the same witnesses state, found the
unhappy Ferguson in the throes of death. He emeticized, purged and
pumped him, till the poison had no show, and felt a little justifiable
pride at his success. Now, Dr. Elliott says he was not poisoned at all;
that the druggist, when the patient applied for the noxious drug, "to
kill a dog," suspected his design, and gave him some comparatively
harmless preparation--piperine, or something of that sort--and that De
Castro was humbugged. He furnishes an analysis from Chemist Dickey, of
the drug said to be furnished by the apothecary, in proof. De Castro
thinks the fact that the man was swollen fearfully, and almost lifeless
when he saw him, and also the druggist Riley's statement that he did
furnish the deadly article, and marked it "strychnia--poison, ten
grains," proof more convincing on his side. Thus the matter stands. Who
can decide when Doctors disagree?

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 7, 1864

ATTEMPTED SUICIDE

Yesterday at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, Emanuel Lopus, barber, of
room No. 23, Mead House, wrote to the idol of his soul that he loved
her better than all else beside; that unto him the day was dark, the
sun seemed swathed in shadows, when she was not by; that he was going to
take the life that God had given him, and enclosed she would please
find one lock of hair, the same being his. He then took a teaspoonful of
laudanum in a gallon of gin, and lay down to die. That is one version of
it. Another is, that he really took an honest dose of laudanum, and was
really anxious to put his light out; so much so, indeed, that after Dr.
Murphy had come, resolved to pump the poison from his stomach or pump
his heart out in the attempt, and after he had comfortably succeeded in
the first mentioned proposition, this desperate French barber rose up
and tried to whip the surgeon for saving his life, and defeating his
fearful purpose, and wasting his laudanum. Another version is, that he
went to his friend Jullien, in the barber shop under the Mead House, and
told him to smash into his trunk after he had breathed his last and
shed his immortal soul, and take from it his professional soap, and his
lather-brush and his razors, and keep them forever to remember him by,
for he was going this time without reserve. This was a touching allusion
to his repeated assertions, made at divers and sundry times during the
past few years, that he was going off immediately and commit suicide.
Jullien paid no attention to him, thinking he was only drunk, as usual,
and that his better judgment would prompt him to substitute his regular
gin at the last moment, instead of the deadlier poison. But on going
to No. 23 an hour afterwards, he found the wretched Lopus in a heavy
stupor, and all unconscious of the things of earth, and the junk-bottle
and the laudanum phial on the bureau. We have endeavored to move the
sympathy of the public in behalf of this poor Lopus, and we have done
it from no selfish motive, and in no hope of reward, but only out of the
commiseration we feel for one who has been suffering in solitude while
the careless world around him was absorbed in the pursuit of life's
foolish pleasures, heedless whether he lived or died. If we have
succeeded--if we have caused one sympathetic tear to flow from the
tender eye of pity, we desire no richer recompense. They took Lopus
to the station-house yesterday afternoon, and from thence he was
transferred to the French Hospital. We learn that he is getting along
first-rate, now.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 7, 1864

SHOP-LIFTING

Lucy Adler was arrested and locked up in the city prison last night,
for petty larceny--stealing shoes, ribbons, and small traps of all kinds
exposed for sale in shops. She brought her weeping boy with her--a lad
of nine years, perhaps--and they were followed by a large concourse of
men and boys, whose curiosity was excited to the highest pitch to know
"what was up with the old woman," as they expressed it. The officers,
and also the merchants, say this woman will travel through a dozen
small stores during the afternoon, and go home and "clean up" a perfect
junk-shop as a result of her labors. She cabbages every light article of
merchandise she can get her claws on. She always has her small boy with
her and if she is caught in a theft, the boy comes the sympathy dodge,
and pumps tears and jerks sobs until the pity of the shopman is moved,
and his parent released. The boy is always on hand, and if an officer
snatches the woman she pulls the metaphorical string that turns on the
boy's sympathetic shower bath, and he is all tears and lamentations in a
moment. At any rate, this is what they say of the cunning pair.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 9, 1864

MYSTERIOUS

If you have got a house, keep your eye on it, these times, for there is
no knowing what moment it will go tramping around town. We meet these
dissatisfied shanties every day marching boldly through the public
streets on stilts and rollers, or standing thoughtfully in front of
gin shops, or halting in quiet alleys and peering round corners, with a
human curiosity, out of one eye, or one window if you please, upon the
dizzy whirl and roar of commerce in the thoroughfare beyond. The houses
have been taking something lately that is moving them a good deal. It
is very mysterious, and past accounting for, but it cannot be helped.
We have just been informed that an unknown house--two stories, with a
kitchen--has stopped before Shark alley, in Merchant street, and seems
to be calculating the chances of being able to scrouge through it into
Washington street, and thus save the trouble of going around. We hardly
think she can, and we had rather she would not try it; we should
be sorry to see her get herself fast in that crevice, which is the
newspaper reporter's shortest cut to the station house and the courts.
Without wishing to be meddlesome or officious, we would like to
suggest that she would find it very comfortable and nice going round by
Montgomery street, and plenty of room. Besides, there is nothing to be
seen in Shark alley, if she is only on a little pleasure excursion.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 9, 1864

ASSAULT BY A HOUSE

The vagrant house we have elsewhere alluded to as prowling around
Merchant street, near Shark alley--we mean Dunbar alley--finally started
to go around by Montgomery street, but at the first move fell over and
mashed in some windows and broke down a new awning attached to the house
adjoining the "Ivy Green" saloon.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 9, 1864

ESCAPED

Mr. Powers, who was arrested the other day for writing to young girls
in the seminaries over the signature of "Mrs. Amelia Barstow," and
soliciting their custom in the obscene picture line, has escaped and
gone into hiding. He went in charge of officer Bowen to confer with
his "attorney" (or his confederate?) and while closeted with that
individual, jumped out of a second-story window--so much so that when
Bowen went after him to take him back, he was nowhere visible to the
naked eye. Mr. Powers tried the same game on officer Hesse, when he
was first arrested, but it failed; Hesse preferred that all private
interviews should be held in his presence. Playing the extreme
confidence game with officers is very old, and very well understood
by most of them. Count Bowen among the latter class hereafter. The
aforesaid "counsel" will be arrested to-day for complicity in the escape
of the prisoner.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 10, 1864

COLLISION

A runaway buggy (at any rate the horse attached to it was running away
and the buggy was taking a good deal of interest in it,) came into
collision with a dray, yesterday, in Montgomery street, and the dray was
not damaged any to speak of. The buggy was; the hub was mashed clear
out of one wheel, and another wheel was turned inside out--so that it
"dished" the wrong way. The cripple was entirely new, and belonged to
Duff and Covert, California street. In meeting a dray, or a heavy truck
wagon, buggies should always turn out to one side, being safer than to
go between it.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 10, 1864

THE MURDERER KENNEDY--A QUESTION OF JURISDICTION

Judge Shepheard said yesterday, with reference to the case of Kennedy,
the soldier who killed a fellow soldier at Black Point on Thursday last,
that he would hold over the examination for three days, to give the
military authorities an opportunity of making a formal demand of the
prisoner, to be tried by a Court Martial, a claim to the exclusive
jurisdiction over the case having been heretofore signified by them.
We are assured, however, that the military authorities do not desire to
take the case out of the hands of the civil authorities. And
besides, two serious obstacles might be interposed as against such a
jurisdiction. In the first place the prisoner is evidently insane, and
was so at the time the murder was committed; Fitzgerald being, it
is reported, the third victim to his terrible fits; and there is
no provision of our laws, authorizing a Military Court to act as a
commission de inquirendo. And in the next place, there is a question
about the title of the United States Government to the property at Black
Point, the title to which is now being litigated, which fact might so
affect it as a military reservation as to throw a strong shade of doubt
over the supremacy of the military law within those particular limits.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 10, 1864

OUR U.S. BRANCH MINT

When the Branch Mint was established in this city, it was upon the
calculation that its annual coinage would amount to about five millions.
Upon that supposition, its organization as to number of officials,
accommodation, and the pay of the employees, was fixed. Although
the coinage has about quadrupled what was calculated upon, neither
accommodations, employes nor compensation have been increased. On the
contrary, the pay is now in green-backs instead of gold, and the payment
often delayed, as at present, for four months, through inefficiency
on the part of some one in Washington. However, Congress made an
appropriation at its last session for a new Mint here, and we hope that
something may come of it different from the present miserable kennel
called a Mint, and that something may also be done for the relief of the
unpaid men and women who perform the labors of the institution. Herewith
we give a synopsis of the business done by the Branch Mint in this city
for the last twelve months. It will be seen that, instead of five, the
coinage has been nearly twenty millions:

FISCAL YEAR 1863-4.

Gold--$19,068,400.00

Silver--468,409.00

[Total] $19,536,809.00

FISCAL YEAR 1862-3.

Gold--$17,510,960.00

Silver--1,040,638.68

[Total]--$18,551,598.68

Gain of 1863-4 over 1862-3--$ 985,210.32

Loss of Silver, $572,229.68. Gain of Gold, $1,557,440.00.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 10, 1864

INTELLIGENCE OFFICE ROW

The names of those concerned in it are suppressed, and it is a matter of
no consequence anyhow, but the foundation of the fight is of interest to
some, as showing how the business of intelligence offices is some
times conducted, in evasion of the law, but not in violation of it. The
statute says that the keeper of the office must, in return for the money
received from his customer, give him a receipt, in which the nature
of the service rendered must be specified. This is done in this wise:
"Received of John Doe, two dollars and fifty cents, for services
rendered in procuring him a situation as stable-boy." That is according
to law, and if John Doe goes to the stable and is refused the situation,
he can make the intelligence man refund his money. But the latter takes
no such chances. To the receipt he adds the following postscript, which
blocks the game on the stable-boy, in spite of the statute: "If you are
denied the situation, your money will be refunded upon the presentation
here of a written statement of the fact of the refusal by the parties
so refusing." The "parties" will not trouble themselves with writing
communications for stable-boys and servant girls to intelligence office
keepers, and without the ceremonious "written statement," the noble
dealer in occupations will not disgorge. He sticks to his contract.
The result of this practice is, that every day the District Attorney
is besieged by frantic chambermaids and blasphemous cooks and wood
choppers, seeking redress for the wrongs they have suffered at the hands
of the intelligence office keepers; but they go away without it. The law
is a wonderful machine, and few there be that understand it; they say
it does not cover the case we have spoken of, at all. This having
been ascertained by a victim, yesterday, he went back to his chuckling
spoiler and whaled him.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 11, 1864

AN ACCUMULATION OF COPPERHEADS

CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY AND SECESSION AFFILIATIONS--THE SAME OLD TALK OF
TYRANNY AND RESISTANCE

Last evening some fifty persons, perhaps, chiefly of the Copperhead
persuasion, assembled in the "Democratic Club Room," on the corner of
Stockton and Filbert streets, for the purpose of effervescing a little.
"Conservative Democratic" imaginations pictured it a grand rally of
persecuted and hunted down patriots. A rational person saw nothing there
but aberrated beings, hugging the bugbear of martyrdom and iterating the
formula laid down by the secret agents of Jeff. Davis' Government. We do
not propose to give a detailed report of their proceedings; it wouldn't
pay. One speech is a type of the whole. It is only Secession and
Treason, modified in expression according to the rational caution and
shrewdness of the speaker. Mr. Brown, the inevitable Beriah, was there,
of course, and of course he spoke; but as he holds the leading string of
"conservatism" in this vicinity, the practice of extreme caution has
at length almost perfected the faculty of couching treason in loyal
phrases, or at least evading, with consummate tact, the danger of
crimination.

MR. BROWN'S SPEECH.--Mr. Brown said that he did not feel able to make,
at that time, an effort proportioned to the importance of the occasion,
for all his energies were spent in fighting their battles. He didn't go
there to make a speech, but "to look into their (Copperhead) faces, to
receive the assurance that Democracy was not dead." Upon which equivocal
announcement of the party's vitality, there was a stamping of feet by
several indiscreet persons. Discriminating ones saw therein a confession
that Copperheads were sickly hereabouts, and look sad, like mourners
at a funeral. The speaker proceeded, with faultless attitude and
gesticulation and a countenance beaming with the light that is supposed
to foreshadow posthumous glories of the immolated hero, to state that he
couldn't argue with his opponents in the present conflict; there was
no issue; if there was he couldn't see it; didn't know how to frame an
argument. Doubtless Alcatraz frowning just in sight of his position,
bothered his powers of composition. Syntax gives botheration, when the
soul of the rhetoric is to be something that must not be expressed, for
fear of disastrous consequences. All the old issues, he went on to say,
were gone, the conditions that formerly divided the parties and kept up
the bonfires of party strife, and there was now but a single question;
one which admitted of no argument; a question of brute force; whether
we had a Government, or were the subjects of despotism. Then came in
the inevitable stereotyped hobby of "inalienable rights," referring
specifically to a number of the propositions of the Declaration of
Independence. He pointed the "Conservative element" to their melancholy
state of discomfiture, and told them there was but one thing left for
them to do; that was to adhere to their principles, associate, organize
and--protest. They could do nothing more; there was no argument. Then
Beriah put a strong case. He asked them: What if they should get up some
morning and find one of their number mysteriously missing; one whom they
loved, and to whom they had been used to looking for counsel; and the
next morning another should be gone in like manner; and another and
another, and so on indefinitely, without warning, and no one knew
whither or for what end they were taken away; they would feel badly,
they would gather in groups, with pallor in their countenances, and
bated breath, and bite their lips with vexation. They would want to know
what had become of those loved ones. It would arouse the feelings and
impulses of every Copperhead in the community. At this juncture Mr.
Lincoln suffered at Beriah's hands a comparison which we have not room
to give in full; said many things savoring strongly of what opens the
gates of Alcatraz, and meekly observed that what he was then uttering
might deprive him of his liberties; verifying the old adage of "A
guilty conscience," etc. He said that the Administration asked them to
surrender their liberties for a time, to preserve the Government; he
wanted to know what a Government was worth without liberty, (Applause,)
and more of the same sort. The people of the United States were then
damagingly compared to Turks. Mr. Brown warned them to beware of
surrendering their liberties. "Liberties once surrendered could only be
recovered at a bloody sacrifice; the price of liberty won from tyranny
is the blood of the patriot." As for his part, he didn't propose to
surrender; their liberties should only be surrendered with their lives.

Beriah entertained his "small but appreciative" audience for about
thirty minutes, in which he adroitly exhibited the virtues of resistance
to the arbitrary measures of the Administration, all of whose measures
were arbitrary; and yielded the floor.

A resolution was then adopted by the meeting, which as adopted, proposed
to instruct the delegates from the Second District to the County
Committee to take steps to have our citizens protected from military
arrests, to apply to the Governor to give us the protection of the civil
law of the State.

A second set of resolutions were then presented, which were somewhat
rich. They conjured all good Democrats to withdraw their support and
patronage from all newspapers that were inimical to their policy, and to
exert their influence against the influence of such papers, generally;
the Morning Call, Alta, and Bulletin, specifically. Then followed a
resolution holding up Messrs. Towne & Bacon to the scorn and contempt of
all good Copperheads, and advising them to steer clear of their printing
establishment, as "adverse to Democratic money," because they, the said
Towne & Bacon, had proscribed good "Union-loving Democrats."

We were in hopes that the resolutions would have passed in that shape,
but the glare of inconsistency hurt Mr. Brown's eyes, and he hoped the
adoption of those resolutions would be deferred until the phraseology
could be altered so as to preserve the spirit and intent, but have the
appearance of inconsistency hid in more subtle "verbiage." The idea did
not at first penetrate the copper-coated intellects of the "Club," but
Beriah must be right, so they assented, and hypocrisy is to be added to
inconsistency, for their stomachs to receive.

The President of the Club then observed that some people had denied that
there were any speakers among them--thereby intimating that so far
the assertion had not been negatived, which made Beriah think that
Copperheads were unappreciative and stupid, for hadn't he just sat down?
And to prove the contrary, he called upon a man named Kirtland to give
them a little more of the same he had favored them with before.

After a little hesitation, Kirtland stepped forth, and there was

A SECCESSIONIST edifying the Club with the same he had told them before.
We did intend to report his speech, and took some notes, but, before
proceeding far, he openly avowed himself a Southerner, with Southern
feelings, and entertaining a Southern view of the question, and we
paused. His speech was rampant, unmeaning, superficial rant not even
worthy the name of sophistry. Had it emanated from a Northern man,
who had any influence to fear, it would have consigned its author to
Alcatraz. But, as it was only the impotent ravings of one who knew where
a display of heroism would be safe, neither the speech nor the speaker
challenge attention. This man was followed by a Mr. Farrel, whom we did
not remain to hear.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 12, 1864

WHAT A SKYROCKET DID

Night before last, a stick six or seven feet long, attached to an
exploded rocket of large size came crashing down through the zinc roof
of a tenement in Milton Place, Bush street, between Dupont and Kearny,
passed through a cloth ceiling, and fetched up on the floor alongside of
a gentleman's bed, with a smash like the disruption of a china shop. We
have been told by a person with whom we are not acquainted, and of whose
reliability we have now no opportunity of satisfying ourselves, as he
has gone to his residence, which is situated on the San Jose road at
some distance from the city, that when the rocket tore up the splinters
around the bed, the gentleman got up. The person also said that he went
out--adding after some deliberation, and with the air of a man who has
made up his mind that what he is about to say can be substantiated if
necessary, that "he went out quick." This person also said that after
the gentleman went out quick, he ran--and then with a great show of
disinterestedness, he ventured upon the conjecture that he was running
yet. He hastened to modify this rash conjecture, however, by observing
that he had no particular reason for suspecting that the gentleman was
running yet--it was only a notion of his, and just flashed on him, like.
He then hitched up his team, which he observed parenthetically that he
wished they belonged to him, but they didn't and immediately drove away
in the direction of his country seat. The tenement is there yet, though,
with the hole through the zinc roof. The tenement is the property of
ex-Supervisor Hinckley, and some of the best educated men in the city
consider that the hole is also, because it is on his premises. It is a
very good hole. If it could be taken from the roof just in the shape it
is now, it would be a nice thing to show at the Mechanics' Fair; any man
who would make a pun under circumstances like these, and suggest that it
be turned over to the Christian Commission Fair on account of its holy
nature, might think himself smart, but would the people--the plodding,
thinking, intelligent masses--would these respect him? Far be it.
Doubtless. What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue. The
foregoing facts are written to prepare the reader for the announcement
that the stick, with the same exploded rocket attached, may be seen at
the hall of the Board of Supervisors. It has remained there to this day.
The man who set it off, and hung on to it, and went up with it, has not
come down yet. The people who live in Milton Place are expecting him,
all the time. They have moved their families, and got out of the way,
so as to give him a good show when he drops. They have said, but without
insisting on it, that if it would be all the same to him, they would
rather he would fall in the alley. This would mash him up a good deal,
likely, and scatter him around some, but they think they could scrape
him up and hold an inquest on him, and inform his parents. The Board of
Supervisors will probably pass an ordinance directing that missiles
of the dangerous nature of rockets shall henceforth be fired in the
direction of the Bay, so as to guard against accidents to life and
property.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 13, 1864

SUNDRIES

A pile of miscellaneous articles was found heaped up at a late hour last
night away down somewhere in Harrison street, which attracted the notice
of numbers of passers-by, and divers attempts were made to analyze the
same without effect, for the reason that no one could tell where to
begin, or which was on top. Two Special Policemen dropped in just then
and solved the difficulty, showing a clean inventory of one horse, one
buggy, two men and an indefinite amount of liquor. The liquor couldn't
be got at to be gauged, consequently the proof of it couldn't be told;
the men, though, were good proof that the liquor was there, for they
were as drunk as Bacchus and his brother. A fight had been on hand
somewhere, and one of the men had been close to it, for his face was
painted up in various hues, sky-blue and crimson being prominent. The
order of the buggy was inverted, and the horse beyond a realizing sense
of his condition. The men went with some noise to the station-house,
and the animal, with attachments, being set to rights, ambled off to a
livery stable on Kearny street.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 13, 1864

"WON'T YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR

A whole bevy of those funny-looking animals that totter through the
Street labelled "Chinese Women," had been invited to call upon Judge
Shepheard yesterday morning, when they would hear something to their
disadvantage. These Taepings were charged with tappings, and as
they didn't appear, the Judge charged them for it, and much bail was
forfeited. There were about a dozen cases. The offence is simply a
conventional sign of invitation to persons passing, to walk in, and
grows out of the characteristic hospitality of that class of persons.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 16, 1864

AN ILL-ADVISED PROSECUTION

Yesterday morning, Rufus Temple was examined before Judge Shepheard on
a charge of obtaining money under false pretences, and acquitted. We are
disposed to make a specific and more extended reference to this matter
than its importance would seem to demand, from the fact that Mr. Temple
is said to be an honest, industrious young man, who has been placed in
an unfavorable light before the public by being arraigned in a Court of
Justice on a criminal charge. The testimony, which signally failed to
sustain the charge, went simply to show that the defendant, who follows
the trade of a caulker, had been employed by Mr. Vice (the prosecuting
witness) to do some extra work on the steamer Nina Tilden; that Temple
presented a bill of thirty dollars to Mr. V. for this work, which
was for some reason refused, upon which the bill was presented to Mr.
Tilden, the owner or one of the owners of the vessel, who remarked, in
substance, that he was not the proper person to pay such bills, but, as
he did not wish any claims to stand against the vessel, he would pay it,
which he did, taking Mr. Temple's receipt there for. Upon learning the
fact of the payment, Mr. Vice saw the city prosecutor, and a verified
complaint was made, embodying the averment that Temple had represented
to Mr. Tilden that he was sent to him (Tilden) with a verbal order from
affiant for the payment of the bill. Mr. Tilden, who was a witness for
the prosecution, denied, on his oath, that Temple had made any such
representation, and that fact being the gist of the offence, the
prosecution was at once abandoned. We cannot but speak in terms of the
strongest condemnation of the reprehensible manner in which parties
very frequently come into the Police Court, under the sanction of the
Prosecuting Attorney. With all of perjury except the technical animus,
they seek to wield this tribunal as a mollifier of their personal
feelings, as if it were instituted as a general dispenser of the lex
talionis. It is indeed a fortunate thing for the community that we have
just such a man as Judge Shepheard on the bench, where discrimination
and decision are so much required.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 17, 1864

SCHOOL DIRECTOR POPE AND THE CALL

At the meeting of the Board of Education last evening, Mr. Pope
complained that he had been misrepresented by the reporter for the
Call, as well as by the Secretary of the Board in his minutes, in the
statements of his resolution introduced at the last meeting, on the
subject of the participation by the pupils of the different Schools
in the exercises of the Freedman's Concert. Mr. Pope says that his
resolution was not to require the Grammar class, that had declined to
participate on that occasion, to do so against their will, but to inform
the members of that class that if they did so decline, they would be
required to continue their usual daily exercises in School. If this was
Mr. Pope's statement, he may have the benefit of it, though the fact
that both the reporter and the Secretary of the Board, who are both
presumed to be, and really are close listeners to the proceedings of the
body, should understand the Director exactly alike, and fall into
the same identical error, is, to say the least, a very extraordinary
coincidence. Whatever may have been the exact phraseology of the
gentleman's motion, the evident intention of the measure and the
disposition of more than one member of the Board was certainly expressed
in our report and the Secretary's minutes. However, as we entertain no
feelings of hostility toward any member of the Board, we, in our own
individual reportorial capacity, will concede, retract or admit anything
in the world, "for the sake of the argument," and to keep peace in the
family. But understand we don't mean it all, nor near it.

THE SAN FRANCISCO MORNING CALL, AUGUST 16, 1864

MAN RUN OVER

A man fell off his own dray--or rather it was a large truck-wagon--in
Davis street, yesterday, and the fore wheels passed over his body. A
bystander stopped the horses and they backed the same wheels over the
man's body a second time; after which he crawled out, jumped on the
wagon, muttered something about being "tired of sich d--d foolishness,"
and drove off before a surgeon could arrive to amputate him!

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 18, 1864

DARING ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE A PAWNBROKER IN BROAD DAYLIGHT!

THE WOUNDS PROBABLY FATAL!--EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS' WORTH OF DIAMONDS
AND WATCHES STOLEN!

Yesterday afternoon about half past two o'clock, a pawnbroker named
Meyer, whose establishment is in Commercial street, below Kearny, went
out and left his son Henry, a youth of eighteen or twenty, perhaps, to
attend to the business during his absence. Upon returning, half an
hour later, he found pools of blood here and there, a knife and
double-barrelled shot gun on the floor--the latter weapon parted from
its stock--several trays of watches, diamonds and various kinds of
jewelry gone, the doors of the safe open, its drawers pulled out and
despoiled of their contents--disorder visible everywhere, but his son
nowhere to be seen! Hearing a faint groan, he ran into the back room,
and there in the gloom he discerned his boy, lying on the floor and
weltering in blood. Now, after reading the above, the public will
know exactly as much about this ghastly mystery as the Police know--as
anybody knows, except the murderer himself. So far as heard from, nobody
was seen to enter the store during Mr. Meyer's absence, and nobody was
seen to leave. The assassin did his work between half-past two and three
o'clock in the afternoon, in the busiest portion of one of the busiest
thoroughfares of the city, and departed unseen, and left no sign by
which his identity may hereafter be established. Up to the present
writing the boy has only groaned in pain and is speechless. We reached
the spot a few minutes after the tragedy was discovered, and found the
street in front blockaded by a crowd of men staring at the premises
in blank fascination, and entering, found another crowd composed of
policemen, doctors, detectives, and reporters, engaged as such people
are usually engaged upon such occasions. The boy's body and his bunk
were deluged in blood, and efforts were being made to relieve his
sufferings. There was apparently but one wound upon him, and that had
been inflicted on the back of his head, behind his right ear. The skull
was indented as if by a slung-shot. Probably neither the knife nor
the gun found upon the floor were used in the assault. Near one of the
windows in the front office closely curtained against observation from
the street--was a pool of gouted blood, as large as a chair-seat; and
the blow was given there, no doubt, for from that spot a roadway was
marked in the dust of the floor to the extreme end of the back room
where the body was found, showing that after he was knocked senseless,
the robbers must have dragged him to that spot, to guard against his
attracting attention by making an outcry. Mr. Meyer says the valuables
carried off by the daring perpetrators of the outrage, are worth about
eight thousand dollars. A man came in while we were present, and
told Capt. Lees that about the time he saw the crowd running toward
Commercial street, he met a man in Kearny street, running as if
destruction were at his heels; that he broke frantically through a
blockade of wagons, carriages, and a funeral procession, sped on his way
and was out of sight in a moment; that he was thick set, about five feet
seven or eight inches in stature, wore dark clothing, a black slouch
hat, and had a sort of narrow goatee; that he had improvised a sack out
of an old calico dress, the neck of which sack he grasped in his hand,
and had the surplus calico wrapped round his arm; the appearance of the
said sack was as if it might have a hat-full of eggs in it--two dozen,
or thereabouts, you might say. Five minutes after the conclusion of the
narrative, we observed the man who saw all this, speeding up town in a
buggy with a detective. At the Chief's office, fifteen minutes after the
discovery of the bloody catastrophe, Mr. Burke's campaign commenced, and
he was dictating orders to a small army of Policemen, with a decision
and rapidity commensurate with the urgency of the occasion: You, and
you, and you, go to the Stockton and Sacramento boats and arrest every
Chinaman and every suspicious white man that tries to go on board; you,
and you, go to the San Jose Railroad--same order; you go to the stable
and order two fleet horses to be saddled and sent here instantly; you,
and you, and you, go to the heads of the Chinese Companies and tell them
to detain every suspicious Chinaman they see, and send me word; I'll be
responsible." And so on, and so forth, until squads of Policemen were
scattering abroad through every portion of the city, and closing every
prominent avenue of escape from it. An affair like this makes hurrying
times in the Police Department. After all, the wonder is that an
enterprise like this robbery and attempted assassination has
not previously been essayed in Mr. Meyer's and other pawnbroking
establishments. They are not frequented by customers in the day-time,
and the glass doors and windows are rendered untransparent by thick
coats of paint, and also by curtains that are always closed, so that
nothing that transpires within can be seen from the street. One or two
active men could enter such a place at night, gag the occupants, turn
the gas nearly out, and take their own time about robbing the concern,
for customers would not be apt to molest an establishment through whose
shaded windows no light appeared.

Up to eleven o'clock last night, young Meyer was still irrational,
although he had spoken incoherently several times of matters foreign to
the misfortune that had befallen him. We have this from Dr. Murphy,
his physician, who saw him at that hour. The Doctor says the wound
was evidently inflicted with a slung-shot. Its form is an egg-shaped
indentation at the base of the brain. There are also the distinct marks
of four fingers and a thumb on the throat, made by the left hand of the
man who assaulted him. (Whose left hand among ye will fit those marks?)
The patient can only swallow with great difficulty, on account of the
fearful choking he received, and the consequent swelling and soreness of
the glands of the throat. He suffers chiefly, however, from the pressing
of the indented skull upon the brain. His condition improves a little
all the time, and, although the chances are nearly all against his
recovery, still that result is regarded as comfortably within the
margin of possibility. Unless he comes to his senses, it will be next
to impossible ever to establish the guilt of any man suspected of this
crime. An ordinary deed of blood excites only a passing interest in San
Francisco, but to show how much a little mystery enhances the importance
of such an occurrence, we will mention that at no time, from three
o'clock in the afternoon, yesterday, until midnight, was there a moment
when there was not a crowd in front of Meyer's store, gazing at its
darkened windows and closed and guarded doors. During the afternoon
and night, several white men were arrested about town on suspicion, and
seventy-two Chinamen were detained from leaving on the boats until after
the hour for sailing. The right man is doubtless at large yet, however.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 19, 1864

THE NEW CHINESE TEMPLE

To-day the Ning-Yong Company will finish furnishing and decorating the
new Josh house, or place of worship, built by them in Broadway,
between Dupont and Kearny streets, and to-morrow they will begin their
unchristian devotions in it. The building is a handsome brick edifice,
two stories high on Broadway, and three on the alley in the rear; both
fronts are of pressed brick. A small army of workmen were busily engaged
yesterday, in putting on the finishing touches of the embellishments.
The throne of the immortal Josh is at the head of the hall in the
third story, within a sort of alcove of elaborately carved and gilded
woodwork, representing human figures and birds and beasts of all degrees
of hideousness. Josh himself is as ugly a monster as can be found
outside of China. He is in a sitting posture, is of about middle
stature, but excessively fat; his garments are flowing and ample,
garnished with a few small circlets of looking-glass, to represent
jewels, and streaked and striped, daubed from head to foot, with paints
of the liveliest colors. A long strand of black horsehair sprouts from
each corner of his upper lip, another from the centre of his chin, and
one from just forward of each ear. He wears an open-work crown, which
gleams with gold leaf. His rotund face is painted a glaring red, and the
general expression of this fat and happy god is as if he had eaten too
much rice and rats for dinner, and would like his belt loosened if he
only had the energy to do it. In front of the throne hangs a chandelier
of Chinese manufacture, with a wilderness of glass drops and curved
candle supports about it; but it is not as elegant and graceful as the
American article. Under it, in a heavy frame-work, a big church bell
is hung, also of Chinese workmanship; it is carved and daubed with
many-colored paint all over. In front of the bell, three long tables
are ranged, the fronts of two of which display a perfect maze-work of
carving. The principal one shows, behind a glass front, several hundred
splendidly gilded figures of kings on thrones, and bowing and smirking
attendants, and horses on the rampage. The figures in this huge carved
picture stand out in bold relief from the background, but they are not
stuck on. The whole concern is worked out of a single broad slab of
timber, and only the cunning hand of a Chinaman could have wrought it.
Over the forward table is suspended a sort of shield, of indescribable
shape, whose face is marked in compartments like a coat of arms, and
in each of these is another nightmare of burnished and distorted human
figures. The ceiling of this room, and both sides of it, are adorned
with great sign boards, (they look like that to a content Christian,
at any rate,) bearing immense Chinese letters or characters, sometimes
raised from the surface of the wood and sometimes cut into it, and
sometimes these letters being painted a bright red or green, and the
grand expanse of sign board blazing with gold-leaf, or vice versa. These
signs are presents to the Church from other companies, and they bear the
names of those corporations, and possibly some extravagant Chinese moral
or other, though if the latter was the case we failed to prove it by Ah
Wae, our urbane and intelligent interpreter. Up and down the room, on
both sides, are ranged alternate chairs and tables, made of the
same hard, close-grained black wood used in the carved tables above
mentioned; devout pagans lean their elbows on these little side tables,
and swill tea while they worship Josh. Now, humble and unpretending
Christian as we are, there was something infinitely comfortable and
touching to us in this gentle mingling together of piety and breakfast.
They have a large painted drum, and a pig or two, in this temple. How
would it strike you, now, to stand at one end of this room with ranks
of repentant Chinamen extending down either side before you, sipping
purifying tea, and all about and above them a gorgeous cloud of glaring
colors and dazzling gold and tinsel, with the bell tolling, and the
drums thundering, and the gongs clanging, and portly, blushing old Josh
in the distance, smiling upon it all, in his imbecile way, from out
his splendid canopy? Nice perhaps? In the second story there are more
painted emblems and symbols than we could describe in a week. In the
first story are six long white slats (in a sort of vault) split into
one hundred and fifty divisions, each like the keys of a piano, and this
affair is the death-register of the Ning-Yong Company. When a man dies,
his name, age, his native place in China, and the place of his death
in this country, are inscribed on one of these keys, and the record is
always preserved. Ah Wae tells us that the Ning-Yong Company numbers
eighteen or twenty thousand persons on this coast, now, and has numbered
as high as twenty-eight thousand. Ah Wae speaks good English, and is the
outside business man of the tribe--that is, he transacts matters with us
barbarians. He will occupy rooms and offices in the temple, as will
also the great Wy Gah, the ineffable High Priest of the temple, and Sing
Song, or President of the Ning-Yong Company. The names of the temple,
inscribed over its doors, are, "Ning Yong Chu Oh," and "Ning Yong Wae
Quong;" both mean the same thing, but one is more refined and elegant,
and is suited to a higher and more cultivated class of Chinese than the
other--though to our notion they appear pretty much the same thing, as
far as facility of comprehending them is concerned. To-morrow the temple
will be opened, and all save Chinese will be excluded from it until
about the 5th of September, when white folks will be free to visit it,
due notice having first been given in the newspapers, and a general
invitation extended to the public.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 19, 1864

WHAT GOES WITH THE MONEY

Since the recent extraordinary expose of the concerns of the Grass
Silver Mining Valley Company, by which Stockholders discovered, to their
grief and dismay, that figures could lie as to what became of some of
their assessments, and could also be ominously reticent as to what
went with the balance, people have begun to discuss the possibility of
inventing a plan by which they may be advised, from time to time, of
the manner in which their money is being expended by officers of mining
companies, to the end that they may seasonably check any tendency
towards undue extravagance or dishonest expenditures that may manifest
itself, instead of being compelled to wait a year or two in ignorance
and suspense, to find at last that they have been bankrupted to no
purpose. And it is time their creative talents were at work in this
direction. The longer they sleep the dread sleep of the Grass Valley,
the more terrible will be the awakening from it. Money is being
squandered with a recklessness that knows no limit--that had a
beginning, but seemingly hath no end, save a beggarly minority of
dividend-paying companies--and after these years of expectation and this
waste of capital, what account of stewardship has been rendered unto the
flayed stock holder? What does he know about the disposition that has
been made of his money? What brighter promise has he now than in any
by-gone time that he is not to go on hopelessly paying assessments and
wondering what becomes of them, until Gabriel sounds his trumpet?
The Hale & Norcross officers decide to sink a shaft. They levy forty
thousand dollars. Next month they have a mighty good notion to go lower,
and they levy a twenty thousand dollar assessment. Next month, the
novelty of sinking the shaft has about worn off, and they think it would
be nice to drift a while--twenty thousand dollars. The following month
it occurs to them it would be so funny to pump a little--and they buy a
forty thousand dollar pump. Thus it goes on for months and months, but
the Hale & Norcross sends us no bullion, though most of the time there
is an encouraging rumor afloat that they are "right in the casing!" Take
the Chollar Company, for instance. It seems easy on its children just
now, but who does not remember its regular old monotonous assessment
anthem? "Sixty dollars a foot! sixty dollars a foot! sixty dollars a
foot!" month in and month out, till the persecuted stockholder howled
again. The same way with the Best & Belcher, and the same way with
three-fourths of the mines on the main lead, from Cedar Hill to Silver
City. We could scarcely name them all in a single article, but we have
given a specimen or so by which the balance may be measured. And what
has gone with the money? We pause (a year or two) for a reply. Now,
in some of the States, all banks are compelled to publish a monthly
statement of their affairs. Why not make the big mining companies do the
same thing? It would make some of them fearfully sick at first, but they
would feel all the better for it in the long-run. The Legislature is not
in session, and a law to this effect cannot now be passed; but if one
company dare voluntarily to set the example, the balance would follow by
pressure of circumstances. But that first bold company does not exist,
perhaps; if it does, a grateful community will be glad to hear from it.
Where is it? Let it come forward and offer itself as the sacrificial
scape-goat to bear the sins of its fellows into the wilderness.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 20, 1864

MARY KANE

This accomplished old gin-barrel came out of the County Jail early in
the morning three days ago, and was promptly in the station-house, drunk
as a loon, before the middle of the day. She got out the next day,
but was in again before night. She got out the following morning, but
yesterday noon she was back again, with her noble heart preserved in
spirits, as usual. Having a full cargo aboard by this time, she will
probably clear for her native land in the County Jail to-day.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 20, 1864

MORE ABUSE OF SAILORS

Yesterday afternoon a Commission was engaged in the United States
District Court room, taking testimony in the criminal proceedings
instituted against Luther Hopkins, Master of the American ship Carlisle,
for brutally treating Andrew Anderson, one of the ship's crew. The
affidavit of the prosecuting witness states that on the 2d April, 1864,
Captain Hopkins cruelly beat him with a belaying pin, while he was
sick, inflicting serious injuries on him; and also, on the 27th April,
Anderson being still sick Hopkins, the defendant, beat him on the
head with a belaying pin; and again, on the 27th June, still being an
invalid, he was beaten with a heavy, knotted rope, more than twenty
blows, by the Captain of the vessel, who also caused him to be bitten by
a dog. Poor Jack seeks redress and protection in a United States Court.
When the Captain marshals his subordinates, from first officer down
to forty-ninth cook, all dependent on him for the tenure of their
dignities, they will with one voice swear they never saw the Captain do
any such thing--blind as bats--while the poor victim felt it sensibly,
and his quaking comrades in the forecastle saw it distinctly enough. It
would be a hard thing should a Captain be punished for merely killing a
sailor or two, as a matter of pastime.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 21, 1864

THE CHINESE TEMPLE

The New Chinese Temple in Broadway--the "Ning Yong Wae Quong" of the
Ning Yong Company, was dedicated to the mighty Josh night before last,
with a general looseness in the way of beating of drums, clanging of
gongs and burning of yellow paper, commensurate with the high importance
of the occasion. In the presence of the great idol, the other day, our
cultivated friend, Ah Wae, informed us that the old original Josh (of
whom the image was only an imitation, a substitute vested with power to
act for the absent God, and bless Chinamen or damn them, according to
the best of his judgment,) lived in ancient times on the Mountain of
Wong Chu, was seventeen feet high, and wielded a club that weighed two
tons; that he died two thousand five hundred years ago, but that he is
all right yet in the Celestial Kingdom, and can come on earth, or appear
anywhere he pleases, at a moment's notice, and that he could come down
here and cave our head in with his club if he wanted to. We hope he
don't want to. Ah Wae told us all that, and we deliver it to the public
just as we got it, advising all to receive it with caution and not bet
on its truthfulness until after mature reflection and deliberation.
As far as we are concerned, we don't believe it, for all it sounds so
plausible.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 21, 1864

IT IS THE DANIEL WEBSTER

MINING COMPANIES' ACCOUNTS.--The Morning Call of yesterday has a lively
article on Mining Companies, suggesting that Mining Trustees should
publish quarterly statements of Expenditures and Receipts, concluding
with: "The Legislature is not in session, and a law to this effect
cannot now be passed; but if one Company dare voluntarily to set the
example, the balance would follow by pressure of circumstances. But
that first bold Company does not exist, perhaps; if it does, a grateful
community will be glad to hear from it. Where is it? Let it come forward
and offer itself as the sacrificial scape-goat to bear the sins of its
fellows into the wilderness."

In answer to this the officers of the Daniel Webster Mining Company,
located in Devil's Gate District, Nevada Territory, have requested us
to inform the shareholders and others who have purchased stock in this
Company at high prices, that a complete exhibit of the Company's affairs
will be made public in the Argus on Saturday next. This Company, in
consequence of a couple of shareholders in Nevada Territory, (legal
gentlemen at that,) paying their previous assessments in green-backs,
has been the first to levy an assessment payable in currency. We
believe, however, they will be the first "who dare" to make public
their accounts. We hope the Coso will be the next to follow suit, as a
correspondent of ours, in Sacramento, (whose letter appears under the
appropriate heading,) seems anxious to learn what has become of the
forty three thousand two hundred dollars collected by this Company for
assessments the last year.--(S. F. Argus, Saturday.)

So there are company officers who are bold enough, fair enough, true
enough to the interests entrusted to their keeping, to let stockholders,
as well as all who may chance to become so, know the character of their
stewardship, and whose records are white enough to bear inspection. We
had not believed it, and we are glad that a Mining Company worthy of the
name of Daniel Webster existed to save to us the remnant of our faith
in the uprightness of these dumb and inscrutable institutions. We have
nothing to fear now; all that was wanting was someone to take the lead.
Other Companies will see that this monthly or quarterly exhibit of their
affairs is nothing but a simple act of justice to their stockholders
and to others who may desire to become so. They will also see that it is
policy to let the public know where invested money will be judiciously
used and strictly accounted for; and, our word for it, Companies that
dare to show their books, will soon fall into line and adopt the system
of published periodical statements. In time it will become a custom, and
custom is more binding, more impregnable, and more exacting than any law
that was ever framed. In that day the Coso will be heard from; and so
will Companies in Virginia, which sport vast and gorgeously-painted
shaft and machinery houses, with costly and beautiful green
chicken-cocks on the roof, which are able to tell how the wind blows,
yet are savagely ignorant concerning dividends. So will other Companies
come out and say what it cost to build their duck ponds; so will still
others tell their stockholders why they paid sixty thousand dollars for
machinery worth about half the money; another that we have in our eye
will show what they did with an expensive lot of timbers, when they
haven't got enough in their mine to shingle a chicken-coop with; and yet
others will let us know if they are still "in the casing," and why they
levy a forty-thousand-dollar assessment every six weeks to run a drift
with. Secretaries, Superintendents, and Boards of Trustees, that don't
like the prospect, had better resign. The public have got precious
little confidence in the present lot, and the public will back this
assertion we are making in its name. Stockholders are very tired of
being at the mercy of omnipotent and invisible officers, and are ripe
for the inauguration of a safer and more sensible state of things.
And when it is inaugurated, mining property will thrive again, and
not before. Confidence is the mainstay of every class of commercial
enterprise.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 23, 1864

NO EARTHQUAKE

In consequence of the warm, close atmosphere which smothered the city at
two o'clock yesterday afternoon, everybody expected to be shaken out
of their boots by an earthquake before night, but up to the hour of our
going to press the supernatural bootjack had not arrived yet. That
is just what makes it so unhealthy--the earthquakes are getting so
irregular. When a community get used to a thing, they suffer when they
have to go without it. However, the trouble cannot be remedied; we
know of nothing that will answer as a substitute for one of those
convulsions--to an unmarried man.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 23, 1864

RAIN

One of those singular freaks of Nature which, by reference to the
dictionary, we find described as "the water or the descent of water that
falls in drops from the clouds--shower," occurred here yesterday, and
kept the community in a state of pleasant astonishment for the space
of several hours. They would not have been astonished at an earthquake,
though. Thus it will be observed that nothing accustoms one to a thing
so readily as getting used to it. You will always notice that, in
America. We were thinking this refreshing rain would make everybody
happy. Not so the cows. An agricultural sharp informs us that
yesterday's rain was a misfortune to California--that it will kill the
dry grass upon which the cattle now subsist, and also the young grass
upon which they were calculating to subsist hereafter. We know nothing
what ever about the matter, but we do know that if what this gentleman
says is strictly true, the inevitable deduction is that the cattle are
out of luck. We stand to that.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 23, 1864

THE NEW CHINESE TEMPLE

Being duly provided with passes, through the courtesy of our cultivated
barbaric friend, Ah Wae, outside business-agent of the Ning Yong
Company, we visited the new Chinese Temple again yesterday, in company
with several friends. After suffocating in the smoke of burning punk and
josh lights, and the infernal odors of opium and all kinds of edibles
cooked in an unchristian manner, until we were becoming imbued with
Buddhism and beginning to lose our nationality, and imbibe, unasked,
Chinese instincts, we finally found Ah Wae, who roused us from our
lethargy and saved us to our religion and our country by merely
breathing the old, touching words, so simple and yet so impressive, and
withal so familiar to those whose blessed privilege it has been to be
reared in the midst of a lofty and humanizing civilization: "How do,
gentlemen--take a drink?" By the magic of that one phrase, our noble
American instincts were spirited back to us again, in all their pristine
beauty and glory. The polished cabinet of wines and liquors stood on
a table in one of the gorgeous halls of the temple, and behold,
an American, with those same noble instincts of his race, had been
worshipping there before us--Mr. Stiggers, of the Alta. His photograph
lay there, the countenance subdued by accustomed wine, and reposing upon
it appeared that same old smile of serene and ineffable imbecility which
has so endeared it to all whose happiness it has been to look upon
it. That apparition filled us with forebodings. They proved to be well
founded. A sad Chinaman--the sanctified bar-keeper of the temple--threw
open the cabinet with a sigh, exposed the array of empty decanters,
sighed again, murmured "Bymbye, Stiggins been here," and burst into
tears. No one with any feeling would have tortured the poor pagan for
further explanations when manifestly none were needed, and we turned
away in silence, and dropped a sympathetic tear in a fragrant rat-pie
which had just been brought in to be set before the great god Josh. The
temple is thoroughly fitted up now, and is resplendent with tinsel and
all descriptions of finery. The house and its embellishments cost about
eighty thousand dollars. About the 5th of September it will be thrown
open for public inspection, and will be well worth visiting. There is
a band of tapestry extending around a council-room in the second story,
which is beautifully embroidered in a variety of intricate designs
wrought in bird's feathers, and gold and silver thread and silk fibres
of all colors. It cost a hundred and fifty dollars a yard, and was made
by hand. The temple was dedicated last Friday night, and since then
priests and musicians have kept up the ceremonies with noisy and
unflagging zeal. The priests march backward and forward, reciting
prayers or something in a droning, sing-song way, varied by discordant
screeches somewhat like the cawing of crows, and they kneel down, and
get up and spin around, and march again, and still the infernal racket
of gongs, drums and fiddles, goes on with its hideous accompaniment, and
still the spectator grows more and more smothered and dizzy in the close
atmosphere of punk-smoke and opium-fumes. On a divan in one hall, two
priests, clad in royal robes of figured blue silk, and crimson skull
caps, lay smoking opium, and had kept it up until they looked as drunk
and spongy as the photograph of the mild and beneficent Stiggers. One of
them was a high aristocrat and a distinguished man among the Chinamen,
being no less a personage than the chief priest of the temple,
and "Sing-Song" or President of the great Ning-Yong Company. His
finger-nails are actually longer than the fingers they adorn, and one
of them is twisted in spirals like a cork screw. There was one room half
full of priests, all fine, dignified, intelligent looking men like Ah
Wae, and all dressed in long blue silk robes, and blue and red topped
skull caps, with broad brims turned up all round like wash-basins. The
new temple is ablaze with gilded ornamentation, and those who are
fond of that sort of thing would do well to stand ready to accept the
forthcoming public invitation.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 23,1864

INEXPLICABLE NEWS FROM SAN JOSE

We have before us a letter from an intelligent correspondent, dated
"Sarrozay, (San Jose?) Last Sunday;" we had previously ordered this
correspondent to drop us a line, in case anything unusual should happen
in San Jose during the period of his sojourn there. Now that we have got
his chatty letter, however, we prefer, for reasons of our own, to make
extracts from it, instead of publishing it in full. Considering the
expense we were at in sending a special correspondent so far, we are
sorry to be obliged to entertain such a preference. The very first
paragraph in this blurred and scrawling letter pictured our friend's
condition, and filled us with humiliation. It was abhorrent to us
to think that we, who had so well earned and so proudly borne the
appellation of "M. T., The Moral Phenomenon," should live to have such a
letter addressed to us. It begins thus:

"Mr. Mark Twain--Sir: Sarrozay's beauriful place. Flowers--or maybe it's
me--smells delishs--like sp-sp-sp(ic! )irits turpentine. Hiccups again.
Don' mind them had 'em three days."

As we remarked before, it is very humiliating. So is the next paragraph:

"Full of newsper men--reporters. One from Alta, one from Flag, one from
Bulletin, two from MORRING CALL, one from Sacramento Union, one from
Carson Independent. And all drunk--all drunk but me. By Georshe! I'm
stonished."

The next paragraph is still worse:

"Been out to Leland of the Occidental, and Livingston in the Warrum
Springs, and Steve, with four buggies and a horse, which is a sp
splennid place splennid place."

Here follow compliments to Nolan, Conductor of the morning train, for
his kindness in allowing the writer to ride on the engine, where he
could have "room to enjoy himself strong, you know," and to the Engineer
for his generosity in stopping at nearly every station to give people a
"chance to come on board, you understand." Then his wandering thoughts
turn again affectionately to "Sarrozay" and its wonders:

"Sarrozay's lovely place. Shade trees all down both sides street, and in
the middle and elsewhere, and gardens--second street back of Connental
Hotel. With a new church in a tall scaffolding--I watched her an hour,
but can't understand it. I don' see how they got her in--I don' see how
they goin' to get her out. Corralled for good, praps. Hic! Them hiccups
again. Comes from s-sociating with drunken beasts."

Our special next indulges in some maudlin felicity over the prospect of
riding back to the city in the night on the back of the fire-breathing
locomotive, and this suggests to his mind a song which he remembers to
have heard somewhere. That is all he remembers about it, though, for
the finer details of its language appear to have caved into a sort of
general chaos among his recollections. The bawr stood on the burring
dock, Whence all but him had f-flowed--f-floored--f-fled--

The f-flumes that lit the rattle's back

Sh-shone round him o'er the shed--

"I dono what's the marrer withat song. It don't appear to have any sense
in it, somehow--but she used to be abou the fines' f-fusion--"

Soothing slumber overtook the worn and weary pilgrim at this point,
doubtless, and the world may never know what beautiful thought it met
upon the threshold and drove back within the portals of his brain, to
perish in forgetfulness. After this effort, we trust the public will
bear with us if we allow our special correspondent to rest from his
exhausting labors for a season--a long season--say a year or two.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 23, 1864

CAMANCHE ITEMS--SANITARY CONTRIBUTIONS

Business is progressing in lively style at the Monitor Yard. Some two
hundred and seventy-five hands, including about fifty boys, swarm in and
about the progressing hull, and all appear to work with a will, under
the keen superintending eye of Mr. Ryan and his able assistants. On
Saturday evening, after the men had struck work, they were invited to
assist at a grand flag-raising. A tall tapering pole was planted, amid
general enthusiasm, and a splendid American ensign hoisted to the truck
with cheers to its constellated glories and toasts for its ultimate
triumph. Mr. J. W. Willard, the gentleman who attends to the
contribution-box placed at the entrance gate, for aid to the Sanitary
Commission Fund, informs us that visitors contribute their two bits with
cheerfulness; in many instances coin of larger denomination are dropped,
and change refused to be taken. On Sunday, a general visiting time,
the amount contributed was two hundred and seventy-three dollars; and
yesterday the box received from fifty to sixty dollars. The "Monitor
Box" promises a good source.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 24, 1864

SUPERNATURAL IMPUDENCE

All that Mr. Stiggers, of the Alta, has to say about his monstrous
conduct in the Ning-Yong Temple, day before yesterday, in drinking up
all the liquors in the establishment, and breaking the heart of the
wretched Chinaman in whose charge they were placed--a crushing
exposure of which we conceived it our duty to publish yesterday--is the
following: "We found a general festival, a sort of Celestial free and
easy, going on, on arrival, and were waited on in the most polite manner
by Ah Wee, who, although a young man, is thoroughly well educated, very
intelligent, and speaks English quite fluently. With him we took a glass
of wine and a cigar before the high altar, and with a general shaking
hands all around, our part of the ceremonies was concluded." That is
the coolest piece of effrontery we have met with in many a day. He
"concluded his part of the ceremonies by taking a glass of wine and a
cigar." We should think a man who had acted as Mr. Stiggers did upon
that occasion, would feel like keeping perfectly quiet about it. Such
flippant gayety of language ill becomes him, under the circumstances.
We are prepared, now, to look upon the most flagrant departures from
propriety, on the part of that misguided young creature, without
astonishment. We would not even be surprised if his unnatural instincts
were to prompt him to come back at us this morning, and attempt to
exonerate himself, in his feeble way, from the damning charge we have
fastened upon him of gobbling up all the sacred whiskey belonging to
those poor uneducated Chinamen, and otherwise strewing his path
with destruction and devastation, and leaving nothing but tears and
lamentation, and starvation and misery, behind him. We should not even
be surprised if he were to say hard things about us, and expect people
to believe them. He may possibly tremble and be silent, but it would not
be like him, if he did.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 24, 1864

A DARK TRANSACTION

A gloom pervaded the Police Court, as the sable visages of Mary
Wilkinson and Maria Brooks, with their cloud of witnesses, entered
within its consecrated walls, each to prosecute and defend respectively
in counter charges of assault and battery. The cases were consolidated,
and crimination and recrimination ruled the hour. Mary said she was a
meek-hearted Christian, who loved her enemies, including Maria, and had
prayed for her on the very morning of the day when the latter threw a
pail of water and a rock against her. Maria said she didn't throw; that
she wasn't a Christian herself, and that Mary had the very devil in
her. The case would always have remained in doubt, but Mrs. Hammond
overshadowed the Court, and flashed defiance at counsel, from her eyes,
while indignation and eloquence burst from her heaving bosom, like the
long pent up fires of a volcano, whenever any one presumed to intimate
that her statement might be improved in point of credibility, by a
slight explanation. Even the gravity of the Court was somewhat disturbed
when three hundred weight of black majesty, hauteur, and conscious
virtue, rolled on to the witness stand, like the fore quarter of a
sunburnt whale, a living embodiment of Desdemona, Othello, Jupiter,
Josh, and Jewhilikens. She appeared as counsel for Maria Brooks, and
scornfully repudiated the relationship, when citizen Sam Platt, Esq.
prefaced his interrogation with the endearing, "Aunty." "I'm not your
Aunty," she roared. "I'm Mrs. Hammond," upon which the citizen S. P.,
Esq., repeated his assurances of distinguished regard, and caved a
little. Mrs. Hammond rolled off the stand, and out of the Court room,
like the fragment of a thunder cloud, leaving the "congregation," as
she called it, in convulsions. Mary Brooks and Maria Wilkinson were both
convicted of assault and battery, and ordered to appear for sentence.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 24, 1864

INGRATITUDE

George Johnson yesterday had his room-mate, M. Fink, arrested for
stealing one hundred and fourteen dollars from him. Johnson says Fink is
an old friend of his, and came to him three months ago and said he had
no money, could get no work to do, and had no place to sleep; he had
previously been tending bar at the Mazurka Saloon. Johnson has shared
his bed with him, and paid his washing and board bills from that time
until a few weeks ago, when the fellow got a situation of some kind on
one of the steamers. He still continued to share Johnson's room, in the
Wells Building, corner of Clay and Montgomery streets, however, when
in port. Johnson left him in bed yesterday morning, early, and when he
returned, he missed his money and his friend--the former from the bureau
drawer and the latter from the bed. We consider that this only confirms
what we have always said--namely, that the heart of man is desperately
wicked.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 24, 1864

POLICE CONTRIBUTIONS

Yesterday, F. L. Post, Property Clerk of the Police Department, paid
over the fourth and fifth instalments of the monthly contributions of
the Police force to the Sanitary Fund, amounting, in the aggregate, to a
fraction under five hundred dollars. This makes a total of two thousand
five hundred and sixty-four dollars, in gold, received by the Sanitary
Commission from the same source since the beginning of the present year,
and speaks volumes for the liberality and patriotism of our Police.
Chief Burke contributes fifteen dollars monthly; officer Cook, twelve
dollars and a half; officer Hesse, twelve dollars; Captains Lees and
Baker, ten dollars each, and none of the members of the force less than
five dollars. These donations are purely voluntary. While upon this
subject, we would mention that R. G. Sneath, Treasurer of the Sanitary
Committee, designs having a beautiful certificate engraved, suitable for
framing as a parlor ornament, and one of these will be filled out and
presented to each person who contributes ten dollars for the relief of
the sick and wounded soldiers of the Union.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 25, 1864

THE THEATRES, ETC.

METROPOLITAN.--"Mazeppa" was performed last evening, in the presence
of about two thousand people. The personation of the Tartar Prince was
assumed by the manageress herself--Mrs. Emily Jordan. The part involves
some rather risky horsemanship, and, considering the sultriness of the
weather, a refreshing scantiness of clothing, which, perhaps, had not
the least to do with causing the presence of the crowd. We suppose, as
Mrs. Malaprop says, "comparisons are odorous," but we must give Jordan
the credit of doing the "runs" in better style than Menken. The general
performance of the role had not the dash and abandon of that many-named
woman, but the equestrian portion was decidedly superior; and it
surprises us to learn that the actress, up to the time of consenting to
play the part, had been entirely unfamiliar with equestrianism. We must,
therefore, add to her merit of gracefulness, the quality of courage,
moral and physical. It would make the spectacle more generally
effective, if greater attention were paid to other parts of it than that
assigned to Mazeppa. The scenery and appointments are very well indeed;
but the cast is miserably defective. The people act with a hesitation
and timidity that lead one to believe they expected the "wild" horse to
break loose from his halterings behind the scenes, and distribute a
few kicks among them, which, by the way, not a few of the supers richly
deserve. Some of the combats were ridiculous, and were openly derided
by the audience. Mr. Phelps, who deserves every credit for his untiring
industry and ability as a stage manager, had better get those gay
swordsmen together and drill them thoroughly. "Mazeppa" will be repeated
to-night, and every night this week until further notice.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 25, 1864

THE LADIES' FAIR

The great Union Hall, in Howard street, yesterday afternoon, was
swarming with a busy hive of ladies and artisans, hurrying up the
decorations and working against time in the effort to get all things
in readiness for the great Fair in behalf of the Christian Commission,
which was to begin in the evening. The chaos of flags, evergreens, frame
work, timbers, etc., was already beginning to take upon itself outlines
of grace and forms of beauty, under the deft handling of the ladies and
their assistants. A charming floral temple stands in the centre of the
Hall; it is octagonal in shape, is composed of a cluster of evergreen
arches which come together at the top like the rafters of a dome, and
are surmounted by an eagle--not a live one. The bases upon which these
arches rest, form counters, whereon are displayed baskets of fresh
flowers for sale; one or two larger bouquets among them are perfect
miracles of beauty. A succession of ample arches, swathed in evergreens
and draped with flags and embellished with various designs, extends
entirely around the sides of the hall; under these are miniature shops,
in which the loveliest possible clerks will stand and dispose of all
manner of wares at ruinously moderate prices, considering the object to
which the profits are to be applied. There is one arch which bears this
motto: "Santa Clara's Offering to the Soldiers," and under it were five
handsome young ladies and two pretty glass work-baskets laden with fresh
flowers--a most extraordinary offering to an army of wounded soldiers,
it occurred to us. Over other alcoves were such mottoes as "God is Our
Trust;" "M. E. Churches;" "In hoc signo vinces," surmounted by a stately
cross; "Union is Strength," etc. No. 1 of these alcoves will be occupied
by ladies from Oakland; No. 2, by Miss Baker and her School, of this
city; No. 3, by members of Dr. Wadsworth's and Dr. Anderson's
Churches, (Presbyterian;) No. 4 is erected by Methodists, Baptists and
Presbyterians of Santa Clara; No. 5, by the United Methodists of
San Francisco; No. 6, by the Congregationalists; No. 7, by the
Episcopalians; No. 8, by members of Mr. Kittredge's congregation; No. 9
and 10, by the Baptists. At the left of the stage, under a splendor of
silken flags, the smallest and fairest of hands will dispense some of
the most useful and useless things to be found in the Fair--cigars and
soap. (That sentence does not seem to sound right, somehow, but there is
no time now to skirmish around it and find out what is the matter with
it.) At the other corner of the stage is the Christian soda fountain. At
the right of the entrance door they were building a "moss covered well"
around an old oaken bucket which is to be filled with lemonade; (why not
bay rum, or Jamaica rum, or something of that kind?) This is "Jacob's
Well," and will be carried on exclusively by Rachel, in the costume of
her day. On the left of the entrance is a cool, dripping grotto, built
by some counterfeiter of Nature, out of pasteboard rocks; the effect is
heightened by pendant sprays of Spanish moss, and a stuffed duck sitting
placidly on a shelf in the grotto, renders the deception complete. No
duck could look more complacent or more perfectly satisfied with his
condition, or more natural, or more like a genuine stuffed duck than he
does. It was hard to resist the temptation to squeeze his shelf, to see
if he would squawk. One of the reception rooms was filled with fine oil
paintings, loaned by the artists and picture dealers of the city.

THE OPENING.--By half-past eight in the evening, Union Hall was pretty
well crowded with gentlemen and ladies, and the handsome decorations
of the place showed to all the better advantage by contrast with the
shifting panorama of life and light by which they were surrounded. The
famous Presidio Band opened the ceremonies with superb music, after
which the Rev. Mr. Blane, pastor of the Howard street Methodist Church,
offered up a fervent prayer for the success of this effort in behalf of
the Christian Commission. Mayor Coon was then introduced, and delivered
an earnest and eloquent address in which he set forth the objects had
in view by the Commission, and urged the importance of extending to it
a generous aid and encouragement. W. H. L. Barnes, Esq., followed in
a stirring speech of some length, which was well received. The several
speakers labored under great disadvantage because of the immense space
it was necessary to fill with their voices, and the noise and confusion
consequent on such a vast gathering of people, but a fraction of whom
were seated, and who were too impatient to stand still many minutes
together. After a short interval, a fragile young man appeared suddenly
in the centre of the stage, dazzled the audience for a single second,
like a spark, and went out. Previous to going out, however, he whispered
something, and immediately afterward the "Euterpeans," who have so often
delighted our citizens with their music, stepped upon the stage and sang
a beautiful quartette about The Flag. During the course of the evening,
Mrs. Grotjan sang twice, as did also Mrs. Tourney. The singers found it
as hard work to sing in such a place as the speakers did to talk. Great
credit is due the Presidio Band, the Euterpeans and the two ladies, for
volunteering their services last evening without compensation. To-night
the grand feature will be a series of beautiful tableaux, in which the
most lovely young ladies and gentlemen in the city will appear. Charles
Alper's Band have volunteered for this evening, and there will doubtless
be some fine vocal music in addition.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 26, 1864

A "CONFEDERACY" CAGED

"When wine is in, wit is out." So remarked Judge Shepheard yesterday
morning, when J. F. Dolan offered intoxication as an excuse for belching
treason--and by the way, speaking of Judge Shepheard, it is every day
becoming more and more apparent that in his incumbency, the people have
got the right man in the right place. The Judge further observed
that when a man is under the influence of liquor, being too bold
and independent for caution, he is very likely to let out his real
sentiments, and that although this Dolan pretends to be a loyal man when
sober, he had no confidence in the profession of loyalty in a man who,
when intoxicated, would heap curses on every thing pertaining to the
Union cause, declare himself a strong Jeff. Davis man, wish for the
destruction of the Union army, and that he was in the Southern army with
a musket on his shoulder, as did Dolan. Mr. Riley, in whose saloon Dolan
began his disloyal manifestation, and who is evidently a thorough-going
Union man, created a sensation in the Court room while testifying, very
decidedly in his favor, by giving forcible expression to his feelings
on the subject. Dolan had gone up to his counter and called for a Jeff.
Davis drink: he wanted none other than a Jeff. Davis drink. Mr. R. told
him he'd be d--d if any body could get a Jeff. Davis drink in his house,
and incontinently turned him out, telling him at the same time that but
for the fact of his being drunk, he would give him a d--d thrashing.
Dolan, notwithstanding his good loyalty when sober, was held in the sum
of one thousand dollars to appear at the County Court. A little loyal
when sober, and intensely disloyal when the tongue strings are loosened
by liquor--and such are Copperheads.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 26, 1864

GOOD FROM LOUDERBACK

During the examination of Dolan, yesterday, for uttering treasonable
language, when Mr. Lawrence, Dolan's counsel, proposed to offer evidence
to prove that the defendant was not a disloyal man when sober, Mr.
Louderback, the young Prosecuting Attorney of the Police Court, happily
observed that it would be like proving a man's piety as an excuse in
a prosecution for using profane and obscene language. The defence was
squarely met, and waived the excuse.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 27, 1864

HOW TO CURE HIM OF IT

In a court in Minna street, between First and Second, they keep a puppy
tied up which is insignificant as to size, but formidable as to yelp. We
are unable to sleep after nine o'clock in the morning on account of it.
Sometimes the subject of these remarks begins at three in the morning
and yowls straight ahead for a week. We have lain awake many mornings
out of pure distress on account of that puppy--because we know that if
he does not break himself of that habit it will kill him; it is bound to
do it--we have known thousands and thousands of cases like it. But it
is easily cured. Give the creature a double handful of strychnine,
dissolved in a quart of Prussic acid, and it will soo--oothe him down
and make him as quiet and docile as a dried herring. The remedy is not
expensive, and is at least worthy of a trial, even for the novelty of
the thing.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 27, 1864

THE FAIR

The success of the Fair of the Christian Commission is no longer
conjectural--it is a demonstrated fact. The receipts of the opening
night were over eleven hundred dollars, those of the second, eighteen
hundred dollars, and as there was a considerable larger crowd in
attendance last evening than upon either of the former occasions, it
is fair to presume that the receipts amounted to at least two thousand
dollars--making a total, up to the present time, of about five thousand
dollars. It is proposed to continue the Fair almost a fortnight longer,
and inasmuch as its popularity is steadily increasing, it requires
no gift of prophecy to enable one to pronounce it a grand success in
advance. The prince of Bands--the Presidio--volunteered again last
evening, and delighted the audience with its superb music. There was
vocal music, also, of the highest degree of excellence. The first in
order was a cavatina, by Mrs. Gleason; followed by a ballad, "Brightest
Angel," by Mrs. Shattucx; grand aria from "Maritana," by Mr. John Gregg,
of the Italian opera; "Who will care for Mother now?" ballad, by Miss
Mowry; "Heart Bowed Down by Weight of Woe," from opera of "The Bohemian
Girl," by John Gregg. These several musical gems were well received
and highly appreciated. This evening the tableaux will be resumed, as
follows: 1. Landing of the Pilgrims; 2. Crinoline Avenged; 3. Statuary;
4. Execution of Lady Jane Grey; 5. Winning the Gloves; 6. Statuary--Fair
Rosamond and Queen Eleanor. The tableaux the other evening were got
ten up in fine taste and gave great satisfaction, albeit while the one
representing The Queen of Sheba at the Court of King Solomon, was before
the house, the effect was unduly heightened by an assistant in citizen's
dress rushing bald headed into Court, before he discovered that the
curtain was still up. The Court betrayed surprise; and so would the
original Solomon, if the same man, in the same modern costume, had ever
appeared so unexpectedly before him. The intrusion was not premeditated;
the gentleman was very deaf--so deaf, indeed, that he could not see that
the curtain had not yet been lowered. We forbear to urge anyone to go to
the Fair, to-night, for the chances are that there will be people enough
there to strain the sides of the building a little, anyhow.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 27, 1864

ARREST OF ANOTHER OF THE ROBBING GANG

Sheriff Adams learned a few days ago (says the San Jose Patriot, of the
24th,) that a man named R. F. Hall, a farmer and stock raiser living on
the Salinas, fifteen miles south of San Juan, was an accessory before
the fact in the robbing of the Los Angeles stages. That it was at his
(Hall's) house the robbers were harbored, and that he lent them a gun
and hatchet, with a full knowledge of their felonious purpose. These
facts coming to the mind of the Sheriff, he dispatched Under Sheriff
Hall last week to make the arrest, which he succeeded in doing without
difficulty, on Friday last. The Under Sheriff found R. F. Hall at
home, upon his ranch, took him to Monterey, and surrendered him to the
authorities of that county. The Under Sheriff states that Hall is an
intelligent man, and a well-to-do stock-raiser, having six hundred
head of cattle, a wife and three children. We learn that after long
conversations with both Hall and his wife, the Under Sheriff obtained a
good deal of information in regard to the combination of robbing gangs,
and finding the officer acquainted with Hall's complicity with the
robbers, a confession of the facts was obtained from him. Hall, like all
others engaged in these schemes of robbing, is a Secessionist, and both
he and his wife admitted that all connected with the band were bound to
each other by horrid oaths to revenge any punishment inflicted on them.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 30, 1864

ENTHUSIASTIC HARD-MONEY DEMONSTRATION

The era of our prosperity is about to dawn on us. If it don't it had
orter. The jingle of coin will still be heard in our pockets and tills.
It's all right. The Hard Money Association held an adjourned meeting at
the Police Courtroom last night, for the express purpose of considering
dollars. The meeting was an adjourned one. It staid adjourned. It wasn't
anything else. The room was dimly lighted. It looked like the Hall of
Eolis. Silently sat some ten or a dozen of the galvanized protectors of
our prosperity. They looked for all the world like an infernal council
in conclave. They were dumb; but what great plans for the suppression of
the green-backed dragon were born in that silence still remains hid in
the arcana of the mysterious cabal. They said nothing, they did nothing.
Like fixed statues they sat, all wrapped in contemplation of their
mighty scheme. They didn't adjourn, for from the first it was an
adjourned meeting, and it staid adjourned. Soon they all left--parted
quietly, mysteriously, awfully. The lights were turned out, and--nothing
more. Money is still hard.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 30, 1864

CHINESE RAILROAD OBSTRUCTIONS

The Chinese in this State are becoming civilized to a fearful extent.
One of them was arrested the other day, in the act of preparing for
a grand railroad disaster on the Sacramento Valley Railroad. If these
people continue to imbibe American ideas of progress, they will be
turning their attention to highway robbery, and other enlightened
pursuits. They are industrious.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 31, 1864

"SHINER NO. 1"

That industrious wild "Shiner" with his heavy brass machine for
testing the strength of human muscles, is around again, in his original
swallow-tail gray coat. That same wanderer, coat and machine, have been
ceaselessly on the move throughout California and Washoe, for a year
or more, and still they look none the worse for wear. And still the
generous proposition goeth up from the wanderer's lips, in the by-places
and upon the corners of the street: "Wan pull for a bit, jintlemen,
an' anny man that pulls eighteen hundher' pounds can thry it over agin
widout expinse." And still the wanderer seeketh the eighteen hundred
pounder up and down in the earth, and findeth him not; and still
the public strive for that gratis pull, and still they are
disappointed--still do they fall short of the terms by a matter of half
a ton or so. Go your ways, and give the ubiquitous "Shiner" a chance
to find the man upon whom it is his mission upon earth to confer the
blessing of a second pull "widout expinse."

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 31, 1864

MAYHEM

"Gentle Julia," who spends eleven months of each year in the County
Jail, on an average, bit a joint clear off one of the fingers of Joanna
O'Hara, (an old offender--chicken thief,) in the "dark cell" in the
station-house yesterday. The other women confined there say that is the
way Gentle Julia always fights.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 31, 1864

STRONG AS SAMPSON AND MEEK AS MOSES

Ellen Clark and Peter Connarty were up yesterday, charged with an
assault and battery committed on Dr. S. S. Foster, gymnast and athlete,
at Callahan's building, on Dupont street. The Doctor says he was
assailed by these persons without any provocation on his part, and
suffered at their hands divers indignities and abuses, but being under a
vow made some years since never to strike any one thereafter, no matter
what might be the aggravation, he quietly dropped his cane, folded his
hands, and submitted. King Solomon says, "It is the glory of a man to
pass by an offence." Behold what a glorious fellow Dr. Foster must be;
he declared that although no three men in the profession can handle him,
yet if a person were to spit in his face he would not resent it. That's
a high order of Christian meekness and forbearance--a sublime instance.
Other witnesses, however, tell a story less creditable to this prodigy
of physical and moral firmness, and as they were about equally balanced
in the weight of their testimony, the Doctor was allowed time to procure
some preponderating evidence. So the case was held over until to-day.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 1, 1864

THE COSMOPOLITAN HOTEL BESIEGED

As a proof that it is good policy to advertise, and that nothing that
appears in a newspaper is left unread, we will state that the mere
mention in yesterday's papers that the Cosmopolitan Hotel would be
thrown open for public inspection, caused that place to be besieged at
an early hour yesterday evening, by some thirty thousand men, women and
children; and the chances are that more than as many more had read the
invitation, but were obliged to forego the pleasure of accepting it.
By eight o'clock, the broad halls and stairways of the building, from
cellar to roof, were densely crowded, with people of all ages, sexes,
characters, and conditions in life; and a similar army were collected
in the street outside, unable to gain admission--there was no room for
them. The lowest estimate we heard of the number of persons who passed
into the Hotel was twenty thousand, and the highest sixty thousand; so
we split the difference, and call it thirty thousand. And among this
vast assemblage of refined gentlemen, elegant ladies, and tender
children, was mixed a lot of thieves, ruffians, and vandals. They stole
everything they could get their hands on--silverware from the dining
room, handkerchiefs from gentlemen, veils and victorines from ladies,
and even gobbled up sheets, shirts, and pillow-cases in the laundry, and
made off with them. They wantonly destroyed costly parlor ornaments, and
pulled down and trampled under foot the handsome lace curtains of some
of the windows. They "went through" Mr. Henning's room, and left him
not even a sock or a boot. (We observed, a day or two ago, that he had
a bushel and a half of the latter article stacked up at the foot of his
bed.) The masses, wedged together in the halls and on the staircases,
grew hot and angry, and smashed each other over the head with canes,
and punched each other in the face with their fists, and to stop
the thieving and save loss to helpless visitors, and get rid of the
pickpockets, the gas had to be turned off in some parts of the house. At
ten o'clock, when we were there, there was a constant stream of people
passing out of the hotel, and other streams pouring towards it from
every direction, to be disappointed in their hopes of seeing the wonders
within it, for the proprietors having already suffered to the extent of
several thousands of dollars in thefts and damages to furniture,
were unwilling to admit decent people any longer, for fear of another
invasion of rascals among them. Another grand rush was expected to
follow the letting out of the theatres. The Cosmopolitan still stands,
however, and to-day it opens for good, and for the accommodation of all
of them that do eat and sleep, and have the wherewithal to pay for it.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 1, 1864

RINCON SCHOOL MILITIA

Before disbanding for a fortnight's furlough, the boys connected with
Rincon School had a grand dress parade, yesterday. They are classed into
regular military companies, and officered as follows, by boys chosen
from their own ranks: Company A, Captain John Welch; B, Captain John
Warren; C, Captain Henry Tucker; D, Captain William Thompson; E, Captain
Robinson; F, Captain Charles Redman; G, Captain Cyrus Myers; H, Captain
Henry Tabor. Companies I and J have no regularly elected officers, we
are told. The drummers of the regiment are two youngsters named Douglas
Williams and John Seaborn, and their talent for making a noise amounts
almost to inspiration. Both are first class drummers. The Rincon boys
have been carefully drilled in military exercises for a year, now, and
have acquired a proficiency which is astonishing. They go through with
the most elaborate manoeuvres without hesitating and without making a
mistake; to execute every order promptly and perfectly has become
second nature to them, and requires no more reflection than it does to a
practised boarder to go to dinner when he hears the gong ring. The word
"drill" is the proper one--those boys' legs and arms have been
drilled into a comprehension of those orders so that they execute them
mechanically, even though the restless mind may be thinking of anything
else in the world at the moment. Professor Robinson has been the
military instructor of the Rincon Regiment for several months past.
The School exercises, earlier in the day, were very interesting, and
consisted of dialogues, declamations, vocal and instrumental music,
calisthenics, etc. "The Humors of the Draft," a sort of comedy,
illustrative of the shifts to which unwarlike patriots are put in order
to compass exemption, was well played by a number of the School boys,
and was received with shouts of laughter. Douglas Williams played, on
his drum, a solo which would have been a happy accompaniment to one of
our choicest earthquakes. A young girl sang that lugubrious ditty, "Wrap
the Flag around me, Boys," and the extraordinary purity and sweetness of
her voice actually made pleasant music of it, impossible as such a
thing might seem to any one acquainted with that marvellous piece of
composition. The Principal, Mr. Pelton's, heir, an American sovereign of
eight Summers and no Winters at all, since his life has been passed here
where it has pleased the Almighty to omit that season, gave a recitation
in French, and one in German; and from the touching pathos and
expression which he threw into the latter, and the liquid richness of
his accent, we are satisfied the subject was a noble one and wrought
in beautiful language, but we could not testify unqualifiedly, in this
respect, without access to a translation. The Rincon School was mustered
out of service, yesterday evening, for the term of two weeks.

FINE PICTURE OF REV. MR. KING

California and Nevada Territory are flooded with distressed looking
abortions done in oil, in watercolors, in crayon, in lithography, in
photography, in sugar, in plaster, in marble, in wax, and in every
substance that is malleable or chiselable, or that can be marked on, or
scratched on, or painted on, or which by its nature can be compelled to
lend itself to a relentless and unholy persecution and distortion of
the features of the great and good man who is gone from our midst--Rev.
Thomas Starr King. We do not believe these misguided artistic lunatics
meant to confuse the lineaments, and finally destroy and drive out
from our memories the cherished image of our lost orator, but just the
contrary. We believe their motive was good, but we know their execution
was atrocious. We look upon these blank, monotonous, over-fed and
sleepy-looking pictures, and ask, with Dr. Bellows, "Where was the
seat of this man's royalty?" But we ask in vain of these wretched
counterfeits. There is no more life or expression in them than you may
find in the soggy, upturned face of a pickled infant, dangling by the
neck in a glass jar among the trophies of a doctor's back office, any
day. But there is one perfect portrait of Mr. King extant, with all the
tenderness and goodness of his nature, and all the power and grandeur
of his intellect drawn to the surface, as it were, and stamped upon the
features with matchless skill. This picture is in the possession of Dr.
Bellows, and is the only one we have seen in which we could discover
no substantial ground for fault finding. It is a life-size outline
photograph, elaborately wrought out and finished in crayon by Mrs.
Frances Molineux Gibson, of this city, and has been presented by her to
Rev. Dr. Bellows, to be sold for the benefit of the Sanitary Commission.
It will probably be exhibited for a while at the Mechanics' Fair, after
which it will be disposed of, as above mentioned. Dr. Bellows desires to
keep it, and will do so if bids for it do not take altogether too high a
flight.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 1, 1864

THE THEATRES, ETC.

MR. MASSETT'S LECTURE--"DRIFTING ABOUT."--The printer having by mistake
announced in the big bills the entertainment of Mr. Massett for last
night, this is to say that to-night is the occasion when he will drift
before his audience, spread his sail to the popular breeze, and make the
waves ripple with prose, poetry, humor and song, imitation, incident
and story. There is enough of variety to please the most exacting, fun
enough for the most funny, humor for the gay, pathos for the serious,
and whims for the eccentric. He will do a greater variety of things
than any other man ever attempted before an audience in one night,
and brevity will be united with the variety. As the entertainment is
announced as for "one night only," those who would hear and see Massett,
should go to-night.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 1, 1864

STRATEGY, MY BOY

One of our new policemen was lying exceedingly low in a Chinese alley
the other night, for the purpose of surprising a loafer who was in the
habit of stealing the bread of a butcher, the butcher thinking it was
not meet that he should do so. While lying prone on the ground, the
officer was discovered by a vigilant Chinaman, Ah Wah. The former
feigned obliviousness. The benevolent Chinaman shook the prostrate form,
but meeting with no response, decided that the ghost of the policeman
had gone to another beat, and concluded to administer on his estate.
John took an inventory. Item, one pistol, when suddenly the officer
sprung to his feet and took John. He was brought before Judge Shepheard
yesterday morning, charged with petty larceny. His counsel, Mr.
Zabriskie, said that any innocent person might go through a man's
pockets under similar circumstances. The argument was overpowering, and
Ah Wah was discharged.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 2, 1864

THE MECHANIC'S FAIR

The stern, practical appearance which the great array of machinery and
all manner of industrial implements has heretofore given to the Pavilion
is being softened and relieved, now, by a pleasant sprinkling of fresh
flowers and beautiful pictures; and by the time the Art halls are fully
dressed with paintings, and the central tower with blooming plants, and
the fountain below filled with limpid water, and the thousand lights
a-blaze above a mass of people in ceaseless motion, the place will look
as vivacious and charming as it now looks tumbled and shapeless. And
while on this flight, it is proper to state that in the east wing of the
Pavilion, Mr. Beers will have an excellent and commodious restaurant,
where visitors can obtain anything or everything they may choose to eat
or drink, and in quantities to suit the capacities of all stomachs.
How naturally doth the cultivated human mind ascend from art and
horticultural to hash and hominy!

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 2, 1864

LOST CHILD

A fat, chubby infant, about two years old, was found by the police
yesterday evening, lying fast asleep in the middle of Folsom street,
between Sixth and Seventh, and in dangerous proximity to the railroad
track. We saw the cheerful youngster in the city jail last night,
sitting contentedly in the arms of a negro man who is employed about the
establishment. He had been taking another sleep by the stove in the
jail kitchen. Possibly the following description of the waif may be
recognized by some distressed mother who did not rest well last night:
A fat face, serious countenance; considerable dignity of bearing; flaxen
hair; eyes dark bluish gray, (by gaslight, at least;) a little soiled
red jacket; brown frock, with pinkish squares on it half an inch across;
kid gaiter shoes and red-striped stockings; evidently admires his
legs, and answers "Dah-dah" to each and all questions, with strict
impartiality. Anyone having lost an offspring of the above description
can get it again by proving property and paying for this advertisement.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 3, 1864

SUICIDE OUT OF PRINCIPLE

The Grass Valley National, of Tuesday evening, tells a story of a
Chinaman named Ah Sin, who committed suicide in a very civilized way,
impelled thereto by an enlightened motive. Ah Sin loved to smoke opium.
He had, it may be supposed, a quantity of his favorite drug, but lacked
a pipe. In an evil hour, when suffering for the want of a smoke, he
chanced upon a pipe "worth four bits or a dollar," and incontinently
gobbled it up. At least that was the charge made against him by some
other Chinamen, who were so angry with him for thus disgracing the
national character for honesty, that they could not take time to starve
the culprit to death in the usual manner, but undertook to beat him to
death. A Policeman rescued him from the hands of the executioners, and
for safety placed him in the calaboose. John called for his pipe and his
opium bag, took a farewell smoke, and then taking his sash, a dirty
silk one, from his waist, hung himself with it, with a great deal of
difficulty and determination. The Policeman discovered him dead when he
went in to give him his regular tea. He was in a kneeling position, from
which it may be inferred that he died while saying his prayers to Josh.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 3, 1864

LABYRINTH GARDEN

Visitors to the Mechanics' Fair, to-day, should examine carefully the
pretty and ingenious Labyrinth Garden, in miniature, gotten up by Mr.
Frank Staeglich, and situated near the Floral Tower. It is easy to see
your way into it, and the paths are very straight, but to see your way
out again is the impossible feature of the thing. Although this garden,
with its endless complication of drives and avenues, is only about as
large as an ordinary lunch table, the grass plats, flower-beds, and rows
of microscopic trees, with which it is luxuriously embellished, are
all alive and growing. There are within the garden one hundred and
twenty-five perfect trees, from one to three inches high, belonging to
many different species of California's lordliest forest monarchs, among
which are the giant redwood and several kinds of pines. The long rows
of lilliputian shrubs which inclose the garden are vigorous young cedar
trees, and there are three thousand of them.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 3, 1864

THE LOST CHILD RECLAIMED

The child which we mentioned yesterday as having been found asleep in
the middle of Folsom street by the Police, and taken to the City Jail,
has been called for, collected and carried away by its father. It knew
its father in a moment, and we believe that is considered to be a severe
test of smartness in a child.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 4, 1864

THE CALIFORNIAN

This sterling literary weekly has changed hands, both in the matter of
proprietorship and editorial management. Mr. Webb has sold the paper to
Captain Ogden, a gentleman of fine literary attainments, an able writer,
and the possessor of a happy bank account--three qualifications
which, in the lump, cannot fail to insure the continued success of the
Californian. Mr. Frank Brett Hart will assume the editorship of the
paper. Some of the most exquisite productions which have appeared in
its pages emanated from his pen, and are worthy to take rank among
even Dickens' best sketches. Taking all things in consideration, if the
Californian dies now, it must be by the same process that resurrected
Lazarus, which we are proud to be able to state was a miracle. After
faithfully laboring night and day for about four months, and publishing
fifteen numbers of the best paper in its particular department ever
issued on this coast, Mr. Webb will now go and rest a while on the
shores of Lake Tahoe. He has chosen to rest himself by fishing, and he
is wise; for the fish in Lake Tahoe are not troublesome; they will let
a man rest there till he rots, and never inflict upon him the fatigue of
putting on a fresh bait. "Inigo" has our kindest wishes for his present
and future happiness, though, rot or no rot.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 4, 1864

THE HURDLE-RACE YESTERDAY

The grand feature at the Bay View Park yesterday, was the hurdle race.
There were three competitors, and the winner was Wilson's circus horse,
"Sam." Sam has lain quiet through all the pacings and trottings and
runnings, and consented to be counted out, but this hurdle business
was just his strong suit, and he stepped forward promptly when it was
proposed. There was a much faster horse (Conflict) in the list, but what
is natural talent to cultivation?--Sam was educated in a circus, and
understood his business; Conflict would pass him under way, trip and
turn a double summerset over the next hurdle, and while he was picking
himself up, the accomplished Sam would sail gracefully over the hurdle
and slabber past his adversary with the easy indifference of conscious
superiority. Conflict made the fastest time, but he fooled away too many
summersets on the hurdles. The proverb saith that he that jumpeth fences
with ye circus horse will aye come to grief.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 4, 1864

DOMESTIC SILKS

California may branch out and become a great silk manufacturing State
some day, when it becomes known that her facilities for doing so are
much superior to those of most other lands. Mr. Louis Prevost, of San
Jose, who has a lot of silk worm eggs and cocoons on exhibition at the
Mechanics' Fair, says that in Europe the greater portion of every crop
of silkworms get diseased and die, but in this climate they all live and
come to maturity--it is impossible for them to become diseased. He also
says that here, it is but little trouble, and requires small care and
attention to raise silk worms, and that in his department of labor,
one man here can perform the work of eight in Europe, and do it with
comparative ease. Mr. Prevost gets no opportunity to manufacture
California silks, because the demand for his silkworm eggs is so great
from foreign countries, and the prices paid him so liberal, that he
finds it more profitable to lay the eggs and ship them off than to keep
them and hatch them. As fast as the worms produce them, he sends them
to Italy, and comes as near filling all orders from there as he can,
at twelve dollars an ounce (containing forty thousand eggs.) He has an
order from Mexico, now, for five hundred ounces, but he is unable to
fill it. They say that a silkworm ranch is one of the few kinds of
property in this world that never fail to pay. Let Californians make a
note of it, and act upon it.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 4, 1864

LOOKS LIKE SHARP PRACTICE

The examination of Simon Lewis, the pawnbroker, charged with exacting
usurious interest, was concluded yesterday, in the Police Court. The
testimony for the prosecution presents this state of facts: Adolph
Warner took a watch, with chain attached, to the shop of the pawnbroker
and pledged it for forty dollars, but did not receive the ticket which
the law requires pawnbrokers to give in all cases to the person pledging
an article, containing a description of the article, number of the pawn,
and date of the transaction, signed by the broker. When Warner's wife
discovered that he had left the watch with Lewis, without taking a
ticket, she went herself for it, and received from the broker two
tickets, one for the watch and one for the chain, purporting to evidence
two separate loans of twenty dollars each, instead of one entire loan
of forty dollars. The law prohibits pawnbrokers from taking a greater
amount of interest than four per cent on sums over twenty dollars; but
on sums of twenty dollars, and under, they are in the habit of charging
ten per cent. The prosecution claims that his was but one loan, but that
defendant had bifurcated the pledge so as to reduce the sums to within
the limit upon which the high rates are charged, and thus compelled
him to pay ten, instead of four per cent. The case looked badly for the
pawnbroker; but when his own books were introduced in evidence, with his
own clerk to explain them, of course Lewis would be exculpated, at least
in the eye of the law; that is to say, he would--and he did--escape
through a mere doubt--a doubt in law, but nowhere else. Lewis had the
manufacturing of all the record and documentary evidence himself, and he
would have been a more stupid knave than is generally to be found among
pawn brokers, if he had not made it to suit his side of the case in the
event of a future controversy about it. From the contradictory character
of the evidence, the Judge could not convict the defendant, but he
delivered a short and pointed homily on the subject of honesty, as
the best policy, and gave notice that he would be somewhat rigorous in
future complaints of that sort.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 4, 1864

A TERRIBLE MONSTER CAGED

A most wretched criminal was brought into the Police Court yesterday
morning, on a charge of petty larceny. He stands between three and four
feet in his shoes, and has arrived at the age of ten years. His name
does not appear on the register, so the world must remain in ignorance
of that. He is an orphan who has been provided with a home in a
respectable family of this city, and is charged with having taken some
chips and sticks from about Dr. Toland's fine new building, which it is
supposed he uses in kindling the fires for the family he lives with. The
person whose vigilance discovered grounds for suspecting this fatherless
and motherless boy of the horrible crime, is a carpenter who works at
the building. The county is indebted to him. The little fellow came into
Court under a strong guard. He was terrified almost out of his senses,
and looked as if he expected the Judge to order his head to be chopped
off at once. The matter, if entertained at all, will be heard on Monday,
and in the mean time the little boy will anticipate worlds of misery.
It is a matter of wonder to some that a deliberate attempt to send an
indefinite number of souls to Davy Jones' locker, by one who occupies
a prominent position, escapes Judicial scrutiny, while the whole force
conservatorial is hot foot in the chase after some little ragged shaver,
some fledgling of St. Giles, unkempt and uncared for, who flits from
corner to corner, and from hole to hole, as if fleeing from his own
shadow. But such persons don't understand conservatorial policy. Let the
hoary headed sinners go, they can get no worse, and soon will die off,
but look sharply after the young crop. The old trunk will decay after a
while and fall before the tempest, but the sapling must be hewn down.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 6, 1864

A PROMISING ARTIST

The large oil painting in the picture store under the Russ House, of the
"Blind Fiddler," is the work of a very promising California artist, Mr.
William Mulligan, of Healdsburg, formerly of St. Louis, Mo. In the main,
both the conception and execution are good, but the latter is faulty in
some of the minor details. Dr. Bellows has a smaller picture, however,
by the same artist, which betrays the presence of genius of a high order
in the hand that limned it. The subject is a dying drummer boy, half
sitting, half reclining, upon the battle field, with his body partly
propped upon his broken drum, and his left arm hanging languidly over
it. Near him lie his cap and his drum-sticks--unheeded, discarded,
useless to him forever more. The dash of blood upon his shirt, the
dreamy, away-at home look upon the features, the careless, resigned
expression of the nerveless arm, tell the story. The colors in the
picture are not gaudy enough to suit the popular taste, perhaps, but
they represent nature truthfully, which is better. Mr. Mulligan has
demonstrated in every work his hands have wrought, that he is an artist
of more than common ability, and he deserves a generous encouragement.
One or two of his pictures will probably be exhibited at the Mechanics'
Fair now being held in this city.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 6, 1864

PEEPING TOM OF COVENTRY

An amorous old sinner, named John Fine, went to the North Beach
bath-house on Sunday for a swim. Owing to the number of pounds he
weighed, he was forced to wade--his weight being considerably over
several stone he couldn't swim, for who ever heard of stones swimming.
In order to make up the deficit of fun, he went to the partition that
screens the ladies' department, and peeped through a crevice. Mr. Ills,
the proprietor of the establishment, witnessed the untoward scrutiny,
and ordered him away; but life's charms riveted Fine to the spot, and
he heeded not the Ills, when his person suffered under the weight of
another stone. The proprietor sent a projectile which struck him in the
face, near the left eye. Astronomically speaking, Fine saw stars, but
didn't think it a fine sight. He left at once and prosecuted Ills.
Yesterday Mr. Ills was fined five dollars for assault and battery.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 6, 1864

TURNED OUT OF OFFICE

Resident Physician Raymond, Visiting Physician Geary, and Matron Weeks,
of the City and County Hospital, were all summarily bundled out of
office, last night, by the Board of Supervisors, for alleged official
neglect, indifference, indolence, and general "dry rot" produced by long
continuance in office, and apparent security in the possession of their
places. Notice was given of a motion to reconsider this action, and
in the meantime the two doctors and the matron were, by resolution, to
retain their offices until their successors were appointed.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 6, 1864

A SMALL PIECE OF SPITE

Some witless practical joker made a false entry, a few days ago, on
a slate kept at the dead-house for the information of the public,
concerning dead bodies found, deaths by accident, etc. The Alta,
Bulletin, and Flag, administered a deserved rebuke to the Coroner's
understrappers, for permitting the entry to remain there, and pass into
the newspapers and mislead the public, and for this reason the slate has
been removed from the office. Now it is too late in the day for such men
as these to presume to deny to the public, information which belongs
to them, and which they have a right to demand, merely to gratify a
ridiculous spite against two or three reporters. It is a matter of no
consequence to reporters whether the slate is kept there or not; but
it is a matter of consequence to the public at large, who are the
real injured parties when the newspapers are denied the opportunity of
conveying it to them. If the Coroner permits his servants to close the
door against reporters, many a man may lose a friend in the Bay, or by
assassination, or suicide, and never hear of it, or know anything about
it; in that case, the public and their servant, the Coroner, are the
victims, not the reporter. Coroner Sheldon needs not to be told that he
is a public officer; that his doings, and those of his underlings at the
coffin-shop, belong to the people; that the public do not recognize his
right or theirs to suppress the transactions of his department of the
public service; and, finally, that the people will not see the propriety
of the affairs of his office being hidden from them, in order that the
small-potato malice of his employees against two or three newspaper
reporters may be gratified. Those employees have always shown a strong
disinclination to tell a reporter anything about their ghastly share in
the Coroner's business, and it was easy to see that they longed for
some excuse to abolish that slate. Their motive for such conduct did not
concern reporters, but it might interest the public and the Coroner if
they would explain it. Those official corpse-planters always put on as
many airs as if the public and their master, the Coroner, belonged to
them, and they had a right to do as they pleased with both. They told
us yesterday that their Coronial affairs should henceforth be a sealed
book, and they would give us no information. As if they--a lot of
forty-dollar understrappers--had authority to proclaim that the affairs
of a public office like the Coroner's should be kept secret from the
people, whose minions they are! If the credit of that office suffers
from their impertinence, who is the victim, Mr. Sheldon or the
reporters? We cannot suffer greatly, for we never succeeded in getting
any information out of one of those fellows yet. You see the dead-cart
leaving the place, and ask one of them where it is bound, and without
looking up from his newspaper, he grunts, lazily, and says, "Stiff,"
meaning that it is going inquest of the corpse of some poor creature
whose earthly troubles are over. You ask one of them a dozen questions
calculated to throw more light upon a meagre entry in the slate, and
he invariably answers, "Don't know"--as if the grand end and aim of
his poor existence was not to know anything, and to come as near
accomplishing his mission as his opportunities would permit. They would
vote for General Jackson at the "Bodysnatchers' Retreat," but for the
misfortune that they "don't know" such a person ever existed. What do
you suppose the people would ever know about how their interests were
being attended to if the employees in all public offices were such
unmitigated ignoramuses as these? One of these fellows said to us
yesterday, "We have taken away the slate; we are not going to give you
any more information; the reporters have got too sharp--by George, they
know more'n we do!" God help the reporter that don't! It is as fervent
a prayer as ever welled up from the bottom of our heart. Now, a reporter
can start any day, and travel through the whole of the long list of
employees in the public offices in this city, and in not a solitary
instance will he find any difficulty in getting any information which
the public have a right to know, until he arrives at the inquest office
of the Coroner. There all knowledge concerning the dead who die in
mysterious ways and mysterious places, and who may have friends and
relatives near at hand who would give the world and all its wealth for
even the poor consolation of knowing their fate, is denied us. Who are
the sufferers by this contemptible contumacy--we or the hundred thousand
citizens of San Francisco? The responsibility of this state of things
rests with the Coroner, and it is only right and just that he should
amend it.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 7, 1864

CHRISTIAN FAIR

The Ladies' Fair of the Christian Commission will close positively
tomorrow evening; to-night and to morrow night there will be a sale or
two at auction, but the ladies wish it distinctly understood that there
will be no general auction of articles left on hand at the close of the
Fair. They consider that when half a dollar may be the means of saving
a soldier's life, they have no right to fritter away donations at
a sacrifice. They have already reduced prices to cost, and in some
instances even below cost, and if the articles cannot be sold at these
rates, they will be retained and contributed to swell the resources of
the Christian Commission in other portions of the State. They have a
stove, a set of furs, several fine cakes, and a few other articles of
value, which they are anxious to dispose of before the Fair closes;
those who desire to purchase will please make a note of it. About the
middle of the Hall, on the east side, Mrs. Alvord has, in a glass case,
several bouquets, done in wax by Mrs. Selim Woodworth, wife of the
commander of the U.S. ship Narragansett, which are to be given to the
lady who polls the largest vote for them; it costs something to vote in
that ward, and the money thus collected is to be forwarded directly to
the wounded soldiers. The largest of these bouquets is an exquisite work
of art and will bear the closest inspection. The silver vases containing
the smaller bouquets, were donated by Mrs. Alvord. Near at hand, the
last named lady has a rare set of books which she has contributed, and
which are also to be voted for, and will be presented to the pastor who
shall be in the majority. Pay your poll-tax and deposit your ballot. It
has occurred to us just at this moment, that if any of the barefooted
Disciples, travelling according to their custom "without purse or
scrip," should return to Earth, and happen into the Fair, they couldn't
vote, could they? Consequently, it is risky, charging for votes, isn't
it? Manifestly.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 7, 1864

TERRIBLE CALAMITY

EXPLOSION OF THE STEAMER WASHOE'S BOILERS--SUPPOSED KILLED, ONE
HUNDRED--WOUNDED AND MISSING, SEVENTY FIVE--SEVERAL SAN FRANCISCANS
AMONG THE NUMBER--ATTENTION PAID BY THE SACRAMENTANS TO THE WOUNDED--THE
CAUSE OF THE CALAMITY--SCENES AND INCIDENTS--ETC., ETC.

We compile an account of this terrible disaster from dispatches
published in the evening papers. The explosion of the boilers of the
Washoe took place at ten o'clock, at a point just above the Hog's Back,
about ten miles above Rio Vista, on her up-trip on Monday night. One of
the boilers collapsed a flue, and, it is said, made a clean sweep
aft, going overboard through the stern of the boat. The cause of this
dreadful calamity, according to D. M. Anderson, the engineer, (who died
at the Sacramento hospital just after he made the statement,) was rotten
iron in the boiler. At the time of the explosion there were one hundred
and twenty-five pounds pressure on the boiler, with two cocks of solid
water. The engine was high pressure. The upper works of the boat aft
were completely shattered, some portions of them, with the state rooms
being blown overboard. The boat had passed the Hog's Back about four or
five minutes before the explosion. She was about twenty yards off the
left bank at the time, and the whole steering gear being destroyed, she
took a sheer and ran ashore, her bow providentially touching a tree,
to which those not injured fastened the boat. Had she not run ashore,
almost everybody on board would have been lost, as they could not steer
the wreck, and they had no boats, the steamer sinking gradually astern.
The boat was set on fire in three places, which added to the horror of
the scene. The fire, however, was put out by the few who were uninjured.
The Chrysopolis was a long way ahead, and knew nothing of the matter.
The Antelope being behind, came up and took off the wounded and a large
number of the dead, and brought the first news of the sad affair to
Sacramento.

MEASURES FOR RELIEF OF THE WOUNDED, AND TAKING OFF THE DEAD.

On the arrival of the Antelope at Sacramento, about half-past five
o'clock yesterday morning, with the terrible news, the alarm-bells of
the city were rung, and the Howard Association turned out to attend to
the wounded the steamer had brought up. The scene for the three hours
that elapsed before the Antelope reached the steamer Washoe is described
as most horrible. All who were alive had been taken ashore, but there
was no shelter for them. Those of the wounded who were able to move
sought shelter in the sand and brush, groaning and screaming with pain.
One man, who was scalded from head to foot, got ashore, and in a nude
state stood and screamed for help, but would not allow any covering
to be put on him. A woman in a similar condition was brought up on the
Antelope. The steamer carried only the wounded to Sacramento. A large
number of the slightly wounded, who could walk or ride, were taken to
the rooms of the Howard Association. The Association hired the Vernon
House for a hospital for the sufferers. On board of the Antelope
the scene was a most dreadful one. Her entire upper cabin, with the
exception of the passage-ways, was covered with mattresses, on which the
injured were lying, sixty-three in number. Others were in the ladies'
cabin, and still others in the dining-room. Four are reported to have
died on the way up, and at the time of landing others were gasping their
last on the levee. At the Vernon House the Howard Association have a
large number of members, who, with a large force of ladies, are doing
all that can be done for the sufferers. The Association also has
a committee out collecting, who have so far met with good success.
Immediately on the arrival of the Antelope, the steamer Visalia fired up
and went down to the wreck to bring the bodies of the dead left there by
the A., and also such others as may be recovered while she is there.

[approximately 1,200 words listing dead and wounded has been omitted.]

Flags were at half mast yesterday, on the Masonic Temple and most of the
engine houses, and on a number of private buildings in Sacramento. The
entire medical fraternity were in attendance on the sufferers, as well
as the clergy of all denominations.

The opinion is now that the total dead will exceed ninety, if not one
hundred.

Too much praise cannot be awarded the members of the Howard Association,
who almost to a man were engaged in behalf of the sufferers after the
arrival of the Antelope. A large number of ladies were in constant
attendance also at the Vernon House, doing all that they could do to
alleviate pain. The collections in Sacramento have been quite liberal.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 8, 1864

EARTHQUAKE

The regular semi-monthly earthquake arrived at ten minutes to ten
o'clock, yesterday morning. Thirty six hours ahead of time. It
is supposed it was sent earlier, to shake up the Democratic State
Convention, but if this was the case, the calculation was awkwardly
made, for it fell short by about two hours. The Convention did not meet
until noon. Either the earthquake or the Convention, or both combined,
made the atmosphere mighty dense and sulphurous all day. If it was the
Democrats alone, they do not smell good, and it certainly cannot be
healthy to have them around.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 8, 1864

BEAUTIFUL WORK

The ladies should examine some of those rare specimens of embroidery
on exhibition at the Mechanics' Fair. Among the finest is a tapestry
picture of a royal party in a barge--names "unbeknowns" to us--by W.
S. Canan, of Healdsburgh; a large portrait of G. Washington, by Mrs.
Chapman Yates, of San Jose; and a cat and a pile of kittens, by
Mrs. Juliana Bayer. We do not like the expression of the old cat's
countenance, but the kittens are faultless--especially the blind brown
one on the right. So perfectly true to nature are those young cats, that
it is easy to see that every school-boy who comes along is seized with
an earnest desire to drown them.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 8, 1864

CAPTAIN KIDD'S STATEMENT

Captain Kidd, of the ill-fated steamer Washoe, has been accused,
according to telegraphic reports from Sacramento, of ungenerous and
unfeeling conduct, in remaining with the wreck of his boat after the
explosion, instead of accompanying the maimed and dying sufferers by
the catastrophe to Sacramento. In defence of himself, he says he was
satisfied that the wounded would be as well and kindly cared for on the
Antelope as if he were present himself, and that he thought the most
humane course for him to pursue would be to stay behind with some of
his men and search among the ruins of his boat for helpless victims,
and rescue them before they became submerged by the gradually sinking
vessel; he believed some of the scalded and frantic victims had wandered
into the woods, and he wished to find them also. He says that his course
was prompted by no selfish or heartless motive, but he acted as his
conscience told him was for the best. We heartily believe it, and we
should be sorry to believe less of any man with a human soul in his
body. His search resulted in the finding of five corpses after the
Antelope left, and these he sent up on the small steamer which visited
the wreck on the following day. However, he need not distress himself
about the strictures of a few thoughtless men, for that class of people
would have blamed him just as cordially no matter what course he had
pursued. Whether one or more flues collapsed, or whether one or more
boilers exploded, or whether the cause of the accident was that too
much steam was being carried, or that the iron was defective or the
workmanship bad, are all questions which must remain unsolved until the
Washoe is raised. At present, and so far as anything that is actually
known about the matter goes, one of these conjectures is just as
plausible as another. Captain Kidd thinks the cause lay in the
inefficient workmanship of the boilermakers. The surviving engineer says
he looked at the steam-gauge scarcely two minutes before the explosion,
and it indicated 114 pounds to the square inch (she was allowed to carry
140;) he tried the steam cocks at the same time, and found two of them
full of water. The boat carried 120 to 125 pounds of steam from San
Francisco to Benicia, and from here to where the accident occurred,
it was customary to carry less, as the water grew shoaler, because, as
every boatman knows, a steamer cannot make as good time, or steer as
well, in shoal water with a full head of steam as she can with less;
from Rio Vista to Freeport, it was customary to carry about 110, and
above Freeport about 70 pounds of steam. The Chrysopolis was far ahead,
and had not been seen for more than half an hour; and since the last
collision Captain Kidd had given orders that the Washoe should be kept
behind the line boats and out of danger; he was making no effort to gain
upon the Chrysopolis, and had no expectation of seeing her again below
Sacramento. Gass & Lombard, of Sacramento, contracted to build boilers
for the Washoe which would stand a pressure of 225 pounds, and secure
the inspector's permission to carry 150; Captain Kidd appointed Mr.
Foster, one of the best engineers on the coast, to stay at the boiler
works and personally superintend the work. The workmanship was bad; the
boilers leaked in streams around the flues, and the Inspector would only
allow a certificate for 113 pounds of steam. The boat made seven trips,
but the leaks did not close up, as was expected. Gass & Lombard then
contracted with boiler makers here to take out the flues and make the
boilers over again, so that they would stand 140 pounds--Captain Kidd
relinquishing 10 pounds from the original contract. It was done, at a
cost of $7,000--about what a new set would have cost--and after a cold
water test of 210 pounds, the Inspector cheerfully gave permission
to carry 140. With a margin like this, the boilers could hardly have
exploded under a pressure of 114 pounds unless the workmanship was in
some sort defective, or the severe test applied by the Inspector had
overstrained the boilers; or unless, perhaps, a rivet or so might have
been started on some previous trip, under a heavier head of steam, and
this source of weakness had increased in magnitude until it finally
culminated in a general let-go under a smaller head of steam. The
sinking of the boat is attributed to the breaking off of the feed pipes
which supply the boilers with water, and which extend through the bottom
of the boat; and as the wreck settled and careened, a larger volume of
water poured in through the open ash ports forward of the fire doors.
The boat sank very gradually, and had not settled entirely until nearly
three hours had elapsed. But as we said in the first place, the real
cause of this dreadful calamity cannot be ascertained until the wreck
is raised and the machinery exposed to view. Captain Kidd leaves to-day
with the necessary apparatus for raising his boat, and Mr. Owens, who
built her, will accompany him and superintend the work. It will be
several months, however, before the Washoe will be in a condition to
resume her trips. Captain Kidd says he would raise the boat, anyhow, to
satisfy himself as to the cause of the accident, even if he never meant
to run her again. Capt. Kidd feels the late calamity as deeply as anyone
could, and as anyone not utterly heartless, must. That his impulses are
kind and generous all will acknowledge who remember that he kept his
boat running night and day, in time of the flood, and brought to this
city hundreds of sufferers by that misfortune, without one cent of
charge for passage, beds or food.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 8, 1864

DEMOCRATIC STATE CONVENTION

C. L. Weller, Chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee,
called the Convention to order yesterday noon, at Turn-Verein Hall.
He observed, in the opening speech, that it was the most important
Democratic Convention which had met since the adoption of the Federal
Constitution, inasmuch as upon it would devolve to decide whether our
liberties were to be preserved or destroyed. Beriah Brown was chosen
temporary Chairman, and temporary Secretaries and a Sergeant-at-Arms
were also appointed. A Committee on Credentials was appointed,
consisting of one Delegate from each county. A Committee on Permanent
Organization was chosen in the same manner. The Convention then
adjourned until three P.M.

Afternoon Session.--As soon as the Convention met, the work of forming
the Committees on Credentials and Permanent Organization was begun, when
the discovery was shortly made that Chas. L. Weller and Beriah Brown
held proxies for the San Diego and Shasta delegations respectively. This
riled Coffroth, of Sacramento, and expelled from his system a two hours'
speech which had probably been festering there all day, on account of
the evident disposition of the San Francisco delegation to rule the
roost. He gave it to them hot and strong, and accused them of gobbling
up everything else they could get their hands on. He was bitter on the
San Francisco boys. Weller replied that he did not conceive himself
guilty of any very heinous crime, in being the recipient of a proxy,
and reminded the Convention, in a general way, that he had always been a
good and consistent Democrat, and had suffered martyrdom for the cause.
Coffroth hit him back; said he was ready to bring flowers and lay
them at the feet of any who had actually suffered martyrdom, and then
ungenerously insinuated that he "didn't see it." He couldn't recognize
a martyr in a man whose misfortunes were all aces in a deal for a
Congressional nomination, perhaps. So the afternoon was wasted in
wrangling, and actual work cannot begin in the Convention until to-day.
Downey, Weller and McKewen are the most prominent aspirants for the
nomination in this District, and Coffroth in the Middle District, as we
are informed by a chaste and reliable Copperhead. The permanent officers
of the Convention are as follows: Chairman, J. W. Mandeville, of
Tuolumne; Secretaries, John D. Goodwin, of Plumas, T. L. Thompson,
of Sonoma, and Barclay Henley, of San Francisco. A Committee on
Resolutions, consisting of five members, was appointed. They are to
report to-day.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 9, 1864

MRS. HALL'S SMELTING FURNACE

We would call the attention of all persons interested in mines and
mining machinery, to several bars of copper and galena, which are
exposed to view on a table in front of the hot-air engine in the
Mechanics' Fair. The bar modestly marked "galena," contains more silver
than anything else, and was smelted from ordinary ore in Mrs. Hall's
famous smelting furnace, by her daughter. The time occupied by the young
lady in the production of this bar was only twenty minutes, and the
materials used were a bushel of ore and a bushel of charcoal. By this
process every particle of metal can be extracted from ore and saved,
in less time and at smaller expense than the same ore could be roasted
preparatory to crushing in a quartz mill. Copper ore can be reduced
with the same facility and at the same slight expense. The furnace is a
combination of principles long known to the votaries of science, but the
"Condenser" attached to it is an entirely new invention, and the credit
of originating it belongs to Mrs. Hall alone. It is a large drum, which
sits upon the flue of the furnace, and into which all the smoke passes;
a shower bath from above thoroughly washes this smoke, and the metallic
particles which would otherwise float away upon the atmosphere are thus
arrested and precipitated to the bottom of the drum. By this means,
all the metal in the ore is saved, which is an achievement not hitherto
compassed by any of our reduction machinery. Mrs. Hall's invention has
been patented, and in a letter from the Department at Washington she
was assured that there was no piece of mechanism gotten up for similar
purposes, in the Patent Office, which could at all compete with this
invention of hers. Let all who have the mining interest of California
at heart, bestow upon Mrs. Hall's smelting apparatus the attention its
importance deserves.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 9, 1864

CHARITABLE CONTRIBUTIONS

Messrs. Barry & Patten collected over a hundred dollars yesterday, at
their saloon in Montgomery street, for the sufferers by the explosion on
the steamer Washoe. It will be forwarded to the officers of the Howard
Association at Sacramento. An earnest and extended movement in this
direction would produce enough money in a single day to secure to those
poor flayed and mangled creatures every comfort and attention they may
stand in need of, and it is proper that Sacramento should be liberally
assisted in her humane work of ministering to their wants. Who will set
the ball in motion? We have seen twenty thousand dollars collected in a
short time in the noble little city of Memphis, Tennessee, for a similar
purpose, years ago. If money is wanted by the unfortunates now suffering
at Sacramento, San Francisco will respond promptly and with a will.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 9, 1864

CROSS SWEARING

That a thing cannot be all black and all white at the same time, is as
self evident as that two objects can not occupy the same space at the
same time, and when a man makes a statement under the solemn sanction of
an oath, the implication is that what he utters is a fact, the verity
of which is not to be questioned. Notwithstanding witnesses are so often
warned of the nature of an oath, and the consequences of perjury, yet it
is a daily occurrence in the Police Court for men and women to mount the
witness stand and swear to statements diametrically opposite. Swearing
positively--leaving mere impressions out of the question--on the one
hand that the horse was as black as night, and on the other that he was
white as the driven snow. Two men have a fight, and a prosecution
for assault and battery ensues. Each party comes up prepared to prove
respectively and positively the guilt and innocence of the party
accused. A swears point blank that B chased him a square and knocked
him down, and exhibits wounds and blood to corroborate his statements.
B brings a witness or two who saw the whole affair, from probably a
distant standpoint, and he testifies that nothing connected with the
fight could have escaped his observation, and that it was A who chased
B a square and knocked him down, and between these two solemn statements
the Court has to decide. How can he do it. It is an impossibility,
and thus many a culprit escapes punishment. There was a case in point
Tuesday morning. A German named Rosenbaum prosecuted another German
named Levy, for running into his wagon and breaking an axletree. He
swore that he kept as far over to the right hand side of the street as
a hole in the planking would permit, stopped his wagon when he saw the
impending collision, and warned Levy off. Notwithstanding, Levy drove
his vehicle against his wheel, breaking the axle, so as to require a new
one which would cost twenty-five dollars. He stated also that Levy had
been trying to injure him in that way for a long while. Levy brought
a witness who swore that between Rosenbaum's wagon and the hole in
the street, there was room for a wagon or two to pass; that Rosenbaum
challenged the collision, and that it was unavoidable on the part of
Levy; that instead of stopping his wagon, the prosecuting witness drove
ahead at a trot until the wagons became entangled, and that no damage
whatever was done to Rosenbaum. On the whole, that instead of Levy
running into Rosenbaum's wagon, Rosenbaum intentionally brought about
the collision for the purpose of recovering damages off of Levy. The
case was stronger than we have stated it, and the Judge could do
nothing but dismiss the matter. That there was perjury on one side, was
apparent. Yet this is but the history of one-half the cases that are
adjudicated in the Police Court. There should be examples made of some
of these reckless swearers. It would probably have a wholesome effect.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 9, 1864

DEMOCRATIC RATIFICATION MEETING

Several hundred men and boys of all political colors, were gathered at
the Plaza last evening to see the sky rockets, look at the pictures and
hear the music and speeches. It was expected, of course, that all the
apostles and prophets, saints and martyrs of the peace makers and the
Constitution preservers would display themselves, no matter how diverse
in their different shades of Democratic conservatism, as the exponents
of the party that is now vaunting its determination to wreak a terrible
retribution on the members and supporters of the present Administration,
under the leadership of George B. McClellan. While the speakers were
concentrating their thoughts for the grand effort before them, the
lights were suddenly extinguished and darkness became visible. The
accident was ominous. Soon, however, all was ablaze again, and the
work of the evening begun. Colonel Hayne was chosen to preside over the
meeting. A very moderate and carefully guarded inaugural embodied his
appreciation of the honor thus conferred on him, and his views in regard
to the conduct and results of the forthcoming campaign. He had always
been a Democrat and a thorough Union man, opposed to dismemberment under
any circumstances whatever. He defined the policy of the Democratic
party, and expressed his belief that the salvation of the country lay
through the Democratic party. Colonel H. was disposed to be charitable
towards his opponents, and, on the whole, showed that parental
solicitude and the good example of Republican politicians have not been
entirely lost on him. After the Chairman had closed his remarks, the
Hon. H. P. Barbour of Tuolumne was presented to the meeting. He spoke of
the humiliation of the party, during the while past, but congratulated
himself and his audience that the genius of civil liberty had rolled
away the stone from the tomb, and the Democratic party had come forth.
He abhorred the man whose argument is vituperation and epithets in a
political discussion. He challenged an impeachment of his Unionism
or his patriotism; deprecated this fratricidal war; arraigned the
Administration for nullification and negro equality; pointed to a
Democratic Administration as the only hope for the restoration of the
unity of the nation and the Government; declared his confidence in the
issue of the campaign, and exhorted the party to unity of action, asking
no quarter, but to fight under the motto of "victory or death." He
considered himself better than a negro any day.

Mr. Doyle, one of the Electors for the State at large, delivered a
short address. His effort was rather feeble, characterized by moderation
entirely unnatural to Democratic speakers. The whole substance of his
speech was, that after trying Mr. Lincoln's Administration for three and
a half years, the nation were satisfied that to continue it would only
be to sink the country inextricably in ruin. A man is needed at the head
of affairs who combines the elements of civilian and soldier; who knows
exactly the right thing to do and the right time to do it in. McClellan
is the man. The mind of the speaker lit for a moment on the Monroe
Doctrine, and finally eliminated through his organs of speech in feeble
tones, the expression of a desire to vote for a competent man.

Mr. Wm. T. Coleman responded to a call in a speech made up of a little
glorification, followed by the usual expressions of confidence in
the result of the party, vindicating his own loyalty, and pointing to
McClellan as the man who is to restore our primal fraternity. Mr. C.
said he was not a sycophantic Peace man--a clamorer for peace on any
terms, whatever. He wanted to see a pacification between the States as
speedily as possible, but one based only upon honorable terms.

After Mr. Coleman closed, a Mr. Hamilton was introduced, and was the
first speaker of the evening to cross the bounds of moderation. Before
he exhibited his positive sympathy for the South, we had begun to think
that the discreet caution or sober temper of the declaimers would afford
but such slight grounds for criticism, beyond their usual arrogations,
and their reflections upon the war policy of the Administration. We have
not space to give even an epitomized report of any of the speeches,
but suffice it to say that Hamilton with the growing vehemence of his
nervous temperament, declaimed immoderately against the Administration;
asked the people if they were prepared to respond to its bloody
mandates; declared that but for the fact that they saw relief in an
approaching election day, the opponents of the Administration would
have resisted with blood, and that those who attempted to carry out its
measures would long ere this have been in their graves. The speaker grew
more virulent as he progressed, and sounds of dissatisfaction were heard
from different persons on the stand. His speech was not well received.
Hamilton has certainly mistaken his party--he can't vote for McClellan;
he'd better go and get a situation in Jeff. Davis' cabinet. His speech
was the regular old stereotyped Radical Copperhead tirade--not even
excepting the attack on ministers of the gospel.

In appropriate order, followed next C. L. Weller. His first remark was
a fling at General McDowell, referring to Bull Run. He is troubled with
Alcatraz on the brain. He inflicted upon his hearers that exaggerated
woe of his morbid imagination, which he glories in parading on every
possible occasion, and with which he ardently hopes to create a current
of sympathy and devotion which will carry him irresistibly to high
political preferment.

We left Mr. Weller alternating between General McDowell and the Chicago
nominee. His chief idea in approving the nomination of General McClellan
seemed to be that he could now rant, vituperate and administer such
counsel as he saw fit, and yet vindicate his loyalty by drawing on
General McClellan's well known patriotism and constancy to the Union.

During one stage of the meeting, two speakers divided the attention of
the crowd. W. D. Sawyer, Esq., had been called upon by some who were too
remote to hear the speakers on the stand, and he addressed them from the
west side of the Plaza.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 10, 1864

RACE FOR THE OCCIDENTAL HOTEL PREMIUM

The best trotting race of the season came off at Bay View Park yesterday
afternoon, for the Occidental Hotel premium of three hundred dollars.
The competitors for it were a stallion "Kentucky Hunter," entered by H.
Fish; gr. stallion "Captain Hanford," entered by Charles H. Shear; and a
stallion "George M. Patchen, Jr.," entered by W. Hendrickson. These are
set down in the bills as the three fastest stallions on this Coast.
On the first heat "Hunter" came in a length ahead of "Patchen," and
"Hanford" brought up the rear. Time, 2:38. The next heat was as closely
contested as the first; "Patchen" was first, and "Hunter" and "Hanford"
neck-and-neck to within two hundred yards of the Judges' stand, when
"Hunter" roused himself and dashed up to the score a couple of lengths
ahead of "Patchen." However, it was pronounced a dead heat, because
"Hunter" had broken into a run once or twice in going around the track.
Time, 2:411/2. "Hanford" led for a considerable portion of the last half
mile, and all thought he would win the heat. The second heat proper was
a handsome race, and was won by "Hunter," again. Time, 2:43. "Hanford"
came out third best. "Hunter" won the third heat also, leading "Patchen"
about two lengths. Time, 2 :40. The first premium, of two hundred and
fifty dollars, was awarded to "Kentucky Hunter," and the second, of
fifty dollars, to "George M. Patchen." There was a large crowd present,
and the race created unusual interest; considerable money changed hands,
but we did not bring any of it away. Previous to the Occidental contest,
a tandem race came off for a purse of one hundred and twenty-five
dollars, mile heats, best 3 in 5. "Spot" and "Latham," driven by Mr.
Covey, and "Rainbow" and "Sorrell Charley," driven by Mr. Ferguson, ran.
Before the first half mile post was reached, Ferguson's team ran away,
and Covey's trotted around leisurely and won the purse. The runaways
flew around the race track three or four times, at break neck speed, and
fears were entertained that some of this break-neck would finally fall
to Ferguson's share, as his strength soon ebbed away, and he no longer
attempted to hold his fiery untamed Menkens, but only did what he could
to make them stay on the track, and keep them from climbing the fence.
Every time they dashed by the excited crowd at the stand, a few frantic
attempts would be made to grab them, but with indifferent success; it
is no use to snatch at a cannon ball--a man must stand before it if he
wants to stop it. One man seized the lead horse, and was whisked under
the wheels in an instant. His head was split open a little, but Dr.
Woodward stitched the wound together, and the sufferer was able to
report for duty in half an hour. Mr. Ferguson's horses should be taught
to economize their speed; they wasted enough of it in that one dash,
yesterday, to win every race this season, if judiciously distributed
among them. The only Christian way to go out to Bay View, is to travel
in one of the Occidental coaches, behind four Flora Temples, and with
their master-spirit, Porter, on the box, and a crowd inside and out,
consisting of moral young men and cocktails. Mr. Leland should be along,
to keep the portable hotel. The principal attraction at Bay View
to-day will be a ten-mile race, single heat. Four entries have been
made--"Fillmore," "Gentleman George," Grissom's mare, and another beast,
whose name has escaped our memory. To-morrow the great equestrienne
race, for the Russ House premium of silver service, valued at three
hundred dollars, will come off. Thirteen ladies have already entered
their names for the skirmish.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 10, 1864

CURIOSITIES

The soldier boys, Perry and Rines, in charge of the Sanitary Cheese and
Silver Bar, at the Mechanics' Fair, have been presented with several
curiosities, which they have added to the greater attractions in their
pagoda. One is an ancient tea pot, two hundred, or two thousand years
old, or along there, somewhere--at any rate, it is very old--which was
given to the boys by a lady in whose family it had been preserved for
several generations. Another is a wine-glass which was taken from one
of the ships in Boston harbor just after our exasperated forefathers
had thrown her cargo of tea overboard. The young lady who presented this
relic, received it from her grandfather, who took it from the vessel
with his own hands. And still another is an old half dollar, made in the
second die ever cast in America. It was presented to Rines, and he has
given it to the Sanitary Fund, and has it on exhibition. It is worth
twenty-five cents to see the Sanitary cheese and the other curiosities,
but it is worth double the money to hear the orator, Rines, deliver
his spirited and entertaining discourse concerning them. The man who
exhibits the lions and tigers in the menagerie isn't a circumstance
to him. We could print an extract or so from his speech, but we do not
think it would be exactly fair to spoil its attractiveness in this way.
Go and hear it yourself. A lady gave a dollar, a day or two ago, for the
privilege of lifting the silver bar, but she miscalculated her strength
somewhat, and failed to carry out her design. The bar weighs nearly two
hundred pounds, and her lifting capacity wouldn't reach. The privilege
is still open, however, to others of the sex.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 10, 1864

A PHILANTHROPIC NATION

Mr. O. C. Wheeler, Secretary of the California Branch of the U.S.
Sanitary Commission, has furnished us a neat little volume entitled "The
Philanthropic Results of the War in America," from which we learn that
since the war began, the American people have not only paid for its
prosecution by enormous taxes, but have voluntarily contributed, toward
caring for the wounded, etc., the immense sum of $212,274,259.45! That
was up to February, 1864; the figure must reach at least $250,000,000 by
this time. This was not all given to the Sanitary Fund, of course, but
to the hundred different departments of charity created by the war.
How much of it came from California? The two hundredth part, say.
Only that--and yet ours is one of the greatest States in the Union.
Therefore, let her not complain, yet awhile, that the calls upon her
in behalf of the Sanitary Fund are too heavy, but rather let her move
steadily along, as she is now doing, in her aid to that charity,
and continue to do it henceforward as cheerfully as she has done
it heretofore. Deposit your spare quarters on the big cheese at the
Mechanics' Fair. It is the contribution of two whole hearted brothers,
and it is worth twenty-five cents to look upon such a monument of kindly
Christian charity. After that cheese has gone the rounds of the States
and collected a quarter of a million for the Sanitary Fund, it will be
cut up in New York and sold by the slice. What will California bid for
the first slice?

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 11, 1864

ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF A DETECTIVE OFFICER

Officer Rose, one of the coolest, shrewdest members of the detective
force, was dispatched to Belmont, on the San Jose Railroad, by Chief
Burke, on Friday morning, to arrest a suspected criminal named James
Charles Mortimer, reported to be in hiding there; he was to find
satisfactory proofs of the man's guilt, first, and then make the arrest;
(his crime is to be kept a secret, as yet.) Arrived at Belmont, Rose
got the proofs that he wanted, from a woman with whom Mortimer had been
living, and from her he also obtained a clue of his hiding place, and
captured his man. He then went to Santa Clara with his prisoner, in
search of further evidence, and the two repaired to a secluded spot a
mile and a half from the town, at nine o'clock on Friday night, to
get some stolen property which Mortimer said he had buried there. The
prisoner watched his opportunity while the officer's back was turned for
a moment, or while he was digging for the hidden treasure, and knocked
him down by striking him in the back of the head with a stone; he then
took the officer's knife from his pocket and cut his throat with it,
severing the windpipe half in two; next he thrust the blade into his
throat and twisted it round; then, to make the murder sure, he took
Rose's revolver and struck him across the forehead with it, inflicting a
ghastly wound. Considering his victim finished by this time, he returned
to Santa Clara, rifled the officer's valise, paid for a check through to
San Francisco on the freight train, but jumped off the cars near Belmont
Station, while they were running slowly, and has not since been heard
of. Rose lay insensible for some time, but woke up at last, stunned
and confused by the blows he had received, and feeble from his loss of
blood, and in this condition he crawled a long distance, and finally
reached the house of a Mr. Trenneth, about midnight, where he was
properly cared for, and from whence he was removed to Santa Clara
yesterday. It was at first supposed he could not survive his injuries,
but he grew better rapidly and constantly, and now no fears are
entertained that he will die. A man of his nerve and resolution requires
more than one fatal wound to kill him. He was brought home to the
city on the evening train yesterday. This man Mortimer (he has a dozen
aliases,) half murdered a man named Conrad Pfister, in Dupont street,
one night, and robbed him of nearly a thousand dollars, and for this
highway robbery and attempted assassination our lenient Court of
Assizes, as usual, only gave him a year in the State Prison. For the
same offence, in the interior of the State, he would have gotten years
at least, and been considered a favorite of Fortune at that. But you
seldom find a longer sentence than one or two years on our Assize
records. Mortimer is one of the worst men known to the Police. He paid
his fare to San Mateo, in the morning train, about six weeks ago and
then tried to slip by and go on to Belmont, but was detected by
Mr. Nolan, the conductor, who put him ashore, and had a rough time
accomplishing it. Mortimer swore he would remember the treatment he had
received, and kill Nolan for it the first opportunity he got. Charles
James Mortimer's photograph is No. 64 in the Rogue's Gallery at
the office of the Chief of Police, and the countenance is not a
prepossessing one. Accompanying the picture is this description of him,
written some time ago: "Native of Maine; occupation, farmer; age, 23
years and 6 months; height, 5 feet 6 inches; weight, 160 pounds; hair,
light; eyes, blue; complexion, light; full face, red cheeks, good
looking; has a crucifix, with lighted candles, three pierced with
arrows, on his right fore arm, printed in red and black ink, and on his
left arm the letters C. J. M.; also, on one arm, the name of Flinn."
Captain Lees, and a posse of Policemen, were sent down to Belmont by
special train, yesterday, and have scattered in different directions
in search of the missing criminal. He will be captured, if it takes the
department ten years to accomplish it.

Since the above was in type, Mr. Rose has made the following statement:
He was walking along with Mortimer, halfway between San Jose and Santa
Clara, on the way to the buried property, when the prisoner suddenly
jumped to one side, seized a stone and knocked him down with it, as
above stated, and stabbed him in the neck, swearing he would "finish"
him. Thinking him "finished," he went away, but returned in the course
of ten minutes, to satisfy himself. Standing behind Rose, as he lay on
the ground, he exclaimed, in a disguised voice, "Hallo, my friend,
what are you doing there? Anything the matter? If you're ailing,
my farm-house is close by." The stratagem was successful; Rose was
deceived, and raised his head, when the fellow remarked, "Oh, so you're
not dead yet! I was afraid so; you've hunted me out, my man, and you
can't live"--and he drew Rose's revolver and struck him three powerful
blows, two back of the left ear, one on top of the head, and several
about the forehead. Before taking his final farewell of his victim,
Mortimer robbed him of his knife, revolver, and forty dollars in money.
Chief Burke wishes us to extend his warmest thanks to the citizens
living near the scene of the outrage, for the assistance rendered by
them to Officer Rose, and especially to the members of Mr. Trenneth's
family, who sat up with the wounded man all night, and did everything
they could for his relief, and furnished him with blankets and bedding
to use during his transportation on the cars; also, to Conductor Nolan
and other officers of the Railroad, for their kindness in making every
arrangement in their power for Mr. Rose's comfort, on his passage to
the city. Rose was doing only tolerably well at last accounts, and was
flighty at intervals.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 13, 1864

SAD ACCIDENT--DEATH OF JEROME RICE

On Wednesday evening last, while Jerome Rice, the well-known auctioneer,
of this city, and Rowland B. Gardner, one of his clerks, were on their
way to the Warm Springs, near Santa Clara, they lost their way in the
hills north of Vallejo Mills, and the night being somewhat dark, they
drove over an embankment twenty feet high. Mr. Rice fell upon his head,
and the force of the concussion crushed in the base of his skull and
fractured his collar bone, a fragment of which pierced one of his lungs.
Mr. Gardner's left thigh was broken, and his body considerably bruised.
Mr. Rice groaned in pain and muttered incoherent words at intervals, but
was never conscious up to the hour of his death, which occurred at
two o'clock yesterday morning, nearly three days and a half after the
accident. All Wednesday night, and all Thursday and Thursday night,
through the blistering sun, and the cold, benumbing air of evening, the
two men lay side by side and suffered inconceivable tortures from hunger
and burning thirst and the sharp pain of their stiffening wounds; and
Gardner spent the lonely hours in calling for the help that never came,
for himself and his insensible companion, until he could no longer speak
for hoarseness and exhaustion. Think of the raging fires in a throat
subjected to such exercise as this, when no water had moistened it for
a day and two nights! On Friday morning Mr. Gardner began his terrible
journey in search of assistance, and for two days and nights, without
food or water, he crawled backwards, by the aid of his hands, in a half
sitting, half reclining posture, and dragging his broken leg. Every
movement must have caused him exquisite agony; the anguish of such a
march cannot even be imagined. And the distance accomplished in those
forty-eight hours of suffering was only half a mile. On Sunday morning
he reached the vicinity of a field and attracted the attention of a
man at work in it, and the two unfortunate men were soon conveyed to a
neighboring house, and kindly cared for. When they went after Mr. Rice,
one of the carriage horses had long since wandered away; but "Roanoke,"
an old favorite and the property of Mr. Rice, was found keeping faithful
watch over his prostrate master, and gazing upon his face. The noble
brute had never deserted his post for three days and a half--hunger
and thirst had failed to drive him from his allegiance. If at any
time, during the two days his comrade was absent from his side, the
unfortunate man awoke from his delirium and realized that he was
desolate and alone, and far from human help, it must have been
some relief to his tortured mind, in that fleeting moment of
consciousness--some balm to his aching wounds, some sense of friendly
companionship to him in his loneliness--to see the eyes of his faithful
horse looking down into his own, in mute sympathy for his distress. Mr.
Rice's head, face and body were swollen in an extraordinary degree, and
blackened and blistered by the fervent heat of the sun. After lingering
in misery for so many hours, death at last put an end to his sufferings
at two o'clock yesterday morning. His wife and family, who have been
enduring for four years all the privations and misfortunes that war
could entail upon them in a section of Texas desolated alternately by
both contending parties, and whom he had not seen and scarcely ever
heard from during that time, will arrive here from Boston, (to which
port they lately escaped,) day after to-morrow, on the steamer Golden
City. After the long separation and the hardships that have fallen to
their life, it is cruel now to dash down the cup of happiness when it
had almost touched their very lips. Who, among all the brave men that
shall read this sad chapter of disasters, could carry, with firm nerve,
the bitter tidings to the unsuspecting widow and her orphans, and
uncoffin before them a mutilated corpse in place of the loving husband
and father they are yearning to embrace? Mr. Gardner is at Centreville,
under medical treatment, but the remains of Mr. Rice will be brought to
the city and kept until the arrival of the steamer, so that the stricken
family may have the sad consolation of looking upon them before they are
consigned to the grave.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 13, 1864

THE CAMANCHE

The work at the Camanche goes vigorously on, and is being rapidly pushed
towards completion. The scattering holes that were left in the bottom
of the hull when the bulk of the riveting was done, have now all been
reached by moving shores and supporting timbers. The outside tier of
timbers running fore and aft, which is to receive the armor, is now
put on from the bow back a distance of some forty or fifty feet on each
side, and begins to give one a tolerable idea of her great strength and
power of resisting the shots of an enemy. Much progress has also been
made in the last few days in placing the machinery of the engine,
and for turning the turret. The thorough manner in which all the work
connected with the Camanche is done must be apparent to anyone who
makes frequent visits to it. The vigilant eyes of Mr. Ryan, one of the
contractors, who is also the superintendent of the work, are everywhere
and see everything. The foremen of the different divisions of the work
are indefatigable in their efforts to have the labor performed in the
most perfect manner. The receipts at the gates, for the Sanitary Fund,
for the week ending Saturday, will reach nearly five hundred dollars. A
large number of our citizens visited the Camanche on Sunday.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 15, 1864

AN INGENIOUS CONTRIVANCE

There is nothing in the Mechanics' Fair more ingenious or pleasanter to
look at than the Skating Pond, and neither is there anything about
the Pavilion which is half so hard to find, unless it be the wretched
school-boy who stealthily rings Dexter's excellent but distracting
door gong, and then melts suddenly away under the neighboring billiard
tables, and is seen no more in life. But the Skating Pond is really easy
to find when you have intelligent directions by which to guide yourself.
From the main entrance, you go straight to the floral tower, and glance
off at an angle of forty-five degrees to the left and forwards; preserve
the direction thus secured until you reach the wall of the building,
and your object is attained. The Skating Pond sits on a table in a neat
parlor, and if you would have one like it, you should line the inside
of a wash-tub with mirrors, have the bottom peopled with male and female
dolls in skating attitude, and arrange it so that it will turn around
rapidly; you will observe that the little figures will be multiplied in
the mirrors into countless multitudes of hurrying and skurrying skaters,
growing smaller and smaller and more and more crowded together, as far
as the eye can reach into the limitless distance; and if your dolls
are dressed in as perfect good taste, and appropriate colors, and are
arranged in as faultless skating postures as are these of which we
are speaking, you cannot fail to be delighted with the liveliness, the
unlimited variety and the magnificence of the scene, and if you are
anything of a skater yourself, you must infallibly become inoculated
with the dash and spirit and rushing excitement of it. Put your eyes
down to the rim of the tub (this one is handsome enough for a drawing
room,) and look far away into the mirrors, and you may see thousands
and thousands of men and women swiftly passing and repassing each other,
over a stretching sea of ice that apparently has no more limit than
space itself. It is a beautiful work of art, and the more one looks at
it the more he is pleased with it. Mrs. Nathaniel Holland, the lady who
has charge of it, invented and constructed it herself.

ADJECTIVES

When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill
most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they
are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An
adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon
a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 15, 1864

COUNTY HOSPITAL DEVELOPMENTS

They do say that when rogues fall out, honest men get their dues.
Messrs. Vogel and Isaacs, of the County Hospital, have fallen out.
The seeming insinuation in the remark is the fruit solely of unworthy
suspicion in the prejudiced mind of the reader. Isadore Isaacs, who
for years has had the lucrative job of repairing all the windows that
chanced to get broken in the Hospital, a day or two ago procured the
arrest of Vogel, an employee of his, for using improper language to
Mrs. Isaacs. Vogel said at the time, that if the charge against him was
prosecuted, he would retaliate upon Isaacs and others connected with the
Hospital by throwing open to the public gaze such a three years'
history of corruption and swindling in that institution as would set
San Francisco dizzy with amazement. To make his threat good, he went
yesterday to Officer Lindheimer and Detective Officer Watkin, and
complained that for the past three years his boss, Isaacs, had been in
the constant habit of charging in his bills against the County, double
and treble the amount of glass actually put into the Hospital windows
by him, and that he did it with the Resident Physician, Dr. Raymond's,
connivance and consent, and that when the Doctor heard of Vogel's
threatened expose he offered him twenty dollars to keep quiet. Vogel
says that whenever Isaacs put in ten panes of glass, he always charged
the City for thirty; for thirty panes, he charged seventy five, or
such a matter, in his bills, and so on and so forth; thus managing, by
naturally quick talents and close attention to business, to make a good
thing out of an unpromising contract, with no capital save a gift in
the way of slinging a multiplication table which amounted almost to
inspiration. Mr. Vogel says he will prove that in three years the
officers of the Hospital paid Isaacs thirteen hundred dollars for
repaired windows, but he does not know how much the City and County paid
to those officers in the same time for the same work--a remark of Mr.
Vogel's which savors of an insinuation. According to a judgment of men
and their manners under circumstances where crime and their direct
or indirect implication in it is concerned, sharpened by his long
experience as a detective, Officer Watkin is satisfied that Vogel knows
a vast deal about the hidden mysteries of the conduct of the Hospital,
but he seems in doubt about the policy of unveiling them all in a heap.
Upon the complaint made by Vogel, Chief Burke had Isaacs arrested, and
upon the examination of the case to-day, comprehensive developments may
be looked for. Considering the important nature of the case, however,
Judge Shepheard should not have allowed Isaacs his liberty on fifty or
sixty dollars' worth of green-backs--one hundred and fifty dollars in
shinplasters. Now, how much credence is to be given to the statements of
Vogel, who is smarting under a sense of injury, we are not prepared to
say; but at the same time, if there are two departments of service
in the Hospital that are not the subject of suspicion in the minds of
taxpayers, we do not know it.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 15, 1864

INTERESTING LITIGATION

San Francisco beats the world for novelties; but the inventive faculties
of her people are exercised on a specialty. We don't care much about
creating things other countries can supply us with. We have on hand a
vast quantity of a certain kind of material and we must work it up, and
we do work it up often to an alarming pitch. Controversy is our forte.
Californians can raise more legal questions and do the wager of combat
in more ways than have been eliminated from the arcana of civil and
military jurisprudence since Justinian wrote or Agamemnon fought.
Suits--why we haven't names for half of them. A man has a spite at his
neighbor--and what man or man's wife hasn't--and he forthwith prosecutes
him in the Police Court, for having onions for breakfast, under some
ordinance or statutory provision having about as much relation to the
case as the title page of Webster's Dictionary. And then, there's an
array of witnesses who are well posted in everything else except the
matter in controversy. And indefatigable attorneys enlighten the Court
by drawing from the witnesses the whole detailed history of the last
century. And then again we are in doubt about some little matter of
personal or public convenience, and slap goes somebody into Court under
duress of a warrant. If we want to determine the age of a child who has
grown out of our knowledge, we commence a prosecution at once
against someone else with children, and elicit from witnesses enough
chronological information to fill a whole encyclopedia, to prove that
our child of a doubtful age was contemporary with the children of
defendant, and thus approximate to the period of nativity sought for.
A settlement of mutual accounts is arrived at by a prosecution for
obtaining goods or money under false pretenses. Partnership affairs
are elucidated in a prosecution for grand larceny. A burglary simply
indicates that a creditor called at the house of his debtor the night
before market morning, to collect a small bill. We have nothing but a
civil code. A portion of our laws are criminal in name only. We have
no law for crime. Cut, slosh around with pistols and dirk knives as
you will, and the worst that comes of it is a petty charge of carrying
concealed weapons; and murder is but an aggravated assault and battery.
We go into litigation instinctively, like a young duck goes into
the water. A man can't dig a shovel full of sand out of a drift that
threatens to overwhelm his property, nor put a fence around his lot
that some person has once driven a wagon across, but what he is dragged
before some tribunal to answer to a misdemeanor. Personal revenge, or
petty jealousies and animosities, or else the pursuit of information
under difficulties, keep up a heavy calendar, and the Judge of the Court
spends three fourths of his time listening to old women's quarrels, and
tales that ought, in many cases, to consign the witnesses themselves to
the prison cell, and dismissing prosecutions that are brought without
probable cause, nor the shadow of it. A prosecuting people we are, and
we are getting no better every day. The census of the city can almost
be taken now from the Police Court calendar; and a month's attendance
on that institution will give one a familiar acquaintance with more than
half of our domestic establishments.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 16, 1864

EXTRAORDINARY ENTERPRISE

It is said by those who ought to know, that the law against killing game
only suspended operation at midnight on Wednesday, yet there were quails
for breakfast at the Occidental at six o'clock the next morning. The
man who brought those birds to town will wear himself out, some time
or other, in getting up at such unseasonable hours of the night to take
advantage of an outgoing law. It would be wrong to suspect him of having
captured the quails the day before.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 16, 1864

MORE DONATIONS

A Chinese merchant of this city has left a superb Chinese lantern at the
Mechanics' Fair, to be sold for the benefit of the Sanitary Fund, and
certain young ladies are in the pleasant habit of leaving handsome
bouquets on the big cheese daily, to be disposed of for the same
charity. By far the most interesting curiosity of all, however, has
lately been added to the collection in the Floral Tower. It is a
voluminous and very musty old book, printed in London two hundred years
ago, in the reign of Charles II., and is rich with the quaint language,
spelling, and typography of the olden time. It is a "Chronicle" of the
Kings of England, and is carried down to the year 1664, the second of
Charles' reign. The chapter which gives the names of the members of
the High Commission before which Charles I. was tried and condemned to
death, is racy with comments upon the bad character, the ignominious
pursuits, and the former social obscurity of those gentlemen, and must
have occasioned great discomfort to such of them as were still living at
the time of its publication. During the trial of the friendless monarch,
"his staff fell to the floor, and seeing that none moved to take it up,
he put forth his hand and took it up himself." The chronicler seemed to
feel that no comment was needed there to show the deep humiliation into
which the poor King had fallen, and he made none. At another stage of
the trial, the head of the King's staff fell off, and a sense of the
dreadful omen flitted across the countenances of the superstitious
multitude around him. The old book contains the genealogy of the
reigning monarch and that of all the nobility of England.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 16, 1864

SUICIDE OF DR. RAYMOND

We gather the following facts concerning this sad event from Chief
Burke: At eight o'clock yesterday morning, the daily papers, as usual,
were taken to the Doctor before he had risen from bed. After the lapse
of half an hour, he was found lying in an insensible condition from the
effects of a heavy dose of morphine, which he had swallowed. He had been
reading, apparently; the Alta, with his spectacles: lying upon it, was
on the bed. Antidotes were administered, and the stomach pump applied,
and he rallied enough to show by the intelligence in his eyes that he
recognized the persons who stood about him, but he was speechless. In
spite of all efforts to expel the poison from his system and annul its
effects, he gradually sank until a few minutes past one o'clock in the
afternoon, when he died. Ever since his removal from the position of
Resident Physician of the County Hospital, by the Board of Supervisors,
on last Monday week, Dr. Raymond had been in a state of great mental
depression and unhappiness, and during the three days preceding his
death he had several times expressed fears that he was going to commit
suicide. He told Dr. Nuttall that he was "possessed of a suicidal
devil," and gave that gentleman his knife because of a desire he felt
to use it upon himself. He refused the Doctor's request that he would
remain with him at his house, however. Dr. Raymond also mentioned this
yearning to commit suicide to Mr. Pond, at the Hospital, and said, "Keep
an eye on me." Dr. Raymond occupied the post of Resident Physician of
the City and County Hospital during the past six or seven years; he came
here from St. Louis, about ten years ago, and those who knew him best
speak highly of his character. He was about fifty years of age.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 16, 1864

THE ALLEGED SWINDLING

The sworn statement, before the proper officer, of Vogel, that his
employer, Isaacs, had received $1,300 in three years for repairs to the
windows of the County Hospital, does not tally with the Auditor's books,
which show bills paid to Dr. Raymond for this purpose amounting to only
$80.87. If Vogel really knows of any criminality in the management of
the affairs of the Hospital, it should be wrung from him, upon Isaacs'
trial, so that if any be guilty, they may be punished, and in order that
if he has made false charges, suspicion may be removed from the parties
wronged. If his statements are invented simply to gratify a thirst
for revenge, the fact should be ferreted out and a stool of repentence
provided for him in the State Prison.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 16, 1864

OFFICER ROSE RECOVERING

Detective Officer Rose, who a few days ago was beaten and stabbed near
Santa Clara, by a prisoner named Mortimer, whom he had arrested, is now
entirely out of danger, and will be about the streets again shortly. We
are glad it is so, for while rascality is so plenty hereabouts, the city
could ill afford to lose so accomplished a detective. Officer Bovee,
one of the men sent to track Mortimer through the southern country, has
returned without having been able to obtain the slightest clue to his
whereabouts.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 17, 1864

DR. RAYMOND NOT REMOVED

We are informed by a member of the Board of Supervisors that the removal
of the late Dr. Raymond from the post of Resident Physician of the
County Hospital, and which action so preyed upon his mind, was not valid
and binding, but on the contrary was void and of no effect, because it
was not recommended by the Hospital Committee, from which, according to
an unrepealed resolution of the Board, all such motions for removal must
emanate.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 17, 1864

THE LATE SUICIDE--CORONER'S INQUEST

An inquest was held last evening at the County Hospital, to inquire
into the recent suicide of Dr. Raymond, late Resident Physician of
that institution. R. G. Tobin, Esq., Justice of the First Township,
officiated as Coroner. A number of witnesses were examined, who entered
into a minute detail of everything that had transpired for several days
previous to the death of the Doctor, having the slightest bearing on
the matter, as to the commission of the rash act. The testimony fully
establishes the fact that the Doctor, at the time and for sometime
previous, was laboring under a temporary aberration of mind. Our limited
space precludes the possibility of giving more than a faithful epitome
of the witnesses' statements. Dr. Holman, on the morning of the 10th,
received a note informing him that Dr. Raymond was ill, and leaving
a message to that effect for Dr. Nuttall, he repaired at once to the
Hospital, where he found deceased insensible, and evidently under
the effect of morphine. He found it impossible to arouse him. The
electrogalvanic battery was applied by Dr. Gerry; an emetic of the
sulphate of zinc was administered by Mr. Pond, the apothecary of the
Hospital, previous to the arrival of the physician, and an injection was
given. Every remedy was used that medical skill could summon, without
even appearing to rally him from the comatose condition in which he was
at first discovered. The only sign of sensibility seemed to have been
indicated when Mr. Pond applied his mouth close to the Doctor's ear,
and called him in a loud voice. Dr. R. opened his eyes for a moment, and
fixed them on Mr. Pond, but did not speak. From the first the sufferer
exhibited all the effects of narcotic poison or apoplexy. His features
were rigid, and his jaws so firmly set that it was only with the
greatest difficulty that the tube of the stomach- pump could be
introduced into his stomach. In an adjoining room, on a table, was a
drachm vial of morphine, partly empty, and close by it a tumbler of
water with morphine dissolved in it, from which he had evidently taken
the fatal draught. On the bed in which the Doctor was lying was the
Morning Alta, as Dr. Gerry positively states, and by it his spectacles.
The witnesses differed some in their impressions concerning the effect
on the mind of deceased of certain newspaper articles of that morning.
Dr. Nuttall felt sure that the rash act was hastened from having read
certain articles reflecting on his character, while Dr. Gerry and Mr.
Pond both agree in their impressions, from the appearance of things,
that the fatal dose was taken a considerable length of time before he
got the paper, and that he had not even so much as seen the article
in the paper that morning, as it was lying on his bed, having the
appearance of not having been unfolded. Witnesses state that there was
no other paper in the room. Deceased has recently spoken of suicidal
propensities that possessed him at times, and made him apprehensive that
he would make an attempt at self destruction. He spoke calmly about
it, and said that at times it was almost irresistible. At such times
he seemed extremely dejected; told Dr. Nuttall, a day or two before his
death, that his "evil genius was a suicidal devil," and gave the Doctor
his knife, fearing he might attempt violence on himself with it. He
placed himself under treatment of Dr. N. a short time since, for this
mental disease, and after two days seemed much better. All the medical
witnesses, Drs. Holman, Nuttall and Geary, agree in their belief that
the suicide was committed during a temporary fit of insanity, aggravated
doubtless by certain recent charges implicating him in frauds in the
Hospital accounts and management. He spoke of the matter as if his
sense of honor was wounded, though Dr. Gerry testifies that he "saw Dr.
Raymond previously with regard to the charges in the morning papers, and
he appeared to regard them with the contempt which they merited." Dr.
Raymond stated to Mr. Pond on Monday last, during a conversation with
reference to his suicidal propensities, that he had twice before in his
life been affected in the same manner, and he was fearful at times that
he would do himself an injury. The day before he died he conversed very
calmly with his cousin, Mr. I. W. Raymond, on this subject. Dr. Nuttall
felt certain that the act was not one of his volition; that if deceased
had been in a proper state of mind, his energies would have been
directed against it. Deceased was in comfortable circumstances, suffered
from no pecuniary embarrassments, had, he said, five thousand dollars in
the Savings Bank, and about as much in United States Bonds, besides what
he had in his pocket; said he was never better off in his life, and had
plenty saved up for the time he was likely yet to live. Deceased was a
native of New York, fifty eight years of age. He has a step mother
and two brothers living--one in New York and one in Maryland. The jury
returned a verdict in accordance with the above facts.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 18, 1864

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS

Probably there is no law against it. A large truck wagon, with a load on
it nearly as heavy as an ordinary church, came to a stand-still on the
slippery cobble stones in front of the Russ House, yesterday, simply
because the solitary horse attached to it found himself unable to
keep up his regular gait with it. A street car and other vehicles were
delayed some time by the blockade. It was natural to expect that a
"streak" of lightning would come after the driver out of the cloudless
sky, but it did not. It is likely Providence wasn't noticing.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 18, 1864

THEATRICAL RECORD

MAGUIRE'S OPERA HOUSE.--The past week has been devoted to benefits
to the different leading members of the community; but the time is
unpropitious for filling the house. Politics are surging; and our
citizens find more amusement in attending their District Club meetings,
mass meetings, and the rest, than in the theatre. To this cause as
much as any other, perhaps, may be attributed the scant showing numbers
present even when such popular actors as Charles R. Thorne and Frank
Mayo made it a personal affair between themselves and the public. Again,
the Mechanics' Industrial Fair is under full headway, and possesses
attractions for an evening promenade among its collections of the
wonders of science, art and skilled industry which the ladies find hard
to resist. The theatrical managers would--to use the language of one of
them--"rather fight twenty shows than one Mechanics' Fair;" especially
such a complete one as has been opened in this city...Tonight, the drama
of "A Life's Revenge" will be given; and next week James H. Warwick
takes the stage.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 18, 1864

DUE WARNING


Someone carried away a costly and beautiful hat from the Occidental
Hotel, (where it was doing duty as security for a board bill,) some
ten days ago, to the great and increasing unhappiness of its owner. Its
return to the place from whence it was ravished, or to this office, will
be a kindness which we shall be only too glad to reciprocate if we ever
get a precisely similar opportunity, and the victim shall insist upon
it. The hat in question was of the "plug" species, and was made by
Tiffany; upon its inner surface the name of "J. Smith" had once been
inscribed, but could not easily be deciphered, latterly, on account
of "Mark Twain" having been written over it. We do not know J. Smith
personally, but we remember meeting him at a social party some time ago,
and at that time a misfortune similar to the one of which we are now
complaining happened to him. He had several virulent cutaneous diseases,
poor fellow, and we have somehow acquired them, also. We do not consider
that the hat had anything to do with the matter, but we mention the
circumstance as being a curious coincidence. However, we do not desire
to see the coincidence extend to the whole community, notwithstanding
the fact that the contemplation of its progress could not do otherwise
than excite a lively and entertaining solicitude on the part of the
people, and therefore we hasten, after ten days' careful deliberation,
to warn the public against the calamity by which they are threatened.
And we will not disguise a selfish hope, at the same time, that these
remarks may have the effect of weaning from our hat the spoiler's
affections, and of inducing him to part with it with some degree of
cheerfulness. We do not really want it, but it is a comfort to us in our
sorrow to be able thus to make it (as a commodity of barter and sale to
other parties,) something of a drug on the market, as it were.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 20, 1864

THE THEATRES, ETC.

MAGUIRE'S OPERA HOUSE.--Mr. J. H. Warwick made his first appearance in
an intensely sensational drama called "The Bottle." The play shows the
unhappy results to a man of family which follow too close a devotion to
the ardent, to the neglect of his regular business. Tableaux occur in
it illustrative of Cruickshank's celebrated pictures. It is rather
overwrought in the misery line, and a man who sits it out will be
inclined to neglect his favorite brandy and water for a week or more.
It has no comforting wind-up, as in "The Drunkard," where the reformed
inebriate sings "Home; Sweet Home," in the midst of a family group and
with his arm about his wife's waist; but after a series of unrelieved
wretchedness, the least of which is murder, the unfortunate man in
"The Bottle" dies in delirium tremens. Warwick was impressive in the
principal character, Richard Thornley; and Mrs. Perry made a good deal
out of the suffering wife. The drama will be repeated this evening,
together with the farce of "His Last Legs."

WILSON-ZOYARA CIRCUS.--Some of the acrobatic feats at the pavilion
excite the wonder of spectators. The most wonderful movements of the
body are executed with a grace and precision that arouse unqualified
admiration. Zoyara has the superb black horse Othello under the most
perfect control, and he executes her bidding in the menage act with
remarkable docility and accuracy--"like a Christian," as an enthusiastic
horseman suggested. The camels are interesting; and altogether the show
is very complete, and deserves to be visited by all.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 21, 1864

STABBED

Two Chinamen got into a dispute early yesterday morning in a butcher
shop, in Washington Alley, when one of them seized a pork cleaver and
aimed four murderous blows at the other's head; the latter removed his
head from the line of attack, and received the blows on his arm, hand
and side. His arm got two deep gashes, his side a slight scratch, and
his right hand was cut nearly in half, the blade striking a straight
line across it a little below the base of the fingers. At this point the
wounded man seized a knife and plunged it into his assailant's side, and
withdrew from the contest, leaving him dangerously scared and feeble,
but not fatally injured. He considered that he withdrew from the contest
with credit to his share in the transaction; he evidently prided himself
upon the fine judgment and spirit of moderation he had shown under
circumstances where the forgetting of such virtues for a moment or
two might be naturally regarded as excusable. Holding a stick in his
mutilated left hand, he designated upon it with his thumb nail a point
two inches and a half from the end of the stick, saying, "Only so
how--not too litty, not too much!" Only an elaborate experience and
the spirit of the true artist could have enabled this bland Chinaman
to cypher down to a fraction the just amount of stabbing necessary
to square accounts with his adversary without overdoing the thing or
falling short of it. Officer James Conway arrested the mathematical
Chinaman and jammed him into the station-house.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 21, 1864

A TERRIBLE WEAPON

A charge of assault with a deadly weapon, preferred in the Police Court
yesterday, against Jacob Friedberg, was dismissed, at the request of
all parties concerned, because of the scandal it would occasion to the
Jewish Church to let the trial proceed, both the assaulted man and the
man committing the assault being consecrated servants of that Church.
The weapon used was a butcher-knife, with a blade more than two feet
long, and as keen as a razor. The men were butchers, appointed by
dignitaries of the Jewish Church to slaughter and inspect all beef
intended for sale to their brethren, and in a dispute some time ago, one
of them partly split the other's head open, from the top of the forehead
to the end of his nose, with the sacred knife, and also slashed one of
his hands. From these wounds the sufferer has only just recovered. The
Jewish butcher is not appointed to his office in this country, but is
chosen abroad by a college of Rabbis and sent hither. He kills beeves
designed for consumption by Israelites, (or anyone else, if they choose
to buy), and after careful examination, if he finds that the animal is
in any way diseased, it is condemned and discarded; if the contrary,
the seal of the Church is placed upon it, and it is permitted to be sent
into the market--a custom that might be adopted with profit by all sects
and creeds. It is said that the official butcher always assures himself
that the sacred knife is perfectly sharp and without a wire edge, before
he cuts a bullock's throat; he then draws it with a single lightning
stroke (and at any rate not more than two strokes are admissible,) and
if the knife is still without a wire edge after the killing, the job has
been properly done; but if the contrary is the case, it is adjudged
that a bone has been touched and pain inflicted upon the animal, and
consequently the meat cannot receive the seal of approval and must be
thrown aside. It is a quaint custom of the ancient Church, and sounds
strangely enough to modern ears. Considering that the dignity of the
Church was in some sense involved in the misconduct of its two servants,
the dismissal of the case without a hearing was asked and granted.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 21, 1864

OUT OF JAIL

James Donlan, who has been serving out a term of imprisonment in the
County Jail, for uttering treasonable language, yesterday paid into the
County Court one hundred and fifty dollars, the balance of his fine,
after deducting the equivalent of seven and a half days confinement, and
was released. Jail life must be very satisfactory, for those who have
been compelled to spend a few days there come out of it completely
satisfied. They don't want to go back, nor stay any longer than they can
help, under the polite attentions of the man who carries the key.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 22, 1864

QUEER FISH

At a case of pomological, ichthyological, mechanical, and a general
variety of specimens, at the west side of the rotunda of the Mechanics'
Fair building, is an unshapely looking animal, between a reptile and
a fish, called the "Catfish Squid," preserved in alcohol. In size, the
thing amounts to no more than a small potato, but the amount of physical
force it is said to exert when not in liquor, and otherwise in good
health, is somewhat enormous, being altogether disproportionate to its
dimensions. A card appended to the jar that keeps the animal in spirits,
informs the curious searcher after information that the squid can "take
a man down and suck him to death." And if any is skeptical of the fact,
he or she can just find out where there is one ready to perform, and try
it on. This specimen was obtained near Oakland. Close by is an other jar
containing an odd looking individual of the lobster species, found on
the islands. It lives in white sand, and is usually found in pairs.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 22, 1864

STRIKE OF THE STEAMER EMPLOYEES

A large body of the strikers who have been employed on our ocean
steamers, and who quit work because their wages were reduced below
living rates, marched to Dall's shipping office, at the corner of
Vallejo and Davis streets, yesterday morning, and afterwards proceeded
to North Point, where the America was ready to set sail, but was waiting
to ship a crew. Here they found men going aboard to take the vacant
places at the reduced rates, and compelled them to take their kits
ashore again, and give up the idea. Several men were knocked down and
roughly handled in the melee which ensued, among them Captain Lees,
of the Detective Police, who received a heavy blow on the head with a
billet of wood. About noon the officers of the America acceded to the
terms demanded by the workmen, and restored the former rate of wages,
and a crew was then shipped without molestation. Wages on the Golden
City will doubtless remain as they were before, also. The prices
heretofore paid (and no increase was asked by the men,) were as follows:
firemen, $70 a month; coal-passers, $60; sailors, $40, and waiters, $40;
and they are little enough. Men who leave families ashore, could not
support them on less, and it is anything but just to ask them to do it.
The insignificant sum the steamship companies would make by the small
reduction contemplated, would be lost again by the inferior capacity of
the men employed, for good and capable men would not work at the terms
offered.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 23, 1864

DEDICATION OF BUSH STREET SCHOOL

The handsome and costly building lately erected on the corner of Bush
and Taylor streets, was dedicated yesterday morning. The first part of
the ceremonies consisted of some vocal and instrumental music.

Mayor Coon made a plain, sensible speech, pertinent to the occasion,
and delivered the keys of the edifice into the hands of Mr. Tait,
Superintendent of the Public Schools, who read a carefully prepared and
rather interesting document relating to educational matters in the city
and county of San Francisco. According to his estimate, there are about
29,000 persons among us under the age of eighteen years; of these,
18,000 were born in California; 6,000 attend the Public, and nearly
5,000 the Private Schools; 2,600 children, old enough to receive
instruction, attend no School at all, and would not if they could;
and there is a still larger number that would if they could, but are
debarred by the want of School accommodations at present. The new Bush
Street School contains twelve classes, numbering in the aggregate seven
hundred and sixty pupils.

Mr. Denman, the Principal of the School, followed with a brief but
interesting history of the rise and progress of the Public School system
of San Francisco, and after a song by the girls, the Rev. Dr. Bellows
delivered what was probably the ablest address that such an occasion
ever called forth, either here or anywhere else. There were two things
in his discourse which marked the profound thinker, and which had in
them more of significance and matter for serious reflection than all
the speeches and sermons we have heard in a year. He said California had
been blessed beyond all other lands in her mild and salubrious climate,
and she was proud of it and grateful for it--but let her look to it that
this blessing be not turned into a curse. There was danger of it; there
was unquestionably great and serious danger of it. There was room for
profound apprehension for the future of a land that had no firesides!
It was around the home fireside, in the midst of the sacred home circle,
when the toils, and the vanities and the cares of the day were over,
and the world, with its pomp and wretchedness, and its sin and show and
folly, shut out and forgotten, that those sweet and holy influences were
brought to bear that trained young hearts in the love of the good and
the abhorrence of evil; first impressions that clung to them, and formed
and ennobled their characters, and fitted them to mould and purify
society and advance the well being of the State in after life. He feared
for the future happiness of a land without these fireside influences.
In another division of his address the speaker dwelt upon the tremendous
responsibilities resting upon those here in whose keeping was entrusted
the moral, religious and educational training of the young, and said
that in California those responsibilities were incalculably greater than
in any other section of the Union, for upon them devolved the work of
laying the foundations of a society and a government which, at the end
of this generation, must be delivered into the hands of a community of
young men and young women, with no old and experienced heads left among
them to guide and watch over them with that sound wisdom and judgment
which can only be gained by fighting the hard battle of life, and with
few among their own numbers who have had an opportunity of getting even
a theoretical idea of the worldly knowledge and wisdom that would have
fallen to them in a land where old men and old women were numerous. He
met only youths and maidens, comparatively speaking, in all the walks of
life upon this Pacific Coast--a section of the world where forty years
entitled a man to be called venerable. From his observation of the
character, and habits, and domestic training of the new generation, full
of life and activity, and impatient of restraint, which he saw
growing up here, debarred from association with age and from wholesome
instruction from the experienced, California had need to fear for her
well-being when her few remaining veterans shall have passed away, and
left this great and powerful State, with its mighty interests, in the
keeping of a community who are men and women in age, but merely boys
and girls in wisdom and experience. This was why he considered that
the teachers of the youth on this coast were burthened with heavier
responsibilities than those of any other land. The task before them
is to raise up a great and good people, out of an army of youths and
maidens springing up in a land where aged men and women are not, and
firesides are unknown.

Dr. Bellows uttered many a great and original thought during his
oration, but none seemed so new and startling, and withal so pregnant
with significance as these two which we have attempted to set down here
in outline. The spirit of prophecy was upon him. It will be well if
California heeds the warning he has proclaimed to her.

SAWYER AND MINGINS

Dr. Bellows was followed by the Rev. Mr. Mingins and Dr. Sawyer. Their
addresses contained nothing worth reporting, and only had the effect
of postponing the calisthenic exercises of the school girls till two
o'clock, thus disappointing many who had come on purpose to see them.
Sawyer lauded the Board and the building, but he neglected to mention
the salaries of the poor teachers. And he abused the newspapers for
censuring the Board of Education--warned the people to disbelieve
everything editors and reporters published against that spotless body of
men.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 23, 1864

FAREWELL ADDRESS OF DR. BELLOWS

A fair idea of the estimation in which the Rev. Dr. Bellows is held by
the people of this coast, and the impression he has made upon them in
his patriotic and benevolent labors on behalf of our country and our
country's defenders, might have been conceived from the attendance on
the meeting last night at Platt's Hall appointed as an occasion for this
great and good man to bid a final farewell to the people of California.
The house was filled to its utmost capacity, yet not a sound of disorder
was heard, nor a breath of disapprobation. The Presidio Band did its
part, as usual, unexceptionably, the airs discoursed being somewhat of
a solemn character, selected in adaptation to the occasion. The entrance
of General McDowell was greeted with applause. Dr. Bellows was not
present, when Governor Low, the President of the California Branch of
the United States Sanitary Commission, opened the meeting with a short
address, and consequently other speakers occupied the time until the Dr.
entered. The Rev. Mr. Grot, of Marysville, made the opening prayer, and
Rev. Dr. Cheney was presented to the audience. After speaking of the
fame of Californians for their work in behalf of the Commission, their
noble and generous contributions, referring feelingly to the death of
Rev. Starr King, and stating the impressions he received during a recent
visit of four months to the Eastern States, with regard to the strong
current of feeling in favor of the Sanitary Commission, the substantial
aid it receives from all quarters, the veneration the soldier has for
the organization and its agents, and then referring to the pluck and
the fortitude of the soldier, on the field, or wounded and maimed in the
hospitals, he yielded the floor and was followed by Rev. Mr. Stebbins,
the successor of Dr. Bellows in the Pastorship of the Geary Street
Church, (late Starr King's.) Dr. Bellows arrived while Mr. Stebbins was
speaking, and followed next in order. His appearance was the signal for
prolonged applause. His speech was characterized by that animation of
thought and fluency of expression that is peculiar to the Doctor. His
devotion to the cause of the Commission of which he is the honored
head, warmed up in him, and the relief of the suffering soldier and the
support of the cause in which he is suffering usurped his every
thought and lifted his soul above every other consideration. He paid
an affectionate and mournful tribute to the memory of the late T. Starr
King, and passed a glowing eulogy on the liberality of Californians to
the cause of the Sanitary Commission; out of their impecuniosity they
had contributed largely. He praised the people of this State for their
fidelity to the Government; expressed his confidence in our civil and
military heads; condoled with us in our present seeming adversity;
and after exhorting the people to make the ballot box their paramount
object, to which the cause of the Sanitary Commission must be held
as secondary in importance, breathing his fervent loyalty to the
Government, and declaring his thorough adhesion to the Administration,
he invoked the blessings of Heaven on our people, and bade his audience
an affectionate farewell. To hear Dr. Bellows speak, was what the people
thronged the Hall for, and as soon as he closed his address, without
waiting for a formal adjournment, they dismissed themselves and the
meeting ended.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 24, 1864

AH SOW DISCHARGED

Ah Sow, the mathematical Chinaman, who stabbed Ah Wong "not too litty,
not too much," but just exactly enough to make him uncomfortable,
was discharged from custody yesterday, at the request of the grateful
creature who was indebted for his life to his spirit of forbearance and
the exercise of his extraordinary anatomical judgment.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 24, 1864

CHILDREN AT THE FAIR

The children of the Public Schools come in droves and armies to the Fair
now, every day, by invitation of the management. The children belonging
to the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum visited the Pavilion yesterday, and
the pupils of the Mason Street Public School, to the number of eight
or nine hundred, filed into the building during the afternoon. A strong
force of Teachers and exhibitors has to be on hand on occasions like
these, to keep Young America from getting ground up in the machinery.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 25, 1864

THE FAIR AT THE FAIR

About seventy of the handsomest young ladies in the State marched in
double file into the Fair Pavilion yesterday morning, broke ranks,
deployed as skirmishers, and effected a bloodless capture of the place,
at five minutes to eleven o'clock. It was observed that they seemed to
take a deeper interest in the pianos and pictures, and especially in
the laces and hair-oil and furs, than in the quartz mashers and patent
grindstones. It is because their tastes are not fully developed yet,
perhaps. They made the only good music that has been extracted from
the fine pianos in the Art Gallery since those instruments have been
condemned to public persecution in that place; they played "Sweet Home,"
with tender expression, and thought of lively Oakland, where they
came from, and sighed for the turmoil and excitement of its busy
thoroughfares. This detachment of young ladies was from Mrs. Harmon's
Pacific Female Seminary, one of the best schools in the State. It
is situated about a mile from the city just named. Mr. McClure, Mr.
Beldler, Miss Wills, Mrs. Harvey, Madame Parot, Miss Cameron, and
perhaps other Teachers employed in the Seminary, accompanied Mrs. Harmon
and her pupils to the Fair. We have ascertained that no young gentlemen
pupils are wanted at present.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 25, 1864

MORTIMER AGAIN

Charles James Mortimer, who attempted to kill Detective Rose, a short
time ago, has been seen in the coast range, between San Mateo and
Spanishtown, within the past day or two. He was recognized by two men,
and his capture attempted, but he shot one of his assailants in
the hand, and the other in the foot, and escaped. These facts were
ascertained by a telegram from Sheriff Keith, of San Mateo county, and
Officer Chappel was at once sent down there to look after Mortimer.
He telegraphed Captain Lees, yesterday, that no traces of the missing
scoundrel could be found, and that it would be useless to send down a
larger force to hunt for him. The country where he was seen is covered
for miles with a dense growth of willows, and Mortimer can hide in them
and elude pursuit as long as he wants to. He need not lack for animal
food, for the district is full of fowls, pigs, sheep, and bullocks, from
which he can take his choice at any time under cover of the night. The
only sure method of catching him lies in burning the willows; but as
this would probably result in the destruction of the crops thereabouts,
the farmers will not permit it to be done.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 25, 1864

ACCOMMODATING WITNESS

A man was summoned to testify in the Police Court, yesterday, and simply
because he said he would swear a jackass was a canary, if necessary, his
services were declined. It was not generous to crush a liberal spirit
like that.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 25, 1864

THE MINT TROUBLES

A report is abroad that the Branch Mint is about to close--that the
employees, being no longer able to support themselves and families on
the mere prospect of getting the salaries due them paid some day or
other, have given notice that unless their accounts are previously
squared, they will quit work in a body on the 30th instant. These
reports were not without foundation. We are glad to be able to state,
however, that the Mint is not going to stop, nor the men be allowed
to suffer much longer for the moneys due them. Within two weeks, or
at farthest three, all cause of complaint will be removed, and the
employees themselves have been satisfied of this fact. We get our
information at headquarters.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 27, 1864

BOAT SALVAGE

One Pinkney, a 'longshoreman, had some of the crew of a French bark up
before the Police Court, yesterday, for an assault and battery, alleged
to have been committed upon him. The Frenchmen testified that a stray
boat was drifting toward their vessel, and they received signals from a
Bremen bark, to which it belonged, to catch it, which they prepared to
do. Pinkney came out after it with his boat, and overtook it just as
it touched the bow of the French bark; his mast got entangled in the
vessel's chains, and fell over and struck him on the arm; five French
sailors pushed off and took the stray boat away from Pinkney. Pinkney
testified that he got the blow on his arm from an oar in the hands of
one of the sailors, and when asked if he had any witnesses to prove that
such was the case, he said "No;" that the District Attorney told him
his arm would be sufficient evidence! The Attorney had a precedent.
John Phoenix once told of a bull that pulled fifteen hundred logs at
one time, and if any one doubted it, he could go and show him the bull.
Pinkney's arm was not considered sufficient evidence of the assault, nor
yet his whole anatomy together, and the case was dismissed.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 27, 1864

NUISANCE

Mrs. Hall entered complaint against a groggery at the corner of Post and
Taylor streets, as a nuisance, yesterday, in the Police Court. The case
was dismissed. It might not have been, if she had gone to the expense
of procuring more legal assistance to prosecute it. The Prosecuting
Attorney is a powerful engine, in his way, but he is not infallible. If
parties would start him in and let him worm out of the witnesses all the
facts that have no bearing upon the case, and no connection with it, and
whether the offence was committed "In the City'n County San Francisco"
or not, and then have another talented lawyer to start in and find out
all the facts that do bear upon the case and are really connected with
it, what multitudes of rascals that now escape would suffer the just
penalties of their transgressions. With his spectacles on, and his head
tilted back at a proper angle, there is no question that the Prosecuting
Attorney is an ornament to the Police Court; but whether he is
particularly useful or not, or whether Government could worry along
without him or not, or whether it is necessary that a Prosecuting
Attorney should give all his time, or bend all his energies, or throw
all his soul into the one thing of being strictly ornamental, or not,
are matters which do not concern us, and which we have never once
thought about. Sometimes he has some of his witnesses there, and isn't
that sufficient?

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 29, 1864

THE DEAF MUTES AT THE FAIR

The inmates of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, to the number of about three
dozen, visited the Fair yesterday, in company with their Teachers, and
kept up an unceasing and extraordinarily animated conversation about
its wonders until their arms and fingers were utterly fagged out with
talking. Poor fellows; we could not help thinking what a great advantage
they have over ordinary people, for you might remove their tongues and
break one of their arms, and they would go on talking with the other all
the same. These pupils talk with incredible rapidity, and their hands,
bodies, and the muscles of their expressive faces are never at rest.
They are always listening with their watchful, restless eyes, and no
movement escapes them. The pupils of the Public School at the corner of
Fifth and Market streets also attended the Fair yesterday, in a crowd
numbering between five and six hundred.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 29, 1864

AFTER MORTIMER

Detective Officer Rose is able to walk about the streets again, although
the wounds he received at Mortimer's hands would have proved mortal to
any but a petrified constitution. Rose's left hand is still in a badly
crippled condition, and his little finger will have to be cut off. He
says that when Mortimer struck him on the head with a stone, in the
twilight of that eventful evening, the blow stunned him somewhat, but
did not render him unconscious; he grappled with his man, but found
that he was unable to cope with him, and when he was stabbed through
the windpipe, he feigned death, and instead of spitting out the flowing
blood that was threatening to choke him, he lay still and swallowed it.
When Mortimer came back the second time and spoke to him, he did not
answer, but the motion of his body, caused by breathing, betrayed him,
and Mortimer commenced beating him over the head with the pistol. Rose
counted the blows, down to the thump behind the ear that knocked him
senseless. As we remarked above, Mr. Rose is now sufficiently recovered
to be about again. He left yesterday to hunt for Mortimer, and has made
up his mind to catch him.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 29, 1864

ADVICE TO WITNESSES

Witnesses in the Police Court, who expect to be questioned on the part
of the prosecution, should always come prepared to answer the following
questions: "Was you there, at the time?" "Did you see it done, and if
you did, how do you know?" "City and County of San Francisco?" "Is your
mother living, and if so, is she well?" "You say the defendant struck
the plaintiff with a stick. Please state to the Court what kind of a
stick it was?" "Did it have the bark on, and if so, what kind of bark
did it have on?" "Do you consider that such a stick would be just as
good with the bark on, as with it off, or vicy versy?" "Why?" "I think
you said it occurred in the City and County of San Francisco?" "You say
your mother has been dead seventeen years--native of what place, and
why?" "You don't know anything about this assault and battery do you?"
"Did you ever study astronomy?--hard, isn't it?" "You have seen this
defendant before, haven't you?" "Did you ever slide on a cellar door
when you were a boy?" "Well--that's all." "Stay: did this occur in the
City and County of San Francisco?" The Prosecuting Attorney may mean
well enough, but meaning well and doing well are two very different
things. His abilities are of the mildest description, and do not fit
him for a position like the one he holds, where energy, industry, tact,
shrewdness, and some little smattering of law, are indispensable to
the proper fulfilment of its duties. Criminals leak through his fingers
every day like water through a sieve. He does not even afford a cheerful
amount of competition in business to the sharp lawyers over whose heads
he was elected to be set up as an ornamental effigy in the Police Court.
He affords a great deal less than no assistance to the Judge, who could
convict sometimes if the District Attorney would remain silent, or if
the law had not hired him at a salary of two hundred and fifty dollars
a month to unearth the dark and ominous fact that the "offence was
committed in the City and County of San Francisco." The man means well
enough, but he don't know how; he makes of the proceedings in behalf of
a sacred right and justice in the Police Court, a drivelling farce, and
he ought to show his regard for the public welfare by resigning.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 30, 1864

MORE CHILDREN

It would have worried the good King Herod to see the army of school
children that swarmed into the Fair yesterday, if he could have been
there to suffer the discomfort of knowing he could not slaughter them
under our eccentric system of government without getting himself into
trouble. There were about eight hundred pupils of the Public Schools in
the building at one time.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 30, 1864

ROBBERY

John Bassett, who had a crowd of witnesses to prove that his honesty
was almost miraculous, and that his character was a holy hash of all the
Christian virtues, and who stood through it all, in the prisoners'
dock, stunned to learn it for the first time in his life, no doubt,
was ordered to appear before the County Court and answer to a charge of
highway robbery, committed lately on Pacific street, when he knocked a
man down and took twenty-six dollars away from him. We have seen many a
nice lot of witnesses in the Police Court, but those for the defence in
this case could about discount the best of them in the matter of clean,
straight-forward swearing to doubtful propositions.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, October 1, 1864

DAMAGES AWARDED

The case of Wm. Galloway against C. F. Richards et al., in the Fourth
District Court, was brought to a close yesterday evening, the jury,
after two hours' absence, returning a verdict for four hundred dollars
in favor of the plaintiff. The action was brought to recover damages
laid at two thousand five hundred dollars, from defendants, who are
druggists, for putting up a prescription in a wrongful manner, thereby
causing a temporary injury to plaintiff's health. The verdict took some,
who had heard the evidence throughout, by surprise; and a motion will
be made on behalf of defendants for a new trial. The truth of the matter
is, that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred of these mistakes in
putting up prescriptions, the whole blame lies with the prescribing
physicians, who, like a majority of lawyers, and many preachers, write a
most abominable scrawl, which might be deciphered by a dozen experts as
many different ways, and each one sustain his version by the manuscript.
When a physician writes the abbreviation of "pulverized cinchona" in
such a manner that nine out of ten among experienced pharmacists would,
without hesitancy, read it "pulverized cantharides," and damage results
from it, if the apothecary is culpable at all, the physician certainly
ought to come in for a share of blame. It would be a good thing for the
world at large, however unprofessional it might be, if medical men were
required by law to write out in full the ingredients named in their
prescriptions. Let them adhere to the Latin, or Fejee, if they choose,
but discard abbreviations, and form their letters as if they had been
to school one day in their lives, so as to avoid the possibility of
mistakes on that account.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, October 2, 1864

EVERYBODY WANTS TO HELP

California is a noble old State. The echoes of the cry of distress
jingle with the ring of dollars. Dr. Bellows says we're poor but don't
know it, but generous, and can't help it, and Dr. Bellows knows. Almost
every few minutes we receive a little note like this: "Mr. H. Behre,
proprietor of the Pavilion Restaurant, will give all the profits
from the receipts on Monday, day and evening, to the Santa Barbara
sufferers." All the hands connected with the restaurant will also
volunteer their services. Mr. Perkins drops in to say that the proceeds
of his sale of fruits will be devoted to the same noble object; also the
receipts of the Sanitary Cheese Exhibition.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, October 2, 1864

THE LAST HITCH AT THE MINT

All of the officials in the Mint have, for the last six months, had a
hard time of it, and some of them a very hard one. For six months they
had received nothing until yesterday, although there has been money
enough here to pay a portion of their demands. Some technical objection
on the part of the Treasurer, Mr. Cheesman, is said to have been the
cause. Latterly, Mr. Swain, the Superintendent, after long effort,
succeeded in getting a positive order to use any money to the credit of
the Mint in the payment of the officials. As Treasury Notes have fallen
very much since a portion of their pay was due, Mr. Swain, having
authority, allowed the pay-rolls to be made out in such amounts as
would make up to the recipients an amount in gold at present prices of
green-backs equal to what their pay would have been if received when
due. This is strictly just. Most of the officials were thus paid three
months' salaries of the six due. But two of the unfortunate clerks
chance to be the appointees of the Treasurer, who objected to pay their
salaries unless the additions mentioned were abated. Mr. Swain declined
to thus make out their pay-rolls, knowing that if thus paid they would
resign. They are faithful, honest, competent, and he cannot at once, if
at all, supply their places. If they resign, the operations of the Mint
must stop for a while, at least, and they cannot afford to remain for
the pay insisted upon by Mr. Cheesman. The result yesterday was, that
after waiting six months for their pay, they left the Mint, not having
received a dollar. They are poor men, we hear, and greatly need their
pay. If the operations of the Mint should cease tomorrow, we presume it
will be because Mr. Cheesman desired to make capital with the Secretary
at the expense of Mr. Swain, by showing that his appointees can be
forced to submit to any loss which his own pertinacious technicalities
have caused. The treatment of these men is not only unjust but cruel,
and the effect upon the public will probably be great inconvenience and
loss to all who have dealings with the Mint.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, October 6, 1864

AN INTERESTING CORRESPONDENCE

A case was brought before Judge Shepheard yesterday afternoon, on
preliminary examination, which involved some nice points, and also
enriched the polite literature of the country with what Mr. Cook,
counsel for one of the parties, termed "foreign correspondence"--a
number of epistolary communications, equal to the productions of
Madame de Sevigne or the Countess of Blessington. One of the questions
presented was, whether a Chinaman's wife is his'n or your'n if you want
her. Ah Chung had a friend who had a wife; friend was in the mountains,
wife in this city, and Ah Chung in Shasta. Ah Chung visited the city,
and delivered to his friend's wife what purported to be a letter from
her husband, directing her to pack up her trunks and go to him, the
messenger to be her escort. She packed up, and Ah Chung took her to
Shasta for his own use. She found herself betrayed, and in durance.
A female friend of her own nation sympathized with her, and wrote a
letter, informing a friend of the distressed captive in this city of
Ah Chung's infamy--Bulwer Lytton couldn't have done it more
eloquently--stating that the perfidious Ah Chung claimed the woman
as his property, and asked two hundred dollars to redeem her. A
correspondence on the subject followed, resulting in the liberation
of the abducted victim; though without her baggage, which had been
confiscated by the avaricious Ah Chung. The denouement was Ah Chung's
being held yesterday, by Judge Shepheard, in the sum of twenty-five
hundred dollars, to answer in the County Court to a charge of grand
larceny. The letters, which were written, of course, in Chinese
characters, were translated by Mr. Charles Carvalto, and afforded an
interesting specimen of sentiment and condolence as expressed by they of
the Flowery Kingdom.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, October 8, 1864

A ROUGH CUSTOMER

Benjamin Roderick has been arrested on charges of malicious mischief,
carrying a concealed weapon, and assault with a deadly weapon with
intent to kill. Yesterday morning, shortly after midnight, he went to
the house of Mary Roberts and got into a quarrel with her, and drawing
a Bowie-knife, threatened to take her life; he went away, and afterwards
returned, renewed his threats, and proceeded to smash up all the
furniture in her house; he created havoc and destruction on all sides,
and ended by breaking the windows with large stones. At last the cries
of the woman attracted the attention of Special Officer Forner, and he
was about to arrest Roderick when the latter broke away and ran. Forner
fired his pistol in the air, which frightened the fugitive, and he
stopped and gave himself up. Besides his Bowie-knife, he carried on his
person a murderous weapon in the shape of a short-handled hatchet--an
equipment calculated to make him rather formidable at short range.
Roderick had been marching with the Broom Rangers, and the woman says he
was drunk when he entered her house.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, October 9, 1864

THE RODERICK CASE

The would-be desperado, Roderick, who threatened the life of Mary
Roberts, in a house in Broadway, on Thursday night, was tried and
convicted in the Police Court, yesterday morning, on three Separate
charges. The first charge was carrying a concealed deadly weapon; he had
a pocket full of them--a Bowie-knife, a short-handled hatchet, and a hat
full of bed-rock, with a trace of quartz in it. The second charge, of
assault with a deadly weapon, was sustained by the testimony of the
complaining witness, Mary Roberts, who swore that Roderick seized her
and aimed a blow at her with his Bowie-knife, when Providence provided
her with invisible wings. She said she knew she had wings at that moment
of her utmost need, although they were not palpable to her imperfect
mortal vision, and she flew away--she gently soared downstairs.
Judging by the woman's general appearance, and her known character
and antecedents, this interference of Providence in her behalf was
remarkable, to say the least, and must have been quite a surprise
to her. The third charge was of malicious mischief. It was shown in
evidence that he wantonly destroyed furniture belonging to the woman,
worth one hundred dollars. The prisoner was ordered to appear for
sentence on all three of the charges, to-morrow morning. Roderick killed
a man once. He is rather a bad looking man, but probably not nearly
so dangerous as one might suppose from his lawless conduct. He has
bad habits, similar to those of many a professedly better man, and he
carries an armament better suited to a fortress than a well meaning
private citizen. All these things are against him, and he deserves to
be punished for having them against him, and for breaking furniture that
did not belong to him. He was not anxious to kill the woman, though,
or even do her a bodily injury, as his opportunities for doing so were
ample, and he threw them away. He might have made a good sensation item
for the newspapers, and he carelessly threw that opportunity away also.
Roderick is a useless incumbrance, any way you take him.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, October 9, 1864

MISCEGNATION

A case of the most infernal description of miscegenation has come to
light in this city--a mixture of white and Chinese. A Chinaman married a
white woman in New York ten years ago, has had children by her, and has
been living with her here in Sacramento street. Latterly, for some cause
or other, he has become abusive toward her, and has several times beaten
her. Finally, influenced by white friends, and by another beating at
the hands of her pagan husband, on Thursday evening she left him, and
applied to Chief Burke for protection, bringing two mixed children with
her. A Special Officer tried to rescue her from this last assault, and
succeeded in diverting the bulk of it to himself, receiving several
powerful blows to his share, and giving several in return; the main
Chinaman escaped from him, but he captured an accessory and brought him
to the station-house. Officer Evatt accompanied the woman back to the
place to protect her while she got possession of her clothing, and
she is now living with some friends in Hinckley street. She is quite
handsome, and of prepossessing appearance and address; one of her
children is a very pretty little girl; she has had four children by
her Chinaman. Late last evening, news came that the husband had been
captured and confined by the mate of the ship Smyrniote, for stealing,
and Officer Evatt went down to take charge of him.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, October 9, 1864

THE CAMANCHE

The monitor Camanche is rapidly approaching completion. The side armor
of wood is all on but about twenty feet at the stern, making nearly
three and a half feet of solid wood on the sides of the monster, from
stem to stern. The work of putting on the five inches of iron plating,
outside of the wood, is being pushed rapidly forward, and already about
seventy feet from the prow is completed. For the last two or three days,
the workmen have been putting the iron plates on the deck, and about one
thousand feet of the deck has been covered with the two plates of iron
designed for it. Those who wish to see the monitor again before she is
launched, and while they can witness the manner of securing the enormous
weight of wood and iron with which the sides are covered, will do well
to do so to-morrow, or within a few days, as she will soon be wholly
encased with her impenetrable coat of mail.

The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, October 11, 1864

HAD A FIT

A lad of some twelve years was seized with convulsions, while sitting
in a buggy at the corner of Sacramento and Montgomery streets, yesterday
afternoon. Restoratives were speedily brought in play, and in a short
time the youth went on his way, viewing with astonishment the multitude
that had collected, which was variously estimated at from one thousand
to four thousand eight hundred and eighty. One kind-hearted person,
whose condition, unfortunately, bordered on the "salubrious," had his
place close to the convulsed boy, and puffed smoke from a villanous
cigar into his eyes with seeming industry, until gently remonstrated
with by a Policeman, on whom he turned furiously, insisting upon tobacco
smoke as an infallible remedy for fits, and that he would give the
officer fits if he interfered further. However, during this sanitary
dispute, the subject had come to and gone off; and the opportunity for
determining fully the efficacy of burnt tobacco and whisky fumes in
cases of fits, was unfortunately lost for the present.



THE SACRAMENTO DAILY UNION

The Sacramento Daily Union, April 16, 1866

On Board Steamer Ajax

Honolulu (H. I.), March 18th.

CLIMATIC

We arrived here to-day at noon, and while I spent an hour or so talking,
the other passengers exhausted all the lodging accommodations of
Honolulu. So I must remain on board the ship to-night. It is Very warm
in the stateroom, no air enters the ports. Therefore, have dressed in
a way which seems best calculated to suit the exigencies of the case. A
description of this dress is not necessary. I may observe, however, that
I bought the chief article of it at "Ward's."

There are a good many mosquitoes around to-night and they are rather
troublesome; but it is a source of unalloyed satisfaction to me to know
that the two millions I sat down on a minute ago will never sing again.

SEA-GOING OUTFIT

I will "bunch" the first four or five days of my "log" of this voyage
and make up a few paragraphs therefrom.

We backed out from San Francisco at 4 P.M., all full--some full
of tender regrets for severed associations, others full of buoyant
anticipations of a pleasant voyage and a revivifying change of scene,
and yet others full of schemes for extending their business relations
and making larger profits. The balance were full of whisky. All except
Brown. Brown had had a couple of peanuts for lunch, and therefore
one could not say he was full of whisky, solely, without shamefully
transcending the limits of truth.

Our little band of passengers were well and thoughtfully cared for by
the friends they left weeping upon the wharf as ever were any similar
party of pilgrims. The traveling outfit conferred upon me began with
a naval uniform, continued with a case of wine, a small assortment
of medicinal liquors and brandy, several boxes of cigars, a bunch of
matches, a fine tooth comb and a cake of soap, and ended with a pair of
socks. (N.B.--I gave the soap to Brown, who bit into it, and then
shook his head and said that, "as a general thing, he liked to prospect
curious foreign dishes and find out what they were like, but he couldn't
go that"--and threw it overboard.) This outfit is a fair sample of
what our friends did for all of us. Three of our passengers--old sea
captains, whalers--Captain Cuttle, Captain Phelps and Captain Fitch
(fictitious names)--had bought eight gallons of whisky, and their
friends sent them eleven gallons more. (N. B.--Owing to head winds and a
rough sea, this outfit did not hold out; the nineteen gallons were ample
for the proposed eight-day voyage, but we were out upwards of ten days,
you see. The whalers were all dry and unhappy this morning.)

"MAKING SAIL"

Leaving all care and trouble and business behind in the city, now
swinging gently around the hills and passing house by house and street
by street out of view, we swept down through the Golden Gate and
stretched away toward the shoreless horizon. It was a pleasant, breezy
afternoon, and the strange new sense of entire and perfect emancipation
from labor and responsibility coming strong upon me, I went up on the
hurricane deck so that I could have room to enjoy it. I sat down on a
bench, and for an hour I took a tranquil delight in that kind of labor
which is such a luxury to the enlightened Christian-to-wit the labor of
other people. Captain Godfrey was "making sail," and he was moving the
men around briskly. He made short work of the job, and his orders were
marked by a felicity of language which challenged my admiration. Said
he:

"Let go the main-hatch. Belay! Haul away on your tops'l jib! Belay!
Clew up your top-gallants'l spanker boom halliards! Belay! Port your
gaff-tops'l sky-scrapers! Belay! Lively, you lubbus! Take a reef in the
lee scuppers! Belay! Mr. Baxter, it's coming on to blow at about four
bells in the hog-watch; have everything taut and trim for it. Belay!"

The ship was rolling fearfully. At this point I got up and started over
to ask the Captain if it wouldn't be a good idea to belay a little for
a change, but I fell down. I then resumed my former seat. For twenty
minutes after this I took careful note of how the Captain leaned his
body to port when the ship lurched to starboard, and hard to larboard
when she lurched to port, and then got up to practice a little. I
only met with moderate success, though, and after a few extraordinary
evolutions, fetched up against the mainmast. The concussion did not
injure the mast perceptibly, but if it had been a brick house the case
might have been very different. I proceeded below, rather discouraged.

SEVERAL EFFECTS OF THE TURBULENT SEA

I found twenty-two passengers leaning over the bulwarks vomiting and
remarking, "Oh, my God!" and then vomiting again. Brown was there, ever
kind and thoughtful, passing from one to another and saying, "That's all
right--that's all right, you know--it'll clean you out like a jug, and
then you won't feel so onery and smell so ridiculous."

The sea was very rough for several days and nights, and the vessel
rolled and pitched heavily. All but six or eight of us took their meals
in bed constantly, and remained shut up in the staterooms day and night.
The saloons and decks looked deserted and lonesome. But gradually
the seasick unfortunates convalesced until our dinner complement was
augmented to fifteen or twenty. There were frames or "racks" on the
tables to keep the dishes in their places, but they did not always
succeed in doing it. An occasional heavy lurch would hoist out a dozen
and start them prospecting for the deck. Brown was bitterly opposed to
the racks, and said he "Wasn't raised to eat out of them brick moulds."
No rack would answer for soup. The soup plate had to be held in the
hand and nicely tilted from side to side to accommodate the fluid to the
pitching of the ship. The chairs were not fastened to the floor, and
it was fun to see a procession of gentlemen go sliding backwards to the
bulkhead, holding their soup plates on a level with their breasts, and
giving their whole attention to preventing the contents from splashing
out. They would come back with the flowtide and sail away again on the
ebb. It would not do to set a glass of water down. The attentive waiters
kept bringing water to Brown, who was always talking, and would not see
the glass set down in time to make his remark heard: "Frank, don't bring
me any water; have to drink it at a gulp to keep it from spilling, and
I've had more'n enough already." And yet about once every two minutes
some passenger opposite would put up his hands and shrink behind them
and exclaim, "Your water, Mr. Brown! your water! Look out for your
water!" and lo, the suffering Brown would find his glass once more
replenished and canting dangerously to leeward. It would be instantly
seized and emptied. At the end of a quarter of an hour Brown had
accomplished nothing in the way of dinner, on account of these incessant
watery interruptions. The boy Frank brought another glass of water, and
said, "Will you have some beefsteak, Mr. Brown?" "Take that water and go
to blazes with it! Beefsteak! no! I've drank eleven gallons of water in
fifteen minutes, and there ain't room enough in me for a sirloin steak
off'm a sand-fly!"

JOURNAL

Heaving my "log," I find the following entries on my tablets:

Wednesday, 7th--Left San Francisco at 4 P.M.; rough night.

Thursday--Weather still rough. Passengers nearly all sick; only half a
dozen at breakfast out of thirty.

Friday--Strong gale all night; heavy sea on this evening; black
overhead.

Saturday--Weather same, or more so.

You can rake that four-days dose of your infamous "Pacific," Mr. Balboa,
and digest it, and you may consider it well for your reputation in
California that we had pretty fair weather the balance of the voyage. If
we hadn't, I would have given you a blast in this letter that would have
made your old dry bones rattle in your coffin--you shameless old foreign
humbug!

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, April 17, 1866

Honolulu, March 19, 1866

THE AJAX VOYAGE CONTINUED

THE OLD NOR'WEST SWELL

On the Sunday following our departure we had a fine day, and no wind
scarcely, yet the sea ran high and the ship rolled a good deal. Upon
inquiry, I learned that this was caused by the "old nor'west swell,"
which resembles any Broadway "swell" in that it puts on a good many airs
and conducts itself pretentiously even when it is not able to "raise the
wind." The old nor'west swell, produced by the prevailing wind from that
quarter, is always present in these seas, ever drifting on its eternal
journey across the waters of the Pacific, year after year, and century
after century as well, no doubt, and piling its billows aloft careless
whether it be storm or calm. The wind and the swell both die out just
above the equator. Another wind and another swell come up around Cape
Horn from the opposite direction, and these die out just below the
equator--so that a windless, waveless belt is left at the center of the
earth, which marks the equator as distinctly as does the little black
line on the map. Ships drift idly on that glassy sea, under the flaming
sun of the tropics, for weeks together, without a breath of wind
to flutter the drooping sails or fan the sweltering and blasphemous
sailors.

A BLAST FOR BALBOA, THE DISCOVERER

We hear all our lives about the "gentle, stormless Pacific," and about
the "smooth and delightful route to the Sandwich Islands," and about
the "steady blowing trades" that never vary, never change, never "chop
around," and all the days of our boyhood we read how that infatuated old
ass, Balboa, looked out from the top of a high rock upon a broad sea as
calm and peaceful as a sylvan lake, and went into an ecstasy of delight,
like any other Greaser over any other trifle, and shouted in his foreign
tongue and waved his country's banner, and named his great discovery
"Pacific"--thus uttering a lie which will go on deceiving generation
after generation of students while the old ocean lasts. If I had been
there, with my experience, I would have said to this man Balboa, "Now,
if you think you have made a sufficient display of yourself, cavorting
around on this conspicuous rock, you had better fold up your old rag and
get back into the woods again, because you have jumped to a conclusion,
and christened this sleeping boy-baby by a girl's name, without stopping
to inquire into the sex of it."

From all I can discover, if this foreign person had named this ocean
the "Four Months Pacific," he would have come nearer the mark. My
information is to the effect that the Summer months give fine weather,
smooth seas and steady winds, with a month and a few days good weather
at the fag end of Spring and the beginning of Autumn; and that for
the other seven or eight months of the year one can calculate pretty
regularly on head winds and stern winds, and winds on the quarter, and
winds several points abaft the beam, and winds that blow straight up
from the bottom, and still other winds that come so straight down from
above that the fore-stuns'l spanker--jib-boom makes a hole through
them as clean as a telescope. And the sea rolls and leaps and chops and
surges "thortships" and up and down and fore-and-aft by turns, when the
gales are blowing; and when they die out the old nor'west swell comes in
and takes a hand, and stands a watch, and keeps up the marine earthquake
until the winds are rested and ready to make trouble again.

In a word, the Pacific is "rough," for seven or eight months in the
year--not stormy, understand me--not what one could justly call
stormy, but contrary, baffling and very "rough". Therefore, if that
Balboa-constrictor had constructed a name for it that had "Wild," or
"Untamed," to it, there would have been a majority of two months in the
year in favor and in support of it.

A WORD TO THE COMMERCIALLY WISE

If the Pacific were always pacific and its "trades" blew steadily the
year around, there would never be any necessity for steamers between
Honolulu and San Francisco; but as it is, a trade is building up between
the two ports, a considerable share of which is going to consist of fast
freight and passengers, and only steamers can extend and develop this
and conduct it successfully. You see we plowed through the tangled
seas and against the head winds this trip in a fraction over ten days,
arriving a day after one of the fast clippers which left San Francisco
a matter of three weeks before. The passage back, at this rate, is about
five to seven days longer for the clipper, but not more than a day and
a half or two days longer for the Ajax. You can rest assured that in the
tremendous trade that is to spring up between California and the Islands
during the next few years, the fast freight and passengers must be
carried by steamers for seven or eight months in the year.

I will remark here that my information about the character of this ocean
route is obtained from old ship-captains, one of whom has commanded in
the packet trade for many years, and who has sailed these seas, whaling
and otherwise, for forty-six years.

But the main argument in favor of a line of fast steamers is this: They
would soon populate these islands with Americans, and loosen that French
and English grip which is gradually closing around them, and which will
result in a contest before many years as to which of the two shall seize
and hold them. I leave America out of this contest, for her influence
and her share in it have fallen gradually away until she is out in the
cold now, and does not even play third fiddle to this European element.

But if California can send capitalists down here in seven or eight days
time and take them back in nine or ten, she can fill these islands full
of Americans and regain her lost foothold. Hawaii is too far away now,
though, when it takes a man twenty days to come here and twenty-five or
thirty to get back again in a sailing vessel.

The steamer line ought to be established, even if it should lose money
for two years. Your State has never paid one single dollar of profit to
the United States--you are nothing but a burden and an expense to the
country--but the kingdom of Hawaii, without costing the United States a
cent, has paid her, in customs, $400,000 in a single year.

California's profits from this section can be made greater and far more
lasting than those from Montana. Therefore let your Merchants' Exchange
look after the former just as earnestly as they are doing with the
latter.

PASSING AWAY THE WEARY TIME

In writing about sea voyages it is customary to state, with the blandest
air of conveying information of rare freshness and originality, that
anything, however trivial, that promises to spice the weary monotony
of the voyage with a new sensation, is eagerly seized upon and the most
made of it by the passengers. I decline to insult your intelligence
by making this thread-bare statement, preferring to believe you would
easily divine the existence of the fact without having to be told it.

We had a bullock tied up on the forecastle, and a box near by with two
sheep and a pig in it. These animals afforded a trifling amusement for
us on our fair days, and when the opportunity offered we used to go
forward and worry them. The bullock was always down on his beam-ends. If
he ever dared to get up on his feet for a second in stormy weather,
the next lurch of the ship would "snatch him bald-headed," as Mr. Brown
expressed it, and flop him flat on the deck; and in fair weather he was
seldom able to get up, on account of his sore bones, acquired through
the bangs and bruises of his foul weather experiences. So the bullock
lay down pretty much all the time from San Francisco to Honolulu--and
ever as his wandering gaze rested upon reeling men, and plunging ship
and towering billow, his eloquent eye damned the weather.

Said Mr. Brown, once: "Let's go forward and twist the Captain's tail."

"Who? Captain Godfrey?"

"Thunder! no; Captain Gordon."

"Who?"

"Why, the bullock--Captain Gordon. We call him Captain Gordon because he
lays down so much."

I recognized the point of Mr. Brown's facetiousness then. Captain
Gordon, a not undistinguished officer of the Eastern armies, had kept
his room all the way, but as he was unwell enough to prefer that course
to staggering about the tossing decks, and had a right to do as he
pleased anyway, I reprimanded Brown on the spot for his inconsiderate
levity.

The pig was pulled and hauled and cuffed for the amusement of the idle
passengers, but unknown to himself he had his revenge; for he imparted
such a villainous odor of the sty to the hands and clothing of any man
who meddled with him, that that man could never drift to windward of
a lady passenger without suffering disgrace and humiliation under the
rebuke of her offended upturned nose. The pig had no name. This was a
source of ceaseless regret to Mr. Brown, and he often spoke of it. At
last one of the sailors named it, and Brown happened to be passing by
and overheard him. The sailor was feeding the animals, and the pig
kept crowding the sheep away and monopolizing the slop pail. The sailor
rapped him on the nose and said:

"Oh, go way wid you, Dennis."

To have heard the passengers go into explosions of laughter when Brown
rushed in, in a state of wild excitement, and related this circumstance,
one might have supposed that this ship had been sailing round and
round the world for dreary ages, and that this was the first funny
circumstance that had ever blessed with a gleam of cheerfulness the
dismal voyage. But, as other writers have said before, even so diluted
a thing as this can send a thrill of delight through minds and bodies
growing torpid under the dull sameness of a long sea voyage.

From that day forward it was Dennis here, and Dennis there, and Dennis
everywhere. Dennis was in everybody's mouth; Dennis was mentioned twice
where the everlasting wonder, "how many miles we made yestaday," was
expressed once. A stranger's curiosity would have been excited to the
last degree to know who this rival to General Grant in notoriety was,
that had so suddenly sprung up--this so thoroughly canvassed, discussed,
and popular "Dennis." But on the 16th of March Dennis was secretly
executed by order of the steward, and Brown said that when the fact
became generally known, there was not a dry eye in the ship. He fully
believed what he said, too. He has a generous heart and a fervent
imagination, and a capacity for creating impossible facts and then
implicitly believing them himself, which is perfectly marvelous.

Dennis was served up on the 17th for our St. Patrick's dinner, and gave
me a stomach-ache that lasted twenty four hours. In life he was lovely,
and behold, he was powerful in death. Peace to his ashes!

The most steady-going amusement the gentlemen had on the trip was
euchre, and the most steady-going the ladies had was being sea-sick.
For days and nights together we used to sit in the smoking room and
play euchre on the same table so sacredly devoted to "seven-up" by the
livelier set of passengers who traveled last voyage in the Ajax. It took
me some little time to learn to play euchre with those old sea captains,
because they brought in so many terms that are neither in Hoyle nor the
dictionary. Hear how they talked:

Captain Fitch--"Who hove that ace on there?"

Captain Phelps--"Why, I did."

Captain Cuttle--"No, you didn't, either--I hove it myself"

Captain Phelps--"You didn't, by the Eternal!--You hove the king."

Captain Fitch--"Well, now, that's just the way always jawin' about who
hove this and who hove that--always sailin' on a taut bowlin'. Why can't
you go slow? You keep heavin' on 'em down so fast that a man can't tell
nothing about it."

Captain Phelps--"Well, I don't care--let it go--I can stand it, I cal'
late. Here goes for a euchre!" (Here the captain played an odd-suit
ace.) "Swing your bower if you've got it, but I'll take them three last
tricks or break a rope-yarn."

(I, as partner to Captain Phelps, got bewildered, and made a bad play.)

Captain Phelps--"Now what did you trump my ace for? That ain't any way
to do; you're always a sailin' too close to the wind."

(In a moment or two I make another bad play.)

Captain Phelps--"Ger-reat Scotland! What in the nation you dumpin'
that blubber at such a time as this for? Rip! I knowed it! took with
a nine-spot! royals, stuns'ls--everything, gone to smash, and nobody
euchred!"

It is necessary to explain that those ancient, incomprehensible whalers
always called worthless odd-suit cards "blubber."

AT HOME

We passengers are all at home now--taking meals at the American Hotel,
and sleeping in neat white cottages, buried in noble shade trees and
enchanting tropical flowers and shrubbery.

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, April 18, 1866

Honolulu, March 1866

STILL AT SEA

I have been here a day or two now, but I do not know enough concerning
the country yet to commence writing about it with confidence, so I will
drift back to sea again.

THE AJAX--HER OFFICERS

The Ajax is a 2,000 ton propeller, and one of the strongest bulk vessels
afloat. All her timber-work is very heavy and fastened and bolted
together as if to hold for a century. She was intended for a warship,
and this accounts for her extraordinary strength. She has excellent
cabin accommodations for sixty passengers, without crowding, and bunks
for forty more. She has room for over twelve hundred tons of freight
after her coal and stores for the round trip are all in; and when a coal
depot is established for her hereafter at Honolulu, so that she need
carry only fuel enough for half the voyage, she can take two or three
hundred tons more. Her principal officers all served in the war. Captain
Godfrey and the Chief mate, Baxter, were both in our navy, and Sanford,
the Chief Engineer, has seen a great deal of service. He held his
commission as Chief Engineer in the navy for sixteen years, and was in
seven battles in the Mexican war, and six during the rebellion--a very
good record. Hite, the Purser, served under General Sherman, in the
Paymaster's department, with the rank of Captain.

THE STEAMER'S ENGINES

The Ajax has a "harp" engine, laid horizontally, so as to be entirely
below the waterline, a judicious arrangement, in view of the ship's
intended duty originally, in a service where cannon-balls and shells
would pelt her, instead of the rain showers of the Pacific. The
horizontal engine takes up much less room than when placed in an upright
position; it packs as closely as sardines in a box and gives the ship
a good deal of extra space for freight and passengers. Every portion of
the Ajax's engine and fire rooms is kept in perfect neatness and good
order by the Chief's crew of 18 men.

In this place I would drop a hint of caution to all romantic young
people who yearn to become bold sailor boys and ship as firemen on a
steamer. Such a berth has its little drawbacks--in conveniences--which
not all the romance in the world can reconcile one to. The principal of
these is the sultry temperature of the furnace room, where the fireman,
far below the surface of the sea and away from the fresh air and the
light of day, stands in a narrow space between two rows of furnaces that
flame and glare like the fires of hell, and shovels coal four hours at
a stretch in an unvarying temperature of 148 degrees Fahrenheit! And yet
how the people of Honolulu growl and sweat on an uncommonly warm
day, with the mercury at 82 degrees in the shade and somewhere in the
neighborhood of 100 degrees in the sun! Steamer firemen do not live, on
an average, over 5 years.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE HAWAIIAN TRADE

It is a matter of the utmost importance to the United States that her
trade with these islands should be carefully fostered and augmented.
Because--it pays. There can be no better reason than that. In actual
revenue California is a burden to the country; she always falls behind;
she always leaves a deficit at the end of the year to be made up by
the nation; she never yields revenue enough to support the Government
establishments within her borders. In contrast with this, the Sandwich
Islands, which cost the United States but little, have paid her, in
customs, as high as $400,000 in gold coin in a single year! duties paid
upon sugar, etc., received in American ports and subtracted from
the profits of the producer here. I will give the figures. They were
compiled by the late N. Lombard Ingals, Secretary of the San Francisco
Board of Brokers, regarded as one of the best accountants and financial
statisticians that ever visited these islands. The following estimate is
for 1864:

Coffee, 14,854 lbs., duty 5c per lb.--$ 742.70

Molasses, 259,469 gals., duty 8c per gal.--23,757.52

Pulu, 664,600 lbs. (at 7c per lb., $46,522), at 20 per cent.--9,304.40

Salt, 308,000 lbs., at 18c per 100 lbs.--554.40

Sugar, 885,957 lbs., at 3c average duty.--265,558.71

Rice, 337,978 lbs., at 2 1/2c per lb.--9,449.45

Unenumerated, at least--2,000.00

Being for San Francisco alone, fully--$311,367.18

Mr. Ingals then adds sugar and molasses sent to Portland, Oregon, the
same year, on which $40,000 duties were paid, making over $350,000 paid
in revenues to the United States for Sandwich Island products on the
Pacific coast alone.

Mr. Ingals then says: "The Eastern vessels' cargoes consist mostly of
oil transhipped from American whalers, and therefore duty free--the
balance of their cargoes are hides, wool and sundries. I think it would
be safe to estimate that the whole of them did not pay over $50,000 to
the Custom house."

You will acknowledge that a trade which pays so well, albeit with no
risk and small expense to the United States, ought to be encouraged,
extended and irrevocably secured. There are two ways of doing this: Let
Congress moderate the high duties some what; secondly--let the Islands
be populated with Americans. To accomplish the latter, a steamer is
indispensable. The sailing vessels can carry freight easily enough, but
they [are] too slow and uncertain to build up the passenger trade from
which immigration and permanent settlement here must naturally result.
In California people are always pressed for time; it is only a few
scattering idlers and pleasure seekers who can look serenely upon such
an appalling sacrifice of precious hours as a tedious voyage of three
weeks hither in a baffled and buffeted sailing vessel and a return trip
occupying four or five weeks. But businessmen and capitalists would run
down here by the steamer when they knew the sea voyage could be ciphered
down to days and hours before starting--and a short number of days at
that. And with the influx of capital would come population, and then I
could not ride over mile after mile of fertile soil (as I did yesterday)
without seeing half a dozen human habitations.

HOW OUR TRADE MUST BE EXTENDED, IF IT IS DONE AT ALL

An important question to be considered is how a steamer is to be made to
pay during the year or two that she is populating the islands, doubling
their productions and establishing a profitable trade for herself
(for more than one-half of the export trade is now in the hands of
the sailing vessels, secured to them by joint ownership in ships and
plantations, by long time contracts for transportation, and by advance
money to planters), and will remain so for some time. The legitimate way
to establish a steamer on a paying basis from the first is to give her
a Government subsidy of fifty or a hundred thousand dollars a year
for carrying the mails, and subtract it from the $500,000 a year
appropriated for the China Mail Company, which is to begin business the
first of next January. The latter company will either let a sub-contract
to the Ajax, or else put a small steamer of their own into the Honolulu
trade--probably the former.

The China steamer will be a 5,000 ton vessel; the Ajax is 2,000 tons
burden. Neither of them can enter here except in broad daylight, so
narrow and crooked and shallow is the channel. The harbor is so small
that it cannot accommodate more than two hundred vessels comfortably,
and so narrow that a large ship cannot be handled freely in it. It is
not much wider than the river at Sacramento--a section of your river a
mile and a half long opposite Sacramento would afford an ampler harbor
than this. For half a mile a ship coming in winds about through a
channel as crooked as a dog's hind leg, and marked by long lines of
upright posts on either side, and in this channel there is not good room
enough for two ships to pass abreast.

The great China mail steamer can not enter this port. She will draw
too much water--there is only about twenty-two feet on the bar. If she
arrived here at dusk she would have to lie at anchor outside the harbor
all night and exchange mails by small boats in the morning--that is, in
fair weather. In the stormy season--in the season of the terrible Kona
she might have to lie there for five or six days. The China mail steamer
will be at sea from thirty-five to forty days on a round trip. With her
provisions and sixty or seventy tons of coal a day, and other expenses,
if she gets off with an outlay of $1,500 a day, while under way, she
will do well. Honolulu is clear out of her way, both going and coming.
Leaving San Francisco she would naturally come down until a little below
the thirtieth parallel, to get the benefit of "the trades," but from
thence to Honolulu, nine degrees further south, would be all lost time
to her. Returning, she would leave Shanghae [sic] and bend around north
till above the fortieth parallel, to get the west winds, and then if she
had no destination but San Francisco she could go straight across with a
spanking breeze all the way--but that not being the case she would make
use of the west wind a great part of the voyage, I suppose, and then
take in a lot of no longer useful canvas and come straight down south
a matter of twenty degrees, land at Honolulu, and then sail north again
about seventeen, to get to San Francisco. Thus, you see, she will come
out of her course, outward bound, over five hundred miles, to strike
Honolulu; returning, she will come out of her course 1,200 altogether,
full 1,700 miles every trip more than she would have to make if she left
the islands out of her voyage. The Ajax is considered fast; the greatest
day's run she made this trip, with the wind exactly right and every
rag of canvass set and drawing, was about 300 miles. On several other
occasions she did not make over 200. So, to allow the China ship the
very liberal average speed of 275 miles a day (250 would be nearer
right), she must lose over six days every voyage if she comes to
Honolulu; she will fool away at least one day here, each way--eight days
altogether; expense for a year, $144,000. It cannot be done any cheaper
by the China mail steamer. The Ajax can do it for a great deal less, and
the China company would make money by sub-letting the contract to her.
The China steamer will certainly never perform the Sandwich Island part
of her contract with the Government; that portion will unquestionably
be executed by some other steamer, and so, why not turn it over to the
Ajax, and thus secure to the country the benefits that must accrue to
it from the permanent establishment of a San Francisco and Honolulu
steamship line?

I am not particular whether the Ajax owners continue her in this trade
or not, but I would like to see some steamer line established on this
route, and I only speak of the Ajax in this connection because she has
already gained a good footing, and because she is owned by a company
which has the confidence of the public and is financially able to
carry out a project of this kind in a good and satisfactory manner, and
because, further, if the China company put a small steamer of their own
in this trade they will not be likely to do it for a year to come, and a
twelvemonth is a good deal of time to lose.

MARK TWAIN

The Sacramento Daily Union, April 19, 1866

Honolulu, March, 1866.

OUR ARRIVAL ELABORATED

A LITTLE MORE

We came in sight of two of this group of islands, Oahu and Molokai
(pronounced O-waw-hoo and Molloki), on the morning of the 18th, and soon
exchanged the dark blue waters of the deep sea for the brilliant
light blue of "sounding." The fat, ugly birds (said to be a species of
albatross) which had skimmed after us on tireless wings clear across
the ocean, left us, and an occasional flying-fish went skimming over the
water in their stead. Oahu loomed high, rugged, useless, barren, black
and dreary, out of the sea, and in the distance Molokai lay like a
homely sway-backed whale on the water.

THE HAWAIIAN FLAG

As we rounded the promontory of Diamond Head (bringing into view a grove
of cocoa-nut trees, first ocular proof that we were in the tropics), we
ran up the stars and stripes at the main-spencer-gaff, and the Hawaiian
flag at the fore. The latter is suggestive of the prominent political
elements of the Islands. It is part French, part English, part American
and is Hawaiian in general. The union is the English cross; the
remainder of the flag (horizontal stripes) looks American, but has a
blue French stripe in addition to our red and white ones. The flag was
gotten up by foreign legations in council with the Hawaiian Government.
The eight stripes refer to the eight islands which are inhabited; the
other four are barren rocks incapable of supporting a population.

REFLECTIONS

As we came in sight we fired a gun, and a good part of Honolulu turned
out to welcome the steamer. It was Sunday morning, and about church
time, and we steamed through the narrow channel to the music of six
different church bells, which sent their mellow tones far and wide,
over hills and valleys, which were peopled by naked, savage, thundering
barbarians only fifty years ago! Six Christian churches within five
miles of the ruins of a Pagan temple, where human sacrifices were daily
offered up to hideous idols in the last century! We were within pistol
shot of one of a group of islands whose ferocious inhabitants closed in
upon the doomed and helpless Captain Cook and murdered him, eighty-seven
years ago; and lo! their descendants were at church! Behold what the
missionaries have wrought!

THE CROWD ON THE PIER

By the time we had worked our slow way up to the wharf, under the
guidance of McIntyre, the pilot, a mixed crowd of four or five
hundred people had assembled--Chinamen, in the costume of their
country--foreigners and the better class of natives, and "half whites"
in carriages and dressed in Sacramento Summer fashion; other native men
on foot, some in the cast off clothing of white folks, and a few wearing
a battered hat, an old ragged vest, and nothing else at least nothing
but an unnecessarily slender rag passed between the legs; native women
clad in a single garment--a bright colored robe or wrapper as voluminous
as a balloon, with full sleeves. This robe is "gathered" from shoulder
to shoulder, before and behind, and then descends in ample folds to the
feet--seldom a chemise or any other under garment--fits like a circus
tent fits the tent pole, and no hoops. These robes were bright yellow,
or bright crimson, or pure black occasionally, or gleaming white; but
"solid colors" and "stunning" ones were the rule. They wore little hats
such as the sex wear in your cities, and some of the younger women had
very pretty faces and splendid black eyes and heavy masses of long black
hair, occasionally put up in a "net;" some of these dark, ginger bread
colored beauties were on foot--generally on bare-foot, I may add--and
others were on horseback--astraddle; they never ride any other way, and
they ought to know which way is best, for there are no more accomplished
horsewomen in the world, it is said. The balance of the crowd consisted
chiefly of little half-naked native boys and girls. All were chattering
in the catchy, chopped-up Kanaka language; but what they were chattering
about will always remain a mystery to me.

THE KING

Captain Fitch said, "There's the King! that's him in the buggy! I know
him far as I can see him."

I had never seen a King in my life, and I naturally took out my note
book and put him down: "Tall, slender, dark; full-bearded; green frock
coat, with lappels and collar bordered with gold band an inch wide--plug
hat--broad gold band around it; royal costume looks too much like a
livery; this man isn't as fleshy as I thought he was."

I had just got these notes entered when Captain Fitch discovered that he
had got hold of the wrong King--or, rather, that he had got hold of the
King's driver or a carriage-driver of one of the nobility. The King
was not present at all. It was a great disappointment to me. I heard
afterward that the comfortable, easy going King Kamehameha (pronounced
Ka-may-ah may-ah) V had been seen sitting on a barrel on the wharf, the
day before, fishing; but there was no consolation in that; that did not
restore to me my lost King.

HONOLULU

The town of Honolulu (said to contain between 12,000 and 15,000
inhabitants) is spread over a dead level; has streets from twenty to
thirty feet wide, solid and level as a floor, most of them straight as
a line and a few as crooked as a corkscrew; houses one and two
stories high, built of wood, straw, 'dobies and dull cream-colored
pebble-and-shell-conglomerated coral cut into oblong square blocks and
laid in cement, but no brick houses; there are great yards, more like
plazas, about a large number of the dwelling houses, and these are
carpeted with bright green grass, into which your foot sinks out of
sight; and they are ornamented by a hundred species of beautiful flowers
and blossoming shrubs, and shaded by noble tamarind trees and the "Pride
of India," with its fragrant flower, and by the "Umbrella Tree," and I
do not know how many more. I had rather smell Honolulu at sunset than
the old Police Courtroom in San Francisco.

ALMOST A KING

I had not shaved since I left San Francisco--ten days. As soon as I got
ashore I hunted for a striped pole, and shortly found one. I always had
a yearning to be a King. This may never be, I suppose. But at any rate
it will always be a satisfaction to me to know that if I am not a King,
I am the next thing to it--I have been shaved by the King's barber.

LANDSMEN ON "SEA LEGS"

Walking about on shore was very uncomfortable at first; there was no
spring to the solid ground, and I missed the heaving and rolling of the
ship's deck; it was unpleasant to lean unconsciously to an anticipated
lurch of the world and find that the world did not lurch, as it
should have done. And there was something else missed--something
gone--something wanting, I could not tell what--a dismal vacuum of
some kind or other--a sense of emptiness. But I found out what it was
presently. It was the absence of the ceaseless dull hum of beating waves
and whipping sails and fluttering of the propeller, and creaking of the
ship--sounds I had become so accustomed to that I had ceased to notice
them and had become unaware of their existence until the deep Sunday
stillness on shore made me vaguely conscious that a familiar spirit of
some kind or other was gone from me. Walking on the solid earth with
legs used to the "giving" of the decks under his tread, made Brown
sick, and he went off to bed and left me to wander alone about this
odd-looking city of the tropics.

NEW SCENES AND STRONG CONTRASTS

The further I traveled through the town the better I liked it. Every
step revealed a new contrast--disclosed something I was unaccustomed to.
In place of the grand mud-colored brown stone fronts of San Francisco,
I saw neat white cottages, with green window-shutters; in place of front
yards like billiard-tables with iron fences around them, I saw those
cottages surrounded by ample yards, about like Portsmouth Square (as to
size), thickly clad with green grass, and shaded by tall trees, through
whose dense foliage the sun could scarcely penetrate; in place of the
customary infernal geranium languishing in dust and general debility on
tin-roofed rear additions or in bedroom windows, I saw luxurious banks
and thickets of flowers, fresh as a meadow after a rain, and glowing
with the richest dyes; in place of the dingy horrors of the "Willows,"
and the painful sharp-pointed shrubbery of that funny caricature of
nature which they call "South Park," I saw huge-bodied, wide-spreading
forest trees, with strange names and stranger appearance--trees that
cast a shadow like a thunder-cloud, and were able to stand alone without
being tied to green poles; in place of those vile, tiresome, stupid,
everlasting gold-fish, wiggling around in glass globes and assuming all
shades and degrees of distortion through the magnifying and diminishing
qualities of their transparent prison houses, I saw cats--Tom-cats, Mary
Ann cats, long-tailed cats, bobtail cats, blind cats, one-eyed cats,
wall-eyed cats, cross-eyed cats, gray cats, black cats, white cats,
yellow cats, striped cats, spotted cats, tame cats, wild cats, singed
cats, individual cats, groups of cats, platoons of cats, companies of
cats, regiments of cats, armies of cats, multitudes of cats, millions
of cats, and all of them sleek, fat, lazy and sound asleep; in place
of roughs and rowdies staring and blackguarding on the corners, I saw
long-haired, saddle-colored Sandwich Island maidens sitting on the
ground in the shade of corner houses, gazing indolently at whatever or
who ever happened along; instead of that wretched cobble-stone pavement
nuisance, I walked on a firm foundation of coral, built up from the
bottom of the sea by the absurd but persevering insect of that name,
with a light layer of lava and cinders overlying the coral, belched up
out of fathomless hell long ago through the seared and blackened crater
that stands dead and cold and harmless yonder in the distance now;
instead of cramped and crowded street cars, I met dusky native women
sweeping by, free as the wind, on fleet horses and astraddle, with
gaudy riding-sashes streaming like banners behind them; instead of the
combined stenches of Sacramento street, Chinadom and Brannon street
slaughter-houses, I breathed the balmy fragrance of jessamine, oleander,
and the Pride of India; in place of the hurry and bustle and noisy
confusion of San Francisco, I moved in the midst of a Summa calm
as tranquil as dawn in the Garden of Eden; in place of our familiar
skirting sand hills and the placid bay, I saw on the one side a
frame-work of tall, precipitous mountains close at hand, clad in
refreshing green, and cleft by deep, cool, chasm-like valleys--and in
front the grand sweep of the ocean; a brilliant, transparent green
near the shore, bound and bordered by a long white line of foamy spray
dashing against the reef, and further out the dead, blue water of the
deep sea, flecked with "white caps," and in the far horizon a single,
lonely sail--

At this moment, this man Brown, who has no better manners than to read
over one's shoulder, observes:

"Yes, and hot. Oh, I reckon not (only 82 in the shade)! Go on, now,
and put it all down, now that you've begun; just say, 'And more
"santipedes," and cockroaches, and fleas, and lizards, and red ants, and
scorpions, and spiders, and mosquitoes and missionaries'--oh, blame my
cats if I'd live here two months, not if I was High-You-Muck-a-Muck and
King of Wawhoo, and had a harem full of hyenas!" (Wahine [most generally
pronounced Wyheeny], seems to answer for wife, woman and female of
questionable character, indifferently. I never can get this man Brown
to understand that "hyena" is not the proper pronunciation. He says "It
ain't any odds; it describes some of 'em, any way.")

I remarked: "But, Mr. Brown, these are trifles."

"Trifles be--blowed! You get nipped by one of them scorpions once, and
see how you like it! There was Mrs. Jones, swabbing her face with a
sponge; she felt something grab her cheek; she dropped the sponge and
out popped a scorpion an inch and a half long! Well, she just got up and
danced the Highland fling for two hours and a half--and yell!--why, you
could have heard her from Lu-wow to Hoolahoola, with the wind fair! and
for three days she soaked her cheek in brandy and salt, and it swelled
up as big as your two fists. And you want to know what made me light
out of bed so sudden last night? Only a 'santipede'--nothing, only a
'santipede,' with forty-two legs on a side, and every foot hot enough to
burn a hole through a rawhide. Don't you know one of them things
grabbed Miss Boone's foot when she was riding one day? He was hid in
the stirrup, and just clamped himself around her foot and sunk his fangs
plum through her shoe; and she just throwed her whole soul into one
war-whoop and then hinted. And she didn't get out of bed nor set that
foot on the floor again for three weeks. And how did Captain Godfrey
always get off so easy? Why, because he always carried a bottle full of
scorpions and santipedes soaked in alcohol, and whenever he got bit he
bathed the place with that devilish mixture or took a drink out of it,
I don't recollect which. And how did he have to do once, when he hadn't
his bottle along? He had to cut out the bite with his knife and fill up
the hole with arnica, and then prop his mouth open with the boot-jack to
keep from getting the lockjaw. Oh, fill me up about this lovely country!
You can go on writing that slop about balmy breezes and fragrant
flowers, and all that sort of truck, but you're not going to leave out
them santipedes and things for want of being reminded of it, you know."

I said, mildly: "But, Mr. Brown, these are the mere--"

"Mere--your grandmother! they ain't the mere anything! What's the use of
you telling me they're the mere--mere--whatever it was you was going to
call it? You look at them raw splotches all over my face--all over my
arms--all over my body! Mosquito bites! Don't tell me about mere--mere
things! You can't get around them mosquito bites. I took and brushed
out my bar [mosquito net] good night before last, and tucked it in all
around, and before morning I was eternally chawed up, anyhow. And the
night before I fastened her up all right, and got in bed and smoked that
old strong pipe until I got strangled and smothered and couldn't get
out, and then they swarmed in there and jammed their bills through my
shirt and sucked me as dry as a life-preserver before I got my breath
again. And how did that dead-fall work? I was two days making it, and
sweated two buckets full of brine, and blame the mosquito ever went
under it, and sloshing around in my sleep I ketched my foot in it and
got it flattened out so that it wouldn't go into a green turtle shell
forty-four inches across the back. Jim Ayers grinding out seven double
verses of poetry about Waw-hoo! and crying about leaving the blasted
place in the two last verses; and you slobbering here about--there you
are! Now--now, what do you say? That yellow spider could straddle over a
saucer just like nothing--and if I hadn't been here to set that spittoon
on him, he would have been between your sheets in a minute--he was
traveling straight for your bed--he had his eye on it. Just pull at that
web that he's been stringing after him--pretty near as hard to break as
sewing silk; and look at his feet sticking out all round the spittoon.
Oh, confound Waw hoo!"

I am glad Brown has got disgusted at that murdered spider and gone; I
don't like to be interrupted when I am writing--especially by Brown,
who is one of those men who always looks at the unpleasant side of
everything, and I seldom do.

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, April 20, 1866

Honolulu, March, 1866.

BOARD AND LODGING SECURED

I did not expect to find as comfortable a hotel as the American, with
its large, airy, well-furnished rooms, distinguished by perfect neatness
and cleanliness, its cool, commodious verandas, its excellent table,
its ample front yard, carpeted with grass and adorned with shrubbery,
etcetera--and so I was agreeably disappointed. One of our lady
passengers from San Francisco, who brings high recommendations,
has purchased a half interest in the hotel, and she shows such a
determination to earn success that I heartily wish she may achieve
it--and the more so because she is an American, and if common remark can
be depended upon the foreign element here will not allow an American to
succeed if a good strong struggle can prevent it.

Several of us have taken rooms in a cottage in the center of the town,
and are well satisfied with our quarters. There is a grassy yard as
large as Platt's Hall on each of the three sides of the premises; a
number of great tamarind and algeraba trees tower above us, and their
dense, wide-spreading foliage casts a shade that palls our verandas with
a sort of solemn twilight, even at noonday. If I were not so fond of
looking into the rich masses of green leaves that swathe the stately
tamarind right before my door, I would idle less and write more, I
think. The leaf of this tree is of the size and shape of that of our
sickly, homely locust in the States; but the tamarind is as much more
superb a tree than the locust as a beautiful white woman is more lovely
than a Digger squaw who may chance to generally resemble her in shape
and size.

The algeraba (my spelling is guess work) has a gnarled and twisted
trunk, as thick as a barrel, far-reaching crooked branches and a
delicate, feathery foliage which would be much better suited to a garden
shrub than to so large a tree.

We have got some handsome mango trees about us also, with dark green
leaves, as long as a goose quill and not more than twice as broad. The
trunk of this tree is about six inches through, and is very straight
and smooth. Five feet from the ground it divides into three branches
of equal size, which bend out with a graceful curve and then assume an
upright position. From these numerous smaller branches spout. The main
branches are not always three in number, I believe, but our's have this
characteristic, at any rate.

We pay from five to seven dollars a week for furnished rooms, and ten
dollars for board.

FURTHER PARTICULARS IN THIS CONNECTION

Mr. Laller, an American, and well spoken of, keeps a restaurant where
meals can be had at all hours. So you see that folks of both regular and
eccentric habits can be accommodated in Honolulu.

Washing is done chiefly by the natives, price, a dollar a dozen. If you
are not watchful, though, your shirt won't stand more than one washing,
because Kanaka artists work by a most destructive method. They use only
cold water--sit down by a brook, soap the garment, lay it on one rock
and "pound" it with another. This gives a shirt a handsome fringe around
its borders, but it is ruinous on buttons. If your washerwoman knows
you will not put up with this sort of thing, however, she will do her
pounding with a bottle, or else rub your clothes clean with her hands.
After the garments are washed the artist spreads them on the green
grass, and the flaming sun and the winds soon bleach them as white as
snow. They are then ironed on a cocoa-leaf mat spread on the ground, and
the job is finished. I cannot discover that anything of the nature of
starch is used.

Board, lodging, clean clothes, furnished room, coal oil or whale oil
lamp (dingy, greasy, villainous)--next you want water, fruit, tobacco
and cigars, and possibly wines and liquors--and then you are "fixed,"
and ready to live in Honolulu.

WATER

The water is pure, sweet, cool, clear as crystal, and comes from a
spring in the mountains, and is distributed all over the town through
leaden pipes. You can find a hydrant spiriting away at the bases of
three or four trees in a single yard, sometimes, so plenty and cheap is
this excellent water. Only twenty-four dollars a year supplies a whole
household with a limitless quantity of it.

FRUIT

You must have fruit. You feel the want of it here. At any rate, I do,
though I cared nothing whatever for it in San Francisco. You pay about
twenty-five cents ("two reals," in the language of the country, borrowed
from Mexico, where a good deal of their silver money comes from) a dozen
for oranges; and so delicious are they that some people frequently eat
a good many at luncheon. I seldom eat more than ten or fifteen at a
sitting, however, because I despise to see anybody gormandize. Even
fifteen is a little surprising to me, though, for two or three oranges
in succession were about as much as I could ever relish at home. Bananas
are worth about a bit a dozen--enough for that rather over-rated fruit.
Strawberries are plenty, and as cheap as the bananas. Those which are
carefully cultivated here have a far finer flavor than the California
article. They are in season a good part of the year. I have a kind of
a general idea that the tamarinds are rather sour this year. I had a
curiosity to taste these things, and I knocked half a dozen off the tree
and ate them the other day. They sharpened my teeth up like a razor,
and put a "wire edge" on them that I think likely will wear off when
the enamel does. My judgment now is that when it comes to sublimated
sourness, persimmons will have to take a back seat and let the tamarinds
come to the front. They are shaped and colored like a pea-nut, and about
three times as large. The seeds inside of the thin pod are covered with
that sour, gluey substance which I experimented on. They say tamarinds
make excellent preserves (and by a wise provision of Providence, they
are generally placed in sugar-growing countries), and also that a few of
them placed in impure water at sea will render it palatable. Mangoes and
guavas are plenty. I do not like them. The limes are excellent, but not
very plenty. Most of the apples brought to this market are imported from
Oregon. Those I have eaten were as good as bad turnips, but not better.
They claim to raise good apples and peaches on some of these islands.
I have not seen any grapes, or pears or melons here. They may be out of
season, but I keep thinking it is dead Summer time now.

CIGARS

The only cigars smoked here are those trifling, insipid, tasteless,
flavorless things they call "Manilas"--ten for twenty-five cents; and it
would take a thousand to be worth half the money. After you have smoked
about thirty-five dollars worth of them in a forenoon you feel nothing
but a desperate yearning to go out somewhere and take a smoke. They say
high duties and a sparse population render it unprofitable to import
good cigars, but I do not see why some enterprising citizen does not
manufacture them from the native tobacco. A Kanaka gave me some Oahu
tobacco yesterday, of fine texture, pretty good flavor, and so strong
that one pipe full of it satisfied me for several hours. [This man Brown
has just come in and says he has bought a couple of tons of Manilas to
smoke to-night.]

WINES AND LIQUORS

Wines and liquors can be had in abundance, but not of the very best
quality. The duty on brandy and whisky amounts to about three dollars a
gallon, and on wines from thirty to sixty cents a bottle, according
to market value. And just here I would caution Californians who design
visiting these islands against bringing wines or liquors with their
baggage, lest they provoke the confiscation of the latter. They will be
told that to uncork the bottles and take a little of the contents out
will compass the disabilities of the law, but they may find it dangerous
to act upon such a suggestion, which is nothing but an unworthy evasion
of the law, at best. It is incumbent upon the custom officers to open
trunks and search for contraband articles, and although I think the
spirit of the law means to permit foreigners to bring a little wine or
liquor ashore for private use, I know the letter of it allows nothing
of the kind. In addition to searching a passenger's baggage, the
Custom-house officer makes him swear that he has got nothing contraband
with him. I will also mention, as a matter of information, that a small
sum (two dollars for each person) is exacted for permission to land
baggage, and this goes to the support of the hospitals.

I have said that the wines and liquors sold here are not of the best
quality. It could not well be otherwise, as I can show. There seem to
be no hard, regular drinkers in this town, or at least very few; you
perceive that the duties are high; saloon keepers pay a license of a
thousand dollars a year; they must close up at ten o'clock at night and
not open again before daylight the next morning; they are not allowed
to open on Sunday at all. These laws are very strict, and are rigidly
obeyed.

WATER AGAIN

I must come back to water again, though I thought I had exhausted the
subject. As no ice is kept here, and as the notion that snow is brought
to Honolulu from the prodigious mountains on the island of Hawaii is a
happy fiction of some imaginative writer, the water used for drinking is
usually kept cool by putting it into "monkeys" and placing those
animals in open windows, where the breezes of heaven may blow upon them.
"Monkeys" are slender-necked, large bodied, gourd-shaped earthenware
vessels, manufactured in Germany and are popularly supposed to keep
water very cool and fresh, but I cannot indorse that supposition. If
a wet blanket were wrapped around the monkey, I think the evaporation
would cool the water within, but nobody seems to consider it worthwhile
to go to that trouble, and I include myself among this number.

Ice is worth a hundred dollars a ton in San Francisco, and five or six
hundred here, and if the steamer continues to run, a profitable trade
may possibly be driven in the article here after. It does not pay to
bring it from Sitka in sailing vessels, though. It has been tried. It
proved a mutinous and demoralizing cargo, too; for the sailors drank the
melted freight and got so high-toned that they refused ever afterwards
to go to sea unless the Captains would guarantee them ice water on
the voyage. Brown got the latter fact from Captain Phelps, and says he
"coppered it in consideration of the source." To "copper" a thing, he
informs me, is to bet against it.

ETIQUETTE

If you get into conversation with a stranger in Honolulu, and experience
that natural desire to know what sort of ground you are treading on by
finding out what manner of man your stranger is, strike out boldly and
address him as "Captain." Watch him narrowly, and if you see by his
countenance that you are on the wrong tack, ask him where he preaches.
It is a safe bet that he is either a missionary or captain of a whaler.
I am now personally acquainted with seventy-two captains and ninety-six
missionaries. The captains and ministers form one half of the
population; the third fourth is composed of common Kanakas and
mercantile foreigners and their families, and the final fourth is made
up of high officers of the Hawaiian Government. And there are just about
cats enough for three apiece all around.

A solemn stranger met me in the suburbs yesterday, and said:

"Good morning, your reverence. Preach in the stone church yonder, no
doubt?"

"No, I don't. I'm not a preacher."

"Really, I beg your pardon, Captain. I trust you had a good season. How
much oil--"

"Oil? Why, what do you take me for? I'm not a whaler."

"Oh, I beg a thousand pardons, your Excellency. Major General in the
household troops no doubt? Minister of the Interior, likely? Secretary
of War? First Gentleman of the Bedchamber? Commissioner of the Royal--"

"Stuff! man. I'm no official. I'm not connected in any way with the
Government."

"Bless my life! Then, who the mischief are you? What the mischief are
you? and how the mischief did you get here, and where in thunder did you
come from?"

"I'm only a private personage--an unassuming stranger--lately arrived
from America."

"No? Not a missionary! not a whaler! not a member of his Majesty's
Government! not even Secretary of the Navy! Ah, Heaven! it is too
blissful to be true--alas, I do but dream. And yet that noble, honest
countenance--those oblique, ingenuous eyes--that massive head, incapable
of--of--anything; your hand; give me your hand, bright waif. Excuse
these tears. For sixteen weary years I have yearned for a moment like
this, and--"

Here his feelings were too much for him, and he swooned away. I pitied
this poor creature from the bottom of my heart. I was deeply moved. I
shed a few tears on him and kissed him for his mother. I then took what
small change he had and "shoved."

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, April 21, 1866

Honolulu, March, 1866.

COMING HOME FROM PRISON

I am probably the most sensitive man in the kingdom of Hawaii
tonight--especially about sitting down in the presence of my betters.
I have ridden fifteen or twenty miles on horseback since 5 P.M., and to
tell the honest truth, I have a delicacy about sitting down at all. I
am one of the poorest horsemen in the world, and I never mount a horse
without experiencing a sort of dread that I may be setting out on that
last mysterious journey which all of us must take sooner or later, and
I never come back in safety from a horseback trip without thinking of
my latter-end for two or three days afterward. This same old regular
devotional sentiment began just as soon as I sat down here five minutes
ago.

An excursion to Diamond Head and the King's Cocoanut Grove was planned
to-day--time, 4:30 P.M.--the party to consist of half a dozen gentlemen
and three ladies. They all started at the appointed hour except myself.
I was at the Government Prison, and got so interested in its examination
that I did not notice how quickly the time was passing. Somebody
remarked that it was twenty minutes past five o'clock, and that woke me
up. It was a fortunate circumstance that Captain Phillips was there with
his "turn-out," as he calls a top-buggy that Captain Cook brought here
in 1778, and a horse that was here when Captain Cook came. Captain
Phillips takes a just pride in his driving and in the speed of his
horse, and to his passion for displaying them I owe it that we were only
sixteen minutes coming from the prison to the American Hotel--a distance
which has been estimated to be over half a mile. But it took some awful
driving. The Captain's whip came down fast, and the blows started so
much dust out of the horse's hide that during the last half of the
journey we rode through an impenetrable fog, and ran by a pocket compass
in the hands of Captain Fish, a whaler Captain of twenty-six years
experience, who sat there through that perilous voyage as self-possessed
as if he had been on the euchre-deck of his own ship, and calmly said,
"Port your helm--port," from time to time, and "Hold her a little
free-steady--so-o," and "Luff--hard down to starboard!" and never once
lost his presence of mind or betrayed the least anxiety by voice or
manner. When we came to anchor at last, and Captain Phillips looked at
his watch and said, "Sixteen minutes--I told you it was in her! that's
ova three miles an hour!" I could see he felt entitled to a compliment,
and so l said I had never seen lightning go like that horse. And I never
had.

THE STEED OAHU

The landlord of the American said the party had been gone nearly an
hour, but that he could give me my choice of several horses that could
easily overtake them. I said, never mind--I preferred a safe horse to a
fast one--I would like to have an excessively gentle horse--a horse with
no spirit whatever--a lame one, if he had such a thing. Inside of five
minutes I was mounted, and perfectly satisfied with my outfit. I had no
time to label him "This is a horse," and so if the public took him for a
sheep I cannot help it. I was satisfied, and that was the main thing. I
could see that he had as many fine points as any man's horse, and I
just hung my hat on one of them, behind the saddle, and swabbed the
perspiration from my face and started. I named him after this island,
"Oahu" (pronounced O-waw-hoo). The first gate he came to he started in;
I had neither whip nor spur, and so I simply argued the case with him.
He firmly resisted argument, but ultimately yielded to insult and abuse.
He backed out of that gate and steered for another one on the other side
of the street. I triumphed by my former process. Within the next
six hundred yards he crossed the street fourteen times and attempted
thirteen gates, and in the meantime the tropical sun was beating down
and threatening to cave the top of my head in, and I was literally
dripping with perspiration and profanity. (I am only human and I was
sorely aggravated. I shall behave better next time.) He quit the gate
business after that and went along peaceably enough, but absorbed in
meditation. I noticed this latter circumstance, and it soon began to
fill me with the gravest apprehension. I said to myself, this malignant
brute is planning some new outrage, some fresh deviltry or other--no
horse ever thought over a subject so profoundly as this one is doing
just for nothing. The more this thing preyed upon my mind the more
uneasy I became, until at last the suspense became unbeatable and I
dismounted to see if there was anything wild in his eye--for I had heard
that the eye of this noblest of our domestic animals is very expressive.
I cannot describe what a load of anxiety was lifted from my mind when
I found that he was only asleep. I woke him up and started him into a
faster walk, and then the inborn villainy of his nature came out again.
He tried to climb over a stone wall, five or six feet high. I saw that I
must apply force to this horse, and that I might as well begin first as
last. I plucked a stout switch from a tamarind tree, and the moment he
saw it, he gave in. He broke into a convulsive sort of a canter,
which had three short steps in it and one long one, and reminded me
alternately of the clattering shake of the great earthuake, and the
sweeping plunging of the Ajax in a storm.

OUT OF PRISON, BUT IN THE STOCKS

And now it occurs to me that there can be no fitter occasion than the
present to pronounce a fervent curse upon the man who invented the
American saddle. There is no seat to speak of about it--one might as
well sit in a shovel--and the stirrups are nothing but an ornamental
nuisance. If I were to write down here all the abuse I expended on those
stirrups, it would make a large book, even without pictures. Sometimes
I got one foot so far through, that the stirrup partook of the nature of
an anklet--sometimes both feet were through and I was handcuffed by the
legs and some times my feet got clear out and left the stirrups
wildly dangling about my shins. Even when I was in proper position and
carefully balanced upon the balls of my feet, there was no comfort in
it, on account of my nervous dread that they were going to slip one way
or the other in a moment. But the subject is too exasperating to write
about.

ABOUT HORSES AND KANAKA SHREWDNESS

This is a good time to drop in a paragraph of information. There is
no regular livery stable in Honolulu, or, indeed, in any part of the
kingdom of Hawaii; therefore, unless you are acquainted with wealthy
residents (who all have good horses), you must hire animals of the
vilest description from the Kanakas. Any horse you hire, even though it
be from a white man, is not often of much account, because it will be
brought in for you from some ranch, and has necessarily been leading
a hard life. If the Kanakas who have been caring for him (inveterate
riders they are) have not ridden him half to death every day themselves,
you can depend upon it they have been doing the same thing by proxy, by
clandestinely hiring him out. At least, so I am informed. The result is,
that no horse has a chance to eat, drink, rest, recuperate, or look well
or feel well, and so strangers go about in the islands mounted as I was
to-day.

In hiring a horse from a Kanaka, you must have all your eyes about you,
because you can rest satisfied that you are dealing with as shrewd a
rascal as ever patronized a penitentiary. You may leave your door open
and your trunk unlocked as long as you please, and he will not meddle
with your property; he has no important vices and no inclination to
commit robbery on a large scale; but if he can get ahead of you in the
horse business, he will take a genuine delight in doing it. This trait
is characteristic of horse jockeys, the world over, is it not? He will
overcharge you if he can; he will hire you a fine-looking horse at night
(anybody's--maybe the King's, if the royal steed be in convenient view),
and bring you the mate to my Oahu in the morning, and contend that it
is the same animal. If you raise a row, he will get out by saying it was
not himself who made the bargain with you, but his brother, "who went
out in the country this morning." They have always got a "brother" to
shift the responsibility upon. A victim said to one of these fellows one
day:

"But I know I hired the horse of you, because I noticed that scar on
your cheek."

The reply was not bad: "Oh, yes--yes--my brother all same--we twins!"

A friend of mine, J. Smith, hired a horse yesterday, the Kanaka
warranting him to be in excellent condition. Smith had a saddle and
blanket of his own, and he ordered the Kanaka to put these on the
horse. The Kanaka protested that he was perfectly willing to trust the
gentleman with the saddle that was already on the animal, but Smith
refused to use it. The change was made; then Smith noticed that the
Kanaka had only changed the saddles, and had left the original blanket
on the horse; he said he forgot to change the blankets, and so, to cut
the bother short, Smith mounted and rode away. The horse went lame
a mile from town, and afterward got to cutting up some extraordinary
capers. Smith got down and took off the saddle, but the blanket stuck
fast to the horse--glued to a procession of raw sores. The Kanaka's
mysterious conduct stood explained.

Another friend of mine bought a pretty good horse from a native, a day
or two ago, after a tolerably thorough examination of the animal. He
discovered to-day that the horse was as blind as a bat, in one eye. He
meant to have examined that eye, and came home with a general notion
that he had done it; but he remembers now that every time he made the
attempt his attention was called to something else by his victimizer.

One more yarn, and then I will pass to something else. I am informed
that when Leland was here he bought a pair of very respectable-looking
match horses from a native. They were in a little stable with a
partition through the middle of it--one horse in each apartment. Leland
examined one of them critically through a window (the Kanaka's "brother"
having gone to the country with the key), and then went around the house
and examined the other through a window on the other side. He said it
was the neatest match he had ever seen, and paid for the horses on the
spot. Whereupon the Kanaka departed to join his brother in the country.
The scoundrel had shamefully swindled Leland. There was only one "match"
horse and he had examined his starboard side through one window and his
port side through another! I decline to believe this story, but I give
it because it is worth something as a fanciful illustration of a fixed
fact--namely, that the Kanaka horse-jockey is fertile in invention and
elastic in conscience.

HONOLULU PRICES FOR HORSEFLESH

You can buy a pretty good horse for forty or fifty dollars, and a good
enough horse for all practical purposes for two dollars and a half. I
estimate Oahu to be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-five
cents. A good deal better animal than he is was sold here day before
yesterday for a dollar and six bits, and sold again to-day for two
dollars and twenty-five cents; Brown bought a handsome and lively little
pony yesterday for ten dollars; and about the best common horse on the
island (and he is a really good one) sold yesterday, with good Mexican
saddle and bridle, for seventy dollars--a horse which is well and
widely known, and greatly respected for his speed, good disposition and
everlasting bottom. You give your horse a little grain once a day; it
comes from San Francisco, and is worth about two cents a pound; and you
give him as much hay as he wants; it is cut and brought to the market
by natives, and is not very good, it is baled into long, round bundles,
about the size of a large man; one of them is stuck by the middle on
each end of a six-foot pole, and the Kanaka shoulders the pole and walks
about the streets between the upright bales in search of customers.
These hay bales, thus carried, have a general resemblance to a colossal
capital H.

These hay-bundles cost twenty-five cents apiece, and one will last a
horse about a day. You can get a horse for a song, a week's hay for
another song, and you can turn your animal loose among the luxuriant
grass in your neighbor's broad front yard without a song at all--you do
it at midnight, and stable the beast again before morning. You have been
at no expense thus far, but when you come to buy a saddle and bridle
they will cost you from $20 to $35. You can hire a horse, saddle and
bridle at from $7 to $10 a week, and the owner will take care of them at
his own expense.

Well, Oahu worried along over a smooth, hard road, bordered on either
side by cottages, at intervals, pulu swamps at intervals, fish ponds at
intervals, but through a dead level country all the time, and no trees
to hide the wide Pacific ocean on the right or the rugged, towering
rampart of solid rock, called Diamond Head or Diamond Point, straight
ahead.

THE KING'S GROVE, WAIKIKI

A mile and a half from town, I came to a grove of tall cocoa-nut trees,
with clean, branchless stems reaching straight up sixty or seventy
feet and topped with a spray of green foliage sheltering clusters
of cocoa-nuts--not more picturesque than a forest of colossal ragged
parasols, with bunches of magnified grapes under them, would be. About
a dozen cottages, some frame and the others of native grass, nestled
sleepily in the shade here and there. The grass cabins are of a grayish
color, are shaped much like our own cottages, only with higher and
steeper roofs usually, and are made of some kind of weed strongly bound
together in bundles. The roofs are very thick and so are the walls; the
latter have square holes in them for windows. At a little distance these
cabins have a furry appearance, as if they might be made of bear skins.
They are very cool and pleasant inside. The King's flag was flying from
the roof of one of the cottages, and His Majesty was probably within.
He owns the whole concern thereabouts, and passes his time there
frequently, on sultry days "laying off." The spot is called "The King's
Grove."

RUINS OF AN ANCIENT HEATHEN TEMPLE

Near by is an interesting ruin--the meager remains of an ancient heathen
temple--a place where human sacrifices were offered up in those old
bygone days when the simple child of nature, yielding momentarily to
sin when sorely tempted, acknowledged his error when calm reflection had
shown it to him, and came forward with noble frankness and offered up
his grandmother as an atoning sacrifice--in those old days when the
luckless sinner could keep on cleansing his conscience and achieving
periodical happiness as long as his relations held out; long, long
before the missionaries braved a thousand privations to come and
make them permanently miserable by telling them how beautiful and how
blissful a place heaven is, and how nearly impossible it is to get
there; and showed the poor native how dreary a place perdition is and
what unnecessarily liberal facilities there are for going to it; showed
him how, in his ignorance, he had gone and fooled away all his kinfolks
to no purpose; showed him what rapture it is to work all day long for
fifty cents to buy food for next day with, as compared with fishing for
pastime and lolling in the shade through eternal Summer, and eating of
the bounty that nobody labored to provide but Nature. How sad it is to
think of the multitudes who have gone to their graves in this beautiful
island and never knew there was a hell! And it inclines right thinking
man to weep rather than to laugh when he reflects how surprised they
must have been when they got there. This ancient temple was built of
rough blocks of lava, and was simply a roofless inclosure, a hundred and
thirty feet long and seventy wide--nothing but naked walls, very thick
but not much higher than a man's head. They will last for, ages,
no doubt, if left unmolested. Its three altars and other sacred
appurtenances have crumbled and passed away years ago. It is said that
in the old times thousands of human beings were slaughtered here, in the
presence of multitudes of naked, whooping and howling savages. If these
mute stones could speak, what tales they could tell, what pictures they
could describe, of fettered victims, writhing and shrieking under the
knife; of dense masses of dusky forms straining forward out of the
gloom, with eager and ferocious faces lit up with the weird light of
sacrificial fires--of the vague back ground of ghostly trees; of the
mournful sea washing the dim shore--of the dark pyramid of Diamond Head
standing sentinel over the dismal scene, and the peaceful moon looking
calmly down upon it through rifts in the drifting clouds!

When Kamehameha (pronounced Ka-may-ha-may-ah) the Great--who was a very
Napoleon in military genius and uniform success--invaded this island of
Oahu three-quarters of a century ago, and exterminated the army sent
to oppose him, and took full and final possession of the country,
he searched out the dead body of the king of Oahu, and those of the
principal chiefs, and impaled their heads upon the walls of this temple.

Those were savage times when this old slaughter-house was in its prime.
The king and the chiefs ruled the common herd with a rod of iron; made
them gather all the provisions the masters needed; build all the houses
and temples; stand all the expenses, of whatever kind; take kicks and
cuffs for thanks; drag out lives well flavored with misery, and then
suffer death for trifling offenses or yield up their lives on the
sacrificial alters to purchase favors from the gods for their hard
rulers. The missionaries have clothed them, educated them, broken up
the tyrannous authority of their chiefs, and given them freedom and the
right to enjoy whatever the labor of their hand and brains produces,
with equal laws for all and punishment for all alike who transgress
them. The contrast is so strong--the wonderful benefit conferred upon
this people by the missionaries is so prominent, so palpable and so
unquestionable, that the frankest compliment I can pay them, and the
best, is simply to point to the condition of the Sandwich Islanders of
Captain Cook's time, and their condition to-day. Their work speaks for
itself.

The little collection of cottages (of which I was speaking a while ago)
under the cocoa-nut trees is a historical point. It is the village of
Waikiki (usually pronounced Wy-kee-ky), once the Capital of the kingdom
and the abode of the great Kamehameha I. In 1801, while he lay encamped
at this place with seven thousand men, preparing to invade the island
of Kau[a]i (he had previously captured and subdued the seven other
inhabited islands of the group, one after another), a pestilence broke
out in Oahu and raged with great virulence. It attacked the king's army
and made great havoc in it. It is said that three hundred bodies were
washed out to sea in one day.

There is an opening in the coral reef at this point, and anchorage
inside for a small number of vessels, though one accustomed to the great
Bay of San Francisco would never take this little belt of smooth water,
with its border of foaming surf, to be a harbor, save for Whitehall
boats or something of that kind. But harbors are scarce in these
islands--open roadsteads are the rule here. The harbor of Waikiki was
discovered in 1786 (seven or eight years after Captain Cook's murder)
by Captains Portlock and Dixon, in the ships King George and Queen
Charlotte--the first English vessels that visited the islands after that
unhappy occurrence. This little bathing tub of smooth water possesses
some further historical interest as being the spot where the
distinguished navigator Vancouver, landed when he came here in 1792.

In a conversation with a gentleman to-day about the scarcity of harbors
among the islands (and in all the islands of the South Pacific), he
said the natives of Tahiti have a theory that the reason why there
are harbors wherever fresh water streams empty into the sea, and
none elsewhere, is that the fresh water kills the coral insect, or so
discommodes or disgusts it that it will not build its stony wall in its
vicinity, and instanced what is claimed as fact, viz., that the break
in the reef is always found where the fresh water passes over it, in
support of this theory.

[This notable equestrian excursion will be concluded in my next, if
nothing happens.]

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, April 24, 1866

Honolulu, March, 1866

THE EQUESTRIAN EXCURSION CONCLUDED

I wandered along the sea beach on my steed Oahu around the base of the
extinct crater of Leahi, or Diamond Head, and a quarter of a mile beyond
the point I overtook the party of ladies and gentlemen and assumed my
proper place--that is, in the rear--for the horse I ride always persists
in remaining in the rear in spite of kicks, cuffs and curses. I was
satisfied as long as I could keep Oahu within hailing distance of the
cavalcade--I knew I could accomplish nothing better even if Oahu were
Norfolk himself.

We went on--on--on--a great deal too far, I thought, for people who were
unaccustomed to riding on horseback, and who must expect to suffer on
the morrow if they indulged too freely in this sort of exercise. Finally
we got to a point which we were expecting to go around in order to
strike an easy road home; but we were too late; it was full tide and
the sea had closed in on the shore. Young Henry McFarlane said he knew
a nice, comfortable route over the hill--a short cut--and the crowd
dropped into his wake. We climbed a hill a hundred and fifty feet high,
and about as straight up and down as the side of a house, and as full of
rough lava blocks as it could stick--not as wide, perhaps, as the broad
road that leads to destruction, but nearly as dangerous to travel, and
apparently leading in the same general direction. I felt for the ladies,
but I had no time to speak any words of sympathy, by reason of my
attention being so much occupied by Oahu. The place was so steep that
at times he stood straight up on his tip-toes and clung by his forward
toenails, with his back to the Pacific Ocean and his nose close to the
moon--and thus situated we formed an equestrian picture which was as
uncomfortable to me as it may have been picturesque to the spectators.
You may think I was afraid, but I was not. I knew I could stay on him as
long as his ears did not pull out.

It was a great relief to me to know that we were all safe and sound on
the summit at last, because the sun was just disappearing in the waves,
night was abroad in the land, candles and lamps were already twinkling
in the distant town, and we gratefully reflected that Henry had saved us
from having to go back around the rocky, sandy beach. But a new trouble
arose while the party were admiring the rising moon and the cool, balmy
night breeze, with its odor of countless flowers, for it was discovered
that we had got into a place we could not get out of--we were apparently
surrounded by precipices--our pilot's chart was at fault, and he
could not extricate us, and so we had the prospect before us of either
spending the night in the admired night-breeze, under the admired moon,
or of clambering down the way we came, in the dark. However, a Kanaka
came along presently and found a first-rate road for us down an almost
imperceptible decline, and the party set out on a cheerful gallop again,
and Oahu struck up his miraculous canter once more. The moon rose up,
and flooded mountain and valley and ocean with silvery light, and I was
not sorry we had lately been in trouble, because the consciousness of
being safe again raised our spirits and made us more capable of enjoying
the beautiful scene than we would have been otherwise. I never breathed
such a soft, delicious atmosphere before, nor one freighted with such
rich fragrance. A barber shop is nothing to it.

BATTLE-GROUND WHOSE HISTORY IS FORGOTTEN

Gayly laughing and talking, the party galloped on, and with set teeth
and bouncing body I clung to the pommel and cantered after. Presently we
came to a place where no grass grew--a wide expanse of deep sand. They
said it was an old battle-ground. All around everywhere, not three feet
apart, the bleached bones of men gleamed white in the moonlight. We
picked up a lot of them for mementoes. I got quite a number of arm bones
and leg bones--of great chiefs, maybe, who had fought savagely in that
fearful battle in the old days, when blood flowed like wine where we now
stood--and wore the choicest of them out on Oahu afterward, trying to
make him go. All sorts of bones could be found except skulls; but a
citizen said, irreverently, that there had been an unusual number of
"skull hunters" there lately--a species of sportsmen I had never heard
of before. The conversation at this point took a unique and ghastly
turn. A gentleman said:

"Give me some of your bones, Miss Blank; I'll carry them for you."

Another said:

"You haven't got bones enough, Mrs. Blank; here's a good shin-bone, if
you want it.."

Such observations as these fell from the lips of ladies with reference
to their queer newly-acquired property:

"Mr. Brown, will you please hold some of my bones for me a minute?" And,

"Mr. Smith, you have got some of my bones; and you have got one, too,
Mr. Jones, and you have got my spine, Mr. Twain. Now don't any of you
gentlemen get my bones all mixed up with yours so that you can't tell
them apart."

These remarks look very irreverent on paper, but they did not sound
so, being used merely in a business way and with no intention of making
sport of the remains. I did not think it was just right to carry off
any of these bones, but we did it, anyhow. We considered that it was
at least as right as it is for the Hawaiian Government and the city of
Honolulu (which is the most excessively moral and religious town that
can be found on the map of the world), to permit those remains to
lie decade after decade, to bleach and rot in sun and wind and suffer
desecration by careless strangers and by the beasts of the field,
unprotected by even a worm-fence. Call us hard names if you will, you
statesmen and missionaries! but I say shame upon you, that after
raising a nation from idolatry to Christianity, and from barbarism to
civilization, you have not taught it the comment [sic] of respect for
the dead. Your work is incomplete.

LEGENDARY

Nothing whatever is known about this place--its story is a secret that
will never be revealed. The oldest natives make no pretense of being
possessed of its history. They say these bones were here when they were
children. They were here when their grandfathers were children--but how
they came here, they can only conjecture. Many people believe this spot
to be an ancient battle-ground, and it is usual to call it so, and
they believe that these skeletons have lain for ages just where
their proprietors fell in the great fight. Other people believe that
Kamehameha I fought his first battle here. On this point, I have heard
a story, which may have been taken from one of the numerous books which
have been written, concerning these islands--I do not know where the
narrator got it. He said that when Kamehameha (who was at first merely
a subordinate chief on the island of Hawaii), landed here, he brought
a large army with him, and encamped at Waikiki. The Oahuans marched
against him, and so confident were they of success that they readily
acceded to a demand of their priests that they should draw a line where
these bones now lie, and take an oath that, if forced to retreat at all,
they would never retreat beyond this boundary. The priests told them
that death and everlasting punishment would overtake any who violated
the oath, and the march was resumed. Kamehameha drove them back step
by step; the priests fought in the front rank and exhorted them both by
voice and inspiring example to remember their oath--to die, if need be,
but never cross the fatal line. The struggle was manfully maintained,
but at last the chief priest fell, pierced to the heart with a spear,
and the unlucky omen fell like a blight upon the brave souls at his
back; with a triumphant shout the invaders pressed forward--the line was
crossed--the offended gods deserted the despairing army, and accepting
the doom their perjury had brought upon them, they broke and fled
over the plain where Honolulu stands now--up the beautiful Nuuanu
Valley--paused a moment, hemmed in by precipitous mountains on either
hand and the frightful precipice of the Pari [pronounced Pally;
intelligent natives claim that there is no r in the Kanaka alphabet] in
front, and then were driven over--a sheer plunge of six hundred feet!

The story is pretty enough, but Mr. Jarves' excellent history says the
Oahuans were intrenched in Nuuanu Valley; that Kamehameha ousted
them, routed them, pursued them up the valley and drove them over the
precipice. He makes no mention of our bone-yard at all in his book.

There was a terrible pestilence here in 1804, which killed great numbers
of the inhabitants, and the natives have legends of others that swept
the islands long before that; and therefore many persons now believe
that these bones belonged to victims of one of these epidemics who
were hastily buried in a great pit. It is by far the most reasonable
conjecture, because Jarves says that the weapons of the Islanders were
so rude and inefficient that their battles were not often very bloody.
If this was a battle it was astonishingly deadly, for in spite of the
depredations of "skull hunters," we rode a considerable distance over
ground so thickly strewn with human bones that the horses' feet crushed
them, not occasionally, but at every step.

SENTIMENT

Impressed by the profound silence and repose that rested over the
beautiful landscape, and being, as usual, in the rear, I gave voice to
my thought. I said:

"What a picture is here slumbering in the solemn glory of the moon! How
strong the rugged outlines of the dead volcano stand out against the
clear sky! What a snowy fringe marks the bursting of the surf over the
long, curved reef! How calmly the dim city sleeps yonder in the plain!
How soft the shadows lie upon the stately mountains that border the
dream haunted Manoa Valley! What a grand pyramid of billowy clouds
towers above the storied Pari! How the grim warriors of the past seem
flocking in ghostly squadrons to their ancient battlefield again--how
the wails of the dying well up from the--"

At this point the horse called Oahu deliberately sat down in the sand.
Sat down to listen, I suppose. Never mind what he heard. I stopped
apostrophising and convinced him that I was not a man to allow contempt
of Court on the part of a horse. I broke the back bone of a Chief over
his rump and set out to join the cavalcade again.

Very considerably fagged out we arrived in town at 9 o'clock at night,
myself in the lead--for when my horse finally came to understand that
he was homeward bound and hadn't far to go, he threw his legs wildly out
before and behind him, depressed his head and laid his ears back, and
flew by the admiring company like a telegram. In five minutes he was far
away ahead of everybody.

We stopped in front of a private residence--Brown and I did--to wait for
the rest and see that none were lost. I soon saw that I had attracted
the attention of a comely young girl and I felt duly flattered. Perhaps
thought I, she admires my horsemanship--and I made a savage jerk at the
bridle and said, "Ho! will you!" to show how fierce and unmanageable the
beast was--though, to say truly, he was leaning up against a hitching
post peaceably enough at the time. I stirred Oahu up and moved him
about, and went up the street a short distance to look for the party,
and "loped" gallantly back again, all the while making a pretense of
being unconscious that I was an object of interest. I then addressed a
few "peart" remarks to Brown, to give the young lady a chance to admire
my style of conversation, and was gratified to see her step up and
whisper to Brown and glance furtively at me at the same time. I could
see that her gentle face bore an expression of the most kindly and
earnest solicitude, and I was shocked and angered to hear Brown burst
into a fit of brutal laughter

As soon as we started home, I asked with a fair show of indifference,
what she had been saying.

Brown laughed again and said: "She thought from the slouchy way you rode
and the way you drawled out your words, that you was drunk! She said,
'Why don't you take the poor creature home, Mr. Brown? It makes me
nervous to see him galloping that horse and just hanging on that way,
and he so drunk.'"

I laughed very loudly at the joke, but it was a sort of hollow,
sepulchral laugh, after all. And then I took it out of Oahu.

AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE

I have found an old acquaintance here--Rev. Franklin S. Rising, of the
Episcopal minister, who has had charge of a church in Virginia,
Nevada, for several years, and who is well known in Sacramento and San
Francisco. He sprained his knee in September last, and is here for
his health. He thinks he has made no progress worth mentioning towards
regaining it, but I think differently. He can ride on horseback, and is
able to walk a few steps without his crutches--things he could not do a
week ago.

"WHILE WE WERE MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA!"

The popular-song nuisance follows us here. In San Francisco it used to
be "Just Before the Battle Mother," every night and all night long. Then
it was "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." After that it was "Wearin'
of the Green." And last and most dreadful of all, came that calamity of
"When We Were Marching Through Georgia." It was the last thing I heard
when the ship sailed, and it gratified me to think I should hear it no
more for months. And now, here at dead of night, at the very outpost
and fag-end of the world on a little rock in the middle of a limitless
ocean, a pack of dark-skinned savages are tramping down the street
singing it with a vim and an energy that make my hair rise!--singing
it in their own barbarous tongue! They have got the tune to
perfection--otherwise I never would have suspected that

"Waikiki lantani oe Kaa hooly hooly wawhoo"

means, "When We Were Marching Through Georgia." If it would have been
all the same to General Sherman, I wish he had gone around by the way of
the Gulf of Mexico, instead of matching through Georgia.

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, May 21, 1866

Honolulu (S. I.), April, 1866.

OFF

Mounted on my noble steed Hawaii (pronounced Hah-wy-ye--stress on second
syllable), a beast that cost thirteen dollars and is able to go his
mile in three--with a bit of margin to it--I departed last Saturday week
for--for any place that might turn up.

SATURDAY IN HONOLULU

Passing through the market place we saw that feature of Honolulu under
its most favorable auspices--that is, in the full glory of Saturday
afternoon, which is a festive day with the natives. The native girls by
twos and threes and parties of a dozen, and sometimes in whole platoons
and companies, went cantering up and down the neighboring streets
astride of fleet but homely horses, and with their gaudy riding habits
streaming like banners behind them. Such a troop of free and easy
riders, in their natural home, which is the saddle, makes a gay and
graceful and exhilarating spectacle. The riding habit I speak of
is simply a long, broad scarf, like a tavern tablecloth brilliantly
colored, wrapped around the loins once, then apparently passed up
between the limbs and each end thrown backward over the same, and
floating and flapping behind on both sides beyond the horse's tail like
a couple of fancy flags; and then, with a girl that throws her chest
forward and sits up like a Major General and goes sweeping by like the
wind. "Gay?" says Brown, with a fine irony; "oh, you can't mean it!"

The girls put on all the finery they can scare up on Saturday
afternoon--fine black silk robes; flowing red ones that nearly put
your eyes out; others as white as snow; still others that discount the
rainbow--and they wear their hair in nets, and trim their jaunty hats
with fresh flowers, and encircle their dusky throats with home-made
necklaces of the brilliant vermilion-tinted blossom of the ohia;
and they fill the markets and the adjacent streets with their bright
presences, and smell like thunder with their villainous cocoa-nut oil.

Occasionally you see a heathen from the sunny isles away down in the
South Seas with his face and neck tattooed till he looks like the
customary unfortunate from Reese River who has been blown up in a mine.
Some are tattooed a dead blue color down to the upper lip--masked, as it
were--leaving the natural light yellow skin of Micronesia unstained from
thence down; some with broad marks drawn down from hair to neck, on both
sides of the face, and a strip of the original yellow skin, two inches
wide, down the center--a grid-iron with a spoke broken out; and some
with the entire face discolored with the popular mortification tint,
relieved only by one or two thin, wavy threads of natural yellow
running across the face from ear to ear, and eyes twinkling out of this
darkness, from under shadowing hat-brims, like stars in the dark of the
moon.

POI FOR SALE

Moving among the stirring crowds, you come to the poi merchants,
squatting in the shade on their hams, in true native fashion, and
surrounded by purchasers. (The Sandwich Islanders always squat on their
hams, and who knows but they may be the old original "ham sandwiches?"
The thought is pregnant with interest.) The poi looks like common flour
paste, and is kept in large bowls formed of a species of gourd, and
capable of holding from one to three or four gallons. Poi is the chief
article of food among the natives, and is prepared from the kalo or taro
plant (k and t are the same in the Kanaka alphabet, and so are l and r).
The taro root looks like a thick, or, if you please, a corpulent sweet
potato, in shape, but is of a light purple color when boiled. When
boiled it answers as a passable substitute for bread. The buck Kanakas
bake it underground, then mash it up well with a heavy lava pestle, mix
water with it until it becomes a paste, set it aside and let it ferment,
and then it is poi--and a villainous mixture it is, almost tasteless
before it ferments and too sour for a luxury afterward. But nothing in
the world is more nutritious. When solely used, however, it produces
acrid humors, a fact which sufficiently accounts for the blithe and
humorous character of the Kanakas. I think there must be as much of
a knack in handling poi as there is in eating with chopsticks. The
forefinger is thrust into the mess and stirred quickly around several
times and drawn as quickly out, thickly coated, just as if it were
poulticed; the head is thrown back, the finger inserted in the mouth
and the poultice stripped off and swallowed--the eye closing gently,
meanwhile, in a languid sort of ecstasy. Many a different finger goes
into the same bowl and many a different kind of dirt and shade and
quality of flavor is added to the virtues of its contents. One tall
gentleman, with nothing in the world on but a soiled and greasy shirt,
thrust in his finger and tested the poi, shook his head, scratched it
with the useful finger, made another test, prospected among his hair,
caught something and ate it; tested the poi again, wiped the grimy
perspiration from his brow with the universal hand, tested again, blew
his nose--"Let's move on, Brown," said I, and we moved.

AWA FOR SALE--DITTO FISH

Around a small shanty was collected a crowd of natives buying the awa
root. It is said that but for the use of this root the destruction of
the people in former times by venereal diseases would have been far
greater than it was, and by others it is said that this is merely a
fancy. All agree that poi will rejuvenate a man who is used up and his
vitality almost annihilated by hard drinking, and that in some kinds of
diseases it will restore health after all medicines have failed; but
all are not willing to allow to the awa the virtues claimed for it. The
native manufacture an intoxicating drink from it which is fearful in
its effects when persistently indulged in. It covers the body with
dry, white scales, inflames the eyes, and causes premature decrepitude.
Although the man before whose establishment we stopped has to pay a
Government license of eight hundred dollars a year for an exclusive
right to sell awa root, it is said that he makes a small fortune every
twelve-month; while saloon keepers, who pay a thousand dollars a year
for the privilege of retailing whisky, etc., only make a bare living.

We found the fish market crowded; for the native is very fond of fish,
and eats the article raw. Let us change the subject.

OLD-TIME SATURDAYS

In old times here Saturday was a grand gala day indeed. All the
native population of the town forsook their labors, and those of the
surrounding country journeyed to the city. Then the white folks had to
stay indoors, for every street was so packed with charging cavaliers and
cavalieresses that it was next to impossible to thread one's way through
the cavalcades without getting crippled. In the afternoon the natives
were wont to repair to the plain, outside the town, and indulge in their
ancient sports and pastimes and bet away their week's earnings on horse
races. One might see two or three thousand, some say five thousand, of
these wild riders, skurrying over the plain in a mass in those days. And
it must have been a fine sight.

At night they feasted and the girls danced the lascivious hula hula--a
dance that is said to exhibit the very perfection of educated motion
of limb and arm, hand, head and body, and the exactest uniformity of
movement and accuracy of "time." It was performed by a circle of girls
with no raiment on them to speak of, who went through with an infinite
variety of motions and figures without prompting, and yet so true was
their "time," and in such perfect concert did they move that when they
were placed in a straight line, hands, arms, bodies, limbs and heads
waved, swayed, gesticulated, bowed, stooped, whirled, squirmed, twisted
and undulated as if they were part and parcel of a single individual;
and it was difficult to believe they were not moved in a body by some
exquisite piece of mechanism. Of late years, however, Saturday has lost
most of its quondam gala features. This weekly stampede of the natives
interfered too much with labor and the interests of the white folks, and
by sticking in a law here, and preaching a sermon there, and by various
other means, they gradually broke it up. The demoralizing hula hula was
forbidden to be performed, save at night, with closed doors, in presence
of few spectators, and only by permission duly procured from the
authorities and the payment of ten dollars for the same. There are
few girls now-a-days able to dance this ancient national dance in the
highest perfection of the art.

THE GOVERNMENT PRISON

Cantering across the bridge and down the firm, level, gleaming white
coral turnpike that leads toward the south, or the east, or the west, or
the north (the points of the compass being all the same to me, inasmuch
as, for good reasons, I have not had an opportunity thus far of
discovering whereabouts the sun rises in this country--I know where it
sets, but I don't know how it gets there nor which direction it comes
from), we presently arrived at a massive coral edifice which I took for
a fortress at first, but found out directly that it was the Government
prison. A soldier at the great gate admitted us without further
authority than my countenance, and I suppose he thought he was paying
me a handsome compliment when he did so; and so did I until I reflected
that the place was a penitentiary. However, as far as appearances went,
it might have been the king's palace, so neat, and clean, and white,
and so full of the fragrance of flowers was the establishment, and I was
satisfied.

We passed through a commodious office, whose walls were ornamented with
linked strands of polished handcuffs and fetters, through a hall, and
among the cells above and below. The cells for the men were eight or ten
feet high, and roomy enough to accommodate the two prisoners and their
hammocks, usually put in each, and have space left for several more. The
floors were scrubbed clean, and were guiltless of spot or stain of any
kind, and the painfully white walls were unmarred by a single mark or
blemish. Through ample gratings, one could see the blue sky and get
his hair blown off by the cool breeze. They call this a prison--the
pleasantest quarters in Honolulu.

There are four wards, and one hundred and thirty-two prisoners can be
housed in rare and roomy comfort within them.

There were a number of native women in the female department. Poor
devils, they hung their heads under the prying eyes of our party as if
they were really ashamed of being there.

In the condemned cell and squatting on the floor, all swathed in
blankets, as if it were cold weather, was a brown-faced, gray-bearded
old scalliwag, who, in a frolicsome mood, had massacred three women and
a batch of children--his own property, I believe--and reflects upon
that exploit with genuine satisfaction to this hour, and will go to the
gallows as tranquilly indifferent as a white man would go to dinner.

OUT AT THE BACK DOOR

The prison-yard--that sad inclosure which, in the prisons of my native
America, is a cheerless barren and yieldeth no vegetation save the
gallows-tree, with its sorrowful human fruit--is a very garden! The
beds, bordered by rows of inverted bottles (the usual style here), were
filled with all manner of dainty flowers and shrubs: Chinese mulberry
and orange trees stood here and there, well stocked with fruit; a
beautiful little pine tree--rare, and imported from the far South
Seas--occupied the center, with sprays of gracefully arching green
spears springing outward like parasol tops, at marked and regular
intervals, up its slender stem, and diminishing in diameter with
mathematical strictness of graduation, till the sprouting plume at the
top stood over a perfect pyramid. Vines clambered everywhere and hid
from view and clothed with beauty everything that might otherwise have
been suggestive of chains and captivity. There was nothing here to
remind one of the prison save a brace of dove cotes, containing several
pretty birds brought hither from "strange, strange lands beyond the
sea." These, sometimes, may pine for liberty and their old free life
among the clouds or in the shade of the orange groves, or abroad on the
breezy ocean--but if they do, it is likely they take it out in pining,
as a general thing.

CAPTAIN TAIT, SCRIPTURAL STUDENT

Against one wall of the prison house stands an airy little building
which does duty as a hospital. A harmless old lunatic, named Captain
Tait, has his quarters here. He has a wife and children in the town,
but he prefers the prison hospital, and has demanded and enjoyed its
hospitality (slip of the pen--no joke intended) for years. He visits his
family at long intervals--being free to go and come as he pleases--but
he always drifts back to the prison again after a few days. His is a
religious mania, and he professes to read sixty chapters of the Bible
every day, and write them down in a book. He was about down to chapter
thirty-five when I was introduced to him, I should judge, as it was
nearly two in the afternoon.

I said, "What book are you reading, Captain?"

"The precious of the precious--the book of books--the Sacred Scriptures,
sir."

"Do you read a good deal in it?"

"Sixty chapters every day (with a perceptible show of vanity, but a
weary look in the eye withal)--sixty chapters every day, and write them
all down in a plain, legible hand."

"It is a good deal. At that rate, you must ultimately get through, and
run short of material."

"Ah, but the Lord looks out for his own. I am in His hands--He does with
me as He wills. I often read some of the same chapters over again,
for the Lord tells me what to read, and it is not for me to choose.
Providence always shows me the place."

"No hanging fire?--I mean, can you always depend on--on this information
coming to time every day, so to speak?"

"Always--always, sir. I take the sacred volume in my hand, in
this manner, every morning, in a devout and prayerful spirit, and
immediately, and without any volition on my part, my fingers insert
themselves between the leaves--so directed from above (with a sanctified
glance aloft)--and I know that the Lord desires me to open at that place
and begin. I never have to select the chapter myself--the Lord always
does it for me."

I heard Brown mutter, "The old man appears to have a good thing,
anyway--and his poi don't cost him anything, either; Providence looks
out for his regular sixty, the prison looks out for his hash, and his
family looks out for itself. I've never seen any sounder maniac than
him, and I've been around considerable."

GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON

We were next introduced to General George Washington, or, at least, to
an aged, limping negro man, who called himself by that honored name. He
was supposed to be seventy years old, and he looked it. He was as crazy
as a loon, and sometimes, they say, he grows very violent. He was a
Samson in a small way; his arms were corded with muscle, and his legs
felt as hard as if they were made of wood. He was in a peaceable mood
at present, and strongly manacled. They have a hard time with him
occasionally, and some time or other he will get in a lively way and eat
up the garrison of that prison, no doubt. The native soldiers who guard
the place are afraid of him, and he knows it.

His history is a sealed book--or at least all that part of it which
transpired previously to the entry of his name as a pensioner upon the
Hawaiian Government fifteen years ago. He was found carrying on at a
high rate at one of the other islands, and it is supposed he was put
ashore there from a vessel called the Olive Branch. He has evidently
been an old sailor, and it is thought he was one of a party of negroes
who fitted out a ship and sailed from a New England port some twenty
years ago. He is fond of talking in his dreamy, incoherent way, about
the Blue Ridge in Virginia, and seems familiar with Richmond and
Lynchburg. I do not think he is the old original General W.

ALOFT

Upstairs in the prison are the handsome apartments used by the officers
of the establishment--also a museum of quaint and curious weapons of
offense and defense, of all nations and all ages of the world. The
prison is to a great extent a self-supporting institution, through the
labor of the convicts farmed out to load and unload ships and work on
the highways, and I am not sure but that it supports itself and pays a
surplus into the public treasury besides, but I have no note of this,
and I seldom place implicit confidence in my memory in matters where
figures and finance are concerned and have not been thought of for
a fortnight. This Government Prison is in the hands of W. C. Parke,
Marshal of the Kingdom, and he has small need to be ashamed of his
management of it. Without wishing to betray too much knowledge of such
matters, I should say that this is the model prison of the western half
of the world, at any rate.

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, May 22, 1866

Honolulu, April, 1866.

SAD ACCIDENT

I have just met an estimable lady--Mrs. Captain Jollopson, whose husband
(with her assistance) commands the whaling bark Lucretia Wilkerson--and
she said:

"Oh, I've never had such a time of it! I'm clean out of luck, I do
believe. The wind's been dead ahead with me all this day. It appears to
me that I can't do no way but that it comes out wrong. First, I turned
out this morning and says I, 'Here's a go--eight bells and no duff yet!
I just know it's going to blow great guns for me to-day.' And so it's
come out. Start fair, sail fair; otherwise, just the reverse. Well, I
hove on my dress and cleared for the market, and took the big basket,
which I don't do when I'm alone, because I'm on the short lay when it
comes to eating; but when the old man's in port, it's different, you
know, and I go fixed when I recruit for him--never come back in ballast
then, because he's on the long lay, and it's expensive too; you can
depend on it, his leakage and shrinkage shows up on his home bills when
he goes out of port, and it's all on account of recruiting, too--though
he says it's on account of toggery for me, which is a likely yarn, when
I can't even buy a set of new halliards for my bonnet but he growls, and
what few slops I do have I've got to smuggle 'em; and yet, bless you, if
we were to ship 'em the freight on mine wouldn't pay primage on his--but
where was I? Oh, yes--I hove on my dress and hove down toward the
market, and while I was laying off and on before the Post Office, here
comes a ship keeper round the corner three sheets in the wind and his
deadlights stove in, and I see by the way he was bulling that if he
didn't sheer off and shorten sail he'd foul my larboard stuns'l boom,
which I had my basket on--because, you see, he'd been among his friends
having a bit of a gam, and had got about one fid too much aboard, and
his judgment had fetched away in the meantime, and so he steered bad,
and was making latitude all the time when he ought to have been making
longitude, and here he was to wind'ard of me, but making so much leeway
that--well, you see how it was. I backed off fast as I could, and sung
out to him to port his helm, but it warn't no use; he'd everything
drawing and I had considerable sternway, and he just struck me a little
abaft the beam, and down I went, head on, and skunned my elbow!" I said,
"Bless my life!" And she said, "Well you may say it! My! such a jolt! It
started everything. It's worse'n being pulled! I shouldn't wonder if I'd
have to be hove down--" and then she spread her hand alongside of her
mouth and sung out, "Susy, ahoy!" to another woman, who rounded to
to wait for her, and the two fell off before the wind and sailed away
together.

TRANSLATION

"Eight bells" stands for the closing of a watch--two to an hour, four
hours to a watch, six watches in a day--on board ship.

"Duff" is Jack Tar's dessert--a sort of dough, with dried apples or
something of the kind in it on extra occasions.

"Cleared" for the market--A ship "clears" for her voyage when she takes
out her papers at the Custom house.

"Short lay" and "long lay"--These phrases are confined to the whaling
interest. Neither the officers nor men get any wages on a whaleship,
but receive, instead, a proportion of all the bone and oil taken; Jack
usually gets about the one-hundred-and-twentieth part of all the "catch"
(or profits of the voyage), for his share, and this is called a "long
lay"; the Captain generally gets a tenth, twelfth or fourteenth, which
is a "short lay," and the other officers in proportion. Some Captains
also have perquisites besides their "lay"--a dollar or more on every
barrel of the "catch," over a certain number. The luckiest Captain of
the lot made $50,000 last season. Very good for a few months work.
When a ship is ready to sail and must suddenly supply the place of
some seaman who has fallen sick, candidates will take advantage of the
circumstances and demand as short a "lay" as a second mate's to ship as
the last man and complete the crew. I am informed (but I do not believe
it), that this is termed the "Lay of the Last Minstrel."

"Recruit"--The whaling voyage to the North Seas occupies about seven
months; then the vessel returns to Honolulu, tranships her oil to the
States, refits and goes over to the coast of California about November
or December, to put in her idle time catching hump-back whales or devil
fish, returning here along in March and April to "recruit"--that is,
procure vegetables, and especially potatoes, which are a protective
against scurvy, and give the men a few days run on shore, and then off
for the north again as early in the Spring as possible. Those vessels
which do not consider the coast fishing profitable, because of the
"stoving" of boats by the savage hump-backs and the consequent loss of
men and material, go to "west'ard," as they term going down to the line
after sperm whales; and when they have finished this "between season,"
they go over and "recruit" at Japan, and from thence proceed directly
north.

"Leakage and Shrinkage"--When a whaler returns here with her cargo, the
United States Consul estimates its probable value in the East, and buys
the interests of the officers and men on behalf of the owners of the
ship, and pays for the same in gold. To secure the ship-owner against
loss, a bill of contingencies is brought against poor Jack by the Consul
(leakage and shrinkage being among the items), which reduces the profits
of his long voyage about one-half or two-thirds. For instance, take the
case of the whaling bark--last year. The Consul considered oil to be
worth between one dollar and seventy-five cents and two dollars a
gallon (in greenbacks) in the States; he put it down at one dollar and
seventy-five cents to be on the safe side, and then reduced as follows:

First--Premium to be paid for money, and difference between gold and
paper--so much. (Jack must be paid in gold.)

Second--An allowance of eight per cent., for probable leakage and
shrinkage of the oil on its homeward voyage.

Third--Freight on the homeward voyage--paid by Jack.

Fourth--Interest and insurance on the cargo hence to the States--paid by
Jack.

Fifth--Commission of the owner at home (2 1/2 per cent.) for selling the
cargo--paid by Jack.

And after all these reductions, what do you suppose the Consul paid Jack
for his one hundred and twentieth "lay" in a cargo of oil worth over
$1.75 a gallon at home? He paid him seventy-four cents a gallon. As a
general thing, the ship-owner at home makes a princely profit out of
this "gouging" of the sailor-man; but instances have occurred--rarely,
however--where the price set by the Consul here was so much above the
real value of the oil at home, that all the gouging was not sufficient
to save the ship-owner from loss.

"Home Bills"--It makes no difference how much money a sailor brings
into port, he is soon head over heels in debt. In order to secure his
services on a voyage, the ship is obliged to assume this indebtedness.
The item is entered against Jack on the ship's books at the home port in
the East as his "home bill." If the voyage proves lucky, the ship gets
even on Jack's home bill by subtracting it from his "lay;" but if she
takes no oil she must pay the bill anyhow, and is "out and injured," of
course. These "home bills" are first assumed by one of the professional
"sharks" in New Bedford and New London who furnish crews to ships; say
Jack owes fifty dollars; the shark enters his name for a voyage, assumes
his debt, advances him a dollar or so for a farewell spree, and takes
his note for $150; and the ship owner agrees to cash it at the end of
six months. Ships have left port responsible for $5,000 home bills,
lost four or five men by desertion, been to great trouble and expense
to supply other men, and then had no luck and failed to catch a single
whale.

"Slops"--Improvident Jack is apt to leave port short of jackets,
trousers, shirts, tobacco, pipes, letter paper, and so forth and so on.
The ship takes a large quantity of these things along, and supplies them
to him at extremely healthy prices, so that sometimes, after a long,
unlucky voyage, no wages and heavy home bills and bills for "slops,"
Jack will return to port very considerably in debt to the ship, and the
ship must stand the loss, for an unprofitable voyage squares all such
accounts. In squaring up a voyage before the Consul, the ship-Captain
piles up the slop bills as high as he can get them, though it does not
put a single cent in his own pocket; he forgets, in his enthusiasm for
his owner's interest, that while he is gouging Jack for the benefit of
"the firm," the firm are gouging himself, and Jack too, by the system
of Consular assessment I have mentioned above. The Captain says to the
Consul:

"Put down three pair of boots on this man's slop bill."

Jack--"But I didn't have but one pair, sir."

Captain--"Belay! Don't talk back; you might have had 'em if you'd a'
wanted 'em. And put him down for eleven pair of socks."

Jack--"But I only had two pair, sir."

Captain--"Well,--it, is that any o' my fault? they there for anybody
that wanted 'em? And set him down for two ream of letter paper."

Jack--"Why, I never writ a letter whilst I was gone, sir."

Captain--"Hold your yop! Do you cal'late for me to be responsible for
all your dam foolishness? You might have had four ream, if you'd wanted
it. And set on ten per cent. for other truck, which I don't recollect
what it was."

And so Jack is gouged by the Captain, for the owner's exclusive benefit,
and both are fleeced by that same owner with strict impartiality.
Perhaps the Captain's "lay" will go East to be sold, and "the firm" will
sell at a dollar and a half and then report to him that the market had
fallen and they only got a dollar for it. Thus ungrateful are they to
the Captain who gouged the seaman on his "slops" for their sole benefit.

"Primage"--This term obtains in most seaports. No man can tell now
what gave it birth, for it is very ancient, and its origin is long ago
forgotten. It is a tax of five per cent. on a ship's freight bills, and
in old times went to her captain. In our day, however, it goes to the
ship-owner with the other freight money (although it forms a separate
item in the freight bill), or is turned over to the agent who procured a
cargo for a vessel, as his commission. When you engage for the shipment
of a lot of freight, you make no mention of this five per cent. primage,
but you perfectly understand that it will be added, and you must pay
it; therefore, when you are ostensibly shipping at twenty cents, you are
really shipping at twenty-one.

"Laying off and on"--A sailor phrase, sufficiently well understood by
landsmen to need no explanation.

"Ship-keeper"--A man who stands guard on a whaler and takes care of the
ship when the boats and the crew are off after whales.

"Bulling"--A term usually applied to the chafing of vessels together
when riding at anchor in harbors subject to chopping swells. Some
whalers say that one reason why they avoid San Francisco is that
this "bulling" process in our Bay is more damaging to their vessels,
frequently, than a long voyage.

"Gam"--The whaleman's phrase for gossip--very common here.

"Fid"--The whaleman's term for our "smile"--drink. A fid is an
instrument which the sailor uses when he splices the main brace on board
ship.

"Fetched away"--A nautical phrase signifying to break loose from
fastenings in a storm--such as the fetching away of furniture, rigging,
etc.

"Skunned"--After examining various authors I have discovered that this
is a provincial distortion of our word "skinned."

"Pulled"--A term signifying the arraigning of a ship's officers before
the Courts by the crew to answer for alleged cruelties practiced upon
them on the high seas--such as the "pulling" of captains and mates by
the crews of the Mercury, the White Swallow, the Great Republic, etc.,
in the San Francisco Courts. Here is another reason why, out of the
eighty seven American whaleships that will fish in the North seas this
Summer, only about sixteen will venture to touch at San Francisco
either going or coming: they find it safer and cheaper to rendezvous and
procure supplies here, and save 4,200 miles extra sailing, than to
start from, and return to, San Francisco and run the chance of getting
"pulled." Honolulu would not amount to anything at all without her
whaling trade, and so Jack cannot "pull" his Captain here--no matter
what his grievance was, he could not easily get it before these Courts;
the lawyer who ventured to take his case would stand a fair chance of
being run out of town by the enraged community. But the whaler-man says,
"You drop into 'Frisco and great Neptune! your men'll pull you before
you get your anchor down--and there you are for three months, on
expenses, waiting on them Courts; and they'll go in and swear to the
infernalest pack of lies, and the jury'll believe every word of it, and
the Judge'll read you a sermon that'll take the hair off your head,
and then he'll take and jam you into a jail. Oh, no; it don't pay a
whale-ship to stop at San Francisco."

"Hove down"--In ports where there are [no] docks, damaged vessels are
hauled out and "hove down" on their sides when repairs to their bottoms
are required.

By this time, if you will go back and read the first paragraphs of this
letter you may be able to understand them.

Every section of our western hemisphere seems supplied with a system
of technicalities, etiquette and slang, peculiar to itself. The above
chapter is intended to give you a somewhat exaggerated idea of the
technicalities of conversation in Honolulu--bred from the great whaling
interest which centers here, and naturally infused in to the vocabulary
of the place. Your favorite California similes were bred from the
technicalities of surface mining--those of Washoe come from the profound
depths of the "main lead," and those of the Honoluluian were born
of whalebone, blubber and the traffic of the seas. Perhaps no single
individual would use more than two or three of the nautical and whaling
phrases I have quoted, in any one conversation, but you might hear all
of them in the course of a week, if you talked with a good many people.

And etiquette varies according to one's surroundings. In the mining
camps of California, when a friend tenders you a "smile" or invites you
to take a "blister," it is etiquette to say, "Here's hoping your dirt'll
pan out gay." In Washoe, when you are requested to "put in a blast," or
invited to take "your regular pison," etiquette admonishes you to touch
glasses and say, "Here's hoping you'll strike it rich in the lower
level." And in Honolulu, when your friend the whaler asks you to take a
"fid" with him, it is simple etiquette to say, "Here's eighteen hundred
barrels, old salt!" But "Drink hearty!" is universal. That is the
orthodox reply, the world over.

In San Francisco sometimes, if you offend a man, he proposes to take his
coat off, and inquires, "Are you on it?" If you are, you can take your
coat off, too. In Virginia City, in former times, the insulted party,
if he were a true man, would lay his hand gently on his six-shooter and
say, "Are you heeled?" But in Honolulu, if Smith offends Jones, Jones
asks (with a rising inflection on the last word, which is excessively
aggravating), "How much do you weigh?" Smith replies, "Sixteen hundred
and forty pound--and you?" "Two ton to a dot, at a quarter past eleven
this forenoon--peel yourself; you're my blubber!"



APOLOGETIC AND EXPLANATORY

When I began this letter I meant to furnish some facts and figures
concerning the great Pacific whaling traffic, to the end that San
Francisco might take into consideration the expediency of making an
effort to divert the patronage of the fleet to herself, if it seemed
well to do so; and chiefly I meant to try and explain why that patronage
does not gravitate to that center naturally and of its own accord. True,
many know the reason already, and need no explanation, but many more do
not understand it so well or know so much about it. But not being in a
sufficiently serious mood to-day, I have wisely left for my next letter
the discussion of a subject of such overwhelming gravity.

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, May 23, 1866

Honolulu, April, 1866.

THE WHALING TRADE

The whaling trade of the North Seas--which is by no means
insignificant--centers in Honolulu. Shorn of it this town would die--its
businessmen would leave and its real estate would become valueless, at
least as city property, though Honolulu might flourish afterwards as
a fine sugar plantation, the soil being rich, and scarcely needing
irrigation.

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce might do worse than make an
effort to divert the whaling trade to her city. Honolulu fits out and
provisions a majority out of ninety-six whalers this year, and receives
a very respectable amount of money for it. Last year she performed this
service for only fifty-one vessels--so you can see how the trade is
increasing. Sailors always spend all their money before they leave port.
Last year they spent $150,000 here, and will doubtless spend double as
much when this year's fleet returns. It is said that in the palmy days
of whaling, fifteen or twenty years ago, they have squandered as high
as a million and a half in this port at the end of a successful
voyage. There have been vast fleets of whaleships fitted out here
and provisioned and recruited in a single year, in those days, and
everything promises that the whaling interest will now move steadily
forward, under the impetus of the long continued high rates of oil and
bone, until it eclipses in importance any degree it has ever attained
in former times. In chartering vessels to carry home the "catch" of
whalers; in equipping them, and supplying and recruiting them--and
in relieving their crews of their money at the end of the season, San
Francisco might manage to get several hundred thousands a year out of
the whaling trade if she could get it into her hands, or a million or
so, should whaling again reach its former high prosperity.

It costs from $l,000 all the way up to $20,000 to provision and fit a
whaler here for her voyage to the North Seas, including paying off crew,
and taking them "by and large," the average is about $6,000 to each
vessel. Of the ninety-six ships which go north from here this season,
only forty-nine will fit here--the other forty-seven, being the increase
in tonnage and on their first voyage, were equipped at home. The home
equipment is generally for two full seasons--so Honolulu will not get
the job of supplying these new ships for a couple of years yet; but
after that she will have their whole custom, unless, perhaps, San
Francisco can make a satisfactory bid for the whaling trade in the
meantime.

There have been over four hundred whalers in the North Seas at one time
in the palmy days of the trade, two thirds of which were supplied in
this market, and paid Honolulu over a million for doing it, even at the
moderate prices of those days.

CONCERNING OIL AND BONE

Oil is valuable, but whalebone is more so.

Sperm whales are chiefly caught at the "line," or "west'art," as they
term it. They do not yield any bone, but the oil is worth from 75 to 100
per cent. more than any other at the present time.

Humpbacks and devil-fish are caught on the coast of California, "between
seasons." The yield is called "coast oil." They yield no bone.

Ockotsk whales yield about twenty per cent. less bone than the Arctic
whale, and it is worth four to five cents a pound less than Arctic.

The "catch" is a term which signifies the fruits of a voyage. The
average catch for three years past of ships sailing out of this port,
was about 650 barrels of oil a year to each vessel, and 8,000 pounds of
bone.

CONSULAR PRICES

The Consular prices at which crews of whalers were paid off here in the
Fall of 1865 were as follows: Whale oil, 64 cents a gallon; coast oil,
60; sperm oil, 92. Ochotsk bone, 74 cents a pound; Arctic, 78--in gold.
These prices were not one-half what the articles were worth in the
Eastern markets--in currency.

PAST AND PRESENT

The "palmy days of whaling"--the phrase which one hears here as often
as he hears in California of matters which transpired "in an early day"
there, or in Washoe of "the flush times of '63"--refers to a period some
fifteen years gone by. But the "palmy days," in a modified form, lasted
clear up to 1853. Let me give a few figures: The fleet brought to this
port in 1853--Oil, 4,000,000 gallons; bone, 2,020,264 pounds. Then for
several years the yield gradually fell away, till in 1858 the figures
were: Oil, considerable under 3,000,000 gallons; bone, 1,614,710 pounds.
Five years after, in 1863, in the midst of the war, the catch had fallen
away down to--Oil, 732,031 gallons; bone, 337,043 pounds. Still lower in
1864: Oil, 642, 362 gallons; bone, 339,331 pounds. But in 1865, in spite
of the pirate Shenandoah, the trade almost held its own; it had "struck
bottom," as we say in Washoe, and was ready to start up again. The yield
was: Oil, 621,434 gallons; bone, 337,394 pounds.

These last figures were for sixty seven ships, all told--fifty-one of
which went from here. We may look for better results this season, with
ninety-six vessels in the fleet; and next year the "palmy days" may
come again, for everything that can be turned into a whale ship by any
process known to art is being bought up or chartered in the East now
for this trade, and in due time the icy solitudes of the North Seas will
once more become populous with the winged servants of commerce.

WHAT COMMANDS THE WHALER PATRONAGE

I have talked whaler talk and read whaling statistics and asked
questions about the whaling interest every now and then for two or three
weeks, and have discovered that it was easy to get plausible information
concerning every point connected with this commerce save one, and that
was: Why is it that this remote port, in a foreign country, is made the
rendezvous of the whaling fleet, instead of the seemingly more eligible
one of San Francisco, on our own soil? This was a "stunner." Most people
would venture a chance shot at one portion of the mystery, but nobody
was willing to attempt its entire solution. The truth seems to be that
there is no main, central, prominent reason for it, but it is made up
of a considerable bundle of reasons, neither of which is especially
important when taken by itself.

SAN FRANCISCO VS. HONOLULU

1. See how the case stands: In Honolulu it is not a holiday job to ship
a crew, natives comprise it chiefly, and the Government frowns upon
their employment as sailors, because it causes the agricultural
interests to suffer for want of labor, and you see the plantations build
up the whole kingdom, while the whaling trade only builds up Honolulu
and one or two smaller seaports. So the Government first made the
whalers enter into bonds of $100 for each man; that is, to insure the
return of that man to the kingdom; the bond was increased, until now it
is $300, and shipping taxes of various kinds have been instituted, which
amount altogether to about $600 for each man, which must be paid in gold
to the Government when the man ships. Ships usually go out under bonds
of $3,000 to $10,000 for the return of their crews. The bond system,
which was intended to keep the Kanakas all at home, don't work; the
whalers still are obliged to take natives or go without crews. So,
urged by the agricultural interest, an attempt will be made in the
Legislature, which convenes two weeks hence, to pass a bill entirely
forbidding the shipping of natives. If this is accomplished it will give
San Francisco one good chance to get the whaling patronage--and it is
a better and more permanent and safer thing to have than rich but
ephemeral mines. In favor of San Francisco, it is acknowledged that
as soon as it became the established whaling rendezvous, whaling crews
would repair to it, and men could be shipped at small expense and
without bonds.

2. It is twenty-one hundred miles from San Francisco to Honolulu--so
that these whalers, by coming here, do four thousand two hundred miles
more sailing than they need to do, and waste about a month and a half of
time in doing it.

3. They cannot insure directly, here. The policies must go all the way
to the East, and then maybe the insurance office may approve them and
maybe it may reject them, and per chance the ship may be lost in the
meantime.

In San Francisco insurance could be directly effected.

4. Here the whole whaling fleet, nearly, is paid off at once, and in
gold, and of course exchange goes up to a high figure; started at five
or six, last Fall, and went up to ten per cent premium. It stands at two
and a half even now, when there is no especial call for money.

In San Francisco it need never go to two and a half at any time. Whale
men's bills are the best paper in the country, being always sure and
prompt, scarcely a single failure to pay them is recorded.

5. Facilities for transhipment of oil eastward would be much greater in
San Francisco than here.

6. Facilities for chartering, equipping, provisioning and recruiting
whalers would be much greater and cheaper in San Francisco than here.

7. Here it takes a mild eternity for a whaler or his agent to
communicate with the ship-owner at home. In San Francisco, your
steamers, overland stages and telegraphs bring them face to face.

I think I have stated the case fairly. In facilities for shipping crews,
in economy of time and distance of travel of a voyage, in facilities for
insuring, in cheapness of money, in facilities for transhipping cargoes,
ditto ditto for chartering and equipping vessels, and ditto ditto for
communicating with owners, Honolulu cannot begin to compete with San
Francisco.

Then why does the whaling fleet rendezvous in a remote port in a foreign
land, instead of a convenient one at home?

AN ATTEMPT AT A SOLUTION

I have got the question answered by piecemeal by many different persons,
and I will jot down the several items here. They say it is hard to get
crews in San Francisco, but they confess that this would not be the case
if that city became the established rendezvous. They say men can "run
away" so easily there, and put the ship in for their "home bills,"
etc., but that here they can't get off the islands. They say the ship is
preyed upon by everybody, and fleeced for everything from spun yarn
up to salt beef. They say their ships are worn out by "bulling" in the
harbor there, but the harbor is smooth and roomy here. And they say,
finally (and then the old sea dogs gnash their teeth and swear till the
air turns blue around them), that "there's more land-sharks (lawyers)
in 'Frisco than there's fiddlers in hell, I tell you; and you'll get
'pulled' before your anchor's down!" If there is a main, central count
in the indictment against San Francisco that is it. A whaler can be
snatched up ("pulled") by his men and the land-sharks, and hauled into
Court in San Francisco with the utmost facility, but they can not touch
him here. The lawyer who took charge of a sailor's complaint against his
Captain might as well emigrate--he could practice no more in Honolulu.
True, when a case is so flagrant that it cannot possibly be overlooked,
a sort of trial is sometimes had, but it never amounts to much.

The above are the whaling Captain's arguments--or were, in the first
place, but from their mouths they have gone into everybody's else, and
belong to nobody in particular now. Then there are other arguments which
you hear oftener from other people than from the whalers themselves.
For instance, several persons have explained about in this wise: In San
Francisco the agent transacts the Captain's business exactly as it is
done here, and then brings in a bill, item by item, for commissions--a
bill that any man can understand in a minute, and it looks expensive;
but here the agent, with fine sagacity, charges no commissions--at least
they do not appear on the surface--they are faithfully wrung into the
general bill in a sort of "debtor to sundries" fashion, though, and
nobody notices it, and consequently nobody grumbles!

Another powerful argument may be stated thus: A whaleman don't amount to
much in San Francisco, but here he is the biggest frog in the pond. Up
there the agent lets him dance attendance until more important business
is attended to, and then goes out with him and assists him in just such
of his concerns as absolutely require assistance, and then leaves him to
paddle his own canoe with the remainder; but here the agent welcomes the
old salt like a long lost brother, and makes him feel that he is a man
of consequence and so he is, and should be so treated in San Francisco;
and the agent attends closely to all the whaler's shore business, of
every kind whatever, if it is desired, and thus the Captain's stay in
port is a complete holiday.

A SUGGESTION

If I were going to advise San Franciscans as to the best strategy to
employ in order to secure the whaling trade, I would say, cripple your
facilities for "pulling" sea-captains on every pretense that sailors can
trump up, and show the whaler a little more consideration when he is in
port. All other objections will die of themselves.

A STEP MADE

A nucleus is already formed up there. Swift & Allen have opened a branch
of their New Bedford house in San Francisco, and their ships (they have
eight at sea now) will rendezvous there hereafter. They are going to
add several vessels to their fleet this season. Sixteen whalers, and
possibly many more, will rendezvous at San Francisco this year.
Those Captains who have tried that port during the past two years are
satisfied with it all but one or two, who have been "pulled."

MARK TWAIN.

Return to Sacramento Daily Union index

The Sacramento Daily Union, May 24, 1866

Honolulu, April, 1866.

PARADISE AND THE PARI (JOKE)

I have ridden up the handsome Nuuanu Valley; noted the mausoleum of the
departed Kings of Hawaii by the wayside; admired the neat residences,
surrounded by beautiful gardens that border the turnpike; stood, at
last, after six miles of travel, on the famous Pari--the "divide," we
would call it--and looked down the precipice of six or eight hundred
feet, over which old Kamehameha I drove the army of the King of Oahu
three-quarters of a century ago; and gazed upward at the sharp peak
close at my left, springing several hundred feet above my head like
a colossal church spire--stood there and saw the sun go down and the
little plain below and the sea that bordered it become shrouded in thick
darkness; and then saw the full moon rise up and touch the tops of the
billows, skip over the gloomy valley and paint the upper third of
the high peak as white as silver; and heard the ladies say: "Oh,
beautiful!--and such a strong contrast!" and heard the gentlemen remark:
"By George! talk about scenery! how's that?"

It was all very well, but the same place in daylight does not make so
fine a picture as the Kalihi Valley (pronounced Kah-lee-he, stress on
the second syllable). All citizens talk about the Pari; all strangers
visit it the first thing; all scribblers write about it--but nobody
talks or writes about or visits the Pari's charming neighbor, the Kalihi
Valley. I think it was a fortunate accident that led me to stumble into
this enchanted ground.

ANOTHER PARADISE

For a mile or two we followed a trail that branched off from the
terminus of the turnpike that leads past the Government prison, and
bending close around the rocky point of a foothill we found ourselves
fairly in the valley, and the panorama began to move. After a while
the trail took the course of a brook that came down the center of the
narrowing canyon, and followed it faithfully throughout its eccentric
windings. On either side the ground rose gradually for a short distance,
and then came the mountain barriers--densely wooded precipices on the
right and left, that towered hundreds of feet above us, and up which one
might climb about as easily as he could climb up the side of a house. It
was a novel sort of scenery, those mountain walls. Face around and
look straight across at one of them, and sometimes it presented a bold,
square front, with small inclination out of the perpendicular; move on
a little and look back, and it was full of sharp ridges, bright with
sunlight, and with deep, shady clefts between and what had before seemed
a smooth bowlder, set in among the thick shrubbery on the face of the
wall, was now a bare rampart of stone that projected far out from the
mass of green foliage, and was as sharply defined against the sky as
if it had been built of solid masonry by the hand of man. Ahead the
mountains looked portly--swollen, if you please--and were marked all
over, up and down, diagonally and crosswise, by sharp ribs that reminded
one of the fantastic ridges which the wind builds of the drifting
snow on a plain. Sometimes these ridges were drawn all about the upper
quarter of a mountain, checking it off in velvety green squares and
diamonds and triangles, some beaming with sunlight and others softly
shaded--the whole upper part of the mountain looking something like a
vast green veil thrown over some object that had a good many edges and
corners to it--then a sort of irregular "eaves" all around, and from
this the main body of the mountain swept down, with a slight outward
curve, to the valley below. All over these highlands the forest trees
grew so thickly that, even close at hand, they seemed like solid banks
of foliage. These trees were principally of two kinds--the koa and the
kukui--the one with a very light green leaf and the other with a dark
green. Occasionally there were broad alternate belts of each extending
diagonally from the mountain's bases to their summits, and here and
there, in the midst of the dark green, were great patches of the bright
light-colored leaves, so that, to look far down the valley, along the
undulating front of the barrier of peaks, the effect was as if the sun
were streaming down upon it through breaks and rifts in the clouds,
lighting up belts at intervals all along, and leaving those intervening
darkened by the shadows of the clouds; and yet there was not a shred
of a cloud in the whole firmament! It was very soft, and dreamy, and
beautiful. And following down the two tall ridges that walled the valley
in, we saw them terminate at last in two bold, black headlands that came
together like a V, and across this gate ran a narrow zone of the most
brilliant light green tint (the shoal water of the distant sea, between
reef and shore), and beyond this the somber blue of the deeper water
stretched away to the horizon. The varied picture of the lights and
shadows on the wooded mountains, the strong, dark outlines of the gate,
and the bright green water and the belt of blue beyond, was one replete
with charming contrasts and beautiful effects--a revelation of fairy
land itself.

The mountain stream beside us, brawling over its rocky bed, leaped over
a miniature precipice occasionally, and then reposed for a season in a
limpid pool at her base, reflecting the dank and dripping vines and fans
that clung to the wall and protruded in bunches and festoons through
breaks in the sparkling cascade. On the gentle rising ground about us
were shady groves of forest trees--the kou, the koa, the bread-fruit,
the lau hala, the orange, lime, bukui, and many others; and, handsomest
of all, the ohia, with its feathery tufts of splendid vermilion-tinted
blossoms, a coloring so vivid as to be almost painful to the eye.
Large tracts were covered with large hau (how) bushes, whose sheltering
foliage is so thick as to be almost impervious to rain. It is spotted
all over with a rich yellow flower, shaped something like a tea cup and
sometimes it is further embellished by innumerable white bell shaped
blossoms, that grow upon a running vine with a name unknown to me. Here
and there were wide crops of bushes completely overgrown and hidden
beneath the glossy green leaves of another species of vine, and so dense
was this covering that it would hardly be possible for a bird to fly
through it. Then there were open spaces well carpeted with grass, and
sylvan avenues that wound hither and thither till they lost themselves
among the trees. In one open spot a vine of the species I last mentioned
had taken possession of two tall dead stumps and wound around and about
them, and swung out from their tops and twined their meeting tendrils
together into a faultless arch. Man, with all his art, could not have
improved its symmetry.

Verily, with its rank luxuriance of vines and blossoms, its groves of
forest trees, its shady nooks and grassy lawns, its crystal brook and
its wild and beautiful mountain scenery, with that charming far-off
glimpse of the sea, Kalihi is the Valley of Enchantment come again!

SAM BRANNAN'S PALACE

While I am on the subject of scenery, I might as well speak of Sam
Brannan's palace, or "the Bungalow," as it is popularly called. Years
ago it was built and handsomely furnished by Shillaber, now of San
Francisco, at a cost of between thirty and forty thousand dollars,
and in the day of its glory must have considerably outshone its regal
neighbor, the palace of the king. It was a large mansion, with compact
walls of coral; dimensions, say, 60 or 70 feet front and 80 feet depth,
perhaps, including the ample verandah or portico in front; this portico
was supported by six or eight tall fluted Corinthian columns, some three
feet in diameter; a dozen coral steps led up to the portico from the
ground, and these extended the whole length of the front; there were
four rooms on the main floor, some twenty-four feet square, each, and
about twenty feet high, besides a room or so of smaller dimensions. When
its white paint was new, this must have been a very stately edifice. But
finally it passed into Brannan's hands--for the sum of thirty thousand
dollars (never mind the particulars of the transaction)--and it has been
going to decay for the past ten years. It has arrived there now, and
it is the completest ruin I ever saw. One or two of the pillars have
fallen, and lie like grand Theban ruins, diagonally across the wide
portico; part of the roof of the portico has caved down, and a huge
gridiron of plasterless lathing droops from above and threatens the head
of the apostrophizing stranger; the windows are dirty, and some of them
broken; the shutters are unhinged; the elegant doors are marred and
splintered; within, the floors are strewn with debris from the shattered
ceilings, weeds grow in damp mold in obscure corners; lizards peep
curiously out from unsuspected hiding places and then skurry along the
walls and disappear in gaping crevices; the Summer breeze sighs fitfully
through the desolate chambers, and the unforbidden sun looks down
through many a liberal vent in roof and ceiling. The spacious grounds
without are rank with weeds, and the fences are crazy with age and
chronic debility. No more complete and picturesque ruin than the
Bungalow exists to-day in the old world or the new. It is the most
discouraged looking pile the sun visits on its daily round, perhaps. In
the sorrowful expression of its deserted halls, its fallen columns and
its decayed magnificence, it seems to proclaim, in the homely phrase of
California, that it has "got enough pie."

Thomas Jefferson John Quincy Adams, of San Francisco, agent for the
State Agricultural Society of California, and agent of pretty much all
the other institutions of the kind in the world, including the Paris
Exhibition, who has traveled all over these islands during the past
eight months, and gathered more information, and collected more
silkworms, and flowers, and seeds, and done more work and stayed longer
in people's houses an uninvited guest, and got more terrific hints and
had a rougher time generally, on an imperceptible income, than any other
man the century has produced, is Sam Brannan's trusted agent to put the
Bungalow in elegant repair and draw on him for five thousand dollars
for the purpose. It is not possible for me to say when the work will be
commenced or who will take the daring contract--but I can say that so
small a sum as five thousand dollars expended on the Bungalow would only
spoil it as an attractive ruin, without making it amount to much as a
human habitation. Let it alone, Brannan, and give your widely known and
much discussed agent another job.

THE KING'S PALACE

Stands not far from the melancholy Bungalow, in the center of grounds
extensive enough to accommodate a village. The place is surrounded by
neat and substantial coral walks, but the gates pertaining to them are
out of repair, and so was the soldier who admitted us--or at any rate
his uniform was. He was an exception, however, for the native soldiers
usually keep their uniforms in good order. The palace is a large, roomy
frame building, and was very well furnished once, though now some of the
appurtenances have lost some of their elegance. But the King don't
care, I suppose, as he spends nearly all his time at his modest country
residence at Waikiki. A large apartment in the center of the building
serves as the royal council chamber; the walls are hung with life-size
portraits of various European monarchs, sent hither as tokens of that
cousinly regard which exists between all kings, at least on paper. To
the right is the reception room or hall of audience, and to the left are
the library and a sort of anteroom or private audience chamber. In one
of these are life-size portraits of old Kamehameha the Great and one or
two Queens and Princes. The old war-horse had a dark brown, broad and
beardless face, with native intelligence apparent in it, and something
of a crafty expression about the eye; hair white with age and cropped
short; in the picture he is clad in a white shirt, long red vest and
with the famous feather war-cloak over all. We were permitted to examine
the original cloak. It is very ample in its dimensions, and is made
entirely of the small, silky, bright yellow feathers of the man-of-war
or tropic bird, closely woven into a strong, coarse netting of grass by
a process which promises shortly to become a lost art, inasmuch as only
one native, and he an old man, is left who understands it in its highest
elegance. These feathers are rare and costly, because each bird has
but two of them--one under each wing--and the birds are not plenty. It
required several generations to collect the materials and manufacture
this cloak, and had the work been performed in the United States, under
our fine army contract system, it would have cost the Government more
millions of dollars than I can estimate without a large arithmetic and
a blackboard. In old times, when a king put on his gorgeous feather
war-cloak, it meant trouble; some other king and his subjects were going
to catch it. We were shown other war-cloaks, made of yellow feathers,
striped and barred with broad bands of red ones--fine specimens of
barbaric splendor. The broken spear of a terrible chief who flourished
seven hundred years ago, according to the tradition, was also brought
out from among the sacred relics of a former age and displayed. It is
said that this chieftain stood seven feet high without his boots (he
was permanently without them), and was able to snake an enemy out of the
ranks with this spear at a distance of forty to sixty and even a hundred
feet and the spear, of hard, heavy, native wood, was once thirty feet
long. The name of this pagan hero is sounded no more from the trumpet
of fame, his bones lie none knows where, and the record of his gallant
deeds is lost. But he was a "brick," we may all depend upon that. How
the wood of the weapon has managed to survive seven centuries of decay,
though, is a question calculated to worry the antiquaries.

But it is sunrise, now, and time for honest people to begin to "turn
in."

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, June 20, 1866

Honolulu, May 23, 1866

HAWAIIAN LEGISLATURE

I have been reporting the Hawaiian Legislature all day. This is my first
visit to the Capitol. I expected to be present on the 25th of April and
see the King open his Parliament in state and hear his speech, but I was
in Maui then and Legislatures had no charms for me.

The Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom is composed of three estates,
viz.: The King, the Nobles and the Commons or Representatives. The
Nobles are members of the Legislature by right of their nobility--by
blood, if you please--and hold the position for life. They hold the
right to sit, at any rate, though that right is not complete until they
are formally commissioned as Legislators by the King. Prince William,
who is thirty-one years of age, was only so commissioned two years ago,
and is now occupying a seat in the Parliament for the first time. The
King's Ministers belong to the Legislature by virtue of their office.
Formerly the Legislative Assembly consisted of a House of Nobles and a
House of Representatives, and worked separately, but now both estates
sit and vote together. The object of the change was to strengthen the
hands of the Nobles by giving them a chance to overawe the Commons (the
latter being able to outvote the former by about three to one), and it
works well. The handful of Nobles and Ministers, being backed by the
King and acting as his mouthpieces, outweigh the common multitude on the
other side of the House, and carry things pretty much their own way.
It is well enough, for even if the Representatives were to assert their
strength and override the Nobles and pass a law which did not suit the
King, his Majesty would veto the measure and that would be the end of
it, for there is no passing a bill over his veto.

Once, when the legislative bodies were separate and the Representatives
did not act to suit the late King (Kamehameha IV), he took Cromwell's
course--prorogued the Parliament instanter and sent the members about
their business. When the present King called a Convention, a year or two
ago, to frame a new Constitution, he wanted a property qualification to
vote incorporated (universal suffrage was the rule before) and desired
other amendments, which the Convention refused to sanction. He dismissed
them at once, and fixed the Constitution up to suit himself, ratified
it, and it is now the fundamental law of the land, although it has never
been formally ratified and accepted by the people or the Legislature. He
took back a good deal of power which his predecessors had surrendered
to the people, abolished the universal suffrage clause and denied the
privilege of voting to all save such as were possessed of a hundred
dollars worth of real estate or had an income of seventy-five dollars a
year. And, if my opinion were asked, I would say he did a wise thing in
this last named matter.

The King is invested with very great power. But he is a man of good
sense and excellent education, and has an extended knowledge of
business, which he acquired through long and arduous training as
Minister of the Interior under the late King, and therefore he uses his
vast authority wisely and well.

THE CAPITOL--AN AMERICAN SOVEREIGN SNUBBED

The Legislature meets in the Supreme Court-room, an apartment which is
larger, lighter and better fitted and furnished than any Courtroom in
San Francisco. A railing across the center separates the legislators
from the visitors.

When I got to the main entrance of the building, and was about to march
boldly in, I found myself confronted by a large placard, upon which was
printed:

NO ADMITTANCE BY THIS ENTRANCE EXCEPT TO MEMBERS OF THE LEGISLATURE AND
FOREIGN OFFICIALS.

It shocked my republican notions somewhat, but I pocketed the
insinuation that I was not high-toned enough to go in at the front door,
and went around and entered meekly at the back one. If ever I come to
these islands again I will come as the Duke of San Jose, and put on as
many frills as the best of them.

THE KING'S FATHER

I found the Legislature to consist of half a dozen white men and some
thirty or forty natives. It was a dark assemblage. The nobles and
Ministers (about a dozen of them altogether) occupied the extreme left
of the hall, with David Kalakaua (the King's Chamberlain) and Prince
William at the head. The President of the Assembly, His Royal Highness
M. Kekuanaoa, and the Vice President (Rhodes) sat in the pulpit, if I
may so term it.

The President is the King's father. He is an erect, strongly built,
massive featured, white-haired, swarthy old gentleman of 80 years of age
or thereabouts. He was simply but well dressed, in a blue cloth coat
and white vest, and white pantaloons, without spot, dust or blemish upon
them. He bears himself with a calm, stately dignity, and is a man of
noble presence. He was a young man and a distinguished warrior under
that terrific old fighter, Kamehameha I, more than half a century ago,
and I could not help saying to myself, "This man, naked as the day he
was born, and war-club and spear in hand, has charged at the head of a
horde of savages against other hordes of savages far back in the past,
and reveled in slaughter and carnage; has worshiped wooden images on his
bended knees has seen hundreds of his race offered up in heathen temples
as sacrifices to hideous idols, at a time when no missionary's foot had
ever pressed this soil, and he had never heard of the white man's God;
has believed his enemy could secretly pray him to death; has seen the
day, in his childhood, when it was a crime punishable by death for a man
to eat with his wife, or for a plebeian to let his shadow fall upon the
King--and now look at him: an educated Christian: neatly and handsomely
dressed; a high minded, elegant gentleman; a traveler, in some degree,
and one who has been the honored guest of royalty in Europe; a man
practiced in holding the reins of an enlightened government, and
well versed in the politics of his country and in general, practical
information. Look at him, sitting there presiding over the deliberations
of a legislative body, among whom are white men--a grave, dignified,
statesmanlike personage, and as seemingly natural and fitted to the
place as if he had been born in it and had never been out of it in his
lifetime. Lord! how the experiences of this old man's strange, eventful
life must shame the cheap inventions of romance!"

Kekuanaoa is not of the blood royal. He derives his princely rank
from his wife, who was a daughter of Kamehameha the Great. Under other
monarchies the male line takes precedence of the female in tracing
genealogies, but here the opposite is the case--the female line takes
precedence. Their reason for this is exceedingly sensible, and I
recommend it to the aristocracy of Europe: They say it is easy to know
who a man's mother was, but, etc., etc.

A COMPREHENSIVE SLUR

The mental caliber of the Legislative Assembly is up to the average of
such bodies the world over--and I wish it were a compliment to say it,
but it is hardly so. I have seen a number of Legislatures, and there was
a comfortable majority in each of them that knew just about enough to
come in when it rained, and that was all. Few men of first class ability
can afford to let their affairs go to ruin while they fool away their
time in Legislatures for months on a stretch. Few such men care a straw
for the small-beer distinction one is able to achieve in such a place.
But your chattering, one-horse village lawyer likes it, and your solemn
ass from the cow counties, who don't know the Constitution from
the Lord's Prayer, enjoys it, and these you will always find in the
Assembly--the one gabble, gabble, gabbling threadbare platitudes and
"give-me-liberty-or-give me-death" buncombe from morning till night, and
the other asleep, with his slab-soled brogans set up like a couple of
grave-stones on the top of his desk.

Among the Commons in this Legislature are a number of Kanakas with
shrewd, intelligent faces, and a "gift of gab" that is appalling. The
Nobles are able, educated, fine-looking men, who do not talk often, but
when they do they generally say something--a remark which will not apply
to all their white associates in the same house. If I were not ashamed
to digress so often I would like to expatiate a little upon the
noticeable fact that the nobility of this land, as a general thing,
are distinguishable from the common herd by their large stature and
commanding presence, and also set forth the theories in vogue for
accounting for it, but for the present I will pass the subject by.

IN SESSION--BILL RAGSDALE

At 11 A.M. His Royal Highness the President called the House to order.
The roll-call was dispensed with for some reason or other, and the
Chaplain, a venerable looking white man, offered up a prayer in the
native tongue; and I must say that this curious language, with its
numerous vowels and its entire absence of hissing sounds, fell very
softly and musically from his lips. A white Chief Clerk read the Journal
of the preceding day's proceedings in English, and then handed the
document to Bill Ragsdale, a "half white" (half white and half Kanaka),
who translated and clattered it off in Kanaka with a volubility that was
calculated to make a slow-spoken man like me distressingly nervous.

Bill Ragsdale stands up in front of the Speaker's pulpit, with his back
against it, and fastens his quick black eye upon any member who rises,
lets him say half a dozen sentences and then interrupts him, and repeats
his speech in a loud, rapid voice, turning every Kanaka speech into
English and every English speech into Kanaka, with a readiness and
felicity of language that are remarkable--waits for another installment
of talk from the member's lips and goes on with his translation as
before. His tongue is in constant motion from 11 in the forenoon till
four in the afternoon, and why it does not wear out is the affair of
Providence, not mine. There is a spice of deviltry in the fellow's
nature and it crops out every now and then when he is translating the
speeches of slow old Kanakas who do not understand English. Without
departing from the spirit of a member's remarks, he will, with apparent
unconsciousness, drop in a little voluntary contribution occasionally
in the way of a word or two that will make the gravest speech utterly
ridiculous. He is careful not to venture upon such experiments, though,
with the remarks of persons able to detect him. I noticed when he
translated for His Excellency David Kalakaua, who is an accomplished
English scholar, he asked, "Did I translate you correctly, your
Excellency?" or something to that effect. The rascal.

FAMILIAR CHARACTERISTICS

This Legislature is like all other Legislatures. A wooden-head gets up
and proposes an utterly absurd some thing or other, and he and half a
dozen other wooden-heads discuss it with windy vehemence for an hour,
the remainder of the house sitting in silent patience the while, and
then a sensible man--a man of weight--a big gun--gets up and shows the
foolishness of the matter in five sentences; a vote is taken and the
thing is tabled. Now, on one occasion, a Kanaka member, who paddled
over here from some barren rock or other out yonder in the ocean--some
scalawag who wears nothing but a pair of socks and a plug hat when he is
at home, or possibly is even more scantily arrayed in the popular malo
got up and gravely gave notice of a bill to authorize the construction
of a suspension bridge from Oahu to Hawaii a matter of a hundred and
fifty miles! He said that natives would prefer it to the interisland
schooners, and they wouldn't suffer from sea-sickness on it. Up came
Honorables Ku and Kulaui, and Kowkow and Kiwawhoo and a lot of
other clacking geese, and harried and worried this notable internal
improvement until some sensible person rose and choked them off by
moving the previous question. Do not do an unjust thing now, and imagine
Kanaka Legislatures do stupider things than other similar bodies.
Rather blush to remember that once, when a Wisconsin Legislature had
the affixing of a penalty for the crime of arson under consideration,
a member got up and seriously suggested that when a man committed the
damning crime of arson they ought either to hang him or make him marry
the girl! To my mind the suspension bridge man was a Solomon compared to
this idiot.

[I shall have to stop at this point and finish this subject to-morrow.
There is a villain over the way, yonder, who has been playing "Get
out of the Wilderness" on a flute ever since I sat down here
to-night--sometimes fast, sometimes slow, and always skipping the first
note in the second bar--skipping it so uniformly that I have got to
waiting and painfully looking out for it latterly. Human nature cannot
stand this sort of torture. I wish his funeral was to come off at
half-past eleven o'clock tomorrow and I had nothing to do. I would
attend it.]

EXPLANATORY

It has been six weeks since I touched a pen. In explanation and excuse
I offer the fact that I spent that time (with the exception of one
week) on the island of Maui. I only got back yesterday. I never spent
so pleasant a month before, or bade any place good-bye so regretfully.
I doubt if there is a mean person there, from the homeliest man on the
island (Lewers) down to the oldest (Tallant). I went to Maui to stay a
week and remained five. I had a jolly time. I would not have fooled away
any of it writing letters under any consideration whatever. It will be
five or six weeks before I write again. I sail for the island of Hawaii
tomorrow, and my Maui notes will not be written up until I come back.

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, June 21, 1866

Honolulu, May 23, 1866.

LEGISLATURE CONTINUED--THE SOLONS AT WORK

The first business that was transacted to-day was the introduction of
a bill to prohibit the intermarrying of old persons with young ones,
because of the non-fruitfulness of such unions. The measure was
discussed, laughed over, and finally tabled. I will remark here that I
noticed that there seemed to be no regular order of business observed.
Motions, resolutions, notices, introduction and third reading of bills,
etc., were jumbled together. This may be convenient enough for the
members, but it must necessarily be troublesome to the clerks and
reporters.

Then a special Committee reported back favorably a bill to prohibit
Chinamen from removing their male children from the islands, and the
report was adopted--which I thought was rather hard on the Chinamen.

WAR

Next "the gentleman from Kohala" offered a resolution requesting the
Minister of the Interior to bring his books into the House and
separate the "Bishop of England's" printing account from his omnibus
of "sundries," and show just how my Lord's account with the Government
printing office stood. [Sensation.]

A member jumped up and moved to amend by requesting a general
inquisition into printing affairs, and to strike out the offensive
clause particularizing the Bishop's bill.

The Minister of the Interior (an Englishman--Dr. Hutchinson) opposed
the motion, angrily--said it "showed the animus of the thing the way it
stood." He said he was ready to produce the books, and went at once and
brought them in.

Another member moved to table the original motion.

Harris, Minister of Finance, wanted the motion to stand unamended;
he said it showed the animus of the thing, too; said it was the old
insinuation, emanating from outside the walls of this House--that the
Minister of the Interior was diverting the public funds to the support
of the Anglican church; the ancient insinuation that he was recreant to
his duty, etc.; said the animus was prominent enough in the language of
the resolution, which denied to the Lord Bishop of Honolulu the title
which all the world recognized as his, and called him the "Bishop of
England;" said the Bishop always paid his bills; he (Harris) always
paid his bills, and gave money frequently to the Anglican church; was a
member of it--would like to know of a single solitary instance where the
Congregationalist member from Kohala had ever contributed one dollar,
one shilling, one infinitesimal fraction of a farthing to the support of
the Reformed Catholic Church of the Lord Bishop; but a King's
Minister couldn't be honest, oh no! and a Minister couldn't be a
gentleman--certainly not! impossible!--oh, utterly!

And so forth and so on, wandering further and further from the question
before the House, and quacking about stuff that had no more to do with
the subject under discussion than the Decalogue has got to do with the
Declaration of Independence. This man was on his feet every five minutes
for an hour. One timid Commoner feebly moved the previous question
once, with a vague hope of shutting up the Minister, but he never got a
second, and was snubbed in a moment, and "went in his hole," as they say
in California.

The original motion was finally tabled, but it made a fearful stir
among the Ministers during its brief existence. It created a bitter
discussion, and showed how malignant are the jealousies that rankle in
the breasts of the rival religious denominations here.

The Vice President said he was sorry the motion had been offered; that
it was an insult to the Government, to the Bishop of Honolulu, to the
House, and to all parties concerned, and it grieved him to have to put
it to a vote.

In the debate, his Excellency Minister Harris was the champion of the
Reformed Catholic Church (though, to save my soul, I could not see what
any Church had to do--that is, openly and aboveboard--with the question
before the House). He was the champion; and without any ill feeling
toward him I will yet express the conviction that about two more such
champions would bring ruin and destruction upon any cause under the sun.

MINISTER HARRIS

Is six feet high, bony and rather slender, middle-aged; has long,
ungainly arms; stands so straight that he leans back a little; has small
side whiskers; from my distance his eyes seemed blue, and his teeth
looked too regular and too white for an honest man; he has a long head
the wrong way--that is, up and down; and a bogus Roman nose and a great,
long, cadaverous undertaker's countenance, displayed upon which his
ghastly attempts at humorous expressions were as shocking as a facetious
leer on the face of a corpse. He is a native of New Hampshire, but is
unworthy of the name of American. I think, from his manner and language
to-day, that he belongs, body and soul, and boots, to the King of the
Sandwich Islands and the "Lord Bishop of Honolulu." He has no command
of language--or ideas. His oratory is all show and pretense; he makes
considerable noise and a great to do, and impresses his profoundest
incoherencies with an oppressive solemnity and ponderous windmill
gesticulations with his flails. He raises his hand aloft and looks
piercingly at the interpreter and launches out into a sort of prodigious
declamation, thunders upward higher and higher toward his climax--words,
words, awful four-syllable words, given with a convincing emphasis that
almost inspires them with meaning, and just as you take a sustaining
breath and "stand by" for the crash, his poor little rocket fizzes
faintly in the zenith and goes out ignominiously. The sensation one
experiences is the same a miner feels when he puts in a blast which
he thinks will send the whole top of a mountain to the moon, and after
running a quarter of a mile in ten seconds to get out of the way, is
disgusted to hear it make a trifling, dull report, discharge a pipe-full
of smoke, and barely jolt half a bushel of dirt. After one of these
incomprehensible ravings, Mr. Harris bends down and smiles a
horrid smile of self-complacency in the face of the Minister of the
Interior--bends to the other side and continues it in the face of the
Minister of Foreign Affairs; beams it serenely upon the admiring lobby,
and finally confers the remnants of it upon the unhappy interpreter--all
of which pantomime says as plainly as words could say it: "Eh?--but
wasn't it an awful shot?" Harris says the weakest and most insipid
things, and then tries by the expression of his countenance to swindle
you into the conviction that they are the most blighting sarcasms. And
in seven years I have never lost my cheerfulness and wanted to lay me
down in some secluded spot and die, and be at rest, until I heard him
try to be funny to-day. If I had had a double-barreled shotgun I would
have blown him into a million fragments. Harris deals in long paragraphs
of personalities, that would not be permitted in any other Legislature.
This man has the reputation of being an "able" man; yet he was talking
pretty much all the time to-day, and all the good sound sense or point
there was in his vaporings could have been boiled down into half a page
of foolscap. Harris is not a man of first-class abilities--but that is
only my opinion, you know--not Harris'. He knows some things, though.
He knows that his salary of $4,000 is little enough, in all conscience
(especially as he gets nothing as Acting Attorney General, and is
not allowed to engage in outside business), and he knew enough on one
occasion to vote against reducing his pay to $3,000 when his single vote
was necessary to kill the proposed economy. He is an inveterate official
barnacle, and is generally well supplied with offices--some people say
the Hawaiian Government is a wheel barrow, and that Harris is the wheel.

The Legislature voted an appropriation yesterday to have the photographs
of its members taken and hung up in the Capitol. If they had known I
was going to paint Harris, they might have saved about three dollars.
Harris, you won't do.

If I had time now I would write you a little something about Harris.
Under the circumstances, though, I feel it my duty to pass on to some
thingelse.

MINISTER HUTCHINSON

Next to His Excellency Mr. Harris, His Majesty's Minister of Finance,
sits His Excellency Mr. Hutchinson, His Majesty's Minister of the
Interior--an Englishman. He has sandy hair, sandy mustache, sandy
complexion--is altogether one of the sandiest men I ever saw, so
to speak: is a tall, stoop shouldered, middle-aged lowering-browed,
intense-eyed, irascible man and looks like he might have his little
prejudices and partialities. He has got one good point, however--he
don't talk.

THE OTHER MINISTERS

Near Dr. Hutchinson sit His Excellency the Governor of Oahu (born
in this country of Italian and American parentage, and considered an
American) and His Excellency M. De Varigny, Acting Minister of
Foreign Affairs--a Frenchman. These are merely sensible, unpretentious
men--nothing particularly remarkable about their manner or appearance.
If Varigny were as hopelessly bad as his English pronunciation, nothing
but a special intervention of Providence could save him from perdition
hereafter.

THE MILLENNIUM AT HAND

I have found at least one startling peculiarity about this Hawaiian
Legislature. They do not accuse its members of being stained with
bribery and corruption. It is a new and pleasant sensation to me. Some
people ascribe this singular purity to innate virtue, while others less
charitable say the members are not offered bribes because they are such
leaky vessels that they would be sure to let it out. Doubtless, in some
cases one theory is correct, and the other correct in other cases. I
hope it is somehow that way; at any rate, I haven't time to discuss it.

LEGISLATIVE ETIQUETTE

Legislative etiquette is of a low grade everywhere, I believe. I find no
exception to the rule here. All hands smoke during the session, from
the highest down to the pock-marked messenger. Cow county members--or
perhaps I should say taro-patch members--lay the sides of their faces
on the desks, encircle them with their arms and go to sleep for a
few moments at a time. I know they must put their feet on the desks
sometimes, but I could not catch them at it. I saw them eating crackers
and cheese, though, and freely excused them for it, because they hold
long, fatiguing sessions--from 11 till 4 o'clock, without intermission.
I am grieved to say that their etiquette is a shade superior to that of
the early Washoe Legislature. "Horse Williams" was a member of one of
them, and he used to always prop his vast feet upon his desk and get
behind them and eat a raw turnip during prayer by the Chaplain.

MORE CHARACTERISTICS

So much for the Legislature. I came away and left them at the favorite
occupation of such bodies--crowding the finance officer's estimates to
the utmost limit. The last thing they did was to provide a Clerk for
the Sheriff of Maui, with a salary of $1,000, which was well enough,
considering that for $2,000 a year and some trifling perquisites, that
officer acts as Sheriff of the Island of Maui, Postmaster of Lahaina,
Custom-house officer, Tax Collector of the Island of Lanai, and probably
does a little in a general way in the missionary line, though he is
better at entertaining a temporary guest, as I am aware; but you know
the inevitable result--every Sheriff of every little dab of rock in this
group will have to have a thousand-dollar clerk now.

MR. BROWN DISAPPOINTED

Brown has been keeping a sharp lookout for the King for nearly three
months, now. When we came out of the Capitol we heard his Majesty had
been at the door a few minutes before. Said the impetuous child of
nature:

"Blame that King, ain't I ever--"

"Peace, son!" said I; "respect the sacred name of royalty."

A CORRECTION

Speaking of the King reminds me of something which ought to be said and
might as well be said in this paragraph. Some people in California have
an idea that the King of the Sandwich Islands is a man who spends his
time idling about the town of Honolulu with individuals of questionable
respectability, and drinking habitually and to excess. This impression
is wrong. Before he ascended the throne he was "faster" than was well
for him or for his good name, but, like the hero of Agincourt, he
renounced his bad habits and discarded his Falstaffs when he became
King, and since that time has conducted himself as becomes his high
position. He attends closely to his business, makes no display, does
not go about much, and in manners and habits is a thorough gentleman.
He only appears in the streets when his affairs require it, and then
he goes well mounted or in his carriage, and decently and properly
attended.

And while upon this subject I will remark that His Majesty's income is
amply sufficient for the modest state he indulges in. The Legislature
appropriates $16,000 a year to his use, and his estates (called the
"Royal Domain"), yield him $20,000 a year besides. The present palace is
to be pulled down and a new one erected. The Legislature has just made
an appropriation of $40,000 to begin the work and carry it on for the
next two years. There was nothing said about what it is ultimately to
cost--wherefore I surmise that it is the design of the Government to
build a palace well worthy of the name.

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, July 16, 1866

Honolulu, June 22, 1866.

"HOME AGAIN"

I have just got back from a three weeks' cruise on the island of Hawaii
and an eventful sojourn of several days at the great volcano. But of
that trip I will speak hereafter. I am too badly used up to do it now. I
only want to write a few lines at present by the Live Yankee, merely to
keep my communications open, as the soldiers say.

THE LATE PRINCESS

I find Hawaiian politics in a state of unusual stir on account of the
death of the King's sister. Her Royal Highness the Princess Victoria
Kamamalu Kaahumanu, heir presumptive to the crown. She was something
over twenty-seven years old, and had never been married, although she
was formally betrothed to Prince William and the marriage day appointed
more than once, but circumstances interfered and the nuptials were never
consummated.

The Princess was a granddaughter of old Kamehameha the Conqueror, and
like all of that stock, was talented. She was the last female descendant
of the old warrior.

The care of her infancy was confided to Dr. A. F. [correctly G. P.] Judd
(afterward so honorably distinguished in Hawaiian history). Subsequently
Hon. John Ii was appointed her guardian by the King. She was carefully
educated in the Royal Chief School, which was at that time presided over
by the earliest friends of the Hawaiians, the American Missionaries.
(It is now in the hands of the gentlemen of the Royal Hawaiian Church,
otherwise the "Reformed Catholic Church," a sort of nondescript wild cat
religion imported here from England.) She became an accomplished pianist
and vocalist, and for many years sat at the melodeon and led the choir
in the great stone church here. From her infancy it was expected that
she would one day fill the throne, and therefore great importance was
attached to her acts, and they were duly observed and noted as straws
calculated to show how the wind would be likely to set in her ultimate
official life. Consequently the strong friendship she manifested for
the missionaries was regarded with jealous eye in certain quarters, and
frequent attempts were made to diminish her partiality for them. The
late Mr. Wyllie, Minister of Foreign Affairs (a native of Scotland),
once sent for Hon. Mr. Ii, and endeavored to get him to use his
influence in dissuading the Princess and Mrs. Bishop (a high chiefess)
who visited California in the Ajax lately, from further attendance upon
the church choirs. He said it was very improper and out of character for
Princesses to sing in a choir, and that such personages in England
would not do such a thing. The effort was fruitless, however; Victoria
continued her former course, and remained faithful to her early friends.
She was urged to desert them and go over to the Reformed Catholic
Church, but she steadfastly refused.

The Princess was distinguished as the founder and Perpetual President
of a benevolent association called "Aha Hui Kaahumanu"--an organization
partaking of the benevolent character of Freemasonry, but without its
secrecy. It was composed of her countrywomen, and supported by their
subscriptions; its membership was exceedingly numerous, and its
ramifications extended all over the several islands of the group. Its
objects were to secure careful nursing of its members when sick, and
their decent burial after death. The society always formed in procession
and followed deceased members to the grave, arrayed in a uniform
composed of a white robe and a scarf, which indicated the official rank
of the wearer by its color.

The Princess was possessed of immense landed estates, and formerly kept
up considerable state. She rode in a fine carriage, and had her guards
and sentries about her several residences, in European fashion.

The natives have always been remarkable for the extravagant love and
devotion they show toward their Chiefs--it almost amounts to worship.
When Victoria was a girl of fifteen she made an excursion through the
island of Hawaii (the realm of the ancient founders of her race), with
her guardian and a retinue of servants, and was everywhere received with
a wild enthusiasm by her people. In Hilo, they came in multitudes to the
house of the reverend missionary, where she was stopping, and
brought with them all manner of offerings--poi, taro, bananas, pigs,
fowls--anything they [could] get hold of which was valuable in their
eyes--and many of them stinted and starved themselves for the time
being, no doubt, to do this honor to a Princess who could not use or
carry away the hundredth part of what they lavished upon her. And for
hours and even days together the people thronged around the place and
wept and chanted their distressing songs, and wailed their agonizing
wails; for joy at the return of a loved one and sorrow at his death are
expressed in precisely the same way with this curious people.

MOURNING FOR THE DEAD

The Princess died on Tuesday, May 29th, and on Wednesday the body was
conveyed to the King's palace, there to lie in state about four weeks,
which is royal custom here. The chamber is still darkened, and its
walls and ceilings draped and festooned with solemn black. The corpse
is attired in white satin, trimmed with lace and ruche, and reposes upon
the famous yellow-feather war-cloak of the kings of Hawaii; a simple
coronet of orange blossoms, interwoven with white feathers, adorns the
head that was promised a regal diadem, six kahili beaters stand upon
each side, and these are surrounded by a guard of honor in command
of one of the High Chiefs; a party of Chief women are in constant
attendance, and officers of the household troops and of the volunteer
forces are on duty about the palace; the old Queen Dowager sleeps in the
chamber every night. Candelabras burn day and night at the head and feet
of the corpse, and shed a funereal twilight over it, and over the silent
attendants and the dark and dismal symbols of woe. Every evening a new
chant, composed by some Chief woman several days before, and carefully
rehearsed, is sung. All this in the death chamber.

Outside, on the broad verandahs and in the ample palace yard, a
multitude of common natives howl and wail, and weep and chant the dreary
funeral songs of ancient Hawaii, and dance the strange dance for the
dead. Numbers of these people remain there day after day and night
after night, sleeping in the open air in the intervals of their mourning
ceremonies.

I am told these things. I have not seen them. The King has ordered that
no foreigner shall be permitted to enter the palace gates before the
last night previous to the funeral. The reason why this order was issued
is, I am told, that the performances at the palace at the time the
corpse of the late King lay there in state were criticised and commented
upon too freely. These performances were considerably toned down while
the missionaries were in power, but under the more liberal regime of the
new Reformed Catholic dispensation they fell back toward their old-time
barbarous character. The gates were thrown open and everybody went in
and saw and heard what may be termed the funeral orgies of the dead
King. The term is coarse, but perhaps it is a better one than a milder
one would be. And then scribblers like myself wrote column after column
about the matter in the public prints, and the subject was discussed and
criticised in private circles and inveighed against in the pulpits. All
this was harassing and disagreeable to the parties nearest concerned,
and hence the present order forbidding any but Hawaiian citizens and
lenient friends from witnessing the ceremonies. So strong is some
people's curiosity, however, that the law has already been violated
several times within the past week by strangers, who entered the tabooed
grounds in disguise. They were discovered, however, and quietly turned
out.

The deceased Princess has lain in state now for more than three
weeks--yet still the nightly wailing goes on in the palace yard, and the
crowds of natives who conduct it increases steadily by influx from the
other islands, and the lamentations grow more extravagant all the time.
The missionary efforts to discourage and break up this weird custom,
inherited from the old pagan days, are quietly rebuked in a little
advertisement which appears over the signature of the King's Chamberlain
in the public papers to-day, wherein he invites all natives to come to
the palace grounds and stay there night and day and take part in the
wailing for the departed. That looks like a disposition on the part of
the authorities not only to check the progress of civilization, but to
go backward a little.

THE COFFIN

The Legislature have appropriated $6,000 to defray the funeral expenses
of the Princess. The obsequies will take place the latter part of
next week. I have seen the coffin (it is not quite finished yet), and
certainly it is the most elegant piece of burial furniture I ever saw.
It is made of those two superb species of native wood, kou and koa. The
former is nearly as dark as ebony; the latter is like fine California
laurel, richly grained and clouded with mahogany. Both woods have an
iron-like hardness, and are exceedingly close in grain, and when
highly polished and varnished nothing in the shape of wood can be more
brilliant, more lustrous, more beautiful. It produces a sort of ecstasy
in me to look at it, and holds me like a mesmeric fascination. There
is nothing extraordinary about the fashioning--the planning and
construction--of this coffin, but still it is beautiful. The wood is so
splendidly burnished, and so gracefully grained and clouded.

The silver tablet upon the coffin, upon which is to be inscribed the
name and title of the deceased, is to cost $500. I go into these minor
details to show you that royal state in the Sandwich Islands approaches
as near to its European models as the circumstances of the case will
admit.

HOW FUNERALS OF DEAD CHIEFS WERE CELEBRATED IN OLD TIMES

If a Sandwich Islands missionary comes across a stranger, I think
he weighs him and measures him and judges him (in defiance of the
injunction to "Judge not, etc.") by an ideal which he has created in
his own mind--and if that stranger falls short of that ideal in any
particular, the good missionary thinks he falls just that much short of
what he ought to be in order to stand a chance for salvation; and with a
tranquil simplicity of self-conceit, which is marvelous to a modest man,
he honestly believes that the Almighty, of a necessity, thinks exactly
as he does. I violate the injunction to judge not, also. I judge that
missionary, but, with a modesty which is entitled to some credit, I
freely confess that my judgment may err. Now, therefore, when I say that
the Sandwich Islands missionaries are pious; hard-working; hard-praying;
self-sacrificing; hospitable; devoted to the well-being of this people
and the interests of Protestantism; bigoted; puritanical; slow; ignorant
of all white human nature and natural ways of men, except the remnant
of these things that are left in their own class or profession; old
fogy--fifty years behind the age; uncharitable toward the weaknesses
of the flesh; considering all shortcomings, faults and failings in the
light of crimes, and having no mercy and no forgiveness for such--when I
say this about the missionaries, I do it with the explicit
understanding that it is only my estimate of them--not that of a Higher
Intelligence--nor that of even other sinners like myself. It is only my
estimate, and it may fall far short of being a just one.

Now, after the above free confession of my creed, I think I ought to be
allowed to print a word of defense of these missionaries without having
that eternal charge of "partiality and prejudice" launched at me that is
generally sure to be discharged at any man here who ventures--in
certain quarters--to give them any credit or offer to defend them from
ill-natured aspersions.

Mr. Staley, my Lord Bishop of Honolulu--who was built into a Lord by
the English Bishop of Oxford and shipped over here with a fully equipped
"Established Church" in his pocket--has frequently said that the natives
of these islands are morally and religiously in a worse condition to-day
than they were before the American missionaries ever came here. Now
that is not true--and in that respect the statement bears a very
strong family likeness to many other of the Bishop's remarks about our
missionaries. Our missionaries are our missionaries--and even if they
were our devils I would not want any English prelate to slander them.
I will not go into an argument to prove that the natives have been
improved by missionary labor--because facts are stronger than argument.
Above I have stated how the natives are now singing and wailing every
night--queerly enough, but innocently and harmlessly--out yonder in the
palace yard, for the dead Princess. Following is some account of the
style of conducting this sort of thing shortly before the traduced
missionaries came. I quote from Jarves' History of the Sandwich Islands:

"The ceremonies observed on the death of any important personage were
exceedingly barbarous. The hair was shaved or cut close, teeth knocked
out and sometimes the ears were mangled. Some tattooed their tongues in
a corresponding manner to the other parts of their bodies. Frequently
the flesh was cut or burnt, eyes scooped out, and other even more
painful personal outrages inflicted. But these usages, however shocking
they may appear were innocent compared with the horrid saturnalia which
immediately followed the death of a chief of the highest rank. Then the
most unbounded license prevailed; law and restraint were cast aside, and
the whole people appeared more like demons than human beings. Every
vice and crime was allowed. Property was destroyed, houses fired and old
feuds revived and avenged. Gambling, theft and murder were as open as
the day; clothing was cast aside as a useless incumbrance; drunkenness
and promiscuous prostitution prevailed through out the land, no women,
excepting the widows of the deceased, being exempt from the grossest
violation. There was no passion however lewd, or desire however wicked,
but could be gratified with impunity during the continuance of this
period which, happily, from its own violence soon spent itself. No other
nation was ever witness to a custom which so entirely threw off all
moral and legal restraints and incited the evil passions to unresisted
riot and wanton debauchery."

It is easy to see, now, that the missionaries have made a better people
of this race than they formerly were; and I am satisfied that if that
old time national spree were still a custom of the country, my Lord
Bishop would not be in this town to-day saying hard things about the
missionaries. No; his excellent judgment would have impelled him to take
to the woods when the Princess died.

WHO SHALL INHERIT THE THRONE?

The great bulk of the wealth, the commerce, the enterprise and the
Spirit of progress in the Sandwich Islands centers in the Americans.
Americans own the whaling fleet; they own the great sugar plantations;
they own the cattle ranches; they own their share of the mercantile
depots and the lines of packet ships. Whatever of commercial and
agricultural greatness the country can boast of it owes to them.
Consequently the question of who is likely to succeed to the crown in
case of the death of the present King, is an interesting one to American
residents, and therefore to their countrymen at home. The incumbent of
the throne has it in his power to help or hinder them a good deal. The
King is not married; and if he dies without leaving an heir of his own
body or appointing a successor, the crown will be likely to fall upon
either His Highness Prince William C. Lunalilo or David Kalakaua. The
former is of the highest blood in the kingdom--higher than the King
himself, it is said--and Kalakaua is descended from the ancient Kings
of the island of Hawaii. King Keoua (father of Kamehameha the
Great), great-great grandfather of the present King, was also the
great-great-grandfather of Prince William; but from Kamehameha the lines
diverge, and if there is any kinship between William and Kamehameha V
it is distant. They both had a common ancestor in King Umi, however, a
gentleman who flourished several hundred years ago. Prince William
is called eleventh in descent from Umi, and the present King only
fourteenth, which confers seniority of birth and rank upon the former.
But this subject is tanglesome.

PRINCE WILLIAM

Prince William is a man of fine large build; is thirty-one years of age,
is affable, gentlemanly, open, frank, manly; is as independent as a
lord and has a spirit and a will like the old Conqueror himself. He
is intelligent, shrewd, sensible--is a man of first-rate abilities, in
fact. He has a right handsome face, and the best nose in the Hawaiian
kingdom, white or other wise; it is a splendid beak, and worth being
proud of. He has one most unfortunate fault--he drinks constantly; and
it is a great pity, for if he would moderate this appetite, or break it
off altogether, he could become a credit to himself and his nation. I
like this man, and I like his bold independence, and his friendship for
and appreciation of the American residents; and I take no pleasure in
mentioning this failing of his. If I could print a sermon that would
reform him, I would cheerfully do it.

DAVID KALAKA

Hon. David Kalakaua, who at present holds the office of King's
Chamberlain, is a man of fine presence, is an educated gentleman and
a man of good abilities. He is approaching forty, I should judge--is
thirty-five, at any rate. He is conservative, politic and calculating,
makes little display, and does not talk much in the Legislature. He is a
quiet, dignified, sensible man, and would do no discredit to the kingly
office.

The King has power to appoint his successor. If he does such a thing,
his choice will probably fall on Kalakaua. In case the King should die
without making provision for a successor, it would be the duty of the
Legislature to select a King from among the dozen high Chiefs, male and
female, who are eligible under the Hawaiian Constitution. Under these
circumstances, if Prince William were thoroughly redeemed from his
besetting sin, his chances would be about even with Kalakaua's.

FUNERAL MUSIC

It is two o'clock in the morning and I have just been up toward the
palace to hear some of the singing of the numerous well-born watchers
(of both sexes) who are standing guard in the chamber of death. The
voices were very pure and rich, and blended together without harshness
or discord and the music was exceedingly plaintive and beautiful. I
would have been glad enough to get closer. When the plebeians outside
the building resumed their distressing noise I came away. In the
distance I hear them at if yet, poor, simple, loving, faithful,
Christian savages.

POSTSCRIPT

The Swallow arrived here on Monday morning, with Anson Burlingame,
United States Minister to China, and General Van Valkenburgh, United
States Minister to Japan. Their stay is limited to fourteen days, but a
strong effort will be made to persuade them to break that limit and
pass the Fourth of July here. They are paying and receiving visits
constantly, of course, and are cordially welcomed. Burlingame is a man
who would be esteemed, respected and popular anywhere, no matter whether
he were among Christians or cannibals.

The people are expecting McCook, our new Minister to these islands,
every day.

Whartenby and Mackie, of Nevada (Cal.), arrived here in the last vessel,
and will start back in a week or two. They came merely for recreation.

Several San Franciscans have come to Honolulu to locate permanently.
Among them Dr. A. C. Buffum; he has a fair and growing practice. Judge
Jones is another; he has already more law practice on his hands than he
can well attend to. And lastly, J. J. Ayers, late one of the proprietors
of the Morning Call, has arrived, with material for starting a newspaper
and job office. He has not made up his mind yet, however, to try the
experiment of a newspaper here. Sanford, last Chief Engineer of
the Ajax, came in the last vessel, and proposes to settle in the
islands--perhaps in the sugar line. He has gone to Maui to see what the
chances are in that deservedly famous sugar-producing region.

A letter arrived here yesterday morning giving a meager account of the
arrival on the island of Hawaii of nineteen poor starving wretches, who
had been buffeting a stormy sea in an open boat for forty-three days!
Their ship, the Hornet, from New York, with a quantity of kerosene on
board, had taken fire and burned in lat. 2 degrees north and long. 135
degrees west. Think of their sufferings for forty-three days and nights,
exposed to the scorching heat of the center of the torrid zone, and
at the mercy of a ceaseless storm! When they had been entirely out
of provisions for a day or two and the cravings of hunger became
insupportable, they yielded to the shipwrecked mariner's final and
fearful alternative, and solemnly drew lots to determine who of their
number should die to furnish food for his comrades--and then the morning
mists lifted and they saw land. They are being cared for at Sanpohoihoi
[Laupahoehoe], a little seaside station I spent a night at two weeks
ago. This boat-load was in charge of the Captain of the Hornet. He
reports that the remainder of the persons in his ship (twenty in number)
left her in two boats, under command of the first and second mates and
the three boats kept company until the night of the nineteenth day, when
they got separated. No further particulars have arrived here yet, and no
confirmation of the above sad story.

DINNER TO THE ENVOYS

The American citizens of Honolulu, anxious to show to their
distinguished visitors the honor and respect due them, have invited
them to partake of a dinner upon some occasion before their departure.
Burlingame and General Van Valkenburgh have accepted the invitation and
will inform the Committee this evening what Day will best suit their
convenience.

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, July 19, 1866

BURNING OF THE CLIPPER SHIP HORNET AT SEA

Detailed Account of the Sufferings of Officers and Crew, as given by the
Third Officer and Members of the Crew.

Honolulu, June 25, 1866.

In the postscript to a letter which I wrote two or three days ago,
and sent by the ship Live Yankee, I gave you the substance of a letter
received here from Hilo by Walker, Allen & Co. informing them that a
boat containing fifteen men, in a helpless and starving condition,
had drifted ashore at Laupahoehoe, Island of Hawaii, and that they
had belonged to the clipper ship Hornet, Mitchell master, and had been
afloat on the ocean since the burning of that vessel, about one hundred
miles north of the equator, on the 3d of May--forty-three days.

The third mate and ten of the seamen have arrived here and are now in
the hospital. Captain Mitchell, one seaman named Antonio Passene, and
two passengers (Samuel and Henry Ferguson, of New York city, young
gentlemen, aged respectively 18 and 28) are still at Hilo, but are
expected here within the week.

In the Captain's modest epitome of this terrible romance, which you have
probably published, you detect the fine old hero through it. It reads
like Grant.

THE THIRD MATE

I have talked with the seamen and with John S. Thomas, third mate, but
their accounts are so nearly alike in all substantial points, that I
will merely give the officer's statement and weave into it such matters
as the men mentioned in the way of incidents, experiences, emotions,
etc. Thomas is very intelligent and a very cool and self possessed young
man, and seems to have kept a pretty accurate log of his remarkable
voyage in his head. He told his story, of three hours length, in a
plain, straightforward way, and with no attempt at display and no
straining after effect. Wherever any incident may be noted in this paper
where any individual has betrayed any emotion, or enthusiasm, or has
departed from strict, stoical self-possession, or had a solitary thought
that was not an utterly unpoetical and essentially practical one,
remember that Thomas, the third mate, was not that person. He has been
eleven days on shore, and already looks sufficiently sound and healthy
to pass almost anywhere without being taken for an invalid. He has the
marks of a hard experience about him though, when one looks closely. He
is very much sunburned and weather-beaten, and looks thirty-two years
old. He is only twenty-four, however, and has been a sailor fifteen
years. He was born in Richmond, Maine, and still considers that place
his home.

SAILING OF THE "HORNET"--PACIFIC RAILROAD IRON

The following is the substance of what Thomas said: The Hornet left
New York on the 15th of January last, unusually well manned, fitted and
provisioned--as fast and as handsome a clipper ship as ever sailed out
of that port. She had a general cargo--a little of everything; a
large quantity of kerosene oil in barrels; several hundred cases of
candles--also four hundred tons Pacific Railroad iron and three engines.
The third mate thinks they were dock engines, and one of the seamen
thought they were locomotives. Had no gales and no bad weather--nothing
but fine sailing weather and she went along steadily and well--fast,
very fast, in fact. Had uncommonly good weather off Cape Horn; he had
been around that Cape seven times--each way--and had never seen such
fine weather there before. On the 12th of April, in latitude, say, 35
south and longitude 95 west, signaled a Prussian bark--she set Prussian
ensign, and the Hornet responded with her name, expressed by means of
Merritt's system of signals. She was sailing west--probably bound for
Australia. This was the last vessel ever seen by the Hornet's people
until they floated ashore at Hawaii in the long boat--a space of
sixty-four days.

THE SHIP ON FIRE

At seven o'clock on the morning of the 3d of May, the chief mate and
two men started down into the hold to draw some "bright varnish" from
a cask. The captain told him to bring the cask on deck--that it was
dangerous to have it where it was, in the hold. The mate, instead of
obeying the order, proceeded to draw a can full of the varnish first. He
had an "open light" in his hand, and the liquid took fire; the can was
dropped, the officer in his consternation neglected to close the bung,
and in a few seconds the fiery torrent had run in every direction, under
bales of rope, cases of candles, barrels of kerosene, and all sorts
of freight, and tongues of flame were shooting upward through every
aperture and crevice toward the deck.

The ship was moving along under easy sail, the watch on duty were idling
here and there in such shade as they could find, and the listlessness
and repose of morning in the tropics was upon the vessel and her
belongings. But as six bells chimed, the cry of "Fire!" rang through the
ship, and woke every man to life and action. And following the fearful
warning, and almost as fleetly, came the fire itself. It sprang through
hatchways, seized upon chairs, table, cordage, anything, everything--and
almost before the bewildered men could realize what the trouble was and
what was to be done the cabin was a hell of angry flames. The mainmast
was on fire--its rigging was burnt asunder! One man said all this had
happened within eighteen or twenty minutes after the first alarm--two
others say in ten minutes. All say that one hour after the alarm, the
main and mizzenmasts were burned in two and fell overboard.

Captain Mitchell ordered the three boats to be launched instantly, which
was done--and so hurriedly that the longboat (the one he left the vessel
in himself) had a hole as large as a man's head stove in her bottom. A
blanket was stuffed into the opening and fastened to its place. Not a
single thing was saved, except such food and other articles as lay about
the cabin and could be quickly seized and thrown on deck. Thomas was
sent into the longboat to receive its proportion of these things, and,
being barefooted at the time, and bareheaded, and having no clothing
on save an undershirt and pantaloons, of course he never got a chance
afterward to add to his dress. He lost everything he had, including his
log-book, which he had faithfully kept from the first. Forty minutes
after the fire alarm the provisions and passengers were on board the
three boats, and they rowed away from the ship--and to some distance,
too, for the heat was very great. Twenty minutes afterward the two masts
I have mentioned, with their rigging and their broad sheets of canvas
wreathed in flames, crashed into the sea.

All night long the thirty-one unfortunates sat in their frail boats
and watched the gallant ship burn; and felt as men feel when they see
a tried friend perishing and are powerless to help him. The sea was
illuminated for miles around, and the clouds above were tinged with
a ruddy hue; the faces of the men glowed in the strong light as they
shaded their eyes with their hands and peered out anxiously upon the
wild picture, and the gunwales of the boats and the idle oars shone like
polished gold.

At five o'clock on the morning after the disaster, in latitude 2 degrees
20' north, longitude 112 degrees 8' west, the ship went down, and the
crew of the Hornet were alone on the great deep, or, as one of the
seamen expressed it, "We felt as if somebody or something had gone
away--as if we hadn't any home anymore."

Captain Mitchell divided his boat's crew into two watches and gave the
third mate charge of one and took the other himself. He had saved a
studding sail from the ship, and out of this the men fashioned a rude
sail with their knives; they hoisted it, and taking the first and second
mates' boats in tow, they bore away upon the ship's course (northwest)
and kept in the track of vessels bound to or from San Francisco, in the
hope of being picked up.

THEIR WATER, PROVISIONS, ETC.

I have said that in the few minutes time allowed him, Captain Mitchell
was only able to seize upon the few articles of food and other
necessaries that happened to lie about the cabin. Here is the list: Four
hams, seven pieces of salt pork, (each piece weighed about four pounds),
one box of raisins, 100 pounds of bread (about one barrel), twelve
two-pound cans of oysters, clams and assorted meats; six buckets of raw
potatoes (which rotted so fast they got but little benefit from them),
a keg with four pounds of butter in it, twelve gallons of water in a
forty-gallon tierce or "scuttle-butt," four one-gallon demijohns full of
water, three bottles of brandy, the property of passengers; some pipes,
matches and a hundred pounds of tobacco; had no medicines. That was all
these poor fellows had to live on for forty-three days--the whole thirty
one of them!

Each boat had a compass, a quadrant, a copy of Bowditch's Navigator
and a nautical almanac, and the captain's and chief mate's boat had
chronometers.

RATIONS

Of course, all hands were put on short allowance at once. The day they
set sail from the ship each man was allowed a small morsel of salt
pork--or a little piece of potato, if he preferred it--and half a sea
biscuit three times a day. To understand how very light this ration of
bread was, it is only necessary to know that it takes seven of these sea
biscuits to weigh a pound. The first two days they only allowed one gill
of water a day to each man; but for nearly a fortnight after that the
weather was lowering and stormy, and frequent rain squalls occurred.
The rain was caught in canvas, and whenever there was a shower the
forty-gallon cask and every other vessel that would hold water was
filled--even all the boots that were water tight were pressed into this
service, except such as the matches and tobacco were deposited in to
keep dry. So for fourteen days. There were luxurious occasions when
there was plenty of water to drink. But after that how they suffered the
agonies of thirst for four long weeks!

HOPING AGAINST HOPE

For seven days the boats sailed on, and the starving men ate their
fragment of biscuit and their morsel of raw pork in the morning, and
hungrily counted the tedious hours until noon and night should bring
their repetitions of it. And in the long intervals they looked mutely
into each other's faces, or turned their wistful eyes across the wild
sea in search of the succoring sail that was never to come.

"Didn't you talk?" I asked one of the men.

"No; we were too down-hearted--that is, the first week or more. We
didn't talk--we only looked at each other and over the ocean."

And thought, I suppose. Thought of home--of shelter from storms--of food
and drink, and rest.

The hope of being picked up hung to them constantly--was ever present to
them, and in their thoughts, like hunger. And in the Captain's mind was
the hope of making the Clarion Islands, and he clung to it many a day.

The nights were very dark. They had no lantern and could not see the
compass, and there were no stars to steer by. Thomas said, of the boat
"She handled easy, and we steered by the feel of the wind in our faces
and the heave of the sea." Dark, and dismal, and lonesome work was that!
Sometimes they got a fleeting glimpse of the sailor's friend, the north
star, and then they lighted a match and hastened anxiously to see if
their compass was faithful to them--for it had to be placed close to an
iron ring-bolt in the stern, and they were afraid, during those first
nights, that this might cause it to vary. It proved true to them,
however.

SUMPTUOUS FARE

On the fifth day a notable incident occurred. They caught a dolphin! and
while their enthusiasm was still at its highest over this stroke of good
fortune, they captured another. They made a trifling fire in a tin plate
and warmed the prizes--to cook them was not possible--and divided them
equitably among all hands and ate them.

On the sixth day two more dolphins were caught.

Two more were caught on the seventh day, and also a small bonita, and
they began to believe they were always going to live in this extravagant
way, but it was not to be--these were their last dolphins, and they
never could get another bonita, though they saw them and longed for them
often afterward.

RATIONS REDUCED

On the eighth day the rations were reduced about one-half.
Thus--breakfast, one-fourth of a biscuit, an ounce of ham and a gill of
water to each man; dinner, same quantity of bread and water, and four
oysters or clams; supper, water and bread the same, and twelve large
raisins or fourteen small ones, to a man. Also, during the first twelve
or fifteen days, each man had one spoonful of brandy a day, then it gave
out.

This day, as one of the men was gazing across the dull waste of waters
as usual, he saw a small, dark object rising and falling upon the waves.
He called attention to it, and in a moment every eye was bent upon it in
intensest interest. When the boat had approached a little nearer, it was
discovered that it was a small green turtle, fast asleep. Every noise
was hushed as they crept upon the unconscious slumberer. Directions were
given and hopes and fears expressed in guarded whispers. At the fateful
moment--a moment of tremendous consequence to these famishing men--the
expert selected for the high and responsible office stretched forth his
hand, while his excited comrades bated their breath and trembled for
the success of the enterprise, and seized the turtle by the hind leg and
handed him aboard! His delicate flesh was carefully divided among the
party and eagerly devoured--after being "warmed" like the dolphins which
went before him.

THE BOATS SEPARATE

After the eighth day I have ten days unaccounted for--no notes of them
save that the men say they had their two or three ounces of food and
their gill of water three times a day--and then the same weary watching
for a saving sail by day and by night, and the same sad "hope deferred
that maketh the heart sick," was their monotonous experience. They
talked more, however, and the Captain labored without ceasing to keep
them cheerful. [They have always a word of praise for the "old man"]

The eighteenth day was a memorable one to the wanderers on the lonely
sea. On that day the boats parted company. The Captain said that
separate from each other there were three chances for the saving of some
of the party where there could be but one chance if they kept together.

The magnanimity and utter unselfishness of Captain Mitchell (and through
his example, the same conduct in his men) throughout this distressing
voyage, are among its most amazing features. No disposition was ever
shown by the strong to impose upon the weak, and no greediness, no
desire on the part of any to get more than his just share of food, was
ever evinced. On the contrary, they were thoughtful of each other and
always ready to care for and assist each other to the utmost of their
ability. When the time came to part company, Captain Mitchell and his
crew, although theirs was much the more numerous party (fifteen men to
nine and seven respectively in the other boats), took only one-third of
the meager amount of provisions still left, and passed over the other
two-thirds to be divided up between the other crews. These men could
starve, if need be but they seem not to have known how to be mean.

After the division the Captain had left for his boat's share two-thirds
of the ham, one-fourth of a box of raisins, half a bucket of biscuit
crumbs, fourteen gallons of water, three cans of "soup-and bully."
[That last expression of the third mate's occurred frequently during
his narrative, and bothered me so painfully with its mysterious
incomprehensibility, that at length I begged him to explain to me what
this dark and dreadful "soup and-bully" might be. With the Consul's
assistance he finally made me understand the French dish known as "soup
bouillon" is put up in cans like preserved meats, and the American
sailor is under the impression that its name is a sort of general tide
which describes any description of edible whatever which is hermetically
sealed in a tin vessel, and with that high contempt for trifling
conventionalities which distinguishes his class, he has seen fit to
modify the pronunciation into soup-and-bully.--MARK.]

The Captain told the mates he was still going to try to make the Clarion
Isles, and that they could imitate his example if they thought best, but
he wished them to freely follow the dictates of their own judgment in
the matter. At eleven o'clock in the forenoon the boats were all cast
loose from each other, and then, as friends part from friends whom they
expect to meet no more in life, all hands hailed with a fervent "God
bless you, boys; Good-bye!" and the two cherished sails drifted away and
disappeared from the longing gaze that followed them so sorrowfully.

ANOTHER CAPTURE

On the afternoon of this eventful eighteenth day two "boobies" were
caught--a bird about as large as a duck, but all bone and feathers--not
as much meat as there is on a pigeon--not nearly so much, the men say.
They eat them raw--bones, entrails and everything--no single morsel was
wasted; they were carefully apportioned among the fifteen men. No fire
could be built for cooking purposes--the wind was so strong and the sea
ran so high that it was all a man could do to light his pipe.

A GOOD FRIEND GONE

At even tide the wanderers missed a cheerful spirit--a plucky,
strong-hearted fellow, who never drooped his head or lost his grip--a
staunch and true good friend, who was always at his post in storm or
calm, in rain or shine--who scorned to say die, and yet was never afraid
to die--a little trim and taut old rooster, he was, who starved with the
rest, but came on watch in the stern-sheets promptly every day at four
in the morning and six in the evening for eighteen days and crowed like
a maniac! Right well they named him Richard of the Lion Heart! One of
the men said with honest feeling: "As true as I'm a man, Mr. Mark Twain,
if that rooster was here to-day and any man dared to abuse the bird I'd
break his neck!" Richard was esteemed by all and by all his rights were
respected. He received his little ration of bread crumbs every time the
men were fed, and, like them, he bore up bravely and never grumbled and
never gave way to despair. As long as he was strong enough he stood in
the stern-sheets or mounted the gunwale as regularly as his watch came
round, and crowed his two-hour talk, and when at last he grew feeble in
the legs and had to stay below, his heart was still stout and he slapped
about in the water on the bottom of the boat and crowed as bravely as
ever! He felt that under circumstances like these America expects every
rooster to do his duty, and he did it. But is it not to the high honor
of that boat's crew of starving men, that, tortured day and night by
the pangs of hunger as they were, they refused to appease them with
the blood of their humble comrade? Richard was transferred to the chief
mate's boat and sailed away on the eighteenth day.

RELIGIOUS SERVICES

The third mate does not remember distinctly, but thinks morning and
evening prayers were begun on the nineteenth day. They were conducted
by one of the young Fergusons, because the Captain could not read the
prayer book without his spectacles, and they had been burned with the
ship. And ever after this date, at the rising and the setting of the
sun, the storm tossed mariners reverently bowed their heads while
prayers went up for "they that are helpless and far at sea."

AN INCIDENT

On the morning of the twenty-first day, while some of the crew were
dozing on the thwarts and others were buried in reflection, one of the
men suddenly sprang to his feet and cried, "A sail! a sail!" Of course,
sluggish blood bounded then and eager eyes were turned to seek the
welcome vision. But disappointment was their portion, as usual. It was
only the chief mate's boat drifting across their path after three days'
absence. In a short time the two parties were abreast each other and
in hailing distance. They talked twenty minutes; the mate reported "all
well" and then sailed away, and they never saw him afterward.

FURTHER REDUCTION OF RATIONS

On the twenty-fourth day Captain Mitchell took an observation and found
that he was in latitude 16 degrees north and longitude 117 degrees
west--about l,000 miles from where his vessel was burned. The hope he
had cherished so long that he would be able to make the Clarion Isles
deserted him at last he could only go before the wind, and he was now
obliged to attempt the best thing the southeast trades could do for
him--blow him to the "American group" or to the Sandwich Islands--and
therefore he reluctantly and with many misgivings turned his prow
towards those distant archipelagoes. Not many mouthfuls of food were
left, and these must be economized. The third mate said that under this
new programme of proceedings "we could see that we were living too high;
we had got to let up on them raisins, or the soup-and-bullies, one,
because it stood to reason that we warn't going to make land soon, and
so they wouldn't last." It was a matter which had few humorous features
about it to them, and yet a smile is almost pardonable at this idea, so
gravely expressed, of "living high" on fourteen raisins at a meal.

The rations remained the same as fixed on the eighth day, except that
only two meals a day were allowed, and occasionally the raisins and
oysters were left out.

What these men suffered during the next three weeks no mortal man may
hope to describe. Their stomachs and intestines felt to the grasp like
a couple of small tough balls, and the gnawing hunger pains and the
dreadful thirst that was consuming them in those burning latitudes
became almost insupportable. And yet, as the men say, the Captain said
funny things and talked cheerful talk until he got them to conversing
freely, and then they used to spend hours together describing delicious
dinners they had eaten at home, and earnestly planning interminable and
preposterous bills of fare for dinners they were going to eat on shore,
if they ever lived through their troubles to do it, poor fellows. The
Captain said plain bread and butter would be good enough for him all the
days of his life, if he could only get it.

But the saddest things were the dreams they had. An unusually
intelligent young sailor named Cox said: "In those long days and nights
we dreamed all the time--not that we ever slept. I don't mean--no, we
only sort of dozed--three-fourths of the faculties awake and the other
fourth benumbed into the counterfeit of a slumber; oh, no--some of
us never slept for twenty-three days, and no man ever saw the
Captain asleep for upward of thirty. But we barely dozed that way
and dreamed--and always of such feasts! bread, and fowls, and
meat--everything a man could think of, piled upon long tables, and
smoking hot! And we sat down and seized upon the first dish in our
reach, like ravenous wolves, and carried it to our lips, and--and then
we woke up and found the same starving comrades about us, and the vacant
sky and the desolate sea!

These things are terrible even to think of.

RATIONS STILL FURTHER REDUCED

It even startles me to come across that significant heading so often in
my note-book, notwithstanding I have grown so familiar with its sound by
talking so much with these unfortunate men.

On the twenty-eighth day the rations were: One teaspoonful of bread
crumbs and about an ounce of ham for the morning meal; a spoonful of
bread crumbs alone for the evening meal, and one gill of water three
times a day! A kitten would perish eventually under such sustenance.

At this point the third mate's mind reverted painfully to an incident
of the early stages of their sufferings. He said there were two between
decks, on board the Hornet, who had been lying there sick and helpless
for he didn't know how long; but when the ship took fire they turned
out as lively as any one under the spur of the excitement. One was a
"Portyghee," he said, and always of a hungry disposition--when all the
provisions that could be got had been brought aft and deposited near
the wheel to be lowered into the boats, "that sick Portyghee watched his
chance, and when nobody was looking he harnessed the provisions and eat
up nearly a quarter of a bar'l of bread before the old man caught him,
and he had more than two notions to put his lights out." The third
mate dwelt up on this circumstance as upon a wrong he could not fully
forgive, and intimated that the Portyghee stole bread enough, if
economised in twenty eighth-day rations, to have run the long-boat party
three months.

THEY CAPTURE A PRIZE

Four little flying fish, the size of the sardines of these latter days,
flew into the boat on the night of the twenty eighth day. They were
divided among all hands and devoured raw. On the twenty-ninth day
they caught another, and divided it into fifteen pieces, less than a
teaspoonful apiece.

On the thirtieth day they caught a third flying fish and gave it to the
revered old Captain--a fish of the same poor little proportions as the
others--four inches long--a present a king might be proud of under such
circumstances--a present whose value, in the eyes of the men who offered
it, was not to be found in the Bank of England--yea, whose vaults were
notable to contain it! The old Captain refused to take it; the men
insisted; the Captain said no--he would take his fifteenth--they must
take the remainder. They said in substance, though not in words, that
they would see him in Jericho first! So the Captain had to eat the fish.

I believe I have done the third mate some little wrong in the beginning
of this letter. I have said he was as self possessed as a statue that he
never betrayed emotion or enthusiasm. He never did except when he spoke
of "the old man." It always thawed through his ice then. The men were
the same way; the Captain is their hero--their true and faithful friend,
whom they delight to honor. I said to one of these infatuated skeletons,
"But you wouldn't go quite so far as to die for him?" A snap of the
finger--"As quick as that!--I wouldn't be alive now if it hadn't been
for him." We pursued the subject no further.

RATIONS STILL FURTHER REDUCED

I still claim the public's indulgence and belief. At least Thomas
and his men do through me. About the thirty second day the bread gave
entirely out. There was nothing left, now, but mere odds and ends of
their stock of provisions. Five days afterward, on the thirty-seventh
day--latitude 16 degrees 30' north, and longitude 170 degrees west--kept
off for the "American group"--"which don't exist and never will, I
suppose," said the third mate. Ran directly over the ground said to be
occupied by these islands--that is between latitude 16 degrees and 17
degrees north and longitude 133 degrees to 136 degrees west. Ran over
the imaginary islands and got into 136 degrees west, and then the
Captain made a dash for Hawaii, resolving that he would go till he
fetched land, or at any rate as long as he and his men survived.

THE LAST RATION!

On Monday, the thirty-eighth day after the disaster, "we had nothing
left," said the third mate, "but a pound and a half of ham--the bone was
a good deal the heaviest part of it--and one soup-and-bully tin." These
things were divided among the fifteen men, and they ate it all--two
ounces of food to each man. I do not count the ham bone, as that was
saved for the next day. For some time, now, the poor wretches had been
cutting their old boots into small pieces and eating them. They would
also pound wet rags to a sort of pulp and eat them.

STARVATION FARE

On the thirty-ninth day the ham bone was divided up into rations,
and scraped with knives and eaten. I said: "You say the two sick men
remained sick all through, and after awhile two or three had to be
relieved from standing watch; how did you get along without medicines!"

The reply was: "Oh, we couldn't have kept them if we'd had them, if we'd
had boxes of pills, or anything like that, we'd have eaten them. It was
just as well--we couldn't have kept them, and we couldn't have given
them to the sick men alone--we'd have shared them around all alike, I
guess." It was said rather in jest, but it was a pretty true jest, no
doubt.

After apportioning the ham bone, the Captain cut the canvas cover that
had been around the ham into fifteen equal pieces, and each man took his
portion. This was the last division of food that the Captain made. The
men broke up the small oaken butter tub and divided the staves among
them selves, and gnawed them up. The shell of the little green turtle,
heretofore mentioned, was scraped with knives and eaten to the last
shaving. The third mate chewed pieces of boots and spit them out, but
ate nothing except the soft straps of two pairs of boots--eat three on
the thirty-ninth day and saved one for the fortieth.

THE AWFUL ALTERNATIVE

The men seem to have thought in their own minds of the shipwrecked
mariner's last dreadful resort--cannibalism; but they do not appear
to have conversed about it. They only thought of the casting lots and
killing one of their number as a possibility; but even when they were
eating rags, and bone, and boots, and shell, and hard oak wood, they
seem to have still had a notion that it was remote. They felt that
someone of the company must die soon--which one they well knew; and
during the last three or four days of their terrible voyage they were
patiently but hungrily waiting for him. I wonder if the subject of these
anticipations knew what they were thinking of? He must have known it--he
must have felt it. They had even calculated how long he would last; they
said to themselves, but not to each other, I think they said, "He will
die Saturday--and then!"

There was one exception to the spirit of delicacy I have mentioned--a
Frenchman, who kept an eye of strong personal interest upon the sinking
man and noted his failing strength with untiring care and some degree
of cheerfulness. He frequently said to Thomas: "I think he will go off
pretty soon, now, sir. And then we'll eat him!" This is very sad.

Thomas and also several of the men state that the sick "Portyghee,"
during the five days that they were entirely out of provisions, actually
ate two silk handkerchiefs and a couple of cotton shirts, besides his
share of the boots, and bones, and lumber.

THE CAPTAIN'S BIRTHDAY

Captain Mitchell was fifty-six years old on the 12th of June--the
fortieth day after the burning of the ship and the third day before the
boat's crew reached land. He said it looked somewhat as if it might be
the last one he was going to enjoy. He had no birthday feast except some
bits of ham canvas--no luxury but this, and no substantials save the
leather and oaken bucket staves.

Speaking of the leather diet, one of the men told me he was obliged to
eat a pair of boots which were so old and rotten that they were full of
holes; and then he smiled gently and said he didn't know, though, but
what the holes tasted about as good as the balance of the boot. This man
was still very feeble, and after saying this he went to bed.

LAND HO!

At eleven o'clock on the 15th of June, after suffering all that men may
suffer and live for forty-three days, in an open boat, on a scorching
tropical sea, one of the men feebly shouted the glad tidings, "Land
ho!" The "watch below" were lying in the bottom of the boat. What do you
suppose they did? They said they had been cruelly disappointed over
and over again, and they dreaded to risk another experience of the
kind--they could not bear it--they lay still where they were. They said
they would not trust to an appearance that might not be land after all.
They would wait.

Shortly it was proven beyond question that they were almost to land.
Then there was joy in the party. One man is said to have swooned away.
Another said the sight of the green hills was better to him than a day's
rations, a strange figure for a man to use who had been fasting for
forty days and forty nights.

The land was the island of Hawaii, and they were off and could see
nothing in shore but breakers. I was there a week or two ago and it is
a very dangerous place. When they got pretty close to shore they saw
cabins, but no human beings. They thought they would lower the sail and
try to work in with the oars. They cut the ropes and the sail came down,
and then they found they were not strong enough to ship the oars. They
drifted helplessly toward the breakers, but looked listlessly on and
cared not a straw for the violent death which seemed about to overtake
them after all their manful struggles, their privations and their
terrible sufferings. They said "it was good to see the green fields
again." It was all they cared for. The "green fields" were a haven of
rest for the weary wayfarers; it was sufficient; they were satisfied;
it was nothing to them that death stood in their pathway; they had long
been familiar to him; he had no terrors for them.

Two of Captain Spencer's natives saw the boat, knew by the appearance of
things that it was in trouble, and dashed through the surf and swam
out to it. When they climbed aboard there were only five yards of space
between the poor sufferers and a sudden and violent death. Fifteen
minutes afterward the boat was beached upon the shore and a crowd of
natives (who are the very incarnation of generosity, unselfishness and
hospitality) were around the strangers dumping bananas, melons, taro,
poi--anything and everything they could scrape together that could be
eaten--on the ground by the cart-load; and if Mr. Jones, of the station,
had not hurried down with his steward, they would soon have killed the
starving men with kindness. As it was, the sick "Portyghee" really ate
six bananas before Jones could get hold of him and stop him. This is
a fact. And so are the stories of his previous exploits. Jones and
the Kanaka girls and men took the mariners in their arms like so many
children and carried them up to the house, where they received kind and
judicious attention until Sunday evening, when two whaleboats came from
Hilo, Jones furnished a third, and they were taken in these to the town
just named, arriving there at two o'clock Monday morning.

REMARKS

Each of the young Fergusons kept a journal from the day the ship sailed
from New York until they got on land once more at Hawaii. The Captain
also kept a log every day he was adrift. These logs, by the Captain's
direction, were to be kept up faithfully as long as any of the crew
were alive, and the last survivor was to put them in a bottle, when he
succumbed, and lash the bottle to the inside of the boat. The Captain
gave a bottle to each officer of the other boats, with orders to follow
his example. The old gentleman was always thoughtful.

The hardest berth in that boat, I think, must have been that of
provision-keeper. This office was performed by the Captain and the third
mate; of course they were always hungry. They always had access to the
food, and yet must not gratify their craving appetites.

The young Fergusons are very highly spoken of by all the boat's crew,
as patient, enduring, manly and kind-hearted gentlemen. The Captain gave
them a watch to themselves--it was the duty of each to bail the
water out of the boat three hours a day. Their home is in Stamford,
Connecticut, but their father's place of business is New York.

In the chief mate's boat was a passenger--a gentlemanly young fellow of
twenty years, named William Lang, son of a stockbroker in New York.

The chief mate, Samuel Hardy, lived at Chatham, Massachusetts; second
mate belonged in Shields, England; the cook, George Washington (negro),
was in the chief mate's boat, and also the steward (negro); the
carpenter was in the second mate's boat.

CAPTAIN MITCHELL

To this man's good sense, cool judgment, perfect discipline, close
attention to the smallest particulars which could conduce to the welfare
of his crew or render their ultimate rescue more probable, that boat's
crew owe their lives. He has shown brain and ability that make him
worthy to command the finest frigate in the United States, and a genuine
unassuming heroism that [should] entitle him to a Congressional medal. I
suppose some of the citizens of San Francisco who know how to appreciate
this kind of a man will not let him go on hungry forever after he gets
there. In the above remarks I am only echoing the expressed opinions of
numbers of persons here who have never seen Captain Mitchell, but who
judge him by his works--among others Hon. Anson Burlingame and our
Minister to Japan, both of whom have called at the hospital several
times and held long conversations with the men. Burlingame speaks in
terms of the most unqualified praise of Captain Mitchell's high and
distinguished abilities as evinced at every point throughout his
wonderful voyage.

THE SICK

Captain Mitchell, one sailor, and the two Fergusons are still at Hilo.
The two first mentioned are pretty feeble, from what I can learn. The
Captain's sense of responsibility kept him strong and awake all through
the voyage; but as soon as he landed, and that fearful strain upon his
faculties was removed, he was prostrated--became the feeblest of the
boat's company.

The seamen here are doing remarkably well, considering all things. They
already walk about the hospital a little--and very stiff-legged, because
of the long inaction their muscles have experienced.

When they came ashore at Hawaii no man in the party had had any movement
of his bowels for eighteen days, several not for twenty-five or thirty,
one not for thirty-seven, and one not for forty-four days. As soon as
any of the men can travel they will be sent to San Francisco.

I have written this lengthy letter in a great hurry in order to get it
off by the bark Milton Badger, if the thing be possible, and I may have
made a good many mistakes, but I hardly think so. All the statistical
information in it comes from Thomas, and he may have made mistakes,
because he tells his story entirely from memory, and although he
has naturally a most excellent one, it might well be pardoned for
inaccuracies concerning events which transpired during a series of weeks
that never saw his mind strongly fixed upon any thought save the weary
longing for food and water. But the log-books of the Captain and the two
passengers will tell the terrible romance from the first day to the last
in faithful detail, and these I shall forward by the next mail if I am
permitted to copy them.

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, July 30, 1866

Honolulu, June 30, 1866.

A MONTH OF MOURNING

For a little more than a month, the late Princess--her Royal Highness
Victoria Kamamalu Kaahumanu, heir presumptive to the crown and sister
to the King--lay in state at Iolani Palace, the royal residence. For a
little over a month, troops of natives of both sexes, drawn here from
the several islands by the great event, have thronged past my door every
evening on their way to the palace. Every night, and all night long, for
more than thirty days, multitudes of these strange mourners have burned
their candle-nut torches in the royal inclosure, and sung their funeral
dirges, and danced their hulahulas, and wailed their harrowing wail for
the dead. All this time we strangers have been consumed with curiosity
to look within those walls and see the pagan deviltry that was going on
there. But the thing was tabu (forbidden--we get our word "taboo" from
the Hawaiian language) to foreigners--haoles. The grounds were thrown
open to everybody the first night, but several rowdy white people acted
so unbecomingly--so shamefully, in fact--that the King placed a strict
tabu upon their future admittance. I was absent--on the island of Hawaii
[Maui]--at that time, and so I lost that one single opportunity to
gratify my curiosity in this matter.

Last night was to behold the grand finale, inasmuch as the obsequies
were to transpire to-day, and therefore I was a good deal gratified to
learn that a few foreigners would be allowed to enter a side gate
and view the performances in the palace yard from the verandah of Dr.
Hutchinson's house (Minister of the Interior). I got there at a little
after eight P.M.

NIGHT SCENE IN THE PALACE GROUNDS

The verandah we occupied overlooked the royal grounds, and afforded
an excellent view of the two thousand or twenty-five hundred natives
sitting, densely packed together, in the glare of the torches, between
our position and the palace, a hundred feet in front of us. It was a
wild scene--those long rows of eager, dusky faces, with the light upon
them, the band of hula-girls in the center, showily attired in white
bodices and pink skirts, and with wreaths of pink and white flowers and
garlands of green leaves about their heads; and the strongly illuminated
torch-bearers scattered far and near at intervals through the large
assemblage and standing up conspicuously above the masses of sitting
forms. Light enough found its way to the broad verandahs of the palace
to enable us to see whatever transpired upon them with considerable
distinctness. We could see nothing there, however, except two or three
native sentries in red uniforms with gleaming muskets in their hands.
Presently someone said: "Oh, there's the King!"

"Where?"

"There--on the verandah--now, he's just passing that--. No; it's that
blasted Harris."

That isn't really his Christian name, but he is usually called by that
or a stronger one. I state this by way of explanation. Harris is the
Minister of Finance and Attorney General, and I don't know how many
other things. He has three marked points: He is not a second Solomon--he
is as vain as a peacock; he is as "cheeky" as--however, there is no
simile for his "cheek." In the Legislature, the other day, the Speaker
was trying to seat a refractory member; the member knew he was strictly
in order, though, and that his only crime was his opposition to the
Ministry, and so he refused to sit down. Harris whispered to the
interpreter: "Tell the Speaker to let me have the chair a moment." The
speaker vacated his place; Harris stepped into it, rapped fiercely with
the gavel, scowled imperiously upon the intrepid commoner and ordered
him to sit down. The man declined to do it. Harris commanded the
Sergeant-at-Arms to seat him. After a trial, that officer said the bold
representative of the people refused to permit him to seat him. Harris
ordered the Sergeant to take the man out of the house--remove him by
force! [Sensation--tempest, I should rather say.] The poor humbled and
brow-beaten country members threw off their fears for the moment and
became men; and from every part of the house they shouted: "Come out
of that chair! leave that place! put him out! put out the----!" [I have
forgotten the Hawaiian phrase, but it is equivalent to "miserable dog."]
And this terrible man who was going to perform such wonders, vacated the
Speaker's chair and went meekly back to his own place, leaving the stout
opponent of the Ministry master of the field. The Legislature adjourned
at once, and the excited and triumphant burst forth into a stirring
battle-hymn of the old days of Kamehameha the Great. Harris was an
American once (he was born in Portsmouth, N. H.), but he is no longer
one. He is hoopilimeaai to the King. How do you like that, Mr. H.? How
do you like being attacked in your own native tongue?

[NOTE TO THE READER.--That long native word means--well, it means Uriah
Heep boiled down--it means the soul and spirit of obsequiousness. No
genuine American can be other than obedient and respectful toward the
Government he lives under and the flag that protects him, but no such an
American can ever be hoopilimeaai to anybody.]

I hope the gentle reader will pardon this digression; but if the gentle
reader don't want to do it, he can let it alone.

A GLIMPSE OF THE HEATHEN AGES

About half-past eight o'clock a dozen native women rose up and began the
sad mourning rites. They locked arms and swayed violently backward and
forward; faced around and went through a number of quick gestures with
hands, heads and bodies; turned and twisted and mingled together--heads
and hands going all the time, and their motions timed to a weird howling
which it would be rather complimentary to call singing; and finished
up spreading their arms abroad and throwing their heads and bodies far
backward simultaneously, and all uttering a deafening squall at the same
moment.

"Well, if there's anything between the Farallones and Fiddlers Green as
devilish as that, I wish I may--"

"Brown," I said, "these solemn and impressive funeral rites of the
ancient times have been rescued from the oblivion to which the ignorant
missionaries consigned them forty years ago, by the good and wise Lord
Bishop Staley, and it ill-beseems such as you to speak irreverently of
them. I cannot permit you to say more in this vein in my presence."

When the women had finished the multitude clapped their hands
boisterously in token of applause.

A number of native boys next stood up and went through a performance a
good deal like that which I have just described, singing, at the same
time, a strange, unmusical chant. The audience applauded again. (Harris
came out once more on that part of the verandah which could be seen
best by the great assemblage, and assumed an attitude and expression
so suggestive of his being burdened with the cares of state of sixty or
seventy kingdoms, that, if I had been a stranger, I must have said to
myself: "The trifles Richelieu had to contend with were foolishness to
what this man has got on his hands.")

CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION IN WARM QUARTERS

Next, about twenty native women dressed in black rose up and sang some
hymns like ours, but in the Kanaka tongue, and made good music of them.
Some of the voices were very rich and sweet, the harmony was excellent
and the time perfect. Every now and then, while this choir sang (and,
in fact, all the evening), old time natives scattered through the crowd
would suddenly break out into a wild heart-broken wail that would almost
startle one's pulse into stillness. And there was one old fellow near
the center who would get up often, no matter what was going on,
and branch forth into a sort of singsong recitation, which he would
eventually change into a stump speech; he seemed to make a good many
hits judging by the cordial applause he got from a coterie of admirers
in his immediate vicinity.

MORE HEATHEN DEVILTRY

A dozen men performed next--howled and distorted their bodies and flung
their arms fiercely about, like very maniacs.

"God bless my soul, just listen at that racket! Your opinion is your
opinion, and I don't quarrel with it; and my opinion is my opinion; and
I say, once for all, that if I was Mayor of this town I would just get
up here and read the Riot Act once, if I died for it the next--"

"Brown, I cannot allow this language. These touching expressions of
mourning were instituted by the good Bishop, who has come from his
English home to teach this poor benighted race to follow the example and
imitate the sinless ways of the Redeemer, and did not he mourn for the
dead Lazarus? Do not the sacred scriptures say 'Jesus wept'?"

I overheard this person Brown muttering something about the imitation
being rather overdone or improved on, or something of that kind, but
I paid no attention to it. The man means well; his ignorance is his
misfortune--not his crime.

Twenty Kanakas in striped knit shirts now filed through the dense crowd
and sat down in a double row on the ground; each bore an immense gourd,
more than two feet long, with a neck near one end and a head to it the
outer, or largest end, was a foot in diameter; these things were dry and
hollow, and are the native tom-toms or drums. Each man set his gourd on
end, and supported it with a hand on each side; at a given signal every
drummer launched out into a dismal chant and slapped his drum twice
in quick succession with his open hands; then three times; then twice
again; then--well, I cannot describe it; they slapped the drums in every
conceivable way, and the sound produced was as dull and dry as if the
drums had been solid stone; then they held them above their heads a few
moments, or over their shoulders, or in front of their faces, or behind
their necks, and then brought them simultaneously to the ground with a
dead, hollow thump; and then they went on slapping them as before. They
kept up this most dreary and unexciting performance for twenty minutes
or more, and the great concourse of natives watched every motion with
rapt and eager admiration, and loudly applauded the musicians.

Brown muttered (under the vile pretense of not intending to be
overheard):

""Jesus wept."

"Brown," I said, "your conduct is shameful. It has always been conceded
that in following the example set us by the Savior we may be allowed
some latitude. But I will not argue with a man who is so bigoted,
fault-finding and uncharitable. I will have nothing further to say to
you upon this subject."

"He--he wept."

I thought I heard those words, but Brown's head was out of the window,
and I was not certain. I was already irritated to that degree that to
speak would be to lose my temper, and therefore I allowed the suspected
mutinous language to pass unnoticed.

THE CELEBRATED NATIONAL DANCE ( HULAHULA )

After the drumming came the famous hulahula we had heard so much about
and so longed to see--the lascivious dance that was wont to set the
passions of men ablaze in the old heathen days, a century ago. About
thirty buxom young Kanaka women, gayly attired as I have before
remarked, in pink and white, and with heads wreathed with flowers and
evergreens, formed themselves into half a dozen rows of five or six in
a row, shook the reefs out of their skirts, tightened their girdles and
began the most unearthly caterwauling that was ever heard, perhaps; the
noise had a marked and regular time to it, however, and they kept strict
time to it with writhing bodies; with heads and hands thrust out to the
left, then to the right; then a step to the front and the left hands
all projected simultaneously forward, and the right hands placed on the
hips; then the same repeated with a change of hands; then a mingling
together of the performers--quicker time, faster and more violently
excited motions--more and more complicated gestures--(the words of their
fierce chant meantime treating in broadest terms, and in detail, of
things which may be vaguely hinted at in a respectable newspaper but
not distinctly mentioned)--then a convulsive writhing of the person,
continued for a few moments and ending in a sudden stop and a grand
caterwaul in chorus [Great applause].

"Jesus wept!"

I barely heard the words, and that was all. They sounded like blasphemy.
I offered no rebuke to the utterer, because I could not disguise from
myself that the gentle grief of the Savior was but poorly imitated
here--that the heathen orgies resurrected by the Lord Bishop of Honolulu
were not warranted by the teachings of the Master whom he professes to
serve.

Minister Harris emerging from the Palace verandah at this moment with
the weight of his sixty kingdoms bearing down on him heavier than ever,
and it being past midnight, I judged it time to go home, and I did so.

WHOSE CIRCUS IT WAS

It is reported that the King has said: "The foreigners like their
religion--let them enjoy it, and freely. But the religion of my fathers
is good enough for me." Now that is all right. At least I think so. And
I have no fault to find with the natives for the lingering love they
feel for their ancient customs. But I do find fault with Bishop Staley
for reviving those customs of a barbarous age at a time when they had
long been abandoned and were being forgotten--when one more generation
of faithful adherence to the teachings of the American missionaries
would have buried them forever and made them memories of the
past--things to be talked of and wondered at, like the old laws that
made it death for a plebeian to stand erect in the presence of his king,
or for a man to speak to his wife on a tabu day--but never imitated.

For forty years before the Bishop brought his Royal Hawaiian Established
Reformed Catholic Church here the kings and chiefs of this land had
been buried with the quiet, simple, Christian rites that are observed
in England and America, and no man thought of anything more being
necessary. But one of the first things Bishop Staley did when he
arrived here a few years ago was to write home that the missionaries had
deprived the natives of their innocent sports and pastimes (such as the
lascivious hulahula, and the promiscuous bathing in the surf of nude
natives of opposite sexes), and one of the next things he did was to
attend a hulahula at Waikiki with his holy head tricked out in the
flower and evergreen trumpery worn by the hula-girls. When the late king
died the Bishop revived the half forgotten howling and hula dancing and
other barbarisms in the palace yard, and officiated there as a sort of
master of ceremonies. For many a year before he came that wretchedest of
all wretched musical abortions, the tom-tom, had not been heard near
the heart of Honolulu; but he has reinstated it and brought it into its
ancient esteem and popularity. The old superstitions of this people were
passing away far faster than is the case with the inhabitants of the
unfrequented and sparsely populated country districts of America, France
and Wales, but Bishop Staley is putting a stop to progress in this
direction.

We owe the strange and unpleasant scenes of last night to him--there are
not ten white men in the kingdom who have ever seen their like before
in public--and I am told that he is appalled at the work of his own
hands--that he is ashamed--that he dreads to think of the comments it
will provoke in Christian lands--in a word, that he finds, too late,
that he has made a most melancholy blunder.

BISHOP STALEY

If I may speak freely, I think this all comes of elevating a weak,
trivial minded man to a position of rank and power--of making a Bishop
out of very inferior material--of trying to construct greatness out
of constitutional insignificance. My estimate of Bishop Staley is not
carelessly formed there is evidence to back it. He gossips habitually;
he lacks the common wisdom to keep still that deadly enemy of a man, his
own tongue--he says ill-advised things in public speeches and then in
other public speeches denies that he ever said them; he shows spite,
a trait which is not allied to greatness; he is fond of rushing into
print, like mediocrity the world over, and is vainer of being my Lord
Bishop over a diocese of fifteen thousand men and women (albeit they
belong to other people's churches) than some other men would be of
wielding the world-wide power of the Pope; and finally, every single
important act of his administration has evinced a lack of sagacity and
an unripeness of judgment which might be forgiven a youth, but not a
full-grown man--or, if that seems too severe, which might be forgiven
a restless, visionary nobody, but not a Bishop. My estimate of Bishop
Staley may be a wrong one, but it is at least an honest one.

Persons who are intimate with Bishop Staley say he is a good man, and
a well educated and cultivated one, and that in social life he is
companionable, pleasant and liberal spirited when church matters are not
the topic of conversation. This is no doubt true; but it is my province
to speak of him in his official, not in his private capacity. He has
shown the temerity of an incautious, inexperienced and immature judgment
in rushing in here fresh from the heart and home of a high English
civilization and throwing down the gauntlet of defiance before a band of
stern, tenacious, unyielding, tireless, industrious, devoted old Puritan
knights who have seen forty years of missionary service; whose time was
never fooled away in theorizing, but whose lightest acts always meant
business; who landed here two score years ago, full of that fervent zeal
and resistless determination inherited from their Pilgrim forefathers,
and marched forth and seized upon this people with a grip of iron, and
infused into their being, wrought into their very natures, the spirit of
democracy and the religious enthusiasm that animated themselves; whose
grip is still upon the race and can never be loosened till they, of
their own free will and accord, shall relax it. He showed a marvelous
temerity--one weak, inexperienced man against a host of drilled and
hardy veterans; and among them great men--men who would be great
in wider and broader spheres than that they have chosen here. He
miscalculated the force, the confidence, the determination of that
Puritan spirit which subdued America and underlies her whole religious
fabric to-day--which has subdued these islanders, and whose influence
over them can never be unseated.

THE REFORMED CATHOLIC CHURCH--THE COURT RELIGION

His church was another miscalculation. It was a mistake to appeal by
imposing ceremonies and showy display to a people imbued with a thorough
Puritan distaste for such things, and who had never been much accustomed
to anything of the kind at any period of their history. There is little
in common between the simple evergreen decorations and the tom-toms and
the hulahulas of the natives, and the cheap magnificence of the Bishop's
cathedral altar, his gaudily painted organ-pipes and the monotonous and
unattractive ceremonials of his church service.

He is fighting with good nerve, but his side is weak. The moneyed
strength of these islands--their agriculture, their commerce, their
mercantile affairs--is in the hands of Americans--republicans; the
religious power of the country is wielded by Americans--republicans; the
whole people are saturated with the spirit of democratic Puritanism, and
they are--republicans. This is a republic, to the very marrow, and over
it sit a King, a dozen Nobles and half a dozen Ministers. The field of
the Royal Hawaiian Established Church is thus so circumscribed that
the little cathedral in Nuuanu street, with its thirty pews of
ten-individual capacity each, is large enough to accommodate it in its
entirety, and have room to spare.

And this is the bugbear that has kept the American missionaries in hot
water for three or four years! The Bishop of Honolulu ought to feel
flattered that a chance so slim as his, and a power so feeble as his,
has been able to accomplish it. But at the same time he ought to feel
grateful, because, if let alone, he and his Church must infallibly have
been and remained insignificant. I do not say this ill-naturedly, for
I bear the Bishop no malice, and I respect his sacred office; I simply
state a palpable fact.

I will say a word or two about the Reformed Catholic Church, to the
end that strangers may understand its character. Briefly, then, it is a
miraculous invention. One might worship this strange production itself
without breaking the first commandment, for there is nothing like it
in the heavens above or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the
earth. The Catholics refuse to accept it as Catholic, the Episcopalians
deny that it is the church they are accustomed to, and of course
the Puritans claim no kindred with it. It is called a child of the
Established Church of England, but it resembles its parent in few
particulars. It has got an altar which is gay with fiery velvet, showy
white trimmings, vases of flowers and other mantel ornaments. (It was
once flanked by imposing, seven-branched candlesticks, but these
were obnoxious and have been removed.) Over it is a thing like a gilt
sign-board, on which is rudely painted two processions--four personages
in each--marching solemnly and in single file toward the crucified
Savior in the center, and bringing their baggage with them. The design
of it is a secret known only to the artist and his Maker. Near the
pulpit is a red canopied shower-bath--I mean it looks like one--upon
which is inscribed, "Separated unto the Gospel of God." The Bishop sits
under it at a small desk, when he has got nothing particular to do. The
organ pipes are colored with a groundwork of blue, which is covered all
over with a flower work wrought in other colors. Judging by its striking
homeliness, I should say that the artist of the altar piece had labored
here also. Near the door of the church, but inside, of course, stands a
small pillar, surmounted by a large shell. It may be for holy water or
it may be a contribution box. If the latter be the case, I must protest
that this ghastly pun--this mute suggestion to shell out--is ill
suited to the sacred character of the place, and it is only with the
profoundest pain that I force myself to even think for a moment upon so
distressing a circumstance. Against the wall is a picture of the future
Cathedral of Honolulu--a more imposing structure than the present one;
that many a year may elapse before it is built is no wish of mine. A
dozen acolytes--Chinese, Kanaka and half white boys, arrayed in white
robes, hold positions near the altar, and during the early part of the
service they sing and go through some performances suggestive of the
regular Catholic services; after that, the majority of the boys go
off on furlough. The Bishop reads a chapter from the Bible; then the
organist leaves his instrument and sings a litany peculiar to this
Church, and not to be heard elsewhere; there is nothing stirring or
incendiary about his mild, nasal music; the congregation join the
chorus; after this a third clergyman preaches the sermon; these three
ecclesiastics all wear white surplices. I have described the evening
services. When the Bishop first came here he indulged in a good deal
of showy display and ceremony in his Church, but these proved so
distasteful, even to Episcopalians, that he shortly modified them very
much.

I have spoken rather irreverently once or twice in the above paragraph,
and am ashamed of it. But why write it over? I would not be likely to
get it any better. I might make the matter worse.

"And say that--."

"Brown, have you, in defiance of all my reproofs, been looking over my
shoulder again?"

"Yes, but that's all right, you know--that's all right. Just say--just
say that the Bishop works as hard as any man, and makes the best fight
he can--and that's a credit to him, anyway."

"Brown, that is the first charitable sentiment I have ever heard you
utter. At a proper moment I will confer upon you a fitting reward for
it. But for the present, good-night, son. Go, now. Go to your innocent
slumbers. And wash your feet, Brown--or perhaps it is your teeth--at any
rate you are unusually offensive this evening. Remedy the matter. Never
mind explaining--good-night."

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSION

The French Roman Catholic Mission here, under the Right Reverend Lord
Bishop Maigret, goes along quietly and unostentatiously; and its affairs
are conducted with a wisdom which betrays the presence of a leader of
distinguished ability. The Catholic clergy are honest, straightforward
frank and open; they are industrious and devoted to their religion and
their work; they never meddle; wherever they do can be relied on
as being prompted by a good and worthy motive. These things disarm
resentment--prejudice cannot exist in their presence. Consequently,
Americans are never heard to speak ill or slightingly of the French
Catholic Mission. Their religion is not nondescript--it is plain, out
and out, undisguised and unmistakable Catholicism. You know right where
to find them when you want them. The American missionaries have no
quarrel with these men; they honor and respect and esteem them--and bid
them God-speed. There is an anomaly for you--Puritan and Roman Catholic
striding along, hand in hand, under the banner of the Cross!

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, August 1, 1866

Honolulu, July 1, 1866.

FUNERAL OF THE PRINCESS

At ten o'clock yesterday morning, the court, members of the legislature
and various diplomatic bodies assembled at the Iolani Palace, to be
present at the funeral of the late Princess. The sermon was preached
by the Rev. Mr. Parker, pastor of the great stone church--of which the
Princess was a member, I believe, and whose choir she used to lead
in the days of her early womanhood. To the day of her death she was a
staunch, unwavering friend and ally of the missionaries, and it is a
matter of no surprise that Parker, always eloquent, spoke upon this
occasion with a feeling and pathos which visibly moved the hearts of men
accustomed to conceal their emotions.

The Bishop of Honolulu, ever zealous, had sought permission to officiate
in Parker's stead, but after duly considering the fact that the
Princess had always regarded the Bishop with an unfriendly eye and had
persistently refused to have anything to do with his church, his request
was denied. However, he demanded and was granted the place of honor
in the procession, although it belonged properly to the officiating
clergyman. The Bishop also claimed that inasmuch as the Royal Mausoleum
was consecrated ground, it would be sacrilegious to allow a Calvinistic
minister to officiate there when the body was consigned to the tomb,
and so he was allowed to conduct that portion of the obsequies himself.
However, he explained that it was not the custom of his church to read
a burial service or offer up a prayer over such as had never belonged
to that church, and therefore the departed Princess was consigned to her
last resting place with no warmer or kindlier a recommendation than
a meager, non-committal benediction--a sort of chilly funereal
politeness--nothing more. But then we should not blame the Bishop in
this matter, because he has both authority and example to sustain his
position, as I find by reference to a "Review" by W. D. Alexander of one
of his "Pastoral Addresses." I quote from Alexander:

"Only last December, Thomas Powell, near Peterborough in England, wished
to have his son buried in the parish church-yard, and a Dissenting
minister to officiate. When the friends had gathered around the grave,
a messenger arrived from the clergyman of the Established Church, one
Ellaby, stating that he was ready to perform the Episcopal service. This
was courteously declined, upon which the Rector issued from the church
and forbade the burial. Even the right of silent interment was denied
them, and when the afflicted father would himself perform the last sad
offices at the grave of his child the spade was wrenched from his hand
by the sexton."

In offering this defense of the Bishop of Honolulu, I do so simply
with an unselfish wish to do him justice and save him from hasty and
injurious criticism, and not through a mean desire to curry favor with
him.

THE GRAND FUNEREAL PAGEANT

As the hour of eleven approached, large bodies of white and native
residents, chiefly on horseback, moved toward the palace through the
quiet streets, to see the procession form. All business houses were
closed, of course, and many a flag, half-mast high, swung lazily in the
Summer air.

The procession began to move at eleven, amid the solemn tolling of bells
and the dull booming of minute guns from the heights overlooking the
city. A glance of the eye down the procession revealed a striking and
picturesque spectacle--large bodies of women, in melancholy black, and
roofed over with a far-reaching double line of black umbrellas; troops
of men and children, in black; carriages; with horses clad from head
to foot in sable velvet; and in strong contrast with all this were the
bright colors flashing here and there along the pageant--swarthy Zouaves
in crimson raiment; soldiers, in blue and white and other lively hues;
mounted lancers, with red and white pennants fluttering from their
weapons; nobles and great offices in splendid uniforms; and--conspicuous
amid its gloomy surrounding--the catafalque, flanked on either side with
gorgeously-tinted kahilis. The slow and measured tread of the marching
squadrons; the mournful music of the bands; the chanting of the virtues
of the dead and the warrior deeds of her ancestors, by a gray and
venerable woman here and there, the wild wail that rang out at times
from some bereaved one to whom the occasion brought back the spirit of
the buried past--these completed the effect.

THE KAHILIS

The kahilis are symbols of mourning which are sacred to the aristocracy.
They are immense plumes, mounted upon tall poles, and are made of
feathers of all bright and beautiful colors; some are a rich purple;
some crimson; others brown, blue, white and black, etc. These are all
dyed, but the costly kahilis formed of the yellow feather of royalty
(tabu to the common herd) were tinted by the hand of nature, and come
from the tropic bird, which, as I have said in a previous letter, has
but two of them--one under each wing. One or two kahilis, also, made of
red feathers from a bird called by sailors the marlinspike bird, had no
artificial coloring about them. These feathers are very long and slender
(hence the fowl's name), and each bird's tail is furnished with two,
and only two, of them. The birds of the Sandwich Islands seem uncommonly
indigent in the matter of strictly ornamental feathers. A dozen or more
of these gaudy kahilis were upheld by pallbearers of high blood and
fenced in the stately catafalque with a vari-colored wall as brilliant
as a rainbow. Through the arches of the catafalque could be seen the
coffin, draped with that badge and symbol of royalty, the famous yellow
feather war-cloak, whose construction occupied the toiling hands of its
manufacturers during nine generations of Hawaiian Kings.

"STYLE"

We have here, in this little land of 50,000 inhabitants, the complete
machinery, in its minutest details, of a vast and imposing empire,
done in miniature. We have all the sounding titles, all the grades
and castes, all the pomp and circumstance, of a great monarchy. To the
curious, the following published programme of the procession will not
be uninteresting. After reading the long list of dignitaries, etc., and
remembering the sparseness of the population, one is almost inclined to
wonder where the material for that portion of the procession devoted to
"Hawaiian Population Generally" is going to be procured:

DETAILS

The "Ahahui Kaahumanu"--a benevolent society instituted (and presided
over) by the late Princess for the nursing of the sick and the burial
of the dead--was numerously represented. It is composed solely of native
women. They were dressed in black, and wore sashes of different colors.

His Majesty the King, attended by a guard of nobles and princes, whose
uniforms were splendid, with bright colors and loops and braids of gold,
rode with his venerable father in the first carriage in the rear of the
catafalque. The Bishop of Honolulu occupied the place of honor in that
portion of the procession which preceded the catafalque.

The servants of the King and the late Princess would have made quite
a respectable procession by themselves. They numbered two hundred and
fifty, perhaps.

Four or five poodle dogs, which had been the property of the deceased,
were carried in the arms of individuals among these servants of
peculiar and distinguished trustworthiness. It is likely that all the
Christianity the Hawaiians could absorb would never be sufficient to
wean them from their almost idolatrous affection for dogs. And
these dogs, as a general thing, are the smallest, meanest, and most
spiritless, homely and contemptible of their species.

As the procession passed along the broad and beautiful Nuuanu street,
an innocent native would step out occasionally from the ranks, procure a
slice of watermelon, or a pineapple, or a lighted pipe, from some dusky
spectator and return to his place and enjoy the refreshing luxury as he
kept step with the melancholy music.

When we had thoroughly examined the pageant we retired to a back street
and galloped ahead to the mausoleum, two miles from the center of the
town, and sat down to wait. This mausoleum is a neat edifice, built of
dressed blocks of coral, has a high, sharp, slated roof, and its form is
that of a Greek cross. The remains of the later Kings repose in it,
but those of ancient times were hidden or burned, in compliance with a
custom of the dark ages; some say, to prevent evil-disposed persons
from getting hold of them and thus being enabled to pray a descendant to
death; others say, to prevent the natives from making fish hooks out
of them, it being held that there were superior fishhook virtues in the
bones of a high chief. There are other theories for accounting for this
custom, but I have forgotten what they are. It is said that it was usual
to send a friend to hide the bones (after they had been stripped of the
flesh and neatly tied in a bundle), and then waylay him and kill him
as he came back, whereby it will be observed that to do a favor of this
kind was attended with consequences which could not be otherwise than
disagreeable to the party assuming the kindly office of undertaker to a
dead dignitary. Of course, as you will easily divine, the man was killed
to prevent the possibility of his divulging his precious secret.

The mausoleum is large enough to accommodate many dead Kings and
Princes. It stands in the middle of a large grass-clad lawn, which is
inclosed by a stone wall.

ARRIVAL OF THE PROCESSION

As the procession filed through the gate, the military deployed
handsomely to the right and left and formed an avenue through which the
long column of mourners passed to the tomb. The coffin was borne through
the door of the mausoleum, followed by the King and his chiefs,
the great officers of the kingdom, foreign Consuls, Ambassadors and
distinguished guests (Burlingame and General Van Valkenburgh). Several
of the kahilis were then fastened to a framework in front of the tomb,
there to remain until they decay and fall to pieces, or forestalling
this, until another scion of royalty dies. At this point of the
proceedings the multitude set up such a dismal, heart-broken wailing
as I hope never to hear again. The soldiers fired three volleys of
musketry--the wailing being previously silenced to permit of the guns
being heard. His Highness Prince William, in a showy military uniform
(who was formerly betrothed to the Princess but was not allowed to
marry her), stood guard and paced back and forth within the door. The
privileged few who followed the coffin into the mausoleum remained some
time, but

THE KING

Soon came out and stood in the door and near one side of it. A
stranger could have guessed his rank (although he was so simply and
unpretentiously dressed) by the profound deference paid him by all
persons in his vicinity; by seeing his high officers receive his quiet
orders and suggestions with bowed and uncovered heads; and by observing
how careful those persons who came out of the mausoleum were to avoid
"crowding" him (although there was room enough in the doorway for
a wagon to pass, for that matter); how respectfully they edged out
sideways, scraping their backs against the wall and always presenting a
front view of their persons to His Majesty, and never putting their hats
on until they were well out of the royal presence.

The King is thirty-four years of age it is said, but looks all of fifty.
He has an observant, inquiring eye, a heavy, massive face, a lighter
complexion than is common with his race, tolerably short, stiff hair,
a moderate mustache and imperial, large stature, inclining somewhat to
corpulence (I suppose he weighs fully one hundred and eighty--maybe a
little over), has fleshy hands, but a small foot for his size, is about
six feet high, is thoughtful and slow of movement, has a large head,
firmly set upon broad shoulders, and is a better man and a better
looking one than he is represented to be in the villainous popular
photographs of him, for none of them are good. That last remark
is surplusage, however, for no photograph ever was good, yet, of
anybody--hunger and thirst and utter wretchedness overtake the outlaw
who invented it! It transforms into desperadoes the meekest of men;
depicts sinless innocence upon the pictured faces of ruffians; gives
the wise man the stupid leer of a fool, and a fool an expression of more
than earthly wisdom. If a man tries to look merely serious when he sits
for his picture, the photograph makes him as solemn as an owl; if he
smiles, the photograph smirks repulsively; if he tries to look pleasant,
the photograph looks silly; if he makes the fatal mistake of attempting
to seem pensive, the camera will surely write him down an ass. The sun
never looks through the photographic instrument that it does not print
a lie. The piece of glass it prints it on is well named a 'negative"--a
contradiction--a misrepresentation--a falsehood. I speak feelingly of
this matter, because by turns the instrument has represented me to be a
lunatic, a Solomon, a missionary, a burglar and an abject idiot, and I
am neither.

The King was dressed entirely in black--dress-coat and silk hat--and
looked rather democratic in the midst of the showy uniforms about him.
On his breast he wore a large gold star, which was half hidden by the
lapel of his coat. He remained at the door a half hour, and occasionally
gave an order to the men who were erecting the kahilis before the tomb.
He had the good taste to make one of them substitute black crape for the
ordinary hempen rope he was about to tie one of them to the framework
with. Finally he entered his carriage and drove away, and the populace
shortly began to drop in his wake. While he was in view there was but
one man who attracted more attention than himself, and that was Minister
Harris. This feeble personage had crape enough around his hat to express
the grief of an entire nation, and as usual he neglected no opportunity
of making himself conspicuous and exciting the admiration of the simple
Kanakas. Oh! noble ambition of this modern Richelieu!

A CONTRAST--HOW THEY DID IN ANCIENT TIMES

It is interesting to contrast the funeral ceremonies of the Princess
Victoria with those of her great ancestor Kamehameha the Conqueror,
who died less than fifty years ago--in 1819, the year before the first
missionaries came:

"On the 8th of May, 1819, at the age of sixty-six, he died, as he had
lived, in the faith of his country. It was his misfortune not to have
come in contact with men who could have rightly influenced his religious
aspirations. Judged by his advantages and compared with the most eminent
of his countrymen he may be justly styled not only great, but good. To
this day his memory warms the heart and elevates the national feelings
of Hawaiians. They are proud of their old warrior King; they love his
name; his deeds form their historical age; and an enthusiasm everywhere
prevails, shared even by foreigners who knew his worth, that constitutes
the firmest pillar of the throne of his son.

"In lieu of human victims (the custom of that age), a sacrifice of
three hundred dogs attended his obsequies--no mean holocaust when
their national value and the estimation in which they were held are
considered. The bones of Kamehameha, after being kept for a while, were
so carefully concealed that all knowledge of their final resting place
is now lost. There was a proverb current among the common people that
the bones of a cruel King could not be hid; they made fish-hooks and
arrows of them, upon which, in using them, they vented their abhorrence
of his memory in bitter execrations."

The account of the circumstances of his death, as written by the native
historians, is full of minute detail, but there is scarcely a line of it
which does not mention or illustrate some bygone custom of the country.
In this respect it is the most comprehensive document I have yet met
with. I will quote it entire:

"When Kamehameha was dangerously sick and the priests were unable to
cure him, they said: 'Be of good courage and build a house for the god'
(his own private god or idol) 'that thou mayest recover.' The chiefs
corroborated this advice of the priests, and a place of worship was
prepared for Kukailimoku, and consecrated in the evening. They proposed
also to the King, with a view to prolong his life, that human victims
should be sacrificed to his deity; upon which the greater part of the
people absconded through fear of death, and concealed themselves in
hiding places till the tabu, in which destruction impended, was past.
It is doubtful whether Kamehameha approved of the plan of the chiefs and
priests to sacrifice men, as he was known to say, 'The men are sacred
for the King;' meaning that they were for the service of his successor.
This information was derived from Liholiho, his son.

"After this, his sickness increased to such a degree that he had not
strength to turn himself in his bed. When another season, consecrated
for worship at the new temple (heiau) arrived; he said to his son,
Liholiho, 'Go thou and make supplication to thy god; I am not able
to go, and will offer my prayers at home. When his devotions to his
feathered god, Kukailimoku, were concluded, a certain religiously
disposed individual, who had a bird god, suggested to the King that
through its influence his sickness might be removed. The name of this
god was Pua; its body was made of a bird, now eaten by the Hawaiians,
and called in their language alae. Kamehameha was willing that a trial
should be made, and two houses were constructed to facilitate the
experiment; but while dwelling in them he became so very weak as not
to receive food. After lying there three days, his wives, children and
chiefs, perceiving that he was very low, returned him to his own house.
In the evening he was carried to the eating house, where he took a
little food in his mouth which he did not swallow--also a cup of water.
The chiefs requested him to give them his counsel; but he made no reply,
and was carried back to the dwelling house--but when near midnight--ten
o'clock, perhaps--he was carried again to the place to eat; but, as
before, he merely tasted of what was presented to him. Then Kaikioewa
addressed him thus: 'Here we all are, your younger brethren, your
son Liholiho and your foreigner; impart to us your dying charge, that
Liholiho and Kaahumanu may hear.' Then Kamehameha inquired, 'What do you
say?' Kaikiowa repeated, 'Your counsels for us.' He then said, 'Move on
in my good way and--.' He could proceed no further. The foreigner, Mr.
Young, embraced and kissed him. Hoapili also embraced him, whispering
something in his ear, after which he was taken back to the house. About
twelve he was carried once more to the house for eating, into which
his head entered, while his body was in the dwelling house immediately
adjoining. It should be remarked that this frequent carrying of a sick
chief from one house to another resulted from the tabu system, then
in force. There were at that time six houses connected with an
establishment--one for worship, one for the men to eat in, an
eating house for the women, a house to sleep in, a house in which to
manufacture kapa (native cloth) and one where, at certain intervals, the
women might dwell in seclusion.

"The sick was once more taken to his house, when he expired; this was at
two o'clock, a circumstance from which Leleiohoku derived his name. As
he breathed his last, Kalaimoku came to the eating house to order those
in it to go out. There were two aged persons thus directed to depart;
one went, the other remained on account of love to the King, by whom he
had formerly been kindly sustained. The children also were sent away.
Then Kalaimoku came to the house, and the chiefs had a consultation. One
of them spoke thus: 'This is my thought--we will eat him raw.' Kaahumanu
(one of the dead King's widows) replied, 'Perhaps his body is not at our
disposal; that is more properly with his successor. Our part in him--his
breath--has departed; his remains will be disposed of by Liholiho.'

"After this conversation the body was taken into the consecrated house
for the performance of the proper rites by the priest and the new King.
The name of this ceremony is uko; and when the sacred hog was baked the
priest offered it to the dead body, and it became a god, the King at the
same time repeating the customary prayers.

"Then the priest, addressing himself to the King and chiefs, said: 'I
will now make known to you the rules to be observed respecting persons
to be sacrificed on the burial of this body. If you obtain one man
before the corpse is removed, one will be sufficient; but after it
leaves this house four will be requited. If delayed until we carry the
corpse to the grave there must be ten; but after it is deposited in the
grave there must be fifteen. To-morrow morning there will be a tabu,
and, if the sacrifice be delayed until that time, forty men must die.'

"Then the high priest, Hewahewa, inquired of the chiefs, 'Where shall
be the residence of King Liholiho?' They replied, 'Where indeed? You,
of all men, ought to know.' Then the priest observed, 'There are two
suitable places--one is Kau, the other is Kohala.' The chiefs preferred
the latter, as it was more thickly inhabited. The priest added, 'These
are proper places for the King's residence; but he must not remain in
Kona, for it is polluted.' This was agreed to. It was now break of day.
As he was being carried to the place of burial the people perceived that
their King was dead, and they wailed. When the corpse was removed from
the house to the tomb, a distance of one chain, the procession was met
by a certain man who was ardently attached to the deceased. He leaped
upon the chiefs who were carrying the King's body; he desired to die
with him on account of his love. The chiefs drove him away. He persisted
in making numerous attempts, which were unavailing, also had it in his
heart to die with him, but was prevented by Hookio.

"The morning following Kamehameha's death, Liholiho and his train
departed for Kohala, according to the suggestions of the priest, to
avoid the defilement occasioned by the dead. At this time if a chief
died the land was polluted, and the heirs sought a residence in another
part of the country until the corpse was dissected and the bones tied in
a bundle, which being done, the season of defilement terminated. If the
deceased were not a chief, the house only was defiled, which became pure
again on the burial of the body. Such were the laws on this subject.

"On the morning on which Liholiho sailed in his canoe for Kohala, the
chiefs and people mourned after their manner on occasion of a chief's
death, conducting themselves like madmen and like beasts. Their conduct
was such as to forbid description. The priests, also, put into action
the sorcery apparatus, that the person who had prayed the King to death
might die; for it was not believed that Kamehameha's departure was the
effect either of sickness or old age. When the sorcerers set up by their
fireplaces sticks with a strip of kapa flying at the top, the chief
Keeaumoku, Kaahumanu's brother, came in a state of intoxication and
broke the flagstaff of the sorcerers, from which it was inferred that
Kaahumanu and her friends had been instrumental in the King's death. On
this account they were subjected to abuse."

You have the contrast, now, and a strange one it is. This great Queen,
Kaahumanu, who was "subjected to abuse" during the frightful orgies
that followed the King's death, in accordance with an ancient custom,
afterwards became a devout Christian and a steadfast and powerful friend
of the missionaries.

MARK TWAIN.

POSTSCRIPT--THE MINISTERS

Burlingame and Van Valkenburgh, United States Ministers to China
and Japan, are ready to sail, but are delayed by the absence of two
attaches, who went to Hawaii to see the volcano, and who were not aware
how slow a country this is to get around in. The journey to Hilo, which
would be made anywhere else almost in eighteen or twenty hours, requires
a week in the little inter-island schooners.

Colonel Kalakaua, the King's Chamberlain, has invited the Ministerial
party to a great luau (native dinner) at Waikiki.

Gen. Van Valkenburgh has achieved a distinguished success as a curiosity
finder--not hunter. Standing on the celebrated Pari, a day or two ago,
and amusing himself by idly punching into the compact lava wall through
which the road is cut, he crumbled away a chunk of it, and observing
something white sticking to it, he instituted an examination, and found
a sound, white, unmarred and unblemished human jaw-tooth firmly imbedded
in the lava! Now the question is how did it get there--in the side
(where a road had been cut in) of a mountain of lava--seven hundred feet
above the valley? a mountain which has been there for ages, this being
one of the oldest islands in the group. Burlingame was present, and saw
the General unearth his prize. I have critically examined it, but, as I
half expected myself, the world knows as much about how to account for
the wonder now as if I had let it alone. In old times, the bones of
Chiefs were often thrown into the volcanoes, to make sure that no enemy
could get a chance to meddle with them; and Brown has given it as his
deliberate opinion that "that old snag used to belong to one of them
fellows." Possibly--but the opinion comes from a source which entitles
it to but little weight. However, that tooth is as able a curiosity as
any I have yet seen in the Sandwich Islands. M. T.

The Sacramento Daily Union, August 18, 1866

Honolulu, July, 1866

AT SEA AGAIN

Bound for Hawaii, to visit the great volcano and behold the other
notable things which distinguish this island above the remainder of the
group, we sailed from Honolulu on a certain Saturday afternoon, in the
good schooner Boomerang.

The Boomerang was about as long as two street cars, and about as wide
as one. She was so small (though she was larger than the majority of the
inter-island coasters) that when I stood on her deck I felt but little
smaller than the Colossus of Rhodes must have felt when he had a man-of
war under him. I could reach the water when she lay over under a strong
breeze. When the Captain and Brown and myself and four other gentlemen
and the wheelsman were all assembled on the little after portion of the
deck which is sacred to the cabin passengers, it was full--there was not
room for any more quality folks. Another section of the deck, twice as
large as ours, was full of natives of both sexes, with their customary
dogs, mats, blankets, pipes, calabashes of poi, fleas, and other
luxuries and baggage of minor importance. As soon as we set sail the
natives all laid down on the deck as thick as negroes in a slave-pen,
and smoked and conversed and captured vermin and ate them, spit on each
other, and were truly sociable.

The little low-ceiled cabin below was rather larger than a hearse,
and as dark as a vault. It had two coffins on each side--I mean two
bunks--though Mr. Brown, with that spirit of irreverence which is so sad
a feature of his nature, preferred to call the bunk he was allotted his
shelf. A small table, capable of accommodating three persons at dinner,
stood against the forward bulkhead, and over it hung the dingiest
whale-oil lantern that ever peopled the obscurity of a dungeon with grim
and ghostly shapes. The floor room unoccupied was not extensive. One
might swing a cat in it, perhaps, but then it would be fatal to the cat
to do it. The hold forward of the bulkhead had but little freight in it,
and from morning till night a villainous old rooster, with a voice like
Baalam's ass, and the same disposition to use it, strutted up and down
in that part of the vessel and crowed. He usually took dinner at 6
o'clock, and then, after an hour devoted to meditation, he mounted a
barrel and crowed a good part of the night. He got hoarser and hoarser
all the time, but he scorned to allow any personal consideration
to interfere with his duty, and kept up his labors in defiance of
threatened diphtheria.

Sleeping was out of the question when he was on watch. He was a source
of genuine aggravation and annoyance to me. It was worse than useless
to shout at him or apply offensive epithets to him--he only took
these things for applause, and strained himself to make more noise.
Occasionally, during the day, I threw potatoes at him through an
aperture in the bulkhead, but he simply dodged them and went on crowing.

The first night, as I lay in my coffin, idly watching the dim lamp
swinging to the rolling of the ship, and snuffing the nauseous odors of
bilge water, I felt something gallop over me. Lazarus did not come out
of his sepulchre with a more cheerful alacrity than I did out of mine.
However, I turned in again when I found it was only a rat. Presently
something galloped over me once more. I knew it was not a rat this time,
and I thought it might be a centipede, because the Captain had killed
one on deck in the afternoon. I turned out. The first glance at
the pillow showed me a repulsive sentinel perched upon each end of
it--cockroaches as large as peach leaves--fellows with long, quivering
antennae and fiery, malignant eyes. They were grating their teeth like
tobacco worms, and appeared to be dissatisfied about something. I had
often heard that these reptiles were in the habit of eating of sleeping
sailors' toenails down to the quick, and I would not get in the bunk
any more. I laid down on the floor. But a rat came and bothered me, and
shortly afterward a procession of cockroaches arrived and camped in my
hair. In a few moments the rooster was crowing with uncommon spirit and
a party of fleas were throwing double summersets about my person in
the wildest disorder, and taking a bite every time they struck. I was
beginning to feel really annoyed. I got up and put my clothes on and
went on deck.

The above is not an attempt to be spicy--it is simply an attempt to give
a truthful sketch of inter-island schooner life. There is no such thing
as keeping a vessel in elegant condition, I think, when she carries
molasses and Kanakas.

"ROLL ON, SILVER MOON"

It was compensation for all my sufferings to come unexpectedly upon so
beautiful a scene as met my eye--to step suddenly out of the sepulchral
gloom of the cabin and stand under the strong light of the moon--in the
center, as it were, of a glittering sea of liquid silver, to see the
broad sails straining in the gale, the ship keeled over on her side, and
the angry foam hissing past her lee bulwarks, and sparkling sheets of
spray dashing high over her bows and raining upon her decks; to brace
myself and hang fast to the first object that presented itself, with
hat jammed down and coat-tails whipping in the breeze, and feel that
exhilaration that thrills in one's hair and quivers down his backbone
when he knows that every inch of canvas is drawing and the vessel
cleaving through the billows at her utmost speed. There was no darkness,
no dimness, no obscurity there. All was brightness, every object was
vividly defined. Every prostrate Kanaka; every coil of rope; every
calabash of poi; every puppy; every seam in the flooring; every
bolthead; every object, however minute, showed sharp and distinct in its
every outline; and the shadow of the broad mainsail lay black as a pall
upon the deck, leaving Brown's white upturned face glorified and his
body in a total eclipse.

I ENDEAVOR TO ENTERTAIN THE SEASICK MAN

I turned to look down upon the sparkling animalculae of the South Seas
and watch the train of jeweled fire they made in the wake of the vessel.
I--

"Oh, me!"

"What is the matter, Brown?"

"Oh, me!"

"You said that before, Brown. Such tautology--"

"Tautology be hanged! This is no time to talk to a man about tautology
when he is sick--so sick--oh, my! and has vomited up his heart and--ah,
me--oh my! hand me that soup dish, and don't stand there hanging to that
bulkhead looking like a fool!"

I handed him the absurd tin shaving-pot, called "berth-pan," which they
hang by a hook to the edge of a berth for the use of distressed
landsmen with unsettled stomachs, but all the sufferer's efforts were
fruitless--his tortured stomach refused to yield up its cargo.

I do not often pity this bitter enemy to sentiment--he would not thank
me for it, anyhow--but now I did pity him; and I pitied him from the
bottom of my heart. Any man, with any feeling, must have been touched to
see him in such misery. I did not try to help him--indeed I did not even
think of so unpromising a thing--but I sat down by him to talk to him
and so cause the tedious hours to pass less wearily, if possible. I
talked to him for some time, but strangely enough, pathetic narratives
did not move his emotions, eloquent declamation did not inspirit him,
and the most humorous anecdotes failed to make him even smile. He seemed
as distressed and restless, at intervals--albeit the rule of his
present case was to seem to look like an allegory of unconditional
surrender--hopeless, helpless and indifferent--he seemed as distressed
and restless as if my conversation and my anecdotes were irksome to him.
It was because of this that at last I dropped into poetry. I said I
had been writing a poem--or rather, been paraphrasing a passage in
Shakespeare--a passage full of wisdom, which I thought I might remember
easier if I reduced it to rhyme--hoped it would be pleasant to him--said
I had taken but few liberties with the original; had preserved its
brevity and terseness, its language as nearly as possible, and its ideas
in their regular sequence--and proceeded to read it to him, as follows:

POLONIUS' ADVICE TO HIS SON--PARAPHRASED FROM HAMLET

Beware of the spoken word! Be wise; Bury thy thoughts in thy breast;
Nor let thoughts that are unnatural Be ever in acts expressed. Be thou
courteous and kindly toward all--Be familiar and vulgar with none;
But the friends thou hast proved in thy need Hold thou fast till life's
mission is done! Shake not thy faith by confiding In every new-begot
friend, Beware thou of quarrels--but in them Fight them out to the
bitter end. Give thine ear unto all that would seek it But to few thy
voice impart; Receive and consider all censure But thy judgment seal in
thy heart. Let thy habit be ever as costly As thy purse is able to span;
Never gaudy but rich--for the raiment Full often proclaimeth the man.
Neither borrow nor lend--oft a loan Both loseth itself and a friend, And
to borrow relaxeth the thrift Whereby husbandry gaineth its end. But lo!
above all set this law: UNTO THYSELF BE THOU TRUE! Then never toward any
canst thou The deed of a false heart do.

As I finished, Brown's stomach cast up its contents, and in a minute
or two he felt entirely relieved and comfortable. He then said that the
anecdotes and the eloquence were "no good," but if he got seasick again
he would like some more poetry.

THE ZONES OF THE EARTH CONCENTRATED

Monday morning we were close to the island of Hawaii. Two of its
high mountains were in view--Mauna Loa and Hualalai. The latter is an
imposing peak, but being only ten thousand feet high is seldom mentioned
or heard of. Mauna Loa is fourteen thousand feet high. The rays of
glittering snow and ice, that clasped its summit like a claw, looked
refreshing when viewed from the blistering climate we were in. One could
stand on that mountain (wrapped up in blankets and furs to keep warm),
and while he nibbled a snow-ball or an icicle to quench his thirst he
could look down the long sweep of its sides and see spots where plants
are growing that grow only where the bitter cold of Winter prevails;
lower down he could see sections devoted to productions that thrive in
the temperate zone alone; and at the bottom of the mountain he could see
the home of the tufted cocoa palms and other species of vegetation that
grow only in the sultry atmosphere of eternal Summers. He could see all
the climes of the world at a single glance of the eye, and that glance
would only pass over a distance of eight or ten miles as the bird flies.

THE REFUGE FOR THE WEARY

We landed at Kailua (pronounced Ki-loo-ah), a little collection of
native grass houses reposing under tall cocoa-nut trees--the sleepiest,
quietest, Sundayest looking place you can imagine. Ye weary ones that
are sick of the labor and care, and the bewildering turmoil of the
great world, and sigh for a land where ye may fold your tired hands and
slumber your lives peacefully away, pack up your carpet sacks and go to
Kailua! A week there ought to cure the saddest of you all.

An old ruin of lava-block walls down by the sea was pointed out as
a fort built by John Adams for Kamehameha I, and mounted with heavy
guns--some of them 32-pounders--by the same sagacious Englishman. I was
told that the fort was dismantled a few years ago, and the guns sold in
San Francisco for old iron--which was very improbable. I was told that
an adjacent ruin was old Kamehameha's sleeping-house; another,
his eating-house; another, his god's house; another, his wife's
eating-house--for by the ancient tabu system, it was death for man and
woman to eat together. Every married man's premises comprised five or
six houses. This was the law of the land. It was this custom, no doubt,
which has left every pleasant valley in these islands marked with the
ruins of numerous house inclosures, and given strangers the impression
that the population must have been vast before those houses were
deserted; but the argument loses much of its force when you come to
consider that the houses absolutely necessary for half a dozen married
men were sufficient in themselves to form one of the deserted "villages"
so frequently pointed out to the "Californian" (to the natives all
whites are haoles--how- ries--that is, strangers, or, more properly,
foreigners; and to the white residents all white newcomers are
"Californians"--the term is used more for convenience than any thing
else).

I was told, also, that Kailua was old Kamehameha's favorite place of
residence, and that it was always a favorite place of resort with his
successors. Very well, if Kailua suits these Kings--all right. Every man
to his taste; but, as Brown observed in this connection, "You'll excuse
me."

STEWED CHICKEN--MIRACULOUS BREAD

I was told a good many other things concerning Kailua--not one of which
interested me in the least. I was weary and worn with the plunging of
the Boomerang in the always stormy passages between the islands; I was
tired of hanging on by teeth and toenails and, above all, I was tired
of stewed chicken. All I wanted was an hour's rest on a foundation
that would let me stand up straight without running any risk--but no
information; I wanted something to eat that was not stewed chicken--I
didn't care what--but no information. I took no notes, and had no
inclination to take any.

Now, the foregoing is nothing but the feverish irritability of a short,
rough sea-voyage coming to the surface--a voyage so short that it
affords no time for you to tone down and grow quiet and reconciled, and
get your stomach in order, and the bad taste out of your mouth, and the
unhealthy coating off your tongue. I snarled at the old rooster and the
cockroaches and the national stewed chicken all the time--not because
these troubles could be removed, but only because it was a sanitary
necessity to snarl at something or perish. One's salt-water spleen
must be growled out of the system--there is no other relief. I pined--I
longed--I yearned to growl at the Captain himself, but there was no
opening. The man had had such passengers before, I suppose, and knew
how to handle them, and so he was polite and painstaking and
accommodating--and most exasperatingly patient and even tempered. So I
said to myself "I will take it out of your old schooner, anyhow; I will
blackguard the Boomerang in the public prints, to pay for your shameless
good-nature when your passengers are peevish and actually need somebody
to growl at for very relief!"

But now that I am restored by the land breeze, I wonder at my
ingratitude; for no man ever treated me better than Captain Kangaroo
did on board his ship. As for the stewed chicken--that last and meanest
substitute for something to eat--that soothing rubbish for toothless
infants--that diet for cholera patients in the rice-water stage--it was
of course about the best food we could have at sea, and so I only abused
it because I hated it as I do sardines or tomatoes, and because it was
stewed chicken, and because it was such a relief to abuse somebody or
something. But Kangaroo--I never abused Captain Kangaroo. I hope I
have a better heart than to abuse a man who, with the kindest and most
generous and unselfish motive in the world, went into the galley, and
with his own hands baked for me the worst piece of bread I ever ate in
my life. His motive was good, his desire to help me was sincere, but his
execution was damnable. You see, I was not sick, but nothing would taste
good to me; the Kanaka cook's bread was particularly unpalatable; he was
a new hand--the regular cook being sick and helpless below--and Captain
Kangaroo, in the genuine goodness of his heart, felt for me in my
distress and went down and made that most infernal bread. I ate one
of those rolls--I would have eaten it if it had killed me--and said to
myself: "It is on my stomach; 'tis well; if it were on my conscience,
life would be a burden to me." I carried one up to Brown and he ate a
piece, but declined to experiment further. I insisted, but he said no,
he didn't want any more ballast. When the good deeds of men are judged
in the Great Day that is to bring bliss or eternal woe unto us all,
the charity that was in Captain Kangaroo's heart will be remembered and
rewarded, albeit his bread will have been forgotten for ages.

THE FAMOUS ORANGE AND COFFEE REGION

It was only about fifteen miles from Kailua to Kealakekua Bay, either by
sea or land, but by the former route there was a point to be weathered
where the ship would be the sport of contrary winds for hours, and she
would probably occupy the entire day in making the trip, whereas we
could do it on horseback in a little while and have the cheering benefit
of a respite from the discomforts we had been experiencing on the
vessel. We hired horses from the Kanakas, and miserable affairs they
were, too. They had lived on meditation all their lives, no doubt, for
Kailua is fruitful in nothing else. I will mention, in this place,
that horses are plenty everywhere in the Sandwich Islands--no Kanaka is
without one or more--but when you travel from one island to another, it
is necessary to take your own saddle and bridle, for these articles are
scarce. It is singular baggage for a sea voyage, but it will not do to
go without it.

The ride through the district of Kona to Kealakekua Bay took us through
the famous coffee and orange section. I think the Kona coffee has a
richer flavor than any other, be it grown where it may and call it by
what name you please. At one time it was cultivated quite extensively,
and promised to become one of the great staples of Hawaiian commerce;
but the heaviest crop ever raised was almost entirely destroyed by a
blight, and this, together with heavy American customs duties, had the
effect of suddenly checking enterprise in this direction. For several
years the coffee growers fought the blight with all manner of cures
and preventives, but with small success, and at length some of the
less persevering abandoned coffee-growing altogether and turned their
attention to more encouraging pursuits. The coffee interest has not
yet recovered its former importance, but is improving slowly. The
exportation of this article last year was over 268,000 pounds, and it
is expected that the present year's yield will be much greater.
Contrast the progress of the coffee interest with that of sugar, and the
demoralizing effects of the blight upon the former will be more readily
seen.

EXPORTATIONS

1852

Coffee, pounds--117,000

Sugar, pounds--730,000

1865

Coffee, pounds--263,000

Sugar, pounds--15,318,097

Thus the sugar yield of last year was more than twenty times what it was
in 1852, while the coffee yield has scarcely more than doubled.

The coffee plantations we encountered in our short journey looked well,
and we were told that the crop was unusually promising.

There are no finer oranges in the world than those produced in the
district of Kona; when new and fresh they are delicious. The principal
market for them is California, but of course they lose much of their
excellence by so long a voyage. About 500,000 oranges were exported last
year against 15,000 in 1852. The orange culture is safe and sure, and
is being more and more extensively engaged in every year. We passed one
orchard that contained ten thousand orange trees.

There are many species of beautiful trees in Kona--noble forests of
them--and we had numberless opportunities of contrasting the orange with
them. The verdict rested with the orange. Among the varied and handsome
foliage of the Kou, Koa, Kukui, breadfruit, mango, guava, peach, citron,
ohia and other fine trees, its dark, rich green cone was sure to arrest
the eye and compel constant exclamations of admiration. So dark a green
is its foliage, that at a distance of a quarter of a mile the orange
tree looks almost black.

WOODLAND SCENERY

The ride from Kailua to Kealakekua Bay is worth taking. It passes along
on high ground--say a thousand feet above sea level--and usually about
a mile distant from the ocean, which is always in sight, save that
occasionally you find yourself buried in the forest in the midst of
a rank, tropical vegetation and a dense growth of trees, whose great
boughs overarch the road and shut out sun and sea and everything, and
leave you in a dim, shady tunnel, haunted with invisible singing
birds and fragrant with the odor of flowers. It was pleasant to ride
occasionally in the warm sun, and feast the eye upon the ever-changing
panorama of the forest (beyond and below us), with its many tints, its
softened lights and shadows, its billowy undulations sweeping gently
down from the mountain to the sea. It was pleasant also, at intervals,
to leave the sultry sun and pass into the cool, green depths of this
forest and indulge in sentimental reflections under the inspiration of
its brooding twilight and its whispering foliage. The jaunt through Kona
will always be to me a happy memory.

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, August 24, 1866

STILL IN KONA--CONCERNING MATTERS AND THINGS

At one farmhouse we got some large peaches of excellent flavor while on
our horseback ride through Kona. This fruit, as a general thing, does
not do well in the Sandwich Islands. It takes a sort of almond shape,
and is small and bitter. It needs frost, they say, and perhaps it does;
if this be so, it will have a good opportunity to go on needing it, as
it will not be likely to get it. The trees from which the fine fruit I
have spoken of came had been planted and replanted over and over again,
and to this treatment the proprietor of the orchard attributed his
success.

We passed several sugar plantations--new ones and not very extensive.
The crops were, in most cases, third rattoons. [NOTE.--The first crop
is called "plant cane;" subsequent crops which spring from the original
roots, without replanting are called "rattoons."] Almost everywhere on
the island of Hawaii sugar-cane matures in twelve months, both rattoons
and plant, and although it ought to be taken off as soon as it tassels,
no doubt, it is not absolutely necessary to do it until about four
months afterward. In Kona, the average yield of an acre of ground is
two tons of sugar, they say. This is only a moderate yield for these
islands, but would be extraordinary for Louisiana and most other
sugar growing countries. The plantations in Kona being on pretty high
ground--up among the light and frequent rains--no irrigation whatever is
required.

In Central Kona there is but little idle cane land now, but there is a
good deal in North and South Kona. There are thousands of acres of cane
land unoccupied on the island of Hawaii, and the prices asked for it
range from one dollar to a hundred and fifty an acre. It is owned by
common natives, and is lying "out of doors." They make no use of it
whatever, and yet, here lately, they seem disinclined to either lease
or sell it. I was frequently told this. In this connection it may not
be out of place to insert an extract from a book of Hawaiian travels
recently published by a visiting minister of the gospel:

"Well, now, I wouldn't, if I was you."

"Brown, I wish you wouldn't look over my shoulder when I am writing and
I wish you would indulge yourself in some little respite from my affairs
and interest yourself in your own business sometimes."

"Well, I don't care. I'm disgusted with these mush-and-milk preacher
travels, and I wouldn't make an extract from one of them. Father Damon
has got stacks of books shoemakered up by them pious bushwhackers from
America, and they're the flattest reading--they are sicker than the
smart things children say in the newspapers. Every preacher that gets
lazy comes to the Sandwich Islands to 'recruit his health,' and then he
goes back home and writes a book. And he puts in a lot of history, and
some legends, and some manners and customs, and dead loads of praise of
the missionaries for civilizing and Christianizing the natives, and says
in considerable chapters how grateful the savage ought to be; and when
there is a chapter to be filled out, and they haven't got anything to
fill it out with, they shovel in a lot of Scripture--now don't they? You
just look at Rev. Cheever's book and Anderson's--and when they come to
the volcano, or any sort of heavy scenery, and it is too much bother to
describe it, they shovel in another lot of Scripture, and wind up with
'Lo! what God hath wrought!' Confound their lazy melts! [sic] Now, I
wouldn't make extracts out of no such bosh."

"Mr. Brown, I brought you with me on this voyage merely because a
newspaper correspondent should travel in some degree of state, and so
command the respect of strangers; I did not expect you to assist me in
my literary labors with your crude ideas. You may desist from further
straining your intellect for the present, Mr. Brown, and proceed to the
nearest depot and replenish the correspondent fountain of inspiration."

"Fountain dry now, of course. Confound me if I ever chance an opinion
but I've got to trot down to the soda factory and fill up that cursed
jug again. It seems to me that you need more inspiration--"

"Good afternoon, Brown."

The extract I was speaking of reads as follows:

"We were in North Kona. The arable uplands in both the Konas are owned
chiefly by foreigners. Indeed the best of the lands on all the islands
appear to be fast going into foreign hands; and one of the allegations
made to me by a foreign resident against the missionaries was that
their influence was against such a transfer. The Rev. Mr. _____ told me,
however, that to prevent the lands immediately about him, once owned by
the admirable Kapiolani, from going to strangers he knew not who, he had
felt obliged to invest his own private funds in them."

We naturally swell with admiration when we contemplate a sacrifice like
this. But while I read the generous last words of that extract, it fills
me with inexpressible satisfaction to know that the Rev. Mr. _____ had
his reward. He paid fifteen hundred dollars for one of those pieces of
land--he did not have to keep it long, without sticking a spade into it
he sold it to a foreigner for ten thousand dollars in gold. Yet there be
those among us who fear to trust the precious promise, "Cast thy bread
upon the waters and it shall return unto thee after many days."

I have since been told that the original $1,500 belonged to a ward of
the missionary, and that inasmuch as the latter was investing it with
the main view to doing his charge the best service in his power, and
doubtless would not have felt at liberty to so invest it merely
to protect the poor natives, his glorification in the book was not
particularly gratifying to him. The other missionaries smile at the
idea of their tribe "investing their own private funds" in this free and
easy, this gay and affluent way--buying fifteen hundred dollars worth of
land at a dash (salary $400 a year), and merely to do a trifling favor
to some savage neighbor.

NATURE'S PRINTED RECORD IN THE LAVA

At four o'clock in the afternoon we were winding down a mountain of
dreary and desolate lava to the sea, and closing our pleasant land
journey. This lava is the accumulation of ages; one torrent of fire
after another has rolled down here in old times, and built up the island
structure higher and higher. Underneath, it is honeycombed with caves;
it would be of no use to dig wells in such a place; they would not
hold water--you would not find any for them to hold, for that matter.
Consequently, the planters depend upon cisterns.

The last lava flow occurred here so long ago that there are none now
living who witnessed it. In one place it inclosed and burned down a
grove of cocoa-nut trees, and the holes in the lava where the trunks
stood are still visible; their sides retain the impression of the bark;
the trees fell upon the burning river, and becoming partly submerged,
left in it the perfect counterfeit of every knot and branch and leaf,
and even nut, for curiosity seekers of a long distant day to gaze upon
and wonder at.

There were doubtless plenty of Kanaka sentinels on guard hereabouts at
that time, but they did not leave casts of their figures in the lava as
the Roman sentinels at Herculaneum and Pompeii did. It is a pity it is
so, because such things are so interesting, but so it is. They probably
went away. They went away early, perhaps. It was very bad. However, they
had their merits--the Romans exhibited the higher pluck, but the Kanakas
showed the sounder judgment.

As usual, Brown loaded his unhappy horse with fifteen or twenty pounds
of "specimens," to be cursed and worried over for a time, and then
discarded for new toys of a similar nature. He is like most people who
visit these Islands; they are always collecting specimens, with a wild
enthusiasm, but they never get home with any of them.

CAPTAIN COOK'S DEATH-PLACE

Shortly we came in sight of that spot whose history is so familiar
to every schoolboy in the wide world--Kealakekua Bay--the place where
Captain Cook, the great circumnavigator, was killed by the natives
nearly a hundred years ago. The setting sun was flaming upon it,
a Summer shower was falling, and it was spanned by two magnificent
rainbows. Two gentlemen who were in advance of us rode through one of
these, and for a moment their garments shone with a more than regal
splendor. Why did not Captain Cook have taste enough to call his great
discovery the Rainbow Islands? These charming spectacles are present
to you at every turn; they are as common in all the islands as fogs and
wind in San Francisco; they are visible every day, and frequently at
night also--not the silvery bow we see once in an age in the States,
by moonlight, but barred with all bright and beautiful colors, like the
children of the sun and rain. I saw one of them a few nights ago. What
the sailors call "rain-dogs"--little patches of rainbow--are often seen
drifting about the heavens in these latitudes, like stained cathedral
windows.

Kealakekua Bay is a little curve like the last kink of a snail shell,
winding deep into the land, seemingly not more than a mile wide from
shore to shore. It is bounded on one side--where the murder was done--by
a little flat plain, on which stands a cocoa-nut grove and some ruined
houses; a steep wall of lava, a thousand feet high at the upper end and
three or four hundred at the lower, comes down from the mountain and
bounds the inner extremity of it. From this wall the place takes its
name, Kealakekua, which in the native tongue signifies "The Pathway
of the Gods." They say (and still believe, in spite of their liberal
education in Christianity), that the great god Lono, who used to live
upon the hillside, always traveled that causeway when urgent business
connected with heavenly affairs called him down to the seashore in a
hurry.

As the red sun looked across the placid ocean through the tall, clean
stems of the cocoa-nut trees, like a blooming whiskey bloat through the
bars of a city prison, I went and stood in the edge of the water on the
flat rock pressed by Captain Cook's feet when the blow was dealt that
took away his life, and tried to picture in my mind the doomed man
struggling in the midst of the multitude of exasperated savages--the men
in the ship crowding to the vessel's side and gazing in anxious dismay
toward the shore--the--But I discovered that I could not do it.

It was growing dark, the rain began to fall, we could see that the
distant Boomerang was helplessly becalmed at sea, and so I adjourned to
the cheerless little box of a warehouse and sat down to smoke and think,
and wish the ship would make the land--for we had not eaten much for the
ten hours and were viciously hungry.

THE STORY OF CAPTAIN COOK

Plain unvarnished history takes the romance out of Captain Cook's
assassination, and renders a deliberate verdict of justifiable homicide.
Wherever he went among the islands he was cordially received and
welcomed by the inhabitants, and his ships lavishly supplied with
all manner of food. He returned these kindnesses with insult and
ill-treatment.

When he landed at Kealakekua Bay, a multitude of natives, variously
estimated at from ten to fifteen thousand, flocked about him and
conducted him to the principal temple with more than royal honors--with
honors suited to their chiefest god, for such they took him to be. They
called him Lono--a deity who had resided at that place in a former age,
but who had gone away and had ever since been anxiously expected back
by the people. When Cook approached the awe-stricken people, they
prostrated themselves and hid their faces. His coming was announced in a
loud voice by heralds, and those who had not time to get out of the way
after prostrating themselves, were trampled under foot by the following
throngs. Arrived at the temple, he was taken into the most sacred part
and placed before the principal idol, immediately under an altar of wood
on which a putrid hog was deposited. "This was held toward him while the
priest repeated a long and rapidly enunciated address, after which he
was led to the top of a partially decayed scaffolding. Ten men, bearing
a large hog and bundles of red cloth, then entered the temple and
prostrated themselves before him. The cloth was taken from them by the
priest, who encircled Cook with it in numerous folds, and afterward
offered the hog to him in sacrifice. Two priests, alternately and in
unison, chanted praises in honor of Lono, after which they led him
to the chief idol, which, following their example, he kissed." He was
anointed by the high priest--that is to say, his arms, hands and face,
were slimed over with the chewed meat of a cocoa-nut; after this nasty
compliment, he was regaled with awa manufactured in the mouths of
attendants and spit out into a drinking vessel; "as the last most
delicate attention, he was fed with swine meat which had been masticated
for him by a filthy old man."

These distinguished civilities were never offered by the islanders to
mere human beings. Cook was mistaken for their absent god; he accepted
the situation and helped the natives to deceive themselves. His conduct
might have been wrong, in a moral point of view, but his policy was good
in conniving at the deception, and proved itself so; the belief that
he was a god saved him a good while from being killed--protected
him thoroughly and completely, until, in an unlucky moment, it was
discovered that he was only a man. His death followed instantly. Jarves,
from whose history, principally, I am condensing this narrative, thinks
his destruction was a direct consequence of his dishonest personation of
the god, but unhappily for the argument, the historian proves, over and
over again, that the false Lono was spared time and again when simple
Captain Cook of the Royal Navy would have been destroyed with small
ceremony.

The idolatrous worship of Captain Cook, as above described, was repeated
at every heathen temple he visited. Wherever he went the terrified
common people, not being accustomed to seeing gods marching around of
their own free will and accord and without human assistance, fled at
his approach or fell down and worshipped him. A priest attended him and
regulated the religious ceremonies which constantly took place in his
honor; offerings, chants and addresses met him at every point. "For a
brief period he moved among them an earthly god--observed, feared and
worshipped." During all this time the whole island was heavily taxed
to supply the wants of the ships or contribute to the gratification of
their officers and crews, and, as was customary in such cases, no return
expected. "The natives rendered much assistance in fitting the ships and
preparing them for their voyages."

At one time the King of the island laid a tabu upon his people,
confining them to their houses for several days. This interrupted
the daily supply of vegetables to the ships; several natives tried
to violate the tabu, under threats made by Cook's sailors, but were
prevented by a chief, who, for thus enforcing the laws of his country,
had a musket fired over his head from one of the ships. This is related
in "Cook's Voyages." The tabu was soon removed, and the Englishmen were
favored with the boundless hospitality of the natives as before,
except that the Kanaka women were interdicted from visiting the ships;
formerly, with extravagant hospitality, the people had sent their wives
and daughters on board themselves. The officers and sailors went freely
about the island, and were everywhere laden with presents. The King
visited Cook in royal state, and gave him a large number of exceeding
costly and valuable presents--in return for which the resurrected Lono
presented His Majesty a white linen shirt and a dagger--an instance of
illiberality in every way discreditable to a god.

"On the 2d of February, at the desire of his commander, Captain
King proposed to the priests to purchase for fuel the railing which
surrounded the top of the temple of Lono! In this Cook manifested as
little respect for the religion in the mythology of which he figured so
conspicuously, as scruples in violating the divine precepts of his own.
Indeed, throughout his voyages a spirit regardless of the rights
and feelings of others, when his own were interested, is manifested,
especially in his last cruise, which is a blot upon his memory."

Cook desecrated the holy places of the temple by storing supplies for
his ships in them, and by using the level grounds within the inclosure
as a general workshop for repairing his sails, etc.--ground which was so
sacred that no common native dared to set his foot upon it. Ledyard, a
Yankee sailor, who was with Cook, and whose journal is considered the
most just and reliable account of this eventful period of the voyage,
says two iron hatchets were offered for the temple railing, and when
the sacrilegious proposition was refused by the priests with horror and
indignation, it was torn down by order of Captain Cook and taken to the
boats by the sailors, and the images which surmounted it removed and
destroyed in the presence of the priests ant chiefs.

The abused and insulted natives finally grew desperate under the
indignities that were constantly being heaped upon them by men whose
wants they had unselfishly relieved at the expense of their own
impoverishment, and angered by some fresh baseness, they stoned a party
of sailors and drove them to their boats. From this time onward Cook
and the natives were alternately friendly and hostile until Sunday, the
14th, whose setting sun saw the circumnavigator a corpse.

Ledyard's account and that of the natives vary in no important
particulars. A Kanaka, in revenge for a blow he had received at the
hands of a sailor (the natives say he was flogged), stole a boat from
one of the ships and broke it up to get the nails out of it. Cook
determined to seize the King and remove him to his ship and keep him a
prisoner until the boat was restored. By deception and smoothly worded
persuasion he got the aged monarch to the shore, but when they were
about to enter the boat a multitude of natives flocked to the place and
one raised a cry that their King was going to be taken away and killed.
Great excitement ensued, and Cook's situation became perilous in the
extreme. He had only a handful of marines and sailors with him, and the
crowd of natives grew constantly larger and more clamorous every moment.
Cook opened the hostilities himself. Hearing a native make threats, he
had him pointed out, and fired on him with a blank cartridge. The man,
finding himself unhurt, repeated his threats, and Cook fired again and
wounded him mortally. A speedy retreat of the English party to the boats
was now absolutely necessary; as soon as it was begun Cook was hit with
a stone, and discovering who threw it, he shot the man dead. The officer
in the boats observing the retreat, ordered the boats to fire--this
occasioned Cook's guard to face about and fire also, and then the attack
became general. Cook and Lieutenant Phillips were together a few paces
in the rear of the guard, and perceiving a general fire without orders,
quitted the King and ran to the shore to stop it--but not being able to
make themselves heard, and being close pressed upon by the chiefs, they
joined the guard, who fired as they retreated. Cook having at length
reached the margin of the water, between the fire and the boats, waved
with his hat for them to cease firing and come in; and while he was
doing this a chief stabbed him from behind with an iron dagger (procured
in traffic with the sailors), just under the shoulder blade, and it
passed quite through his body. Cook fell with his face in the water and
immediately expired.

The native account says that after Cook had shot two men, he struck a
stalwart chief with the flat of his sword, for some reason or other; the
chief seized and pinioned Cook's arms in his powerful grip, and bent him
backward over his knee (not meaning to hurt him, for it was not deemed
possible to hurt the god Lono, but to keep him from doing further
mischief) and this treatment giving him pain, he betrayed his mortal
nature with a groan! It was his death-warrant. The fraud which had
served him so well was discovered at last. The natives shouted, "He
groans!--he is not a god!" and instantly they fell upon him and killed
him.

His flesh was stripped from the bones and burned (except nine pounds
of it which were sent on board the ships). The heart was hung up in a
native hut, where it was found and eaten by three children, who mistook
it for the heart of a dog. One of these children grew to be a very old
man, and died here in Honolulu a few years ago. A portion of Cook's
bones were recovered and consigned to the deep by the officers of the
ships.

Small blame should attach to the natives for the killing of Cook. They
treated him well. In return, he abused them. He and his men inflicted
bodily injury upon many of them at different times, and killed at least
three of them before they offered any proportionate retaliation.

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, August 30, 1866

Kealakekua Bay (S. I.), 1866

GREAT BRITAIN'S QUEER MONUMENT TO CAPTAIN COOK

When I digressed from my personal narrative to write about Cook's
death I left myself, solitary, hungry and dreary, smoking in the little
warehouse at Kealakekua Bay. Brown was out somewhere gathering up a
fresh lot of specimens, having already discarded those he dug out of the
old lava flow during the afternoon. I soon went to look for him. He had
returned to the great slab of lava upon which Cook stood when he was
murdered, and was absorbed in maturing a plan for blasting it out and
removing it to his home as a specimen. Deeply pained at the bare thought
of such a sacrilege, I reprimanded him severely and at once removed
him from the scene of temptation. We took a walk then, the rain having
moderated considerably. We clambered over the surrounding lava field,
through masses of weeds, and stood for a moment upon the doorstep of an
ancient ruin--the house once occupied by the aged King of Hawaii--and
I reminded Brown that that very stone step was the one across which
Captain Cook drew the reluctant old king when he turned his footsteps
for the last time toward his ship.

I checked a movement on Mr. Brown's part: "No," I said, "let it remain;
seek specimens of a less hallowed nature than this historical stone."

We also strolled along the beach toward the precipice of Kealakelikua
and gazed curiously at the semicircular holes high up in its
face--graves, they are, of ancient kings and chiefs--and wondered how
the natives ever managed to climb from the sea up the sheer wall and
make those holes and deposit their packages of patrician bones in them.

Tramping about in the rear of the warehouse, we suddenly came upon
another object of interest. It was a cocoa-nut stump, four or five feet
high, and about a foot in diameter at the butt. It had lava boulders
piled around its base to hold it up and keep it in its place, and it
was entirely sheathed over, from top to bottom, with rough, discolored
sheets of copper, such as ships' bottoms are coppered with. Each sheet
had a rude inscription scratched upon it--with a nail, apparently--and
in every case the execution was wretched. It was almost dark by this
time, and the inscriptions would have been difficult to read even at
noonday, but with patience and industry I finally got them all in my
note-book. They read as follows:

"Near this spot fell

CAPTAIN JAMES COOK

The Distinguished Circumnavigator

who Discovered these islands A.D. 1778.

His Majesty's Ship Imogene,

October 17, 1837."

"Parties from H. M. ship Vixen visited this spot Jan. 25 1858."

"This sheet and capping put on by Sparrowhawk September 16, 1839, in
order to preserve this monument to the memory of Cook."

"Captain Montressor and officers of H. M. S. Calypso visited this spot
the 18th of October, 1858."

"This tree having fallen, was replaced on this spot by H. M. S. V.
Cormorant, G. T. Gordon, Esq., Captain, who visited this bay May 18,
1846."

"This bay was visited, July 4, 1843, by H. M. S. Carysfort, the Right
Honorable Lord George Paulet, Captain, to whom, as the representative of
Her Britannic Majesty Queen Victoria, these islands were ceded, February
25, 1843."

After Cook's murder, his second in command, on board the ship, opened
fire upon the swarms of natives on the beach, and one of his cannon
balls cut this cocoa-nut tree short off and left this monumental
stump standing. It looked sad and lonely enough out there in the rainy
twilight. But there is no other monument to Captain Cook. True, up
on the mountain side we had passed by a large inclosure like an ample
hog-pen, built of lava blocks, which marks the spot where Cook's flesh
was stripped from his bones and burned; but this is not properly a
monument, since it was erected by the natives themselves, and less to
do honor to the circumnavigator than for the sake of convenience in
roasting him. A thing like a guideboard was elevated above this pen on
a tall pole and formerly there was an inscription upon it describing
the memorable occurrence that had there taken place; but the sun and the
wind have long ago so defaced it as to render it illegible.

"MUSIC SOOTHES THE SAD AND LONELY"

The sky grew overcast, and the night settled down gloomily. Brown and
I went and sat on the little wooden pier, saying nothing, for we were
tired and hungry and did not feel like talking. There was no wind; the
drizzling, melancholy rain was still falling, and not a sound disturbed
the brooding silence save the distant roar of the surf and the gentle
washing of the wavelets against the rocks at our feet. We were very
lonely. No sign of the vessel. She was still becalmed at sea no doubt.
After an hour of sentimental meditation, I bethought me of working upon
the feelings of my comrade. The surroundings were in every way favorable
to the experiment. I concluded to sing--partly because music so readily
touches the tender emotions of the heart, and partly because the singing
of pathetic ballads and such things is an art in which I have been said
to excel. In a voice tremulous with feeling, I began:

"'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble
there's no place like home; H-o--m--e--ho- home--sweet, swe-he-he--"

My poor friend rose up slowly and came and stood before me and said:

"Now look a-here, Mark--it ain't no time, and it ain't no place, for you
to be going on in that way. I'm hungry, and I'm tired, and wet; and I
ain't going to be put upon and aggravated when I'm so miserable. If
you was to start in on any more yowling like that, I'd shove you
overboard--I would, by geeminy."

"Poor vulgar creature," I said to myself, "he knows no better. I have
not the heart to blame him. How sad a lot is his, and how much he is to
be pitied, in that his soul is dead to the heavenly charm of music.
I cannot sing for this man; I cannot sing for him while he has that
dangerous calm in his voice, at any rate."

HUNGER DRIVETH TO DESPERATE ENTERPRISES

We spent another hour in silence and in profound depression of spirits;
it was so gloomy and so still, and so lonesome, with nothing human
anywhere neat save those bundles of dry kingly bones hidden in the face
of the cliff. Finally Brown said it was hard to have to sit still
and starve with plenty of delicious food and drink just beyond our
reach--rich young cocoa-nuts! I said, "what an idiot you are not to have
thought of it before. Get up and stir yourself; in five minutes we shall
have a feast and be jolly and contented again!"

The thought was cheering in the last degree, and in a few moments we
were in the grove of cocoa palms, and their ragged plumes were dimly
visible through the wet haze, high above our heads. I embraced one
of the smooth slender trunks, with the thought of climbing it, but
it looked very far to the top, and of course there were no knots or
branches to assist the climber, and so I sighed and walked sorrowfully
away.

"Thunder! what was that!"

It was only Brown. He had discharged a prodigious lava-block at the top
of a tree, and it fell back to the earth with a crash that tore up the
dead silence of the palace like an avalanche. As soon as I understood
the nature of the case I recognized the excellence of the idea. I said
as much to Brown, and told him to fire another volley. I cannot throw
lava-blocks with any precision, never having been used to them, and
therefore I apportioned our labor with that fact in view, and signified
to Brown that he would only have to knock the cocoa-nuts down--I would
pick them up myself.

Brown let drive with another boulder. It went singing through the air
and just grazed a cluster of nuts hanging fifty feet above ground.'

"Well done!" said I; "try it again."

He did so. The result was precisely the same.

"Well done again!" said I; "move your hind-sight a shade to the left,
and let her have it once more."

Brown sent another boulder hurling through the dingy air--too much
elevation--it just passed over the cocoa-nut tuft.

"Steady, lad," said I; "you scatter too much. Now--one, two, fire!" and
the next missile clove through the tuft and a couple of long, slender
leaves came floating down to the earth. "Good!" I said, "depress your
piece a line."

Brown paused and panted like an exhausted dog; then he wiped some
perspiration from his face--a quart of it, he said--and discarded his
coat, vest and cravat. The next shot fell short. He said, "I'm letting
down; them large boulders are monstrous responsible rocks to send up
there, but they're rough on the arms."

He then sent a dozen smaller stones in quick succession after the fruit,
and some of them struck in the right place, but the result was--nothing.
I said he might stop and rest awhile.

"Oh, never mind," he said, "I don't care to take any advantage--I don't
want to rest until you do. But it's singular to me how you always happen
to divide up the work about the same way. I'm to knock 'em down, and
you're to pick 'em up. I'm of the opinion that you're going to wear
yourself down to just nothing but skin and bones on this trip, if you
ain't more careful. Oh, don't mind about me resting--I can't be tired--I
ain't hove only about eleven ton of rocks up into that liberty pole."

"Mr. Brown, I am surprised at you. This is mutiny."

"Oh, well, I don't care what it is--mutiny, sass or what you please--I'm
so hungry that I don't care for nothing."

It was on my lips to correct his loathsome grammar, but I considered the
dire extremity he was in, and withheld the deserved reproof.

After some time spent in mutely longing for the coveted fruit, I
suggested to Brown that if he would climb the tree I would hold his
hat. His hunger was so great that he finally concluded to try it. His
exercise had made him ravenous. But the experiment was not a success.
With infinite labor and a great deal of awkwardly constructed swearing,
he managed to get up some thirty feet, but then he came to an uncommonly
smooth place and began to slide back slowly but surely. He clasped the
tree with his arms and legs, and tried to save himself, but he had got
too much sternway, and the thing was impossible; he dragged for a few
feet and then shot down like an arrow.

"It is tabu," he said, sadly. "Let's go back to the pia. The transom to
my trowsers has all fetched away, and the legs of them are riddled to
rags and ribbons. I wish I was drunk, or dead, or something--anything so
as to be out of this misery."

I glanced over my shoulders, as we walked along, and observed that some
of the clouds had parted and left a dim lighted doorway through to the
skies beyond; in this place, as in an ebony frame, our majestic palm
stood up and reared its graceful crest aloft; the slender stem was a
clean, black line the feathers of the plume--some erect some projecting
horizontally, some drooping a little and others hanging languidly
down toward the earth--were all sharply cut against the smooth gray
background.

"A beautiful, beautiful tree is the cocoa-palm!" I said, fervently.

"I don't see it," said Brown, resentfully. "People that haven't clumb
one are always driveling about how pretty it is. And when they make
pictures of these hot countries they always shove one of the ragged
things into the foreground. I don't see what there is about it that's
handsome; it looks like a feather-duster struck by lightning."

Perceiving that Brown's mutilated pantaloons were disturbing his gentle
spirit, I said no more.

PROVIDENTIALLY SAVED FROM STARVATION

Toward midnight a native boy came down from the uplands to see if the
Boomerang had got in yet, and we chartered him for subsistence service.
For the sum of twelve and a half cents in coin he agreed to furnish
cocoa-nuts enough for a dozen men at five minutes' notice. He
disappeared in the murky atmosphere, and in a few seconds we saw a
little black object, like a rat, running up our tall tree and pretty
distinctly defined against the light place in the sky; it was our
Kanaka, and he performed his contract without tearing his clothes--but
then he had none on, except those he was born in. He brought five large
nuts and tore the tough green husks off with his strong teeth, and thus
prepared the fruit for use. We perceived then that it was about as well
that we failed in our endeavors, as we never could have gnawed the
husks off. I would have kept Brown trying, though, as long as he had any
teeth. We punched the eye-holes out and drank the sweet (and at the same
time pungent) milk of two of the nuts, and our hunger and thirst were
satisfied. The boy broke them open and we ate some of the mushy, white
paste inside for pastime, but we had no real need of it.

After a while a fine breeze sprang up and the schooner soon worked into
the bay and cast anchor. The boat came ashore for us, and in a little
while the clouds and the rain were gone. The moon was beaming tranquilly
down on land and sea, and we two were stretched upon the deck sleeping
the refreshing sleep and dreaming the happy dreams that are only
vouchsafed to the weary and the innocent.

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, September 6, 1866

Kealakekua Bay, July, 1866

A FUNNY SCRAP OF HISTORY

In my last I spoke of the old cocoa-nut stump, all covered with copper
plates bearing inscriptions commemorating the visits of various British
naval commanders to Captain Cook's death-place at Kealakekua Bay. The
most magniloquent of these is that left by "the Right Hon. Lord George
Paulet, to whom, as the representative of Her Britannic Majesty Queen
Victoria, the Sandwich Islands were ceded, February 25, 1843."

Lord George, if he is alive yet, would like to tear off that plate
and destroy it, no doubt. He was fearfully snubbed by his Government,
shortly afterward, for his acts as Her Majesty's representative upon the
occasion to which he refers with such manifest satisfaction.

A pestilent fellow by the name of Charlton had been Great Britain's
Consul at Honolulu for many years. He seems to have employed his time
in sweating, fuming and growling about everything and everybody; in
acquiring property by devious and inscrutable ways; in blackguarding the
Hawaiian Government and the missionaries; in scheming for the transfer
of the islands to the British crown; in getting the King drunk and
laboring diligently to keep him so; in working to secure a foothold for
the Catholic religion when its priests had been repeatedly forbidden
by the King to settle in the country; in promptly raising thunder
every time an opportunity offered, and in making himself prominently
disagreeable and a shining nuisance at all times.

You will thus perceive that Charlton had a good deal of business on his
hands. There was "a heap of trouble on the old man's mind."

He was sued in the Courts upon one occasion for a debt of long standing,
amounting to 3,000 pounds, and judgment rendered against him. This made
him lively. He swore like the army in Flanders. But it was of no avail.
The case was afterwards carefully examined twice--once by a Commission
of distinguished English gentlemen and once by the law officers of
the British Crown--and the Hawaiian Court's decision sustained in both
instances. His property was attached, and one Skinner, a relative who
had $10,000 in bank, got ready to purchase it when it should be sold on
execution. So far, so good.

Several other English residents had been worsted in lawsuits. They and
Charlton became loud in their denunciation of what they termed a want of
justice in the Hawaiian Courts. The suits were all afterwards examined
by the law officers of the British Crown, and the Hawaiian Courts
sustained, as in Charlton's case.

Charlton got disgusted, wrote a "sassy" letter to the King, and left
suddenly for England, conferring his Consulate, for the time being,
upon a kindred spirit named Simpson, a bitter traducer of the Hawaiian
Government--an officer whom the Government at once refused to recognize.
Charlton left with Simpson a demand upon the Government for possession
of a large and exceedingly valuable tract of land in Honolulu, alleged
to have been transferred to him by a deed duly signed by a native
gentleman, who had never owned the property, and whose character for
probity was such that no one would believe he ever would have been
guilty of such a proceeding. Charity compels us to presume that the
versatile Charlton forged the deed. The boundaries, if specified, were
vaguely defined; it contained no mention of a consideration for value
received--it had been held in abeyance and unmentioned for twenty
years, and its signer and witnesses were long since dead. It was a shaky
instrument altogether.

On his way to England Charlton met my Lord George in a Queen's ship,
and laid his grievances before him, and then went on. My Lord sailed
straight to Honolulu and began to make trouble. Under threats of
bombarding the town, he compelled the King to make the questionable
deed good to the person having charge of Charlton's property interests;
demanded the reception of the new Consul; demanded that all those
suits--a great number--which had been decided adversely to Englishmen
(including many which had even been settled by amicable arbitration
between the parties) should be tried over again, and by juries composed
entirely of Englishmen, although the written law provided that but half
the panel should be English, and therefore, of course, the demand could
not be complied with without a tyrannical assumption of power by the
King; he stopped the seizure and sale of Charlton's property; he
brought in a little bill (gotten up by the newly created and
promptly-emasculated Consul, Simpson) for $117,000 and some odd
change--enough to "bust" the Hawaiian exchequer two or three times
over--to use a popular missionary term--for all manner of imaginary
damages sustained by British subjects at diverse and sundry times, and
among the items was one demanding $3,000 to indemnify Skinner for having
kept his $10,000 lying idle for four months, expecting to invest it in
Charlton's property, and then not getting a chance to do it on account
of Lord George having stopped the sale. An exceedingly nice party was
Lord George, take him all around.

For days and nights together the unhappy Kamehameha III was in bitterest
distress. He could not pay the bill, and the law gave him no power to
comply with the other demands. He and his Ministers of state pleaded
for mercy--for time to remodel the laws to suit the emergency. But Lord
George refused steadfastly to accede to either request, and finally,
in tribulation and sorrow, the King told him to take the islands and do
with them as he would; he knew of no other way--his Government was too
weak to maintain its rights against Great Britain.

And so Lord George took them and set up his Government, and hauled
down the royal Hawaiian ensign and hoisted the English colors over the
archipelago. And the sad King notified his people of the event in a
proclamation which is touching in its simple eloquence:

"Where are you, chiefs, people and commons from my ancestors, and people
from foreign lands!

"Hear ye! I make known to you that I am in perplexity by reason of
difficulties into which I have been brought without cause; therefore I
have given away the life of our land, hear ye! But my rule over you, my
people, and your privileges will continue, for I have hope that the life
of the land will be restored when my conduct is justified. KAMEHAMEHA
III."

And then, I suppose, my Lord George Paulet, temporary King of the
Sandwich Islands, went complacently skirmishing around his dominions in
his ship, and feeding fat on glory--for we find him, four months later,
visiting Kealakekua Bay and nailing his rusty sheet of copper to the
memorial stump set up to glorify the great Cook--and imagining, no
doubt, that his visit had conferred immortality upon a name which had
only possessed celebrity before.

But my lord's happiness was not to last long. His superior officer, Rear
Admiral Thomas, arrived at Honolulu a week or two afterward, and as soon
as he understood the case he immediately showed the new Government the
door and restored Kamehameha to all his ancient powers and privileges.
It was the 31st of July, 1843. There was immense rejoicing on Oahu that
day. The Hawaiian flag was flung to the breeze. The King and as many of
his people as could get into the Great Stone Church went there to pray,
and the balance got drunk. The 31st of July is Independence Day in the
Sandwich Islands, and consequently in these times there are two grand
holidays in the Islands in the month of July. The Americans celebrate
the 4th with great pomp and circumstance, and the natives outdo them if
they can, on the 31st--and the speeches disgorged upon both occasions
are regularly inflicted in cold blood upon the people by the newspapers,
that have a dreary fashion of coming out just a level week after one has
forgotten any given circumstance they talk about.

A LUCRATIVE OFFICE

When I woke up on the schooner's deck in the morning, the sun was
shining down right fervently, everybody was astir, and Brown was
gone--gone in a canoe to Captain Cook's side of the bay, the Captain
said. I took a boat and landed on the opposite shore, at the port of
entry. There was a house there--I mean a foreigner's house--and near
it were some native grass huts. The Collector of this port of entry not
only enjoys the dignity of office, but has emoluments also. That makes
it very nice, of course. He gets five dollars for boarding every foreign
ship that stops there, and two dollars more for filling out certain
blanks attesting such visit. As many as three foreign ships stop there
in a single year, sometimes. Yet, notwithstanding this wild rush of
business, the late Collector of the port committed suicide several
months ago. The foreign ships which visit this place are whalers
in quest of water and potatoes. The present Collector lives back
somewhere--has a den up the mountain several thousand feet--but he comes
down fast enough when a ship heaves in sight.

WASHOE MEN

I found two Washoe men at the house. But I was not surprised--I believe
if a man were to go to perdition itself he would find Washoe men there,
though not so thick, maybe, as in the other place.

THE HOLY PLACE

Two hundred yards from the house was the ruins of the pagan temple of
Lono, so desecrated by Captain Cook when he was pretending to be that
deity. Its low, rude walls look about as they did when he saw them, no
doubt. In a cocoa-nut grove near at hand is a tree with a hole through
its trunk, said to have been made by a cannon ball fired from one of
the ships at a crowd of natives immediately after Cook's murder. It is a
very good hole.

THE HERO OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL BOOKS

The high chief cook of this temple--the priest who presided over it and
roasted the human sacrifices--was uncle to Obookia, and at one time that
youth was an apprentice-priest under him. Obookia was a young native of
fine mind, who, together with three other native boys, was taken to New
England by the captain of a whaleship during the reign of Kamehameha I,
and were the means of attracting the attention of the religious world
to their country and putting it into their heads to send missionaries
there. And this Obookia was the very same sensitive savage who sat down
on the church steps and wept because his people did not have the Bible.
That incident has been very elaborately painted in many a charming
Sunday School book--aye, and told so plaintively and so tenderly that
I have cried over it in Sunday School myself, on general principles,
although at a time when I did not know much and could not understand why
the people of the Sandwich Islands need care a cent about it as long
as they did not know there was a Bible at all. This was the same
Obookia--this was the very same old Obookia--so I reflected, and gazed
upon the ruined temple with a new and absorbing interest. Here that
gentle spirit worshipped; here he sought the better life, after his rude
fashion; on this stone, perchance, he sat down with his sacred lasso,
to wait for a chance to rope in some neighbor for the holy sacrifice;
on this altar, possibly, he broiled his venerable grandfather, and
presented the rare offering before the high priest, who may have said,
"Well done, good and faithful servant." It filled me with emotion.

KANUI THE UNFORTUNATE

Obookia was converted and educated, and was to have returned to his
native land with the first missionaries, had he lived. The other native
youths made the voyage, and two of them did good service, but the third,
Wm. Kanui, fell from grace afterward, for a time, and when the gold
excitement broke out in California he journeyed thither and went to
mining, although he was fifty years old. He succeeded pretty well, but
the failure of Page, Bacon & Co. relieved him of $6,000. and then, to
all intents and purposes, he was a bankrupt community. Thus, after all
his toils, all his privations, all his faithful endeavors to gather
together a competence, the blighting hand of poverty was laid upon him
in his old age and he had to go back to preaching again. One cannot but
feel sad to contemplate such afflictions as these cast upon a creature
so innocent and deserving.

And finally he died--died in Honolulu in 1864. The Rev. Mr. Damon's
paper, referring--in the obituary notice--to Page-Bacon's unpaid
certificates of deposit in the unhappy man's possession, observes that
"he departed this life leaving the most substantial and gratifying
evidence that he was prepared to die." And so he was, poor fellow, so he
was. He was cleaned out, as you may say, and was prepared to go. He was
all ready and prepared--Page-Bacon had attended to that for him. All he
had to do was to shed his mortal coil. Then he was all right. Poor, poor
old fellow. One's heart bleeds for him.

For some time after his bereavement in the matter of finances, he helped
Rev. M. Rowell to carry on the Bethel Church in San Francisco and gave
excellent satisfaction for a man who was so out of practice. Sleep in
peace, poor tired soul!--you were out of luck many a time in your long,
checkered life, but you are safe now where care and sorrow and trouble
can never assail you anymore.

TEMPLE TO THE RAIN GOD

Quite a broad tract of land near that port of entry, extending from the
sea to the mountain top, was sacred to the god Lono in olden times--so
sacred that if a common native set his sacrilegious foot upon it it was
time for him to make his will, because his time was come. He might go
around it by water, but he could not cross it. It was well sprinkled
with pagan temples and stocked with awkward, homely idols carved out of
logs of wood. There was a temple devoted to prayers for rain--and with
rare sagacity it was placed at a point so well up on the mountain side
that if you prayed there twenty-four times a day for rain you would be
likely to get it every time. You would seldom get to your Amen before
you would have to hoist your umbrella.

THE HOUSE BUILT BY THE DEAD MEN

And there was a large temple near at hand which was built in a single
night, in the midst of storm and thunder and rain, by the ghastly hands
of dead men! Tradition says that by the weird glare of the lightning a
noiseless multitude of phantoms were seen at their strange labor far
up the mountain side at dead of night--flitting hither and thither and
bearing great lava-blocks clasped in their nerveless fingers--appearing
and disappearing as the fitful lightning fell upon their pallid forms
and faded away again. Even to this day, it is said, the natives hold
this dread structure in awe and reverence, and will not pass by it in
the night.

VENUS AT THE BATH

At noon I observed a bevy of nude native young ladies bathing in the
sea, and went down to look at them. But with a prudery which seems to be
characteristic of that sex everywhere, they all plunged in with a lying
scream, and when they rose to the surface they only just poked their
heads out and showed no disposition to proceed any further in the same
direction. I was naturally irritated by such conduct, and therefore I
piled their clothes up on a boulder in the edge of the sea and sat down
on them and kept the wenches in the water until they were pretty
well used up. I had them in the door, as the missionaries say. I was
comfortable, and I just let them beg. I thought I could freeze them out,
maybe, but it was impracticable. I finally gave it up and went away,
hoping that the rebuke I had given them would not be lost upon them. I
went and undressed and went in myself. And then they went out. I never
saw such singular perversity. Shortly a party of children of both sexes
came floundering around me, and then I quit and left the Pacific ocean
in their possession.

THE SHAMELESS BROWN

I got uneasy about Brown finally, and as there were no canoes at hand I
got a horse whereon to ride three or four miles around to the other side
of the bay and hunt him up. As I neared the end of the trip, and was
riding down the "pathway of the gods" toward the sea in the sweltering
sun I saw Brown toiling up the hill in the distance, with a heavy burden
on his shoulder, and knew that canoes were scarce with him, too. I
dismounted and sat down in the shade of a crag, and after a while--after
numerous pauses to rest by the way--Brown arrived at last, fagged out,
and puffing like a steamboat, and gently eased his ponderous burden to
the ground--the cocoa-nut stump all sheathed with copper memorials to
the illustrious Captain Cook.

"Heavens and earth!" I said, "what are you going to do with that?"

"Going to do with it!--lemme blow a little--lemme blow--it's monstrous
heavy, that log is; I'm most tired out--going to do with it! Why, I'm
going to take her home for a specimen."

"You egregious ass! March straight back again and put it where you got
it. Why, Brown, I am surprised at you--and hurt. I am grieved to think
that a man who has lived so long in the atmosphere of refinement which
surrounds me can be guilty of such vandalism as this. Reflect, Brown,
and say if it be right--if it be manly--if it be generous--to lay
desecrating hands upon this touching tribute of a great nation to her
gallant dead? Why, Brown, the circumnavigator Cook labored all his life
in the service of his country--with a fervid soul and a fearless spirit,
he braved the dangers of the unknown seas and planted the banner of
England far and wide over their beautiful island world. His works have
shed a glory upon his native land which still lives in her history
to-day; he laid down his faithful life in her service at last and
unforgetful of her son, she yet reveres his name and praises his
deeds--and in token of her love, and in reward for the things he did
for her, she had reared this monument to his memory--this symbol of
a nation's gratitude--which you would defile with unsanctified hands.
Restore it--go!"

"All right, if you say so; but I don't see no use of such a spread as
you're making. I don't see nothing so very high-toned about this old
rotten chunk. It's about the orneryest thing for a monument I've ever
struck yet. If it suits Cook, though, all right; I wish him joy; but if
I was planted under it I'd highst it, if it was the last act of my life.
Monument! it ain't fit for a dog--I can buy dead loads of just such
for six bits. She puts this over Cook--but she put one over that
foreigner--what was his name?--Prince Albert--that cost a million
dollars--and what did he do? Why, he never done anything--never done
anything but lead a gallus, comfortable life, at home and out of danger,
and raise a large family for Government to board at 300,000 pounds a
year apiece. But with this fellow, you know, it was different. However,
if you say the old stump's got to go down again, down she goes. As I
said before, if it's your wishes, I've got nothing to say. Nothing only
this--I've fetched her a mile or a mile and a half, and she weighs a
hundred and fifty I should judge, and if it would suit Cook just as
well to have her planted up here instead of down there, it would be
considerable of a favor to me."

I made him shoulder the monument and carry it back, nevertheless. His
criticisms on the monument and its patron struck me, though, in spite of
myself. The creature has got no sense, but his vaporings sound strangely
plausible sometimes.

In due time we arrived at the port of entry once more.

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, September 22, 1866

Kealakekua Bay, July, 1866

THE ROMANTIC GOD LONO

I have been writing a good deal, of late, about the great god Lono and
Captain Cook's personation of him. Now, while I am here in Lono's home,
upon ground which his terrible feet have trodden in remote ages--unless
these natives lie, and they would hardly do that, I suppose--I might as
well tell who he was.

The idol the natives worshipped for him was a slender, unornamented
staff twelve feet long. Unpoetical history says he was a favorite god on
the island of Hawaii--a great king who had been deified for meritorious
services--just our own fashion of rewarding heroes, with the difference
that we would have made him a Postmaster instead of a god, no doubt.
In an angry moment he slew his wife, a goddess named Kaikilani Alii.
Remorse of conscience drove him mad, and tradition presents us the
singular spectacle of a god traveling "on the shoulder;" for in his
gnawing grief he wandered about from place to place boxing and wrestling
with all whom he met. Of course this pastime soon lost its novelty,
inasmuch as it must necessarily have been the case that when so powerful
a deity sent a frail human opponent "to grass" he never came back
anymore. Therefore, he instituted games called makahiki, and ordered
that they should be held in his honor, and then sailed for foreign lands
on a three-cornered raft, stating that he would return some day, and
that was the last of Lono. He was never seen anymore; his raft got
swamped, perhaps. But the people always expected his return, and they
were easily led to accept Captain Cook as the restored god.

THE POETIC TRADITION

But there is another tradition which is rather more poetical than this
bald historical one. Lono lived in considerable style up here on the
hillside. His wife was very beautiful, and he was devoted to her. One
day he overheard a stranger proposing an elopement to her, and without
waiting to hear her reply he took the stranger's life and then upbraided
Kaikilani so harshly that her sensitive nature was wounded to the quick.
She went away in tears, and Lono began to repent of his hasty conduct
almost before she was out of sight. He sat him down under a cocoa-nut
tree to await her return, intending to receive her with such tokens of
affection and contrition as should restore her confidence and drive all
sorrow from her heart. But hour after hour winged its tardy flight
and yet she did not come. The sun went down and left him desolate. His
all-wise instincts may have warned him that the separation was final,
but he hoped on, nevertheless, and when the darkness was heavy he built
a beacon fire at his door to guide the wanderer home again, if by any
chance she had lost her way. But the night waxed and waned and brought
another day, but not the goddess. Lono hurried forth and sought her far
and wide, but found no trace of her. At night he set his beacon fire
again and kept lone watch, but still she came not; and a new day found
him a despairing, broken-hearted god. His misery could no longer brook
suspense and solitude, and he set out to look for her. He told his
sympathizing people he was going to search through all the island world
for the lost light of his household and he would never come back anymore
till he found her. The natives always implicitly believed that he was
still pursuing his patient quest and that he would find his peerless
spouse again someday, and come back; and so, for ages they waited and
watched in trusting simplicity for his return. They gazed out wistfully
over the sea at any strange appearance on its waters, thinking it
might be their loved and lost protector. But Lono was to them as the
rainbow-tinted future seen in happy visions of youth--for he never came.

Some of the old natives believed Cook was Lono to the day of their
death; but many did not, for they could not understand how he could die
if he was a god.

THE FIELD OF THE VANQUISHED GODS

Only a mile or so from Kealakekua Bay is a spot of historic
interest--the place where the last battle was fought for idolatry. Of
course we visited it and came away as wise as most people do who go and
gaze upon such mementoes of the past when in an unreflective mood.

While the first missionaries were on their way around the Horn, the
idolatrous customs which had obtained in the islands as far back as
tradition reached were suddenly broken up. Old Kamehameha I was dead,
and his son, Liholiho, the new King, was a free liver, a roystering,
dissolute fellow, and hated the restraints of the ancient tabu. His
assistant in the Government, Kaahumanu, the Queen dowager, was proud and
high-spirited, and hated the tabu because it restricted the privileges
of her sex and degraded all women very nearly to the level of brutes. So
the case stood. Liholiho had half a'mind to put his foot down, Kaahumanu
had a whole mind to badger him into doing it, and whisky did the rest.
It was probably the first time whisky ever prominently figured as an
aid to civilization. Liholiho came up to Kailua as drunk as a piper, and
attended a great feast; the determined Queen spurred his drunken courage
up to a reckless pitch, and then, while all the multitude stared in
blank dismay, he moved deliberately forward and sat down with the women!
They saw him eat from the same vessel with them, and were appalled!
Terrible moments drifted slowly by, and still the King ate, still he
lived, still the lightnings of the insulted gods were withheld! Then
conviction came like a revelation--the superstitions of a hundred
generations passed from before the people like a cloud, and a shout went
up,

"The tabu is broken! the tabu is broken!"

Thus did King Liholiho and his dreadful whisky preach the first sermon
and prepare the way for the new gospel that was speeding southward over
the waves of the Atlantic.

The tabu broken and destruction failing to follow the awful sacrilege,
the people, with that childlike precipitancy which has always
characterized them, jumped to the conclusion that their gods were a weak
and wretched swindle, just as they formerly jumped to the conclusion
that Captain Cook was no god, merely because he groaned, and promptly
killed him without stopping to inquire whether a god might not groan as
well as a man if it suited his pleasure to do it; and satisfied that the
idols were powerless to protect themselves they went to work at once and
pulled them down--hacked them to pieces--applied the torch--annihilated
them!

The pagan priests were furious. And well they might be; they had held
the fattest offices in the land, and now they were beggared; they
had been great--they had stood above the chiefs--and now they were
vagabonds. They raised a revolt; they scared a number of people into
joining their standard, and Kekuokalani, an ambitious offshoot of
royalty, was easily persuaded to become their leader.

In the first skirmish the idolaters triumphed over the royal army sent
against them, and full of confidence they resolved to march upon Kailua.
The King sent an envoy to try and conciliate them, and came very near
being an envoy short by the operation; the savages not only refused to
listen to him, but wanted to kill him. So the King sent his men forth
under Major General Kalaimoku and the two hosts met at Kuamoo. The
battle was long and fierce--men and women fighting side by side, as was
the custom--and when the day was done the rebels were flying in every
direction in hopeless panic, and idolatry and the tabu were dead in the
land!

The royalists marched gayly home to Kailua glorifying the new
dispensation. "There is no power in the gods," said they; "they are a
vanity and a lie. The army with idols was weak; the army without idols
was strong and victorious!" The nation was without a religion.

The missionary ship arrived in safety shortly afterward, timed by
providential exactness to meet the emergency, and the gospel was planted
as in a virgin soil.

CANOE VOYAGE

At noon, we hired a Kanaka to take us down to the ancient ruins at
Honaunau in his canoe--price two dollars--reasonable enough, for a sea
voyage of eight miles, counting both ways.

The native canoe is an irresponsible looking contrivance. I cannot think
of anything to liken it to but a boy's sled runner hollowed out, and
that does not quite convey the correct idea. It is about fifteen feet
long, high and pointed at both ends, is a foot and a half or two feet
deep, and so narrow that if you wedged a fat man into it you might not
get him out again. It seems to sit right upon top of the water like
a duck, but it has an outrigger and does not upset easily if you keep
still. This outrigger is formed of two long bent sticks, like plow
handles, which project from one side, and to their outer ends is bound
a curved beam composed of an extremely light wood, which skims along
the surface of the water and thus saves you from an upset on that side,
while the outrigger's weight is not so easily lifted as to make an upset
on the other side a thing to be greatly feared. Still, until one gets
used to sitting perched upon this knife-blade, he is apt to reason
within himself that it would be more comfortable if there were just an
outrigger or so on the other side also.

SLEEPY SCENERY

I had the bow seat, and Brown sat amidships and faced the Kanaka, who
occupied the stern of the craft and did the paddling. With the first
stroke the trim shell of a thing shot out from the shore like an arrow.
There was not much to see. While we were on the shallow water of the
reef, it was pastime to look down into the limpid depths at the large
bunches of branching coral--the unique shrubbery of the sea. We lost
that, though, when we got out into the dead blue water of the deep.
But we had the picture of the surf, then, dashing angrily against the
crag-bound shore and sending a foaming spray high into the air. There
was interest in this beetling border, too, for it was honey-combed with
quaint caves and arches and tunnels, and had a rude semblance of the
dilapidated architecture of ruined keeps and castles rising out of the
restless sea. When this novelty ceased to be a novelty, we had to turn
our eyes shoreward and gaze at the long mountain with its rich green
forests stretching up into the curtaining clouds, and at the specks of
houses in rearward distance and the diminished schooner riding sleepily
at anchor. And when these grew tiresome we dashed boldly into the midst
of a school of huge, beastly porpoises engaged at their eternal game of
arching over a wave and disappearing, and then doing it over again
and keeping it up--always circling over, in that way, like so many
well-submerged wheels. But the porpoises wheeled themselves away, and
then we were thrown upon our own resources. It did not take many minutes
to discover that the sun was blazing like a bonfire, and that the
weather was of a melting temperature. It had a drowsing effect, too, and
when Brown attempted to open a conversation, I let him close it again
for lack of encouragement. I expected he would begin on the Kanaka, and
he did: "Fine day, John." "Aole iki."

[I took that to mean "I don't know," and as equivalent to "I don't
understand you."]

"Sorter sultry, though."

"Aole iki."

"You're right--at least I'll let it go at that, anyway. It makes you
sweat considerable, don't it?"

"Aole iki."

"Right again, likely. You better take a bath when you get down here to
Honaunau--you don't smell good, anyhow, and you can't sweat that way
long without smelling worse."

"Aole iki."

"Oh, this ain't any use. This Injun don't seem to know anything but
'Owry ikky,' and the interest of that begins to let down after it's been
said sixteen or seventeen times. I reckon I'll bail out a while for a
change."

I expected he would upset the canoe, and he did. It was well enough to
take the chances, though, because the sea had flung the blossom of a
wave into the boat every now and then, until, as Brown said in a happy
spirit of exaggeration, there was about as much water inside as there
was outside. There was no peril about the upset, but there was a very
great deal of discomfort. The author of the mischief thought there was
compensation for it, however, in that there was a marked improvement in
the Kanaka's smell afterwards.

THE RUINED CITY OF REFUGE

At the end of an hour we had made the four miles, and landed on a level
point of land, upon which was a wide extent of old ruins, with many a
tall cocoa-nut tree growing among them. Here was the ancient City of
Refuge--a vast inclosure, whose stone walls were twenty feet thick at
the base, and fifteen or twenty feet high; an oblong square, a thousand
and forty feet one way, and a fraction under seven hundred the
other. Within this inclosure, in early times, have been three rude
temples--each was 210 feet long by 100 wide, and 13 high.

In those days, if a man killed another anywhere on the island the
relatives of the deceased were privileged to take the murderer's life;
and then a chase for life and liberty began--the outlawed criminal
flying through pathless forests and over mountain and plain, with his
hopes fixed upon the protecting walls of the City of Refuge, and the
avenger of blood following hotly after him! Sometimes the race was kept
up to the very gates of the temple, and the panting pair sped through
long files of excited natives, who watched the contest with flashing
eye and dilated nostril, encouraging the hunted refugee with sharp,
inspirited ejaculations, and sending up a ringing shout of exultation
when the saving gates closed upon him and the cheated pursuer sank
exhausted at the threshold. But sometimes the flying criminal fell under
the hand of the avenger at the very door, when one more brave stride,
one more brief second of time would have brought his feet upon the
sacred ground and barred him against all harm. Where did these isolated
pagans get this idea of a City of Refuge--this ancient Jewish custom?

This old sanctuary was sacred to all--even to rebels in arms and
invading armies. Once within its walls, and confession made to the
priest and absolution obtained, the wretch with a price on his head
could go forth without fear or without danger--he was tabu, and to harm
him was death. The routed rebels in the lost battle for idolatry fled to
this place to claim sanctuary, and many were thus saved.

THE PLACE OF EXECUTION

Close to a corner of the great inclosure is a round structure of stone,
some six or eight feet high, with a level top about ten or twelve
feet in diameter. This was the place of execution. A high palisade of
cocoa-nut piles shut out its cruel scenes from the vulgar multitude.
Here criminals were killed, the flesh stripped from the bones and
burned, and the bones secreted in holes in the body of the structure. If
the man had been guilty of a high crime, the entire corpse was burned.

A STUDY FOR THE CURIOUS

The walls of the temple are a study. The same food for speculation that
is offered the visitor to the Pyramids of Egypt he will find here--the
mystery of how they were constructed by a people unacquainted with
science and mechanics. The natives have no invention of their own for
hoisting heavy weights, they had no beasts of burden, and they have
never even shown any knowledge of the properties of the lever. Yet some
of the lava blocks quarried out, brought over rough, broken ground,
and built into this wall, six or seven feet from the ground, are of
prodigious size and would weigh tons. How did they transport and how
raise them?

Both the inner and outer surfaces of the walls present a smooth front
and are very creditable specimens of masonry. The blocks are of all
manner of shapes and sizes, but yet are fitted together with the neatest
exactness. The gradual narrowing of the wall from the base upward is
accurately preserved. No cement was used, but the edifice is firm and
compact and is capable of resisting storm and decay for centuries. Who
built this temple, and how was it built, and when, are mysteries that
may never be unraveled.

THERE WERE GIANTS IN THOSE DAYS

Outside of these ancient walls lies a sort of coffin-shaped stone eleven
feet four inches long and three feet square at the small end (it would
weigh a few thousand pounds), which the high chief who held sway over
this district many centuries ago brought hither on his shoulder one
day to use as a lounge! This circumstance is established by the most
reliable traditions. He used to lie down on it, in his indolent way, and
keep an eye on his subjects at work for him and see that there was no
"soldiering" done. And no doubt there was not any done to speak of,
because he was a man of that sort of build that incites to attention
to business on the part of an employee. He was fourteen or fifteen feet
high. When he stretched himself at full length on his lounge, his legs
hung down over the end, and when he snored he woke the dead. These facts
are all attested by irrefragable tradition.

Brown said: "I don't say anything against this Injun's inches, but I
copper his judgment. He didn't know his own size. Because if he did, why
didn't he fetch a rock that was long enough, while he was at it?"

KAAHUMANU'S ROCK

On the other site of the temple is a monstrous seven-ton rock, eleven
feet long, seven feet wide and three feet thick. It is raised a foot or
a foot and a half above the ground, and rests upon half a dozen little
stony pedestals. The same old fourteen-footer brought it down from the
mountain, merely for fun (he had his own notions about fun, and they
were marked by a quaint originality, as well), and propped it up as we
find it now and as others may find it at a century hence, for it would
take a score of horses to budge it from its position. They say that
fifty or sixty years ago the proud Queen Kaahumanu used to fly to this
rock for safety, whenever she had been making trouble with her fierce
husband, and hide under it until his wrath was appeased. But these
Kanakas will lie, and this statement is one of their ablest efforts--for
Kaahumanu was six feet high--she was bulky--she was built like an
ox--and she could no more have squeezed under that rock than she could
have passed between the cylinders of a sugar mill. What could she gain
by it, even if she succeeded? To be chased and abused by her savage
husband could not be otherwise than humiliating to her high spirit, yet
it could never make her feel so flat as an hour's repose under that rock
would.

SCIENCE AMONG BARBARIANS

We walked a mile over a raised macadamized road of uniform width; a road
paved with flat stones and exhibiting in its every detail a considerable
degree of engineering skill. Some say that wise old pagan Kamehameha
I planned and built it, but others say it was built so long before his
time that the knowledge of who constructed it has passed out of the
traditions. In either case, however, as the handiwork of an untaught and
degraded race it is a thing of pleasing interest. The stones are worn
and smooth, and pushed apart in places, so that the road has the exact
appearance of those ancient paved highways leading out of Rome which one
sees in pictures.

A PETRIFIED NIAGARA

The object of our tramp was to visit a great natural curiosity at the
base of the foothills--a congealed cascade of lava. Some old forgotten
volcanic eruption sent its broad river of fire down the mountain side
here, and it poured down in a great torrent from an overhanging bluff
some fifty feet high to the ground below. The flaming torrent cooled
in the winds from the sea, and remains there to-day, all seamed, and
frothed and tippled--a petrified Niagara. It is very picturesque, and
withal so natural that one might almost imagine it still flowed. A
smaller stream trickled over the cliff and built up an isolated pyramid
about thirty feet high, which has the resemblance of a mass of large
gnarled and knotted vines and roots and stems intricately twisted and
woven together.

NATURE'S MINING ACHIEVEMENTS

We passed in behind the cascade and the pyramid, and found the bluff
pierced by several cavernous tunnels, whose crooked courses we followed
about fifty feet, but with no notable result, save that we made a
discovery that may be of high interest to men of science. We discovered
that the darkness in there was singularly like the darkness observable
in other particularly dark places--exactly like it, I thought. I am
borne out in this opinion by my comrade, who said he did not believe
there was any difference but if there was, he judged it was in favor of
this darkness here.

Two of these winding tunnels stand as proof of Nature's mining
abilities. Their floors are level, they are seven feet wide, and their
roofs are gently arched. Their height is not uniform, however. We passed
through one a hundred feet long, which leads through a spur of the hill
and opens out well up in the sheer wall of a precipice whose foot rests
in the waves of the sea. It is a commodious tunnel, except that there
are occasionally places in it where one must stoop to pass under. The
roof is lava, of course, and is thickly studded with little lava-pointed
icicles an inch long, which hardened as they dripped. They project as
closely together as the iron teeth of a corn-sheller, and if one will
stand up straight and walk any distance there, he can get his hair
combed free of charge.

Brown tried to hurry me away from this vicinity by saying that if the
expected land breeze sprang up while we were absent, the Boomerang would
be obliged to put to sea without waiting for us; but I did not care; I
knew she would land our saddles and shirt-collars at Kau, and we could
sail in the superior schooner Emmeline [Emeline], Captain Crane, which
would be entirely to my liking. Wherefore we proceeded to ransack the
country for further notable curiosities.

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, September 26, 1866

Honolulu, September 10, 1866.

THE HIGH CHIEF OF SUGARDOM

I have visited Haleakala, Kilauea, Wailuku Valley, the Petrified
Cataracts, the Pathway of the Great Hog God--in a word, I have visited
all the principal wonders of the island, and now I come to speak of one
which, in its importance to America, surpasses them all. A land which
produces six, eight, ten, twelve, yea, even thirteen thousand pounds
of sugar to the acre on unmanured soil! There are precious few acres of
unmanured ground in Louisiana--none at all, perhaps--which will yield
two thousand five hundred pounds of sugar; there is not an unmanured
acre under cultivation in the Sandwich Islands which yields less.
This country is the king of the sugar world, as far as astonishing
productiveness is concerned. Heretofore the Mauritius has held this high
place. Commodore Perry, in his report on the Mauritius, says:

"Before the introduction of guano into Mauritius the product of sugar on
that island was from 2,000 to 2,500 pounds to the acre, but the increase
since the application of this fertilizer has been so extraordinary as
to be scarcely credible. In ordinary seasons the product has been from
6,000 to 7,000 pounds, and under peculiarly favorable circumstances it
has even reached 8,000 pounds to the acre."

It was "scarcely credible." Guano has not been used in the Sandwich
Islands at all, yet the sugar crop of Maui averages over 6,000 pounds
straight through, all the time, for every acre cultivated. Last year
the average was 7,000 pounds per acre on the Ulupalakua plantation; this
year the "plant" crop on the Wailuku plantation averages 8,000. Portions
of the Waikapu, Wailuku, Waihee, Ulupalakua, and many other plantations
have yielded over 11,000 pounds to the acre, and twenty acres on the
fourth named averaged the enormous yield of 13,000 pounds per acre
one season! These things are "scarcely credible," but they are true,
nevertheless.

By late Patent Office Reports it appears that the average sugar yield
per acre throughout the world ranges from 500 to 1,000 pounds. The
average in the Sandwich Islands, lumping good, bad and indifferent, is
5,000 pounds per acre.

PROGRESS OP THE ISLAND'S PRODUCTION

The cultivation of sugar in the islands dates back fourteen years; its
cultivation as an actual business dates back only four years. This year
the aggregate yield is 27,000,000 pounds. The cultivation of sugar in
Louisiana dates back one hundred and fifteen years; its cultivation as
an actual business dates back just one hundred years. When it had been a
business forty years there were a hundred plantations in Louisiana--ten
years later there were one hundred and fifty on the Mississippi, and the
aggregate yield was only 10,000,000 pounds; a few years later it reached
25,000,000. Compare that with the 27,000,000 yield of twenty-nine small
plantations in the Sandwich Islands. The sugar history of the islands
may be compressed into a very small table. Aggregate yield of pounds
for:

1852--730,000 1856--554,805 1857--700,556 1858--1,204,061
1851--1,826,620 1860--1,444,271 1861--2,567,498 1862--3,005,603
1863--5,292,121 1864--10,414,441 1865--15 318,097 1866--27,050.000

The exports of molasses during the entire year of 1865 amounted to half
a million gallons--only a little more than was exported during the first
six months of the present year.

The following table gives the yield in pounds of the twenty-nine
principal plantations for the present year:

ISLAND OF HAWAII

Harto--150,000 Kohala--2,000,000 Onomea--1,200,000 Metcalf's--1,200,000
Kauiki--1,600,000 Hoonsing--600,000 Paukau--600,000

ISLAND OF MAUI

Makee--1,800,000 Haua--600,000 Waikapu--1,000,000 Wailuku--2,400,000
Bailey & Son--400,000 Lewers--2,000,000 Hobron--1,200,000 Haiku--800,000
East Maui--800,000 C. & Turton--1,000,000 Lahaina Sugar Co--1,200,000
Bal and Adams--700,000

ISLAND OF KAUAI

Princeville--2,000 000 Lihue--700 000 Koloa--700,000 Waipoa--300,000

ISLAND OF OAHU

Kauahai--200,000 Wilder--600,000 Kaalia--400,000 Story & Co--200,000
Halawa--400,000 Wailua--300,000

Total--27,050,000

When all the cane lands in the islands are under full cultivation, they
will produce over 250,000,000 pounds of sugar annually.

COMPARATIVE

In Louisiana, sugar planters paid from $20 to $200 an acre for land,
$500 to $1,000 apiece for negroes $50,000 to $100,000 for stock, mills,
etc., raised 1,000 to 1,500 pounds of sugar to the acre, sold it for 5
and 6 cents--and got rich.

In the Islands wild sugar land is worth from $l to $20 an acre, mills
and stock cost about the same as in Louisiana. The hire of each laborer
is $100 a year--just about what it used to cost to board and clothe and
doctor a negro--but there is no original outlay of $500 to $1,000 for
the purchase of the laborer or $50 to $100 annual interest to be paid
on the sum so laid out. The price of sugar is double what it was in
Louisiana, and the actual net profit to the planter, notwithstanding
high freights and high duties, is also double.

In Louisiana, it cost not less than $180,000 to purchase and stock with
negroes, mill, animals, etc., a plantation of 300 acres, and its crop
would yield $30,000 (allowing each acre to produce 2,000 pounds to the
acre--which it wouldn't do). Deduct $60,000 outlay for negroes and half
the cost of the land, $10,000, and the same plantation in the Islands
would cost $110,000 and be ready for business. Its crop would yield
6,000 pounds to the acre and sell for $180,000 in San Francisco. If the
planters of Louisiana have done well, surely those of the Islands ought.

When the production of a staple steadily increases and capital sticks to
it and shows confidence in it, it is fair to presume that investments in
it are considered secure and profitable. In 1839, '40 and '41, the yield
in Louisiana ranged along in the neighborhood of 100,000,000 pounds
annually--price, 4, 5 and 6 cents a pound. In 1852, '53 and '54,
her yearly yield fluctuated between 350,000,000 and 500,000,000
pounds--market price, 3 1/2 to 5 cents. Thus, 1,000 to 1,500 pounds
to the acre, at 3 1/2 to 6 cents, was so encouraging as to more than
quadruple Louisiana's sugar production in less than thirty years. Six
or eight thousand pounds to the acre, at 10 to 15 cents a pound, has
encouraged the extravagant advance in the Islands from 3,000,000 pounds
to 27,000,000, annual yield, in four years. Against this argument in
favor of the security and productiveness of capital invested there, no
logic can prevail.

MORE FIGURES

They have a bad system in the Sandwich Islands, whereby the planter has
to ship twice and pay broker's commissions as often. This must change
some day. The sugar pays a duty of three cents a pound when it enters
San Francisco, and of course this comes out of the planter's pocket
also. This year the Lewers (or Waihee), Wailuku, Ulupalakua, Princeville
and Kohala plantations will each pay the United States about $60,000 in
coin for duties alone; and the Waikapu, Onomea, Metcalf's and several
other plantations whose names I could mention will each pay about half
as much. The following bill of expenses will show the processes by
which the planter's profits are diminished. The estimate was made in the
island of Maui, in June, when sugar had been falling and had got down to
$210 to $220 a ton in San Francisco:

ON A TON OF SUGAR

Barreling--$16.00 Drayage from mill--$1.00 Shipping to Honolulu--3.00
Brokerage in Honolulu--2.50 Freight to San Francisco--6.00 United
States duty--60.00 Drayage in San Francisco--1.00 Brokerage in San
Francisco--11.00 Total--$100.50 Gross sale 210.00 Remainder--$109.50

And out of that $109.50 must come about sixty per cent for plantation
expenses and interest on the original outlay for land, mill, stock, etc.

The following estimate was made when sugar was worth a cent a pound
more. It shows the business done the present year with three hundred
acres, on a plantation which cost considerably under $90,000 for its
stock, mill, lands and everything complete. The land was purchased
unimproved, at an insignificant price. The present year's crop was 1,000
tons of sugar:

Gross yield--$240,000 Plantation expenses--$60,000 Freight, duties,
etc., etc.--$120,000 Interest on original outlay--$10,000 Total
disbursement--$190,000 Net profit--$50,000

There is more than one plantation in the islands which is worth, with
all its appurtenances, $250,000, and will produce a $260,000 crop next
year--perhaps this--and yield a profit of $70,000, after deducting all
expenses of cultivating, shipping and disposal in San Francisco, and
interest.

One of the best plantations in the Islands, though not one of the
largest, by any means, cost, with its appurtenances, $100,000. All bills
were promptly paid and no debts allowed to accrue and breed interest.
The consequence was, that three years after the first plow disturbed its
virgin soil, it had paid for itself and added a dividend of $20,000.

ADVANTAGES

In Louisiana they take off one plant and two crops usually before
replanting, and so they do in the Islands, as a general thing,
though some think the ratoons would run several years longer without
disadvantage. The sugar crop in Louisiana is never sure--in the Islands,
when favorably situated for irrigation, it never fails. In the former it
must be immediately cut upon the first suspicion of a frost, whether it
is mature or not--in the latter there is no frost, and the planter may
cut it when it suits his convenience; it will stand several months after
ripening without deteriorating. Not much of the cane of the species that
tassel is cultivated, but even tassel cane can remain in the field four
months after maturing without deteriorating.

In Louisiana the cane must always be cut before the frost comes, but
in the Islands it may be cut whenever it is ripe--any day in the year.
Consequently, the mills can take their time and grind comfortably along
in all seasons, whereby the putting on of large extra forces and the
employment of mills of immense capacity on small plantations to rush off
a threatened crop and grind it is avoided. Louisiana has only five or
six weeks to get off her crop in, and so the juice is generally green
and the sugar necessarily inferior to that of the Islands.

The fuel chiefly used to make steam is the dry crushed cane which has
passed through the mill. It is called "trash." It is mixed with hard
wood, and the two combined make a very hot fire.

On the low ground of West Maui plant-cane matures in from eighteen to
twenty months, and ratoons ripen in from fifteen to eighteen months.
At Ulupalakua, whose lowest cane lands are 2,000 feet, and its highest
3,500 feet, above sea level, plant-cane requires all the way from
twenty-two months to three years to ripen, according to elevation.
One may see there plant-cane that is just sprouting, cane that is
half-grown, cane that is full-grown, and first, second and third
ratoons--all on the same plantation. At all seasons of the year there is
cane ready for the mill, and labor in no department of sugar cultivation
and manufacture need ever stop. A thousand acres are in cane, and from
two hundred to three hundred of it are taken off yearly, yielding from
eight hundred to one thousand tons of sugar. This plantation being high
up in the neighborhood of the clouds, depends upon the frequent rains
for irrigation, but 40,000 barrels of water are kept in cisterns for
mill purposes, use of stock, etc., to be ready for emergencies. The West
Maui plantations are all liberally irrigated from unfailing mountain
streams.

In the hot neighborhood of Lahaina cane matures in nine or ten months,
and a year is the average for the islands of Hawaii, Oahu and Kauai.

SPECIMEN OF A HAWAIIAN MILL

The sugar works of the Lewers plantation (formerly known as the Waihee
plantation) are considered the model in the Islands, in the matter
of cost, extent, completeness and efficiency. They make as fine an
appearance as any between Baton Rouge and New Orleans and are doubtless
as perfect in their appliances. The main building is some 200 feet long
and about 40 wide (perhaps more) and proportionally high. Its walls are
of stone masonry and very thick. It has a stately chimney that might
answer for a shot tower. Being painted snow white, the mill building
and the tall chimney stand out in strong contrast with the surrounding
bright green cane-fields. A long, elevated flume in front, and a
laboring overshot wheel of large diameter; at one side a broad peopled
with Coolies spreading "trash" to dry; half a dozen Kanakas feeding cane
to the whirling cylinders of the mill and a noisy procession of their
countrymen driving cart loads of the material to their vicinity and
dumping it--these things give the place a business-like aspect which is
novel in the slumbering Sandwich Islands. The neighboring offices of the
proprietor, the dwelling of the Superintendent, the store, blacksmith
shop, quarters for white employees, native huts and a row of frame
quarters for Chinese coolies, make Waihee a village of very respectable
pretensions. The employees of the mill and plantation, with their
families, number 350 persons, perhaps.

Within the commodious mill building I have described, are four long rows
of iron vats (coolers), about twenty-five in a row, occupying almost the
whole of the great floor, and with railways between the rows which are
traversed by cars which convey the cooked sugar in a liquid state to the
vats to be cooled. Each vat is about six feet long, three and a half or
four feet wide and about two feet deep, and is able to contain an amount
of sweetness equivalent to thirteen young women--in unpoetical figures,
1,400 pounds.

In the center is a small machine called a grinder--an exceedingly useful
contrivance, and the only one I have seen in the Islands. When the sugar
in the coolers becomes grained and hardened it has many hard lumps in
it which it is difficult to reduce in the centrifugals, and this service
the grinder performs. It is simply two swiftly-revolving iron cylinders,
placed close together, and after the grained sugar has passed between
them, lumps before are lumps no longer.

Close to the grinder are six centrifugals--small metallic tubs, whose
sides are pierced with a few thousand pin-holes to the square inch. The
nasty-looking grained sugar--it is about half black molasses, and
looks like an inferior quality of mud--is dumped in, to the amount of a
bushel; the tub is set to spinning around at the rate of ten or twelve
hundred revolutions a minute--the mud begins to retreat from the center
and cling to the sides--and in about three minutes the bottom is as
clean as a dinner-plate; the sides are packed with a coating two or
three inches thick of beautiful light straw-colored sugar ready for the
table, and all the disagreeable molasses has been expressed through the
innumerable pin-holes by the frightful velocity of the machine.

At the upper end of the apartment are several 500-gallon steam
clarifiers, which receive the raw juice from the mill (which is a large
machine on the same principle as the grinder, between whose cylinders
the canes are squeezed dry of their juice) and cleanse it of its
impurities.

Then it passes through pipes to the "train"--a row of great iron
kettles, where it is well boiled and kept in constant motion.

The Weitzel pan receives the cane juice next, and completes the
evaporation of the water from it. A revolving wheel paddles it into
ceaseless motion here. This pan is heated by steam.

The persecuted juice goes hence to the "vacuum pan"--a very costly
contrivance which is little used in the Islands. It is a huge iron
globe, capable of containing several hundred gallons. The virtues
claimed for it are, that it will boil the juice at half the temperature
required by the ordinary open "concentrator," and that consequently the
sugar will cool and grain quicker, that the sugar can even be grained
in the pan, if necessary, and transferred at once to the centrifugals,
instead of lingering in the coolers from four to seven days as is the
case in other mills; and lastly, that it will make almost first quality
sugar out of first molasses. The vacuum pan boils at a temperature of
140 to 160 degrees--the common open concentrator at 230 to 260. The
juice is soon cooked and ready for the coolers, where it remains the
best part of a day; then it passes through the grinder and from thence
through the centrifugals. The perfected sugar is discharged through
chutes into bins in the basement, and the expressed molasses sent back
to be wrought into sugar or barreled for market. A cooper shop on the
premises prepares the kegs to receive the sugar, and an ingenious affair
along side the bins packs the article in them. It is a large auger set
in a framework and worked by a screw; its blades resemble those of
a propeller, and after being lowered into the empty barrel, it works
upward as the sugar is shoveled in, packing it smoothly as it comes.
Three Kanakas are required to tend it, and it does the work of six
or seven. It packs 400 kegs in a day; a man's full day's work by the
customary pounding process with a maul, is 60. This is the only machine
for packing I have heard of in the Islands.

I have seen the cane cut in the fields; hauled to the works; squeezed
through the mill; transferred to the clarifiers; thence to the train;
thence to the Weitzel pan; thence to the vacuum pan; thence to the
coolers--thence to the grinder; thence to the centrifugals; thence, as
sugar, to the bins below; thence to the packer; thence to the artist who
branded the quality and weight and the plantation's name upon the kegs,
and thence to the schooner riding at anchor a mile and a half away--I
have frequently seen this whole process gone through within two days,
and yet I do not consider myself competent to make sugar.

Steam is used for half the machinery, and water power for the other
half. The proprietor has just completed, at a cost of less than $7,000,
a broad and deep ditch, four miles long, which carries an abundant
stream of clear water along the base of the rear hills and full length
of his plantation. It can be used to irrigate not only the 530 acres
now in cane, but will add 210 more that were never susceptible of
cultivation before--which addition is equivalent to adding $120,000
to the gross yield of the concern--that much, at any rate; the land
produces the ordinary average--three tons to the acre.

I have described the Lewers mill as well as I could, and the same
description will answer, in the main, for the Wailuku, Waikapu,
Ulupalakua and all the other mills I have visited. No two mills are just
alike, and yet no two are sufficiently unlike to render it worthwhile
for a man to describe both.

The plantations I have named are all situated on the island of Maui.
Perhaps a few acres of plant cane on either of them have fallen short
of three tons this year, or any year, and choice pieces of ground on
the Ulupalakua, Waikapu and Wailuku have yielded double that amount per
acre. This plant cane averages about equally clear through--say three to
three and a half tons per acre except in the case of the Wailuku, which
reached an average of four tons this year. One twenty-acre lot on
this plantation produced 10,000 pounds of sugar to the acre, and one
eleven-acre lot 11,000 pounds per acre. I take the figures from the
official account books of the Superintendent. The mill was turning out
200,000 pounds of excellent sugar a month when I was there.

MOLASSES

I have said nothing about molasses. They work some of it over and reduce
it to sugar, and each planter ships a few thousand dollars worth of it,
and (as at Ulupalakua) feeds the third quality to his hogs, if he
has any. Formerly inferior molasses was always thrown away, but here,
lately, an enlightened spirit of progress has moved the Government to
allow the erection of three distilleries I am told, and hereafter it
will be made into whisky. [That remark will be shuddered at in some
quarters. But I don't care. Ever since I have been a missionary to these
islands I have been snubbed and kept down by the other missionaries,
and so I will just bring our calling into disrepute occasionally by that
sort of dreadful remarks. It makes me feel better.]

MONOPOLY

A San Francisco refinery company once contracted for all the sugar crop
of the Islands for a year, to be taken directly from the coolers by its
agent and paid for at the rate of about seven or seven and a half cents
a pound, I think it was. This saved the planters a great deal of trouble
and some expense, but they lost confidence and broke up the arrangement.
It would have been a profitable thing for all parties if it could
have been continued, and I think the planters would like to give some
responsible man the sole control of the sugar market of the Pacific
coast on similar terms.

LABOR

The principal labor used on the plantations is that of Kanaka men and
women--six dollars to eight dollars a month and find them, or eight to
ten dollars and let them find themselves. The contract with the laborer
is in writing, and the law rigidly compels compliance with it; if the
man shirks a day's work and absents himself, he has to work two days for
it when his time is out. If he gets unmanageable and disobedient, he is
condemned to work on the reef for a season, at twenty-five cents a
day. If he is in debt to the planter for such purchases as clothing
and provisions, however, when his time expires, the obligation is
canceled--the planter has no recourse at law.

The sugar product is rapidly augmenting every year, and day by day the
Kanaka race is passing away. Cheap labor had to be procured by some
means or other, and so the Government sends to China for Coolies and
farms them out to the planters at $5 a month each for five years, the
planter to feed them and furnish them with clothing. The Hawaiian agent
fell into the hands of Chinese sharpers, who showed him some superb
Coolie samples and then loaded his ships with the scurviest lot of
pirates that ever went unhung. Some of them were cripples, some were
lunatics, some afflicted with incurable diseases and nearly all were
intractable, full of fight and animated by the spirit of the very devil.
However, the planters managed to tone them down and now they like them
very well. Their former trade of cutting throats on the China seas has
made them uncommonly handy at cutting cane. They are steady, industrious
workers when properly watched. If the Hawaiian agent had been possessed
of a reasonable amount of business tact he could have got experienced
rice and sugar cultivators--peaceable, obedient men and women--for the
same salaries that must be paid to these villains, and done them a real
service by giving them good homes and kind treatment in place of the
wretchedness and brutality they experience in their native land. Some of
the women are being educated as house servants, and I observe that they
do not put on airs, and "sass" their masters and mistresses, and give
daily notice to quit, and try to boss the whole concern, as the tribe do
in California.

COOLIES FOR CALIFORNIA

You will have Coolie labor in California some day. It is already
forcing its superior claims upon the attention of your great mining,
manufacturing and public improvement corporations. You will not always
go on paying $80 and $100 a month for labor which you can hire for $5.
The sooner California adopts Coolie labor the better it will be for her.
It cheapens no labor of men's hands save the hardest and most exhausting
drudgery--drudgery which neither intelligence nor education are required
to fit a man for--drudgery which all white men abhor and are glad to
escape from. You may take note of the fact that to adopt Coolie labor
could work small hardship to the men who now do the drudgery, for every
ship-load of Coolies received there and put to work would so create
labor--would permit men to open so many mines they cannot afford to
work now, and begin so many improvements they dare not think of at
present--that all the best class of the working population who might be
emancipated from the pick and shovel by that ship-load would find easier
and more profitable employment in superintending and overseeing the
Coolies. It would be more profitable, as you will readily admit, to the
great mining companies of California and Nevada to pay 300 Chinamen an
aggregate of $1,500 a month--or five times the amount, if you think it
more just--than to pay 300 white men $30,000 a month. Especially when
the white men would desert in a body every time a new mining region was
discovered, but the Chinamen would have to stay until their contracts
were worked out.

People are always hatching fine schemes for inducing Eastern capital
to the Pacific coast. Yonder in China are the capitalists you want--and
under your own soil is a bank that will not dishonor their checks. The
mine purchased for a song by Eastern capital would pour its stream of
wealth past your door and empty it in New York. You would be little the
richer for that. There are hundreds of men in California who are sitting
on their quartz leads, watching them year after year, and hoping for
the day when they will pay--and growing gray all the time--hoping for
a cheapening of labor that will enable them to work the mine or warrant
another man in buying it--who would soon be capitalists if Coolie labor
were adopted.

The Mission Woolen Mill Company take California wool and weave from
it fabrics of all descriptions, which they challenge all America to
surpass, and sell at prices which defy all foreign competition. The
secret is in their cheap Chinese labor. With white labor substituted the
mills would have to stop.

The Pacific Railroad Company employ a few thousand Chinamen at about
$30 a month, and have white men to oversee them. They pronounce it the
cheapest, the best, and most quiet, peaceable and faithful labor they
have tried.

Some of the heaviest mining corporations in the State have it in
contemplation to employ Chinese labor. Give this labor to California
for a few years and she would have fifty mines opened where she has one
now--a dozen factories in operation where there is one now--a thousand
tons of farm produce raised where there are a hundred now--leagues of
railroad where she has miles to-day, and a population commensurate with
her high and advancing prosperity.

With the Pacific Railroad creeping slowly but surely toward her over
mountain and desert and preparing to link her with the East, and with
the China mail steamers about to throw open to her the vast trade of our
opulent coast line stretching from the Amoor river to the equator, what
State in the Union has so splendid a future before her as California?
Not one, perhaps. She should awake and be ready to join her home
prosperity to these tides of commerce that are so soon to sweep toward
her from the east and the west.

To America it has been vouchsafed to materialize the vision, and realize
the dream of centuries, of the enthusiasts of the old world. We have
found the true Northwest Passage--we have found the true and only direct
route to the bursting coffers of "Ormus and of Ind"--to the enchanted
land whose mere drippings, in the ages that are gone, enriched and
aggrandized ancient Venice, first, then Portugal, Holland, and in our
own time, England--and each in succession they longed and sought for the
fountainhead of this vast Oriental wealth, and sought in vain. The path
was hidden to them, but we have found it over the waves of the Pacific,
and American enterprise will penetrate to the heart and center of its
hoarded treasures, its imperial affluence. The gateway of this path is
the Golden Gate of San Francisco; its depot, its distributing house,
is California--her customers are the nations of the earth; her
transportation wagons will be the freight cars of the Pacific Railroad,
and they will take up these Indian treasures at San Francisco and flash
them across the continent and the vessels of the Pacific Mail Steamship
Company will deliver them in Europe fifteen days sooner than Europe
could convey them thither by any route of her own she could devise.

California has got the world where it must pay tribute to her. She is
about to be appointed to preside over almost the exclusive trade of
450,000,000 people--the almost exclusive trade of the most opulent
land on earth. It is the land where the fabled Aladdin's lamp lies
buried--and she is the new Aladdin who shall seize it from its obscurity
and summon the geni and command him to crown her with power and
greatness, and bring to her feet the hoarded treasures of the earth!

I may have wandered away from my original subject a little, but it is no
matter--I keep thinking about the new subject, and I must have wandered
into it eventually anyhow.

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, October 25, 1866

Kilauea, June, 1866.

A NOTABLE DISCOVERY

Leaving the caves and tunnels, we returned to the road and started in
a general direction toward Honaunau but were presently attracted by a
number of holes in a bluff not more than three or four hundred yards
from the place we had just left. We concluded to go up and examine them.
Our native boatman, who had faithfully followed us thus far, and who
must have been bearing the chief part of the heat and burden of the day,
from the amount of perspiring he was doing looked a little discouraged,
I thought and therefore we signified to him, in elaborate pantomime,
that he might sit down and wait till we came back. We scrambled through
a tangle of weeds which concealed great beds of black and wrinkled lava,
and finally reached the low bluff. But the holes were just high enough
to be out of reach. I bent a little below the lower one and ordered
Brown to mount my shoulders and enter it. He said he could hold me
easier than I could hold him, and I said he was afraid to go in that
dark cavern alone. He used some seditious language of small consequence
and then climbed up and crawled in. I suppose the fellow felt a little
nervous, for he paused up there on his hands and knees and peered into
the darkness for some minutes with nothing of him visible in the face of
the precipice but his broad boot soles and a portion of his person which
a casual acquaintance might not have recognized at a cursory glance.
Then he and his boot soles slowly disappeared. I waited a minute in a
state of lively curiosity; another minute with flagging curiosity as
regarded the cave, but with a new-born attention to the pelting sun;
another long minute with no curiosity at all--I leaned drowsily against
the wall. And about this time the investigator backed suddenly out
of the hole and crushed me to the earth. We rolled down the slight
declivity and brought up in a sitting posture face to face. I looked
astonished, maybe, but he looked terrified.

"It's one of them infernal old ancient graveyards!" he said.

"No? This is why the superstitious Kanaka staid behind then?"

"Yes, likely. I suppose you didn't know that boneyard was there, else
you'd have gone in yourself, instead of me. Certainly you would--oh, of
course."

"Yes, you are right--but how is it in there, Brown? Compose yourself,
lad--what did you find?"

"Oh, it's easy enough to talk, but I'm not going to prospect any more
of them holes, not if I know myself, I aint, and I think I do; it aint
right, anyway, to be stirring up a dead man that's done his work and
earned his rest, and besides it aint comfortable."

"But what did you see, Brown--what did you see?"

"I didn't see anything, at first--I only felt. It was dark as the inside
of a whale in there, and I crawled about fifteen feet and then fetched
up against something that was wood with my nose and skinned the end of
it a little where you notice it's bloody. I felt of it with my hand,
and judged it to be a canoe, and reached in and took out something and
backed out till it was light enough, and then I found it was a withered
hand of one of them rusty old kings. And so l laid it down and come
out."

"Yes, you did 'come out'--and you 'come out' in something of a hurry,
too. Give me a light."

I climbed in and put the relic back into the canoe, with its fellows,
and I trust the spirit of the deceased, if it was hovering near, was
satisfied with this mute apology for our unintentional sacrilege.

And thus another item of patiently acquired knowledge grew shaky. We had
learned, early, that the bones of great Chiefs were hidden, like those
of Kamehameha the Great; the information was accepted until we learned
that it was etiquette to convey them to the volcano and cast them
into the lakes of fire; that was relied on till we discovered that
the legitimate receptacle for them was the holes in the precipice of
Kealakekua; but now found that the walls of the City of Refuge contain
orifices in which the bones of the great Chiefs are deposited, and
lo! here were more in this distant bluff!--and bones of great Chiefs,
too--all bones of great Chiefs. The fact is, there is a lie out
somewhere.

FREE-AND-EASY FASHIONS OF NATIVE WOMEN

Tired and over-heated, we plodded back to the ruined temple. We
were blistered on face and hands, our clothes were saturated with
perspiration and we were burning with thirst. Brown ran, the last
hundred yards, and without waiting to take off anything but his coat and
boots jumped into the sea, bringing up in the midst of a party of native
girls who were bathing. They scampered out, with a modesty which was not
altogether genuine, I suspect, and ran, seizing their clothes as they
went. He said they were very handsomely formed girls. I did not notice,
particularly.

These creatures are bathing about half their time, I think. If a man
were to see a nude woman bathing at noonday in the States, he would
be apt to think she was very little better than she ought to be, and
proceed to favor her with an impudent stare. But the case is somewhat
different here. The thing is so common that the white residents pass
carelessly by, and pay no more attention to it than if the rollicking
wenches were so many cattle. Within the confines of even so populous a
place as Honolulu, and in the very center of the sultry city of Lahaina,
the women bathe in the brooks at all hours of the day. They are only
particular about getting undressed safely, and in this science they all
follow the same fashion. They stoop down snatch the single garment over
the head, and spring in. They will do this with great confidence within
thirty steps of a man. Finical highflyers wear bathing dresses, but of
course that is an affectation of modesty born of the high civilization
to which the natives have attained, and is confined to a limited number.

Many of the native women are prettily formed, but they have a noticeable
peculiarity as to shape--they are almost as narrow through the hips as
men are.

EXIT, BOOMERANG

As we expected, there was no schooner Kangaroo at Kealakekua when we got
back there, but the Emmeline [Emeline] was riding quietly at anchor in
the same spot so lately occupied by our vessel, and that suited us much
better. We waited until the land breeze served, and then put to sea.
The land breeze begins to blow soon after the sun sets and the earth has
commenced cooling; the sea breeze rushes inland in the morning as soon
as the sun has begun to heat the earth again.

TRANQUIL SCENERY

All day we sailed along within three to six miles of the shore. The view
in that direction was very fine. We were running parallel with a long
mountain that apparently had neither beginning nor end. It rose with
a regular swell from the sea till its forests diminished to velvety
shrubbery and were lost in the clouds. If there were any peaks we could
not see them. The white mists hung their fringed banners down and hid
everything above a certain well defined altitude. The mountain side,
with its sharply marked patches of trees; the smooth green spaces and
avenues between them; a little white habitation nestling here and there;
a tapering church-spire or two thrust upward through the dense foliage;
and a bright and cheerful sunlight over all--slanted up abreast of us
like a vast picture, framed in between ocean and clouds. It was marked
and lined and tinted like a map. So distinctly visible was every door
and window in one of the white dwellings, that it was hard to believe
it was two or three miles from our ship and two thousand feet above the
level of the sea. Yet it was--and it was several thousand feet below the
top of the mountain, also.

INHERENT UNSELFISHNESS OF THE NATIVES

The night closed down dark and stormy. The sea ran tolerably high and
the little vessel tossed about like a cork. About nine or ten o'clock
we saw a torch glimmering on the distant shore, and presently we saw
another coming toward us from the same spot; every moment or so we could
see it flash from the top of a wave and then sink out of sight again.
From the speed it made I knew it must be one of those fleet native
canoes. I watched it with some anxiety, because I wondered what
desperate extremity could drive a man out on such a night and on such a
sea to play with his life--for I did not believe a canoe could live long
in such rough water. I was on the forecastle. Pretty soon I began to
think maybe the fellow stood some chance; shortly I almost believed
he would make the trip, though his light was shooting up and down
dangerously; in another minute he darted across our bow and I caught the
glare from his torch in my face. I sprang aft then to get out of him his
dire and dreadful news.

It was a swindle. It was one of those simple natives risking his life to
bring the Captain a present of half a dozen chickens.

"He has got an ax to grind." I spoke in that uncharitable spirit of the
civilized world which suspects all men's motives--which cannot conceive
of an unselfish thought wrought into an unselfish deed by any man
whatsoever, be he Pagan or Christian.

"None at all," said the Captain; "he expects nothing in return--wouldn't
take a cent if I offered it--wouldn't thank me for it, anyway. It's the
same instinct that made them load Captain Cook's ships with provisions.
They think it is all right--they don't want any return. They will bring
us plenty of such presents before we get to Kau."

I saw that the Kanaka was starting over the side again. I said:

"Call him back and give him a drink anyhow; he is wet--and dry also,
maybe."

"Pison him with that Jamaica rum down below," said Brown.

"It can't be done--five hundred dollars fine to give or sell liquor to a
native."

The Captain walked forward then to give some orders, and Brown took the
Kanaka down stairs and "pisoned" him. He was delighted with a species of
rum which Brown had tried by mistake for claret during the day, and had
afterwards made his will, under the conviction that he could not survive
it.

They are a strange race, anyhow, these natives. They are amazingly
unselfish and hospitable. To the wayfarer who visits them they freely
offer their houses, food, beds, and often their wives and daughters. If
a Kanaka who has starved two days gets hold of a dollar he will spend
it for poi, and then bring in his friends to help him devour it. When a
Kanaka lights his pipe he only takes one or two whiffs and then passes
it around from one neighbor to another until it is exhausted. The
example of white selfishness does not affect their native unselfishness
any more than the example of white virtue does their native
licentiousness. Both traits are born in them--are in their blood and
bones and cannot be educated out.

IN DISTRESS

By midnight we had got to within four miles of the place we were to stop
at--Kau, but to reach it we must weather a point which was always hard
to get around on account of contrary winds.

The ship was put about and we were soon standing far out to sea. I went
to bed. The vessel was pitching so fearfully an hour afterward that it
woke me up. Directly the Captain came down, looking greatly distressed,
and said:

"Slip on your clothes quick and go up and see to your friend. It has
been storming like everything for fifteen or twenty minutes, and I
thought at first he was only seasick and could not throw up, but now he
appears to be out of his head. He lies there on the deck and moans and
says, 'Poetry--poetry--oh, me.' It is all he says. What the devil should
he say that for? Hurry!"

Before the speech was half over I was plunging about the cabin with the
rolling of the ship, and struggling frantically to get into my clothes.
But the last sentence or two banished my fears and soothed me, I
understood the case.

I was soon on deck in the midst of the darkness and the whistling winds,
and with assistance groped my way to the sufferer. I told him I had
nothing but some verses built out of alternate lines from the "Burial of
Sir John Moore" and the "Destruction of the Sennacherib," and proceeded
to recite them:

THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE

And other parties, subsequently to the Destruction of the Sennacherib.
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, The turf with our
bayonets turning, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold, And
our lanterns dimly burning. And the tents were all silent, the banners
alone, When the clock told the hour for retiring--The lances uplifted,
the trumpet unblown, Though the foe were sullenly firing. And the might
of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, As his corse to the ramparts we
hurried, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord, O'er the grave
when our hero we buried. For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the
blast, And smoothed down his lonely pillow, And breathed in the face of
the foe as he passed--And we far away on the billow! And the eyes
of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, As we bitterly thought on the
morrow, And their hearts but once heaved and forever grew still, But we
spake not a word of sorrow! And there lay the steed, with his nostril
all wide In the grave where a Briton hath laid him, And the widows of
Ashur are loud in their wail, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him. And
there lay the rider, distorted and pale, From the field of his fame
fresh and gory, With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail--So
we left him alone in his glory!

"It is enough. God bless you!" said Brown, and threw up everything he
had eaten for three days.

KAU AND WAIOHINU

All day the next day we fought that treacherous point--always in sight
of it but never able to get around it. At night we tacked out forty or
fifty miles, and the following day at noon we made it and came in and
anchored.

We went ashore in the first boat and landed in the midst of a black,
rough, lava solitude, and got horses and started to Waiohinu, six miles
distant. The road was good, and our surroundings fast improved. We were
soon among green groves and flowers and occasional plains of grass.
There are a dozen houses at Waiohinu, and they have got sound roofs,
which is well, because the place is tolerably high upon the mountainside
and it rains there pretty much all the time. The name means "sparkling
water," and refers to a beautiful mountain stream there, but they ought
to divide up and let it refer to the rain also.

A sugar plantation has been started at Waiohinu, and 150 acres planted,
a year ago, but the altitude ranges from 1,800 to 2,500 feet above
sea level, and it is thought it will take another year for the cane to
mature.

We had an abundance of mangoes, papaias and bananas here, but the pride
of the islands, the most delicious fruit known to men, cherimoya, was
not in season. It has a soft pulp, like a pawpaw, and is eaten with a
spoon. The papaia looks like a small squash, and tastes like a pawpaw.

In this rainy spot trees and flowers flourish luxuriantly, and three of
those trees--two mangoes and an orange--will live in my memory as
the greenest, freshest and most beautiful I ever saw--and withal, the
stateliest and most graceful. One of those mangoes stood in the middle
of a large grassy yard, lord of the domain and incorruptible sentinel
against the sunshine. When one passed within the compass of its broad
arms and its impenetrable foliage he was safe from the pitiless glare of
the sun--the protecting shade fell everywhere like a somber darkness.

In some places on the islands where the mango refused to bear fruit, a
remedy suggested by the Scientific American has been tried with success.
It consists in boring a hole in the trunk of the tree, filling the same
with gunpowder and plugging it up. Perhaps it might be worthwhile to try
it on other fruit trees.

THE CISTERN TREE

Speaking of trees reminds me that a species of large-bodied tree grows
along the road below Waiohinu whose crotch is said to contain tanks of
fresh water at all times; the natives suck it out through a hollow
weed, which always grows near. As no other water exists in that wild
neighborhood, within a space of some miles in circumference, it is
considered to be a special invention of Providence for the behoof of the
natives. I would rather accept the story than the deduction, because
the latter is so manifestly but hastily conceived and erroneous. If the
happiness of the natives had been the object, the tanks would have been
filled with whisky.

KAU INDEPENDENCE--JUDICIAL SAGACITY

The natives of the district of Kau have always dwelt apart from their
fellow islanders--cut off from them by a desolate stretch of lava on one
side and a mountain on the other--and they have ever shown a spirit and
an independence not elsewhere to be found in Hawaii-nei. They are not
thoroughly tamed yet, nor civilized or Christianized. Kau was the last
district on the island that submitted to Kamehameha I. Two heaps of
stones near the roadside mark where they killed two of the early Kings
of Hawaii. On both occasions these monarchs were trying to put down
rebellion. They used to make their local chiefs very uncomfortable
sometimes, and ten years ago, in playful mood, they made two Tax
Collectors flee for their lives.

Most natives lie some, but these lie a good deal. They still believe in
the ancient superstitions of the race, and believe in the Great Shark
God and pray each other to death. When sworn by the Great Shark God they
are afraid to speak anything but the truth; but when sworn on the Bible
in Court they proceed to soar into flights of fancy lying that make the
inventions of Munchausen seem poor and trifling in comparison.

They worship idols in secret, and swindle the wayfaring stranger.

Some of the native Judges and Justices of the Peace of the Kau district
have been rare specimens of judicial sagacity. One of them considered
that all the fines for adultery ($30 for each offense) properly belonged
to himself. He also considered himself a part of the Government, and
that if he committed that crime himself it was the same as if the
Government committed it, and, of course, it was the duty of the
Government to pay the fine. Consequently, whenever he had collected a
good deal of money from other Court revenues, he used to set to work
and keep on convicting himself of adultery until he had absorbed all the
money on hand in paying the fines.

The adultery law has been so amended that each party to the offense is
now fined $30; and I would remark, in passing, that if the crime
were invariably detected and the fines collected, the revenues of the
Hawaiian Government would probably exceed those of the United States.
I trust the observation will not be considered in the light of an
insinuation, however.

An old native Judge at Hilo once acquitted all the parties to a suit and
then discovering, as he supposed, that he had no further hold on them
and thus was out of pocket, he condemned the witnesses to pay the costs!

A Kau Judge, whose two years commission had expired, redated it himself
and went on doing business as complacently as ever. He said it didn't
make any difference--he could write as good a hand as the King could.

THE PROCESSION MOVETH AGAIN

Brown bought a horse from a native at Waiohinu for twelve dollars, but
happening to think of the horse jockeying propensities of the race, he
removed the saddle and found that the creature needed "half-soling," as
he expressed it. Recent hard riding had polished most of the hide off
his back. He bought another and the animal went dead lame before we got
to the great volcano, forty miles away. I bought a reckless little mule
for fifteen dollars, and I wish I had him yet. One mule is worth a dozen
horses for a mountain journey in the Islands.

The first eighteen miles of the road lay mostly down by the sea, and was
pretty well sprinkled with native houses. The animals stopped at all
of them--a habit they had early acquired; natives stop a few minutes
at every shanty they come to, to swap gossip, and we were forced to do
likewise--but we did it under protest.

Brown's horse jogged along well enough for 16 or 17 miles, but then he
came down to a walk and refused to improve on it. We had to stop and
intrude upon a gentleman who was not expecting us, and who I thought did
not want us, either, but he entertained us handsomely, nevertheless, and
has my hearty thanks for his kindness.

We looked at the ruddy glow cast upon the clouds above the volcano, only
twenty miles away, now (the fires had become unusually active a few
days before) for awhile after supper, and then went to bed and to sleep
without rocking.

We stopped a few miles further on, the next morning, to hire a guide,
but happily were saved the nuisance of traveling with a savage we could
not talk with. The proprietor and another gentleman intended to go to
the volcano the next day, and they said they would go at once if we
would stop and take lunch. We signed the contract, of course. It was the
usual style. We had found none but pleasant people on the island, from
the time we landed at.

To get through the last twenty miles, guides are indispensable. The
whole country is given up to cattle ranching, and is crossed and
recrossed by a riddle of "bull paths" which is hopelessly beyond
solution by a stranger.

IN FAIRY LAND

Portions of that little journey bloomed with beauty. Occasionally we
entered small basins walled in with low cliffs, carpeted with greenest
grass, and studded with shrubs and small trees whose foliage shone with
an emerald brilliancy. One species, called the mamona [mamani], with its
bright color, its delicate locust leaf, so free from decay or blemish
of any kind, and its graceful shape, chained the eye with a sort of
fascination. The rich verdant hue of these fairy parks was relieved and
varied by the splendid carmine tassels of the ohia tree. Nothing was
lacking but the fairies themselves.

THE KINGDOM OF DESOLATION

As we trotted up the almost imperceptible ascent and neared the volcano,
the features of the country changed. We came upon a long dreary desert
of black, swollen, twisted, corrugated billows of lava--blank and dismal
desolation! Stony hillocks heaved up, all seamed with cracked wrinkles
and broken open from center to circumference in a dozen places, as if
from an explosion beneath. There had been terrible commotion here once,
when these dead waves were seething fire; but now all was motionless and
silent--it was a petrified sea! The narrow spaces between the upheavals
were partly filled with volcanic sand, and through it we plodded
laboriously. The invincible ohia struggled for a footing even in this
desert waste, and achieved it--towering above the billows here and
there, with trunks flattened like spears of grass in the crevices from
which they sprang.

We came at last to torn and ragged deserts of scorched and blistered
lava--to plains and patches of dull gray ashes--to the summit of the
mountain, and these tokens warned us that we were nearing the palace of
the dread goddess Pele, the crater of Kilauea.

MARK TWAIN.

The Sacramento Daily Union, November 16, 1866

Volcano House,

June 3d--Midnight.

THE GREAT VOLCANO OF KILAUEA

I suppose no man ever saw Niagara for the first time without feeling
disappointed. I suppose no man ever saw it the fifth time without
wondering how he could ever have been so blind and stupid as to find any
excuse for disappointment in the first place. I suppose that any one of
nature's most celebrated wonders will always look rather insignificant
to a visitor at first, but on a better acquaintance will swell and
stretch out and spread abroad, until it finally grows clear beyond his
grasp--becomes too stupendous for his comprehension. I know that a large
house will seem to grow larger the longer one lives in it, and I also
know that a woman who looks criminally homely at a first glance will
often so improve upon acquaintance as to become really beautiful before
the month is out.

I was disappointed when I saw the great volcano of Kilauea (Ke-low
way-ah) to-day for the first time. It is a comfort to me to know that
I fully expected to be disappointed, however, and so, in one sense at
least, I was not disappointed.

As we "raised" the summit of the mountain and began to canter along the
edge of the crater, I heard Brown exclaim, "There's smoke, by George!"
(poor infant--as if it were the most surprising thing in the world to
see smoke issuing from a volcano), and I turned my head in the opposite
direction and began to crowd my imagination down. When I thought I had
got it reduced to about the proper degree, I resolutely faced about and
came to a dead halt. "Disappointed, anyhow!" I said to myself "Only a
considerable hole in the ground--nothing to Haleakala--a wide, level,
black plain in the bottom of it, and a few little sputtering jets of
fire occupying a place about as large as an ordinary potato-patch, up
in one corner--no smoke to amount to anything. And these 'tremendous'
perpendicular walls they talk about, that inclose the crater! they don't
amount to a great deal, either; it is a large cellar--nothing more--and
precious little fire in it, too." So I soliloquized. But as I gazed, the
"cellar" insensibly grew. I was glad of that, albeit I expected it. I
am passably good at judging of heights and distances, and I fell to
measuring the diameter of the crater. After considerable deliberation
I was obliged to confess that it was rather over three miles, though
it was hard to believe it at first. It was growing on me, and tolerably
fast. And when I came to guess at the clean, solid, perpendicular walls
that fenced in the basin, I had to acknowledge that they were from 600
to 800 feet high, and in one or two places even a thousand, though at
a careless glance they did not seem more than two or three hundred.
The reason the walls looked so low is because the basin inclosed is so
large. The place looked a little larger and a little deeper every five
minutes, by the watch. And still it was unquestionably small; there was
no getting around that. About this time I saw an object which helped to
increase the size of the crater. It was a house perched on the extreme
edge of the wall, at the far end of the basin, two miles and a half
away; it looked like a martin box under the eaves of a cathedral! That
wall appeared immensely higher after that than it did before.

I reflected that night was the proper time to view a volcano, and Brown,
with one of those eruptions of homely wisdom which rouse the admiration
of strangers, but which custom has enabled me to contemplate calmly,
said five o'clock was the proper time for dinner, and therefore we
spurred up the animals and trotted along the brink of the crater for
about the distance it is from the Lick House, in San Francisco, to the
Mission, and then found ourselves at the Volcano House.

On the way we passed close to fissures several feet wide and about as
deep as the sea, no doubt, and out of some of them steam was issuing.
It would be suicidal to attempt to travel about there at night. As we
approached the lookout house I have before spoken of as being perched on
the wall, we saw some objects ahead which I took for the brilliant white
plant called the "silver sword," but they proved to be "buoys"--pyramids
of stones painted white, so as to be visible at night, and set up at
intervals to mark the path to the lookout house and guard unaccustomed
feet from wandering into the abundant chasms that line the way.

By the path it is half a mile from the Volcano House to the
lookout-house. After a hearty supper we waited until it was thoroughly
dark and then started to the crater. The first glance in that direction
revealed a scene of wild beauty. There was a heavy fog over the crater
and it was splendidly illuminated by the glare from the fires below.
The illumination was two miles wide and a mile high, perhaps; and if you
ever, on a dark night and at a distance beheld the light from thirty
or forty blocks of distant buildings all on fire at once, reflected
strongly against overhanging clouds, you can form a fair idea of what
this looked like.

THE VISION OF HELL AND ITS ANGELS

Arrived at the little thatched look out house, we rested our elbows on
the railing in front and looked abroad over the wide crater and down
over the sheer precipice at the seething fires beneath us. The view was
a startling improvement on my daylight experience. I turned to see the
effect on the balance of the company and found the reddest-faced set of
men I almost ever saw. In the strong light every countenance glowed
like red-hot iron, every shoulder was suffused with crimson and shaded
rearward into dingy, shapeless obscurity! The place below looked like
the infernal regions and these men like half-cooled devils just come up
on a furlough.

I turned my eyes upon the volcano again. The "cellar" was tolerably
well lighted up. For a mile and a half in front of us and half a mile
on either side, the floor of the abyss was magnificently illuminated;
beyond these limits the mists hung down their gauzy curtains and cast
a deceptive gloom over all that made the twinkling fires in the remote
corners of the crater seem countless leagues removed--made them seem
like the camp-fires of a great army far away. Here was room for the
imagination to work! You could imagine those lights the width of a
continent away--and that hidden under the intervening darkness were
hills, and winding rivers, and weary wastes of plain and desert--and
even then the tremendous vista stretched on, and on, and on!--to the
fires and far beyond! You could not compass it--it was the idea, of
eternity made tangible--and the longest end of it made visible to the
naked eye!

The greater part of the vast floor of the desert under us was as black
as ink, and apparently smooth and level; but over a mile square of it
was ringed and streaked and striped with a thousand branching streams of
liquid and gorgeously brilliant fire! It looked like a colossal railroad
map of the State of Massachusetts done in chain lightning on a midnight
sky. Imagine it--imagine a coal-black sky shivered into a tangled
network of angry fire!

Here and there were gleaming holes twenty feet in diameter, broken in
the dark crust, and in them the melted lava--the color a dazzling white
just tinged with yellow--was boiling and surging furiously; and from
these holes branched numberless bright torrents in many directions, like
the "spokes" of a lady's fan, and kept a tolerably straight course for
a while and then swept round in huge rainbow curves, or made a long
succession of sharp worm-fence angles, which looked precisely like the
fiercest jagged lightning. These streams met other streams, and they
mingled with and crossed and recrossed each other in every conceivable
direction, like skate tracks on a popular skating ground. Sometimes
streams twenty or thirty feet wide flowed from the holes to some
distance without dividing--and through the opera-glasses we could see
that they ran down small, steep hills and were genuine cataracts of
fire, white at their source but soon cooling and turning to the richest
red, grained with alternate lines of black and gold. Every now and
then masses of the dark crust broke away and floated slowly down these
streams like rafts down a river. Occasionally the molten lava flowing
under the superincumbent crust broke through--split a dazzling streak,
from five hundred to a thousand feet long, like a sudden flash of
lightning, and then acre after acre of the cold lava parted into
fragments, turned up edgewise like cakes of ice when a great river
breaks up, plunged downward and were swallowed in the crimson cauldron.
Then the wide expanse of the "thaw" maintained a ruddy glow for a while,
but shortly cooled and became black and level again. During a "thaw,"
every dismembered cake was marked by a glittering white border which was
superbly shaded inwards by aurora borealis rays, which were a flaming
yellow where they joined the white border, and from thence toward their
points tapered into glowing crimson, then into a rich, pale carmine, and
finally into a faint blush that held its own a moment and then dimmed
and turned black. Some of the streams preferred to mingle together in
a tangle of fantastic circles, and then they looked something like the
confusion of ropes one sees on a ship's deck when she had just taken in
sail and dropped anchor--provided one can imagine those ropes on fire.

Through the glasses, the little fountains scattered about looked very
beautiful. They boiled, and coughed, and spluttered, and discharged
sprays of stringy red fire--of about the consistency of mush, for
instance--from ten to fifteen feet into the air, along with a shower
of brilliant white sparks--a quaint and unnatural mingling of gouts of
blood and snowflakes!

We had circles and serpents and streaks of lightning all twined and
wreathed and tied together, without a break throughout an area more
than a mile square (that amount of ground was covered, though it was not
strictly "square"), and it was with a feeling of placid exultation that
we reflected that many years had elapsed since any visitor had seen such
a splendid display--since any visitor had seen anything more than the
now snubbed and insignificant "North" and "South" lakes in action. We
had been reading old files of Hawaiian newspapers and the "Record Book"
at the Volcano House, and were posted.

I could see the North Lake lying out on the black floor away off in
the outer edge of our panorama, and knitted to it by a webwork of
lava streams. In its individual capacity it looked very little more
respectable than a schoolhouse on fire. True, it was about nine hundred
feet long and two or three hundred wide, but then, under the present
circumstances, it necessarily appeared rather insignificant, and besides
it was so distant from us. We heard a week ago that the volcano was
getting on a heavier spree than it had indulged in for many years, and I
am glad we arrived just at the right moment to see it under full blast.

I forgot to say that the noise made by the bubbling lava is not great,
heard as we heard it from our lofty perch. It makes three distinct
sounds--a rushing, a hissing, and a coughing or puffing sound; and if
you stand on the brink and close your eyes it is no trick at all to
imagine that you are sweeping down a river on a large low pressure
steamer, and that you hear the hissing of the steam about her boilers,
the puffing from her escape pipes and the churning rush of the water
abaft her wheels. The smell of sulfur is strong, but not unpleasant to a
sinner.

THE PILLAR OF FIRE

We left the lookout house at ten o'clock in a half cooked condition
because of the heat from Pele's furnaces, and wrapping up in blankets
(for the night was cold) returned to the hotel. After we got out in the
dark we had another fine spectacle. A colossal column of cloud towered
to a great height in the air immediately above the crater, and the
outer swell of every one of its vast folds was dyed with a rich crimson
luster, which was subdued to a pale rose tint in the depressions
between. It glowed like a muffled torch and stretched upward to a dizzy
height toward the zenith. I thought it just possible that its like had
not been seen since the children of Israel wandered on their long march
through the desert so many centuries ago over a path illuminated by
the mysterious "pillar of fire." And I was sure that I now had a vivid
conception of what the majestic "pillar of fire" was like, which almost
amounted to a revelation.

ACCOMMODATIONS FOR MAN AND BEAST

It is only at very long intervals that I mention in a letter matters
which properly pertain to the advertising columns, but in this case it
seems to me that to leave out the fact that there is a neat, roomy, well
furnished and well kept hotel at the volcano would be to remain silent
upon a point of the very highest importance to anyone who may desire
to visit the place. The surprise of finding a good hotel in such an
outlandish spot startled me considerably more than the volcano did. The
house is new--built three or four months ago--and the table is good.
One could not easily starve here even if the meats and groceries were to
give out, for large tracts of land in the vicinity are well paved with
excellent strawberries. One can have as abundant a supply as he chooses
to call for. There has never heretofore been anything in this locality
for the accommodation of travellers but a crazy old native grass hut,
scanty fare, hard beds of matting and a Chinese cook.

MARK TWAIN.



DAILY HAWAIIAN HERALD

DAILY HAWAIIAN HERALD, September 4, 1866

SAM CLEMENTS.--"Mark Twain,"--which is merely his nom de plume,--has
been by us advised to correspond with the HERALD in his vivid and
gossipping style. We shall expect letters from him soon; and as our
people are aware of the vim and pungency of his pen we look forward to
an interesting addition of latest news to our columns.

DAILY HAWAIIAN HERALD, September 5, 1866

"MARK TWAIN" ON PHOTOGRAPHS.--

We have just been reading over Sam Clement's [sic] last letter, and in
the flowing instance he blunders on so much truth that we have a notion
to countermand our order for him to communicate with us. Speaking of
photographs he says they are all false, and feelingly remarks,

No photograph ever was good, yet, of anybody--hunger and thirst and
utter wretchedness overtake the outlaw who invented it! It transforms
into desperadoes the meekest of men; depicts sinless innocence upon
the pictured faces of ruffians; gives the wise man the stupid leer of
a fool, and a fool an expression of more than earthly wisdom. If a man
tries to look serious when he sits for his picture the photograph
makes him look as solemn as an owl; if he smiles, the photograph smirks
repulsively; if he tries to look pleasant, the photograph looks silly;
if he makes the fatal mistake of attempting to seem pensive, the camera
will surely write him down as an ass. The sun never looks through the
photographic instrument that it does not print a lie. The piece of
glass it prints it on is well named a "negative"--a contradiction--a
misrepresentation--a falsehood. I speak feelingly of this matter,
because by turns the instrument has represented me to be a lunatic, a
Soloman, a missionary, a burglar and an abject idiot, and I am neither.

DAILY HAWAIIAN HERALD, September 14, 1866

MARK TWAIN ON CAPTAIN COOK.

It seems that Mark Twain while here, not only borrowed "Jarves" History
of Captain Cook and carried it off, vi et armis; but that he also
appropriated from its pages the following synopsis of the event of the
navigator's death:

Plain unvarnished history takes the romance out of Captain Cook's
assassination, and renders a deliberate verdict of justifiable homicide.
Wherever he went among the islands he was cordially received and
welcomed by the inhabitants, and his ships lavishly supplied with
all manner of food. He returned these kindnesses with insult and ill
treatment.

When he landed at Kealakekua Bay, a multitude of natives, variously
estimated at some ten to fifteen thousand, flocked about him and
conducted him to the principal temple with more than royal honors--with
honors suited to their chiefest god, for which they took him to be. They
called him Lono--a deity who had resided at that place in a former age,
but who had gone away and had ever since been anxiously expected back
by the people. When Cook approached the awe-stricken people, they
prostrated themselves and hid their faces. His coming was announced in a
loud voice by heralds, and those who had not time to get out of the way
after prostrating themselves, were trampled underfoot by the following
throngs. Arrived at the temple, he was taken into the most sacred part
and placed before the principal idol.

These distinguished civilities were never offered by the islanders to
mere human beings. Cook was mistaken for their absent god; he accepted
the situation and helped the natives to deceive themselves. His conduct
might have been wrong in a moral point of view, but his policy was good
in conniving at the deception, and proved itself so; the belief that
he was a god saved him a good while from being killed--protected
him thoroughly and completely, until, in an unlucky moment, it was
discovered that he was only a man. His death followed instantly. Jarves,
from whose history, principally, I am condensing this narrative, thinks
his destruction was a direct consequence of his dishonest personation of
the god; but unhappily for the argument, the historian proves over
and over again that the false Lono was spared time and time again when
simple Captain Cook of the Royal Navy would have been destroyed with
small ceremony.

The idolatrous worship of Captain Cook, as above described, was repeated
at every heathen temple he visited. Wherever he went the terrified
common people not being accustomed to seeing gods marching around of
their own free will and accord and without human assistance, fled at
his approach or fell down and worshipped him. A priest attended him and
regulated the religious ceremonies which constantly took place in his
honor; offerings, chants and addresses met him at every point. "For a
brief period he moved among them an earthly god--observed, feared and
worshipped." During all this time the whole island was heavily taxed
to supply the wants of the ships or contributed to the gratification of
their officers and crews, and as was customary in such cases, no returns
expected. "The natives rendered much assistance in filling the ships and
preparing them for their voyages."

At one time the king of the island laid a tabu upon his people,
confining them to their houses for several days. This interrupted
the daily supply of vegetables to the ships. Several natives tried
to violate the tabu, under threats made by Cook's sailors, but were
prevented by a chief, who for the enforcing the laws of his country, had
a musket fired over his head from one of the ships. This is related in
"Cook's Voyages." The tabu was soon removed, and the Englishmen were
favored with the boundless hospitality of the natives as before,
except that the Kanaka women were interdicted from visiting the ships.
Formerly, with extravagant hospitality, the people had sent their wives
and daughters on board themselves. The officers and sailors went freely
about the island and were everywhere laden with presents. The King
visited Cook in royal state and gave him a large number of exceedingly
costly and valuable presents--in return for which the resurrected Lono
presented His Majesty a white linen suit and a dagger--an instance of
illiberality in every way discreditable to a god.

"On the 2d of February, at the desire of his commander, Captain
King proposed to the priests to purchase for fuel the railing which
surrounded the top of the temple of Lono! In this Cook manifested as
little respect for the religion in the mythology of which he figured so
conspicuously, as scruples in violating the divine precepts of his own.
Indeed, throughout his voyages a spirit regardless of the rights
and feelings of others, when his own were interested, is manifested,
especially in his last cruise, which is a blot upon his memory."

Cook desecrated the holy places of the temple by storing supplies for
his ships in them, and by using the level grounds within the inclosure
as a general workshop for repairing his sails, etc.--ground which was
so sacred that no common native dared to set foot upon it. Ledyard, a
Yankee sailor, who was with Cook, and whose journal is considered the
most just and reliable account of this eventful period of the voyage
says two iron hatchets were offered for the temple railing, and when
the sacrilegious proposition was refused by the priests with horror and
indignation, it was torn down by order of Captain Cook and taken to the
boats by the sailors, and the images which surmounted it removed and
destroyed in the presence of the priests and chiefs.

The abused and insulted natives grew desperate under the indignities
that were constantly being heaped upon them by men whose wants they had
unselfishly relieved at the expense of their own impoverishment, and
angered by some fresh baseness, they stoned a party of sailors and drove
them to their boats. From this time onward Cook and the natives were
alternately friendly and hostile until Sunday the 14th, whose setting
sun saw the circumnavigator a corpse.

DAILY HAWAIIAN HERALD, October 6, 1866

MARK TWAIN ON ETIQUETTE.

Etiquette varies according to one's surroundings. In the mining camps of
California, when a friend tenders you a "mile" or invites you to take
a "blister"--vulgarly called a drink--it is etiquette to say, "Here's
hoping your dirt'll pan out gay." In Washoe, when you are requested to
"put in a blast," or invited to take your "regular poison," etiquette
admonishes you to touch glasses and say, "Here's hoping you'll strike it
rich in the lower level." And in Honolulu, when your friend, the whaler,
asks you to take a "fid" with him, it is simple etiquette to say,
"Here's eighteen hundred barrels, old salt." But "drink hearty" is
universal. That is the orthodox reply the world over. In San Francisco,
sometimes if you offend a man, he proposes to take his coat off, and
inquires, "Are you on it?" If you are, you can take your coat off too.
In Virginia City, in former times, the insulted party, if he were a
true man, would lay his hand gently on his six-shooter and say "Are you
heeled?" But in Honolulu, if Smith offends Jones, Jones asks (with a
rising inflection on the last word, which is excessively aggravating,)
"How much do you weigh?" "Sixteen hundred and forty pound--and you?"
"Two ton to a dot--at a quarter past eleven this forenoon--peel
yourself, you're my blubber!"

MARK TWAIN

DAILY HAWAIIAN HERALD, October 17, 1866

An Epistle from Mark Twain

San Francisco, Sept. 24th

THE QUEEN'S ARRIVAL.

Queen Emma and suite arrived at noon to-day in the P. M. S. S.
Sacramento, and was received by Mr. Hitchcock, the Hawaiian Consul,
and escorted to the Occidental Hotel, where a suite of neatly decorated
apartments had been got ready for her. The U. S. Revenue cutter Shubrick
went to sea and received the guest with a royal salute of 21 guns, and
then escorted her ship to the city; Fort Point saluted again, and the
colors of the other fortifications and on board the U. S. war steamer
Vanderbilt were dipped as the Sacramento passed. The commander of the
fleet in these waters had been instructed to tender the Vanderbilt to
Queen Emma to convey her to the Islands when she shall have concluded
her visit. The City government worried for days together over a public
reception programme, and then, when the time arrived to carry it into
execution, failed. But a crowd of gaping American kings besieged the
Occidental Hotel and peered anxiously into every carriage that arrived
and criticised every woman who emerged from it. Not a lady arrived from
the steamer but was taken for Queen Emma, and her personal appearance
subjected to remarks--some of them flattering and some otherwise. C. W.
Brooks and Jerome Leland, and other gentlemen, are out of pocket and
a day's time, in making preparations all day yesterday for a state
reception--but at midnight no steamer had been telegraphed, and so they
sent their sumptuous carriages and spirited four-horse teams back to the
stables and went to bed in sorrow and disappointment.

The Queen was expected at the public tables at dinner tonight, (in
the simplicity of the American heart,) and every lady was covertly
scrutinized as she entered the dining room--but to no purpose--Her
Majesty dined in her rooms, with her suite and the Consul.

She will be serenaded tonight, however, and tomorrow a numerous cortege
will march in procession before the hotel and give her three cheers and
a tiger, and then, no doubt, the public will be on hand to see her if
she shows herself.

ALPHABET WARREN.

I believe I do not know of anything further to write about that will
interest you, except that in Sacramento, a few days ago, when I went
to report the horse fair of the State Agricultural Society, I found Mr.
John Quincy Adam Warren, late of the Islands, and he was well dressed
and looked happy. He had on exhibition a hundred thousand varieties
of lava and worms, and vegetables, and other valuables which he had
collected in Hawaii-nei. I smiled on him, but he wouldn't smile back
again. I did not mind it a great deal, though I could not help thinking
it was ungrateful in him. I made him famous in California with a
paragraph which I need not have written unless I wanted to--and this is
the thanks I get for it. He would never have been heard of if I had
let him alone--and now he declines to smile. I will never do a man a
kindness again.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Charles L. Richards, of Honolulu, sails tomorrow for the Islands with
a fast team he purchased here. The steamer Colorado is undergoing the
alterations necessary to fit her for the China Mail Company's service,
and will sail about the first of January with about all the cabin
passengers she can carry. She will touch at Honolulu, as I now
understand. I expect to go out in her, in order to see that everything
is done right. Commodore Watson is to command her I believe. I am going
chiefly, however, to eat the editor of the Commercial Advertiser for
saying I do not write the truth about the Hawaiian Islands, and
for exposing my highway robbery in carrying off Father Damien's
book--History of the Islands. I shall go there mighty hungry. Mr.
Whitney is jealous of me because I speak the truth so naturally, and he
can't do it without taking the lock-jaw. But he ought not to be jealous;
he ought not to try to ruin me because I am more virtuous than his is; I
cannot help it--it is my nature to be reliable, just as it is his to
be shaky on matters of fact--we cannot alter these natures--us leopards
cannot change our spots. Therefore, why growl?--why go and try to make
trouble? If he cannot tell when I am writing seriously and when I am
burlesquing--if he sits down solemnly and takes one of my palpable
burlesques and reads it with a funereal aspect, and swallows it as
petrified truth,--how am I going to help it? I cannot give him the
keen perception that nature denied him--now can I? Whitney knows that.
Whitney knows he has done me many a kindness, and that I do not forget
it, and am still grateful--and he knows that if I could scour him up so
that he could tell a broad burlesque from a plain statement of fact, I
would get up in the night and walk any distance to do it. You know
that, Whitney. But I am coming down there mighty hungry--most uncommonly
hungry, Whitney.

MARK TWAIN.

DAILY HAWAIIAN HERALD, October 23, 1866

MARK TWAIN'S LECTURE.--This lecture, delivered in San Francisco on the
night of October 2d, appears by the comments of the press of that city
to have been a success. The Bulletin says:

The Academy of music was "stuffed," to use an expression of the
lecturer, to repletion last night, on the occasion of the delivery of
"Mark Twain's" (Samuel Clements') [sic] lecture on the Sandwich Islands.
It is perhaps fortunate that the King of Hawaii did not arrive in time
to attend, for unless he had gone early he must have been turned away,
as many others were who could not gain admittance. Nearly every seat in
the house had been engaged beforehand, and those who came last had to
put up with the best they could get, while many were obliged to stand up
all the evening.

The appearance of the lecturer was the signal for applause, and from
the time he closed, the greatest good feeling existed. He commenced by
apologizing for the absence of an orchestra. He wasn't used to getting
up operas of this sort. He had engaged a musician to come and play, but
the trombone player insisted upon having some other musicians to help
him. He had hired the man to work and wouldn't stand any such nonsense,
and so discharged him on the spot.

The lecturer then proceeded with his subject, and delivered one of the
most interesting and amusing lectures ever given in this city. It was
replete with information of that character which is seldom got from
books, describing all those minor traits of character, customs and
habits which are only noted by a close observer, and yet the kind of
information which gives the most correct idea of the people described.
Their virtues were set forth generously, while their vices were touched
off in a humorous style, which kept the audience in a constant state of
merriment. From the lecturer's reputation as a humorist, the audience
were unprepared for the eloquent description of the volcano of Kilauea,
a really magnificent piece of word painting, their appreciation of which
was shown by long and continued applause. Important facts concerning the
resources of the Islands were given, interspersed with pointed anecdotes
and side-splitting jokes. Their history, traditions, religion, politics,
aristocracy, royalty, manners and customs, were all described in brief,
and in the humorous vein peculiar to the speaker. It would be impossible
to do justice to the lecture in a synopsis, and as it will probably
be repeated, we shall not attempt it. The lecturer kept his audience
constantly interested and amused for an hour and a half and the lecture
was unanimously pronounced a brilliant success. After its close, and the
audience had risen to leave, he was called out again, and in his funny
style apologised for "the infliction," giving as an excuse that he was
about writing a book on the Sandwich Islands, and needed funds for its
publication.

We are pleased that "Mark Twain" is using the data he gathered here for
the purpose of advancing the interests of these Islands. Although Mr.
Sam Clemens [sic] has been accused of unfairness, we think that his
forthcoming work will show that he has been an industrious collator of
facts.

DAILY HAWAIIAN HERALD, November 16, 1866

CHARACTERISTIC.--The following is the conclusion of Mark Twain's
advertisement for his lecture delivered lately in Grass Valley:

"After the lecture is over the lecturer will perform the following
wonderful feats on

SLEIGHT OF HAND.

if desired to do so:

"At a given signal, he will go out with any gentleman and take a drink.
If desired, he will repeat this unique and interesting feat--repeat it
until the audience are satisfied that there is no deception about it.

"At a moment's warning he will depart out of town and leave his hotel
bill unsettled. He has performed this ludicrous trick many hundreds of
times in San Francisco and elsewhere, and it has always elicited the
most enthusiastic comments.

"At any hour of the night, after ten, the lecturer will go through any
house in the city, no matter how dark it may be, and take an inventory
of its contents, and not miss as many of the articles as the owner will
in the morning.

"The lecturer declines to specify any more of his miraculous feats
at present, for fear of getting the police too much interested in his
circus."

DAILY HAWAIIAN HERALD, December 13, 1866

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN.

HOW FOR INSTANCE?

Coming down from Sacramento on the Capital the other night, I found on a
centre table a pamphlet advertisement of an Accident Insurance Company.
It interested me a good deal, with its General Accidents, and Hazardous
Tables, and Extra Hazardous furniture of the same description, and I
would like to know something more about it. It is a new thing to me.
I want to invest if I come to like it. I want to ask merely a few
questions of the man who carries on this Accident shop, if you think you
can spare so much space to a far-distant stranger. I am an Orphan.

He publishes this list as accidents he is willing to insure people
against:

GENERAL ACCIDENTS

Include the Travelling Risk, and also all forms of Dislocations, Broken
Bones, Ruptures, Tendons, Sprains, Concussions, Crushings, Bruising,
Cuts, Stabs, Gunshot Wounds, Poisoned Wounds, Burns and Scalds,
Freezing, Bites, Unprovoked Assaults by Burglars, Robbers, or Murderers;
the Action of Lightning or Sunstroke, the effects of Explosions,
Chemicals, Floods, and Earthquakes, Suffocation by Drowning or
Choking--where such accidental injury totally disables the person
insured from following his usual avocation, or causes death within three
months from the time of the happening of the injury.

I want to address the party as follows:

Now, Smith--I suppose likely your name is Smith--you don't know me and I
don't know you, but I am willing to be friendly. I am acquainted with a
good many of your family--I know John as well as I know any man--and I
think we can come to an understanding about your little game without any
hard feelings. For instance:

Do you allow the same money on a dog-bite that you do on an earthquake?
Do you take special risks for specific accidents?--that is to say, could
I, by getting a policy for dog-bites alone, get it cheaper than if I
took a chance in your whole lottery? And if so, and supposing I got
insured against earthquakes, would you charge any more for San Francisco
earthquakes than for those that prevail in places that are better
anchored down? And if I had a policy on earthquakes alone, I couldn't
collect on a dog-bite, maybe could I?

If a man had such a policy, and an earthquake shook him up and loosened
his joints a good deal, but not enough to incapacitate him from engaging
in pursuits which did not require him to be tight, wouldn't you pay him
some of his pension? I notice you do not mention Biles. How about Biles?
Why do you discriminate between Provoked and Unprovoked Assaults by
Burglars? If a burglar entered my house at dead of night, and I, in the
excitement natural to such an occasion, should forget myself and say
something that provoked him, and he should cripple me, wouldn't I get
anything? But if I provoked him by pure accident, I would have you
there, I judge; because you would have to pay for the Accident part of
it anyhow, seeing that insuring against accident is just your strong
suit, you know. Now, that item about protecting a man against freezing
is good. It will procure you all the custom you want in this country.
Because, you understand, the people hereabouts have suffered a good deal
from just such climatic drawbacks as that. Why, three years ago, if a
man--being a small fish in the matter of money--went over to Washoe, and
bought into a good silver mine, they would let that man go on and pay
assessments till his purse got down to about thirty-two Fahrenheit, and
then the big fish would close in on him and freeze him out. And from
that day forth you might consider that man in the light of a bankrupt
community; and you would have him down to a spot, too. But if you are
ready to insure against that sort of thing, and can stand it, you can
give Washoe a fair start. You might send me an agency. Business? Why,
Smith, I could get you more business than you could attend to. With such
an understanding as that, the boys would all take a chance.

You don't appear to make any particular mention of taking risks on
blighted affections. But if you should conclude to do a little business
in that line, you might put me down for six or seven chances. I wouldn't
mind expense--you might enter it on Extra Hazardous. I suppose I would
get ahead of you in the long run anyhow, likely. I have been blighted a
good deal in my time.

But now as to those "Effects of Lightning." Suppose the lightning
were to strike out at one of your men and miss him, and fetch another
party--could that other party come on you for damages? Or could the
relatives of the party thus suddenly snaked out of the bright world in
the bloom of his youth come on you in case he was crowded for time?--as,
of course, he would be, you know, under such circumstances.

You say you have issued over sixty thousand policies, "forty-five of
which have proved fatal and been paid for." Now, do you know, Smith,
that that looks just a little shaky to me, in a measure? You appear to
have it pretty much all your own way, you see. It is all very well for
the lucky forty-five that have died "and been paid for," but how about
the other fifty-nine thousand nine hundred and fifty-five?" You have got
their money, haven't you? but somehow the lightning don't seem to strike
them, and they don't get any chance at you. Won't their families get
fatigued waiting for their dividends? Don't your customers drop off
rather slow, so to speak?

You will ruin yourself publishing such damaging statements as that,
Smith. I tell you as a friend. If you had said that the fifty-nine
thousand nine hundred and fifty-five died, and that forty-five lived,
you would have issued about four tons of policies the next week. But
people are not going to get insured, when you take so much pains to
prove that there is such precious little use in it. Yours,

MARK TWAIN.

DAILY HAWAIIAN HERALD, December 17, 1866

OPEN LETTER TO MARK TWAIN.

HONOLULU, Dec. 14, 1866

AFFLUENT MARK:--I write you in sorrow and tribulation. Since you left
here, everything has gone wrong. The "season" wasn't worth shucks to
ship chandlers, grog-shops or drug-stores. The only class of people
who made money out of it were newspaper men, music-teachers and
portrait-painters. Capt. Coffin didn't make his salt, notwithstanding
he had had all his harness-casks repaired. Whitney's sales have been
unprecedented. He disposed of three cases of "Josephus," Nap's "Life of
Caesar," "Ecce Homo," and three cotton-gins; and Mr. Damon has cleared
his shelves of all the latest sensation novels. By the way, the latter
gentleman is getting anxious about his "Jarvis." He and Mr. W. had a
dispute about the ownership of the volume. How it came out I am not
informed; but the latter's hair has got mighty thin all of a sudden.
(What's the use of their quarrelling about it? You and I know neither of
them will ever see it again.)

Mark, your friends here are delighted at your pecuniary success in
lecturing. They think you will not only help to establish the reputation
of the Islands abroad, but that you will help them out of their pilikia
(trouble) when you arrive here on the first China steamer. (Some of
them are unkind enough to hint that you are giving the Islands fits, and
that's the reason why you won't have the lecture published. Is it so?)
Bring plenty of rhino with you when you come; you have no idea how many
admirers you have here. Wear stout buckskin gloves, for the pressure
of hands will be immense. The natives of this Island form a very even
community, generally speaking. If you arrive here "flush," every one of
them is anxious to shake you by the hand; and if you arrive "broke" they
are sure to shake you, anyhow. By this you will see how uniform is the
native temperament.

Speaking of temperament reminds me that our friend Bucephalus Brown
has, as usual, slipped up again. Some two months since, he started a
temperance society, and elected himself President, Treasurer, and all
the members. Its motto was, "The greatest good to the greatest bummers,"
and great things were expected from it. The society flourished for a
while, but I regret to say, that where it should have found its truest
friend it found its most unrelenting foe. You know, Mark, that Brown
always got along swimmingly, both hygienically and pecuniarily, when he
took his regular "tangleleg" like a man. Impecuniosity was unknown to
that confiding 'art. Your Montgomery street friends can vouch for this
from the number of I. O. U.'s they have signed over to B. B. but
he backslided, and as I said above, organized himself into a grand
Temperance Union for the Propagation of Cold Water Habits. From that
day Brown has been going down. He preached cold water and villified
corn-juice--he denounced the 'appy and 'ilarious mood, and sang paeans
to the Honolulu Water Works; Don Miguel Harvi (from Limerick) was his
aversion, Colonel Pendergast (from Hilo) was his ne plus ultra. Now mark
the sequel. Just as he thought he was getting adversity where "the har
is short," cold water threw him higher than a Chinese kite. Either he
was too heavy on cold water and it rebelled, or tamarind syrup with a
stick in it became jealous of its competitor and fiendishly made it
the dupe to compass Brown's destruction. A few nights ago the water-tap
overflowed in his 'umble but gorgeously equipped hattie, and as the
landlord had taken the marvellous precaution to have holes bored in
the floor, just above a large invoice of most unsaleable and costly
(privately, they were just out of season) articles ever imported from
Injiar, his fellow-tenants' embroidered silk overcoats and Ristori
crinolines got soaked. When he was called upon to examine the goods,
he discovered just what he said he had anticipated, videlicet: that the
water had travelled all around the store and hugged the only good on
hand for which there was no market. You will appreciate poor Brown's
feelings, Mark, when I privately tell you that he has a big disgust on
against water--that water and he don't mix--that he is hydro-phobic.
Mark, avoid it. If you must spend your money, spend it on something less
liable to leak through floors than cold water. I would also advise
you, whenever you rent an upper story, to see that the first floor is
occupied by a lager beer merchant or a charity school. Remember Brown!

Mark, I see you are raking up the Disease and Accident Insurance
Companies. As you and Smith the Insurance man seem to understand each
other, use your influence with him in Brown's favor. He thinks of
returning to the Coast and making another pile; but as you know he
always had an irresistible desire to establish a daily newspaper at the
Farallones. I fear he may invest his next fortune in that enterprise. If
you could only get Smith to add to his list of articles insured the item
of "hydro-scatteries," I will get Brown to remember you in his last will
and testament. Ever of thee,

S. PURMOIL.



ALTA CALIFORNIA

Alta California, December 14, 1866

SO-LONG.

EDITORS ALTA: I leave for the States in the Opposition steamer
to-morrow, and I ask, as a special favor, that you will allow me to
say good-bye to my highway-robber friends of the Gold Hill and Virginia
Divide, and convince them that I have got ahead of them. They had
their joke in robbing me and returning the money, and I had mine in the
satisfaction of knowing that they came near freezing to death while they
were waiting two hours for me to come along the night of the robbery.
And at this day, so far from bearing them any ill will, I want to
thank them kindly for their rascality. I am pecuniarily ahead on the
transaction. I got a telegram from New York, last night, which reads as
follows:

"New York, December 12th.

"Mark Twain: Go to Nudd, Lord & Co., Front street, collect amount of
money equal to what highwaymen took from you. (Signed.) A.D.N."

I took that telegram and went to that store and called for a thousand
dollars, with my customary modesty; but when I found they were going to
pay it, my conscience smote me and I reduced the demand to a hundred. It
was promptly paid, in coin, and now if the robbers think they have got
the best end of that joke, they are welcome--they have my free consent
to go on thinking so. {It is barely possible that the heft of the joke
is on A.D.N., now.}

Good-bye, felons--good-bye. I bear you no malice. And I sincerely pray
that when your cheerful career is closing, and you appear finally before
a delighted and appreciative audience to be hanged, that you will
be prepared to go, and that it will be as a ray of sunshine amid the
gathering blackness of your damning recollections, to call to mind that
you never got a cent out of me. So-long, brigands.

MARK TWAIN.

Alta California, December 15, 1866

"MARK TWAIN'S" FAREWELL.

Samuel Clemens, ("Mark Twain,") the talented humorist and brilliant
writer, leaves San Francisco on the steamer America, to-day, and we take
occasion to print the farewell address delivered on Monday night,
at Congress Hall. After having kept the audience listening in rapt
attention to his gorgeous imagery, in describing the scenes at the
Sandwich Islands, or convulsed with laughter at the humorous sallies
interspersed through the lecture, he seemed to come reluctantly to the
promised "good-bye," and then his whole manner changed--the words
were evidently the language of the heart, and the convictions of his
judgment. He said:

"My Friends and Fellow-Citizens: I have been treated with extreme
kindness and cordiality by San Francisco, and I wish to return my
sincerest thanks and acknowledgments. I have also been treated with
marked and unusual generosity, forbearance and good-fellowship, by my
ancient comrades, my brethren of the Press--a thing which has peculiarly
touched me, because long experience in the service has taught me that
we of the Press are slow to praise but quick to censure each other, as
a general thing--wherefore, in thanking them I am anxious to convince
them, at the same time, that they have not lavished their kind offices
upon one who cannot appreciate or is insensible to them.

"I am now about to bid farewell to San Francisco for a season, and to
go back to that common home we all tenderly remember in our waking hours
and fondly revisit in dreams of the night--a home which is familiar to
my recollection, but will be an unknown land to my unaccustomed eyes. I
shall share the fate of many another longing exile who wanders back to
his early home to find gray hairs where he expected youth, graves where
he looked for firesides, grief where he had pictured joy--everywhere
change! remorseless change where he had heedlessly dreamed that
desolating Time had stood still!--to find his cherished anticipations a
mockery, and to drink the lees of disappointment instead of the beaded
wine of a hope that is crowned with its fruition!

"And while I linger here upon the threshold of this, my new home, to say
to you, my kindest and my truest friends, a warm good-bye and an honest
peace and prosperity attend you, I accept the warning that mighty
changes will have come over this home also when my returning feet shall
walk these streets again.

"I read the signs of the times, and I, that am no prophet, behold the
things that are in store for you. Over slumbering California is stealing
the dawn of a radiant future! The great China Mail Line is established,
the Pacific Railroad is creeping across the continent, the commerce of
the world is about to be revolutionized. California is Crown Princess of
the new dispensation! She stands in the centre of the grand highway of
the nations; she stands midway between the Old World and the New,
and both shall pay her tribute. From the far East and from Europe,
multitudes of stout hearts and willing hands are preparing to flock
hither; to throng her hamlets and villages; to till her fruitful soil;
to unveil the riches of her countless mines; to build up an empire
on these distant shores that shall shame the bravest dreams of her
visionaries. From the opulent lands of the Orient, from India, from
China, Japan, the Amoor; from tributary regions that stretch from the
Arctic circle to the equator, is about to pour in upon her the princely
commerce of a teeming population of four hundred and fifty million
souls. Half the world stands ready to lay its contributions at her feet!
Has any other State so brilliant a future? Has any other city a future
like San Francisco?

"This straggling town shall be a vast metropolis; this sparsely
populated land shall become a crowded hive of busy men; your waste
places shall blossom like the rose, and your deserted hills and valleys
shall yield bread and wine for unnumbered thousands; railroads shall be
spread hither and thither and carry the invigorating blood of commerce
to regions that are languishing now; mills and workshops, yea, and
factories shall spring up everywhere, and mines that have neither name
nor place to-day shall dazzle the world with their affluence. The time
is drawing on apace when the clouds shall pass away from your firmament,
and a splendid prosperity shall descend like a glory upon the whole
land!

"I am bidding the old city and my old friends a kind, but not a sad
farewell, for I know that when I see this home again, the changes that
will have been wrought upon it will suggest no sentiment of sadness; its
estate will be brighter, happier and prouder a hundred fold than it is
this day. This is its destiny, and in all sincerity I can say, So mote
it be!"

"Mark Twain" goes off on his journey over the world as the Travelling
Correspondent of the ALTA CALIFORNIA, not stinted as to time, place or
direction--writing his weekly letters on such subjects and from such
places as will best suit him; but we may say that he will first visit
the home of his youth--St. Louis--thence through the principal cities to
the Atlantic seaboard again, crossing the ocean to visit the "Universal
Exposition" at Paris, through Italy, the Mediterranean, India, China,
Japan, and back to San Francisco by the China Mail Steamship line. That
his letters will be read with interest needs no assurance from us--his
reputation has been made here in California, and his great ability is
well known; but he has been known principally as a humorist, while he
really has no superior as a descriptive writer--a keen observer of men
and their surroundings--and we feel confident his letters to the
ALTA, from his new field of observation, will give him a world-wide
reputation.

Alta California, January 18, 1867

Steamship AMERICA, at sea, 900 miles south of San Francisco,

December 20th, 1866.

AWAY!

"GOOD-BYE, my boy, take care of yourself!" said Jones, and Smith, and
Thompson, and shook hands with me, and then all shouldered their
way through the crowd toward the other end of the steamer, to have
a farewell shake with somebody else, for the ship was just ready to
leave--all was confusion--everybody in a hurry. I edged out of the
surging mass of humanity and leaned on the port bulwarks, to search
among the multitude on the pier for familiar faces. Then the young
man with the evil countenance parted the crowd on either side of him,
struggled edgeways toward me, like a hog climbing through a fence, and
offered to sell me some limes. I had refused him a dozen times already,
but this time I purchased, to get rid of him.

"Good-bye, my lad, take care of yourself!" I wrung the hands of Jones,
Smith, and Thompson, again, and again they disappeared through the human
commotion, to repeat their farewells with other friends at the other end
of the ship. I turned toward the crowd on shore again, and neatly dodged
an apple discharged at someone behind me, whose friend on shore took
this method of shaking hands with him. Some of the faces were glad, some
were listless, some were sorrowful--they belonged to people who were
enjoying the distinction of being acquainted with parties on the
departing ship--to people who knew no one on board, and who were
sullenly hopeless of ever being able to go "home"--to people whose
friends and relatives were going to distant lands, and whose pleasant
faces they might never behold again in life. The cutthroat with the
illustrated papers clove a passage to me, and I bought him out and got
rid of him. And then I faced about and dodged an orange hurled from the
shore--another good-bye that came near miscarrying.

"Good-bye, my lad, take care of yourself!" I shook Jones, and Smith,
and Thompson, warmly by the hand once more, and once more, panting and
perspiring, they struggled through the crowd to bid another farewell
to friends at the other end of the ship. The party with the withered
cigars, "yust imborted fun Hawanna," arrived, and offered his whole
stock at a ruinous sacrifice--five cents a piece. I had it not in my
heart to take advantage of any man's necessities, and I refused to
purchase. I was grieved to see a good-bye apple from the shore cave in
the side of his head as he turned away. At this point Bilgewater arrived
with a keg of quartz specimens, to be delivered to his aunt in New York;
Johnson brought a glass jar of fine tarantulas and scorpions for his
brother, the doctor, in Brooklyn; Witherspoon brought a case of extra
California wines, to be presented in his name to the Secretary of the
Interior; and Elbridge brought a box of choice California fruits, to
be placed on exhibition at the Patent Office. We had an outside
stateroom--No. 14 and so it cost us but little trouble to receive and
stow away these things; though to speak truly, they crowded our baggage
somewhat.

"All ashore that's going!" It was too bad. Jones was nearly back
again--was even reaching out his hand at arm's length for another
farewell shake--but was wedged into the crowd and so squeezed that his
eyes were well nigh bursting from his red-hot face; Smith and Thompson
were close behind him. The order spoiled everything. They could not
overcome the crowd, and so were borne bodily backward toward the
companion-way, and disappeared.

We backed out through a pitiless storm of apples and oranges, through
which I caught occasional glimpses of excited faces and flashing
handkerchiefs on shore, as one sees such things through pelting hail and
snow; and as it ceased, and distance intervened, and the multitude broke
apart and dribbled away like a temporary human embankment, I saw Jones,
and Smith, and Thompson, each shaking his own hands, and faintly heard
a word or two of their good old kindly farewell. I heard the words "BYE"
and "CARE," and I knew they had used the old formula, because these were
naturally the only words emphasized in that formula.

AN ELOPEMENT-SENSATION

Then I stood apart and soliloquized: "Green be my memories of thee as
are thy hills this bright December day, O Mistress of the Occident! May
no--"

"Oh, dang the Occident! There's lively times downstairs. The old man
played his hand for all it was worth--the passengers raised him--the
old man come back--they went him better--the old man passed out, and all
things are lovely and the--"

"Say what you have got to say in plain English, Brown, and refrain from
vulgar metaphor."

"Well, there was a young fellow married a girl and smuggled her aboard,
and her father boarded us in a Whitehall boat with a bogus policeman,
and they grabbed her and he resisted, and there was a fight, and she
cried and took on and said she would go with him or die, and if she
went home she'd up and die sure, and they corraled her and seized a rope
round her waist, and was going to lower her away, but the passengers
mixed in and shucked the old man out and made the bogus policeman jump
overboard with a black eye, and said they'd hang 'em if they didn't
leave quick, and so the turtles are safe in the state room, and the old
son of a seacook's gone; but--you ought to have been there to hear the
old man cuss, and the girl cry and hang on to him--to the young one,
not the old one--and the passengers singing out. 'Bust him! heave him
overboard! keel haul the old hound!' and one would take him a whack
under the ear, and another would fetch him a welt in the ribs, and the
policeman catching it right and left, and holding up his hands to save
his mug, and about two thousand steerage women snuffling and howling,
and m-o-r-e crowding and gouging, and trampling going on--Oh, blood,
hair and the ground tore up!--I never see the like!"

I said, "You can go to bed now, Brown, if you feel tired," and I went
forward to make inquiries. It appeared that a youth of twenty-three or
four had clandestinely married a girl of fifteen, and taken passage
for New York. Her father had boarded us in the stream with a pretended
policeman, (discarded lover in disguise, no doubt). There was a fight;
the passengers took sides with the young couple and were victorious. The
girl hanging by a rope and just ready to go by the run into the small
boat, was hauled aboard again. The father and his man were driven out
of the ship; we were under way for America once more, and the sinking
honeymoon rose up with added lustre over the rescued victims of
matrimony. Long may it shine unclouded!

That was one story. Another said the policeman showed the star of
legitimate authority, and the old man sat in the boat as we moved away,
and cried bitterly, and shook his hand at the lover and said, "You
miserable, heartless dog, you have stolen away my child!" And they said
he was a worthy-looking old man too.

NOON, 16th


All the afternoon, yesterday, two or three hundred passengers paced the
promenade deck, and so quiet was the sea that not half a dozen of them
succumbed to sickness. But at 8 or 9 at night the wind began to rise,
and from that time it steadily increased in violence until, at midnight,
it was blowing a hurricane. There was a tremendous sea running, and the
night was so pitch dark that a man standing on the deck would find by
voices at his elbow that other persons were almost touching him, when he
imagined himself alone. On deck, above the lashing of the waves, and the
roaring of the winds, the shouting of the captain and his officers, and
the hurried tramping of the men were scarcely to be heard.

The steerage passengers were at once imprisoned below, and the hatches
battened down and canvassed over; the ship was by the head, and the
seas were sweeping over the bows every now and then; every man under
the ship's pay--officers, cabin crew and all--were set to work to break
cargo and move it aft; a large quantity of flour was transferred to the
stern, and the large boats on the after-guard were pumped full of water.
These precautions eased the ship's head and saved her. It was well that
the hatches were down snug before the terrific squall struck us, just
after midnight, else either of the three fearful seas that swept over
the ship then in quick succession must have poured thousands of tons of
water into her and sent her to the bottom.

As it was, the vessel was in peril enough. She was tossed about like a
plaything--climbed lofty billows, paused a moment on the crest, and then
plunged down into the gulf on the other side; climbed the next wave, and
while one held his breath in anticipation of the ghastly dive and the
deadly sinking sensation in the chest that always accompanies it, a
prodigious wave would spring upon her from some side angle, and send her
stunned and staggering, broadside on, like a man struck with a club!
And then the officers floundered in water up to their hips, and shouted
orders that came aft reduced to hoarse, confused whispers by the howling
blast! Then the gunwale, a solid timber as thick as a man's thigh,
snapped like a pipe-stem--away went twenty feet of the starboard
bulwarks forward--down came a dozen stanchions with a clatter--crash
went a deluge of water booming aft through steerage and forward-cabin,
carrying stools, carpet sacks, boxes, boots, valises, and a rattling
smash-up of queens ware and crockery along with it--and on the reeling
floors, amid the shrieking of the cordage and the roaring of the
midnight winds and the thundering of the midnight sea down on their
knees in the slush went two hundred and fifty of the ungodliest of all
the ungodly crowds that ever lumbered a ship yet, to pray!

Such consternation as there was aboard this ship you have not seen in
ten years, perhaps. Poor fellows, some of them were well nigh beside
themselves. A man from one of the back settlements knelt down, in the
middle of the forward cabin, with an arm clasping a stanchion to enable
him to maintain his position; and there he knelt and prayed fervently,
till an oil-skin carpet sack came washing by him, and he grabbed
it--found it was not his--set it adrift again--and went on praying; and
so he went on, supplicating for succor and prospecting for carpet sacks,
till sea-sickness got him, and he had to drop all other considerations
and attend to bailing out his stomach. But it may be said of this
stranger that he meant well, and held his grip as well as any man could
have done it. And any man of judgment cannot but think well of his
modesty in only relying on Providence to save the ship, but looking out
for his carpet sack himself. If we would always do our share many things
would be accomplished that never are accomplished.

It was a heavy storm--the heaviest Captain Wakeman has seen on this
coast in seventeen years, except one--and the heaviest another old sea
Captain (among our passengers) of twenty-eight years' experience, ever
saw in his life. [N.B.-Is there always an old skipper aboard who never
saw such a storm before?] It proved the America to be a staunch and
reliable vessel, however, and her commander a thoroughly competent
officer, and these things will render the passengers more satisfied and
confident hereafter in case we have another storm.

SEQUEL TO THE ELOPEMENT

NOON, 19th.

I have to give the sequel to the runaway match now. Yesterday it was
whispered about that our young couple, who passed in the ship as "Mr.
and wife," and occupied a state room together, were really not married!
Luscious sensation for a monotonous sea voyage! Capt. Wakeman exploded
two or three awful salt-water oaths and ordered the Purser to produce
the culprits before him at once. It was done, at 8 P.M. An explanation
was demanded. They said they were married in San Jose Valley, but had
lost the certificate. The Captain swore a blood-curdling oath that he'd
furnish them another, and mighty quick, too; and ordered up the Rev.
Mr. Fackler, an Episcopalian minister of San Francisco, to perform the
ceremony, and four respectable persons to witness it. The bridegroom
did not seem particularly gratified with these proceedings, and even the
bride said afterwards that they had kept company together four days on
shore before they shipped, and she was satisfied--thought people might
mind their own business, and let theirs alone. She said they were going
to be married in Brooklyn, and that was the programme from the start;
didn't care anything about having any such foolishness on the ship!
A child fifteen years old, and weighted down with the wisdom and
experience of an infant! Another lady said she couldn't see why people
wanted to meddle with other people's business. Why couldn't they let the
girl alone! God help me! I am an orphan and many and many a league at
sea--with such a crowd as this!

ANOTHER SEQUEL

The old man had them married, though, on the spot, (at sea, 70 miles
south of San Francisco,) and gave the girl a certificate, and kept one
himself to give to her father in San Francisco, and the trouble was at
an end and the sensation over. A fresh one was started to-day, when it
was discovered that the bridegroom was spliced under a fictitious name,
and so the "old man," (as all sea captains are called,) got off some
more complicated and appalling blasphemy, and hauled up the young man
and married him over again!

Alta California, February 27, 1867

On board steamer

COLUMBIA,

at sea.

DECEMBER 20TH.--Five days out from San Francisco. The fearful storm the
first night out came near foundering the ship, and it did succeed in
making everybody sea-sick. It stove in the forward bulwarks and flooded
steerage and forward cabin with water, and amid a wild rush of floating
boots and carpet-bags, miners from Washoe and California and "web-feet"
from Oregon, who had never prayed in their lives before, perhaps, knelt
down and did the best they could at it on short notice:

ISAAC

For three days afterward most of the ship's family brooded in sorrow and
sea-sickness in their berths, and it took them all of the fourth day to
get up a tolerable degree of cheerfulness. Today, however, Brown, Baker,
Stribling, Smith, Kingdom, Hercules, Isaac, and several of the ladies,
seem about restored to their natural selves. However, to say truly,
Isaac has been his natural self from the beginning. His vanity,
impudence, obsequiousness and utter imperviousness to insult trench upon
the wonderful. He started in very confined quarters in the second cabin,
but by sheer and persistent labor with his seductive tongue he has
already worked up to a seat at the Purser's table and the choicest
state-room on the upper deck--and without extra charge. He writes
cards for a living, and came on board with a pack ready written and
elaborately decorated with the familiar old tiresome flowers, cupids
and birds of unknown species, for half the officers of the ship--and was
surprised to learn that nautical etiquette forbade those gentlemen to
accept of presents from passengers. He offered Captain Waxman (all the
names I use--for ship, passengers, Captain and all--are fictitious,)
a meerschaum pipe (bogus) and was utterly confounded at its
non-acceptance. Broad-shouldered, kinky-haired Isaac receives each
addition to the list of convalescent passengers with his stereotyped
complacent smile, and forces upon him a luncheon from his stock of
bad foreign sausage, good tasting Limberg cheese, with a death-dealing
smell, and execrable Dutch herrings--all of which conduct looks kind
and considerate--it really does but it certainly must mean business. He
probably knows what he is about.

The weather is beyond all praise. No sea-sick passengers may hope
to resist it long. It is so soft and balmy, and so grateful to lungs
accustomed to the frequent fogs of San Francisco. The whole promenade
deck is sheltered from the sun by awnings, and it is delightful to
march up and down the breezy deck in procession and smoke, or sit on the
benches and look out upon the hills and valleys of Mexico.

THE CAPTAIN

MIDNIGHT--have been listening to Some of Captain Waxman's stunning
forecastle yarns, and I will do him the credit to say he knows how to
tell them. With his strong, cheery voice, animated countenance, quaint
phraseology, defiance of grammar and extraordinary vim in the matter
of gesture and emphasis, he makes a most effective story out of very
unpromising materials. There is a contagion about his whole-souled
jollity that the chief mourner at a funeral could not resist. He is
fifty years old, and as rough as a bear in voice and action, and yet
as kind-hearted and tender as a woman. He is a burly, hairy, sunburned,
stormy-voiced old salt, who mixes strange oaths with incomprehensible
sailor phraseology and the gentlest and most touching pathos, and is
tattooed from head to foot like a Fejee Islander. His tongue is forever
going when he has got no business on his hands, and though he knows
nothing of policy or the ways of the world, he can cheer up any company
of passengers that ever travelled in a ship, and keep them cheered up.
He never drinks a drop, never gambles, and never swears where a lady or
a child may chance to hear him--but with all things consonant with the
occasion he sometimes soars into flights of fancy swearing that fill the
listener with admiration. He is--

"Who knocked?"

"Me--let me in."

The ship lurched, I unfastened the door, and the person named Brown
plunged in head-foremost. It was thoughtless on my part. He stove in the
middle berth and started his scalp.

"Well, what do you want, Brown?" [Here a chapter of blasphemy is
omitted.]

"Why, the old man's going to cross the Gulf of Tehuantepec Christmas
Day, instead of going down shore in the quiet waters, as he's been
ordered. It will throw this ship more double summersets than you can see
in a circus. And I know the old man's idea: he means to get up a starchy
Christmas dinner, and then hold her out four points, and all the paper
weights in America couldn't keep it on a man's stomach."

The Gulf of Tehuantepec is the Hatteras of the Pacific. It always
blows there, and is more or less stormy out from shore. But so deep and
inscrutable a mind for strategy as the Captain's dark design implied--as
imputed to him by Brown--never reposed in his honest, ingenuous head.
While I was explaining this to Brown, I heard the Captain's hoarse voice
shout:

"Rouse out the parson, and order the first cabin aft."

Of course, we turned out to learn what such an unusual order meant at
the solemn hour of midnight. In a few minutes there were as many of us
in the Captain's apartments as could find room.

MARRIAGE OF THE RUNAWAY COUPLE

The "Old Man" was sitting in his arm-chair in great state, and his swart
countenance and his whole bearing frowned with a portentous dignity.

"Order up the convicts!"

They came and stood before him--a very young man with a surprised look
on his face, and a blushing, frightened young girl of fifteen, with
tears flowing fast from her pleading eyes.

"So, youngsters, you've been running the blockade, have you? You've
slipped your cables and gone to sea when nobody was on the lookout?
And you've been sailing under false colors! You've been letting on that
you're married, and you ain't!--and now you say you're going to splice
as soon as you get to where you're going, in New Jersey. This sort of
doing ain't going to do in my ship--blood and wrath, I'm outraged! Jine
hands." [The Captain stood up and uncovered--all others did the same.]
"Stand by, Parson--stand by for a surge! Steady--so--let 'em slide into
the joys and sorrows of matrimony!"

Slowly and distinctly the clergyman asked the questions, while the
witnesses looked eagerly on. As the ceremony closed, the Captain took
up its parting injunction and repeated it with grave and deep-voiced
impressiveness:

"Ay, lads--them whom God has spliced together, let no man put 'em
asunder! A-men."

The minister prayed, then blessed the couple, and all the guests
shook hands with them, and wished them well. The witnesses signed the
certificate, the marriage was entered on the ship's log with marvellous
ceremony, and we were all about to depart, when the Captain rose up
solemnly and addressed the bride and groom in a few words of homely
eloquence--words which he probably honestly considered absolutely
necessary to the due completion of the marriage rites.

THE CAPTAIN'S SPEECH

"Young People!--You're all right now. No more dodging--no more shirking
the revenue--no more smuggling--no more sailing under false colors. You
can fly your flag from the mizzen peak halliards now, where all men may
see it, and sail where ye will on the broad seas. Your papers are made
out correct, and nobody can ever overhaul you anymore.

"It's best for you the way it is. You love one another--I see that--we
all see it. Every man and every woman was sent into the world for
some fore-ordinated purpose or other. They ain't going to carry it out
cruisin' around single, and packing off from this place to that place,
and from that place to t'other place, never taking root anywheres, and
never having any set aim in this life or hereafter. The world's got
little enough fair weather in it as it is. Splice and make the most of
it. Sail in company and help one another. When one's aground t'other's
there to help him off; when one's stove, t'other's there to save him;
when one's dismasted and drifting ashore, t'other's there to lend him an
anchor. Up canvas and away! and a happy voyage to ye! The wind is fair,
now, and you can carry skys'ls, r'yals, stuns'ls--every rag you've got;
but by and by it'll be on your quarter, then abeam, and finally ahead.
But hold your grip--don't mind it--it ain't every gale that founders
a ship. You'll have sun on the line, and ice at the pole; you'll have
calms that aggravate you, and head winds that drive you back; you'll
have storms that'll sweep your decks as clean as a desert. But stick
together--hold your grip, and stick together--and by and by, when your
voyage is up, you'll ride safe at anchor, in a haven where calms, nor
storms, nor breaching seas can ever distress you anymore."

SCANDAL

DECEMBER 23D.--Gossiping has begun, scandal is in full blast, and--

"I wouldn't put that in there if I was you."

"Mr. Brown, the matter is none of your business. It is none of your
business, I repeat, but, as long as you have mentioned it, why wouldn't
you put it in?"

"Because it ain't any use because you've as much as said it
before--because you've said that some of the women are out and healthy;
and don't anybody that knows as much as a clam know that whenever a
woman is out and healthy, she's going to start in and make trouble?"

"Mr. Brown, no man can sit in this state-room after making such a
shameful remark as that. Go."

"Oh, certainly--that's all right. I expect maybe I'm wrong and you're
right, anyway. However, it was old Slimmens that made me make the
mistake. She was the first one out, and she said--old Slimmens with
the-"

"Say Miss Slimmens, Brown--it is more respectful. Well, what did she
say?"

"What did she say? Why there is not a solitary passenger in the ship but
what that double-chinned old pelican has blackguarded. She says awful
things about that pretty girl that sits at the middle of the Purser's
table; and she says that poor crippled, gray-headed old grandmother in
the second cabin is no better than she ought to be; and she says she
knew that innocent old fat girl that's always asleep and has to be
shovelled out of her room at four-bells for the inspection, and always
eats till her eyes bug out like the bolt-heads on a jail door--knew her
long ago up on the San Joaquin, and knows the clothes she's got on now
she's travelled in eleven weeks without changing--says her stockings are
awful--they're eleven weeks gone, too--and when she complained of the
weather being so hot, old Slimmens said 'Why don't she go and scrape
herself and then wash--it would be equal to taking off two suits of
flannell'--and she blackguards the choir that's been started, and says
if they come serenading those girls in her end of the ship anymore,
she'll stop their caterwauling almighty quick--she swears she wishes
she may never flutter her tongue again if she don't scald 'em! You bet
she'll do it, too. And she says all the women in the ship are secesh,
and are going to Washington to hatch up some deviltry against the
Government, and she's going to show them up in the Hangtown Thunderclap
of Freedom--because, you know, she's a correspondent, like you--a sister
correspondent, as you may say--and my! but she's savage on that
old rooster that's religious! She says if ever a man had a hangdog
countenance on him, it's him; and moreover, she's satisfied he stole
a bottle of cologne out of her room yesterday, when she let him go in
there to borrow her prayer-book; (she calls it cologne, you know, but
it's gin;) and--and--well, I believe that's all--except that she
says you was very sick last night, it seemed--you was almighty sick,
everybody said, but if she ain't blind and a born fool to boot, you
was as drunk as the piper that played before Moses! There you are, now.
Maybe you don't believe it; if you don't, you just come and hear the old
sage-hen cackle for yourself. Good day."

Poor Brown, he is a man of no tact--he always leaves just as he is about
to become interesting to me. I have no more curiosity than other people,
but still I would like to know what else that venomous old hag has been
saying about me. But we are all catching it--we are all being carefully
dissected--men, women, and children. Slimmens is the chief operator,
but she is not alone. Everybody takes a hand in it--fires his charge of
detraction and winces under the return shot. It serves one good purpose
at any rate--it makes things exceedingly lively some times, and keeps
the passengers in material for conversation always.

Alta California, February 24, 1867

Steamer COLUMBIA, at sea.

SUNDAY, December 23d.--Last night was magnificent--cool, balmy, breezy,
an easy sea on, and all things so flooded with moonlight that each wave
of the ocean, each rope and spar of the ship, and each face and form
about the decks were almost as plain to the sight as if it were noonday.
The six individuals who sing (think of it--only six persons out of five
hundred who make the slightest pretensions to vocal talent!) organized
themselves into a choir and practiced several hymns until a late
hour--for we are to have religious services to-day. After that they sang
"Dog Tray," and "Marching Through Georgia," and "What is Home Without
a Mother," and other venerable melodies, and a few wretched volunteers
joined in and completed the villainy of the performance. Home without
a mother may not amount to much, but there is no use in aggravating
the thing with such a tune as that. And the idea of resurrecting that
infamous dog Tray at this day. That choir sang everything they ought not
to have sung except one, and I trembled to think the surroundings would
yet suggest it. I refer to the song called "Roll On, Silver Moon." If
they had attempted that outrage I would have scuttled the ship. I can
stand a good deal, but I cannot stand everything. I would rather perish
than lose my reason. Altogether, ours is a very poor choir. I will
remark here, that although I hummed a tune occasionally, and whistled
some, I was not requested to sing.

This is a beautiful morning and all parties seem as light hearted
and happy as children. In fact the pastimes of the gentlemen on the
promenade deck in the shade of the awnings, for their own and the
ladies' amusement, have an entirely boyish cast about them. Two men are
playing "mumble-peg" with absorbing interest; a large party are trying
to see which shall be able to walk ten steps, blindfolded, and place a
hat on the compass; a Colonel, who greatly distinguished himself in the
war, is trying to sit on a champagne bottle, with feet crossed, arms
folded, and thread a darning needle without falling over--the bottle
lying on its side, of course, and pointing straight astern, while he
faces towards the ship's head--he has just accomplished it, after
the ninth attempt, and received a boisterous round of applause--some
consolation for the bursts of laughter that greeted his failures. All
are engaged in this sort of nonsense, (Isaac, the Israelite, included,)
except the youth they call "Shape." With hat perched jauntily on one
side of his head, and hands thrust into his coat pockets, he promenades
the deck fore and aft, and admires his legs. They say he is a little
"cracked," I don't know--the idea may have originated with Miss Slimmens
of the "Thunderclap."

Being a little under the weather, I have intruded into the Captain's
room, along with the veteran Sleet, a skipper of thirty years standing,
going home on furlough from his ship. The forenoon is waning fast. Enter
Captain Waxman, sweating and puffing from over-exertion, and says he has
"tore up the whole ship" (he scorns grammar when his mind is seething
with business,) has "tore up the whole ship" to build a pulpit at the
after compass and rig benches and chairs athwart the quarterdeck and
fetch up the organ from below and get everything shipshape for the
parson--

"And--the passengers," said he, "as soon as they found they were going
to be sermonized, they've up anchors and gone to sea--clean gone and
deserted--there ain't a baker's dozen left on the afterdeck! They're
worse than the rats in Hon--here, you velvet-head! you son of Afric's
sunny clime! go forrard and tell the mate to let her go a couple of
points free in Honolulu. Me and old Josephus--he was a Jew, and got rich
as Creosote in San Francisco afterwards--we were going home passengers
from the Sandwich Islands, in a bran-new brig, on her third voyage, and
our trunks were down below--he went with me--laid over one vessel to do
it--because he warn't no sailor, and he liked to be convoyed by a man
that was--felt safer, you understand--and the brig was sliding out
between the buoys, and her head line was paying out ashore--there was
a wood-pile right where it was made fast on the pier--when up come the
biggest rat--as big as any ordinary cat, he was--and darted out on that
line and cantered for the shore!--and up come another! and another! and
another! and away they galloped over that hawser, each one treading on
t'other's tail, till they were so thick you couldn't see a thread of the
cable, and there was a procession of 'em three hundred yards long over
the levee like a streak of pismires, and the Kanakas, some throwing
sticks from that wood-pile and chunks of lava and coral at 'em and
knocking 'em endways every shot--for?' but do you suppose it made any
difference to them rats?--not a particle--not a particle on earth,
bless you!--they'd smelt trouble!--they'd smelt it by their unearthly,
supernatural instinct!--they wanted to go, and they never let up till
the last rat was ashore out of that bran-new beautiful brig!

"I called a Kanaka, with his boat, and he hove alongside and shinned up
a rope and stood off and on for orders, and says I:

"'Do you see that trunk down there?'

"'Ai.'

"'Well, yank it out of there and snake it ashore quicker'n you can wink.
Lively, now!'

"Solomon, the Jew--what did I say his cussed name was? Anyhow, he says:

"'What are you doing, Captain?'

"'Doing! Why, I'm a taking my trunk ashore--that's about what I'm a
doing.'

"'Taking your trunk ashore? Why, bless us, what is that for?'

"'What is it for?' says I, 'do you see them rats a leaving this ship?
She's doomed, sir! she's doomed past retribution! Burnt brandy wouldn't
save her, sir. She'll never finish this voyage--she'll never be heard of
again, sir.'

"Solomon says--'Boy, take that other trunk ashore, too.'

"And don't you know, that bran new beautiful brig sailed out of Honolulu
without a rat on board, and was never seen again by mortal man, sir!
It's so--as sure as you're born, it's so. We shipped in an old tub that
was so rotten that you had to walk easy on her main deck to keep from
going through--so crazy, sir, that in our berths, when there was a sea
on, the timbers overhead worked backwards and forwards eleven inches in
their sockets--just for the world like an old wicker basket, sir--and
the rats were as big as greyhounds, and as lean, sir; and they bit the
buttons off our coats, and chawed our toe-nails off while we slept; and
there were so many of them that in a gale once they all scampered to the
starboard side when we were going about, and put her down the wrong way,
so that, she missed stays, and come monstrous near foundering. But she
went through safe, I tell you, because she had rats aboard." [After
this marvellous chapter of personal history the Captain rushed out in
a business frenzy, and rushed back again in the course of a couple of
minutes.]

"Everything's set--the passengers are back again and stowed, and the
parson's all ready to cat his anchor and get under way--everybody ready
and waiting on that bloody choir that was practicing and squawking
and blatting all night, and now ain't come to time when their watch is
called."

[Out again, and back in something like a minute.]

"D--n that choir! They're like the fellow's sow--had to haul her ears
off to get her up to the trough, and then had to pull her tail out to
get her away again. But rats!--don't tell me nothing about the talent
of rats! It's been noticed, sir!--notes has been taken of it, sir! and
their judgment is better than a human's, sir! Didn't I hear old Ben
Wilson, mate of the Empress of the Seas--as fine a sailor and as lovely
a ship as ever rode a gale--didn't I hear him tell how, seventeen years
ago, when he was laying at Liverpool docks empty--empty as a jug--and
a full Indiaman right alongside, full of provisions, and corn, and
everything a rat might prefer, and going to sail next day--how in the
middle of the night the rats all left her and crossed his decks and went
ashore every one of 'em!--every bloody one of 'em, sir!--and finally--it
was moonlight--he saw a muss going on by the capstan of that other ship,
and he slipped around, and there was a dozen old rats laying their heads
together and chattering about something and looking down the forrard
hatch every now and then, and finally they appeared to have got their
minds made up, and one of 'em went aft and got a scrap of old stuns'l
half a foot square, and they bored holes in the corners with their
teeth, and bent on some long pieces of spun-yarn--made a sort of a
little hammock of it, you understand--and then they lowered away gently
for a while and stopped--and directly they begun heaving again, and up
out of that forrard hatch, in full view of the mate, who was watching
'em all the time, up comes that little hammock with a poor, old,
decrepit sick rat on it, all gone in with the consumption!--and they
lugged him ashore, and they all went up town to the very last rat--and
that ship sailed the next day for India, or Cape o' Good Hope, or
somewheres, and the mate of the Empress didn't sail for as much as three
weeks, and up to that time that ship hadn't been heard from, sir! Drat
that choir! I must go and start 'em out--this sort of thing won't do!"

Alta California, March 15, 1867

On board steamer COLUMBIA, at sea.

THE FIRST DEATH

CHRISTMAS EVE.--It has been an exceedingly quiet Christmas Eve, to-day.
It is because a young child of one of the cabin passengers is lying very
ill--suddenly taken last night--and so no one is willing to be noisy, or
even passably cheerful, for that matter. All act as if they were related
by blood to the child. And it is natural it should be so--a ship's
passengers on a long voyage become as one family.

CHRISTMAS NIGHT.--The child died last evening, and some of the lady
passengers sat up with the corpse all night. At ten this morning, we all
assembled on the lower guard aft, and listened with uncovered heads, to
a brief sermon by the clergyman (Rev. Mr. Fackler) and the reading of
the Episcopal burial service--the capstan with a national flag over it
served for a pulpit, and meanwhile the first officer and boatswain held
the canvassed corpse with its head resting on their shoulders and its
feet upon the taffrail--at the conclusion there was a breathless pause;
then the minister said "Earth unto earth--ashes unto ashes--dust unto
dust!"--a sharp plunge of the weighted body into the sea, a shudder from
the startled passengers, a wild shriek from the young mother (a mere
girl), and all was over.

Within three hours, with that solemn presence gone out of the ship,
cheerfulness and vivacity reigned again.

THE FALL OF THE ISAAC

DECEMBER 28th.--Isaac's upward flight culminated yesterday in a raffle,
and now he is fallen! Hobnobbing with the chief officers, and hail
fellow well met with everybody yesterday--to-day, degraded to the ranks,
and none so poor as to take notice of him. You see he has often excited
sympathy by displaying his late wife's jewelry (he said she died six
weeks ago,) and mourning over it. But yesterday he got up that raffle
said it grieved him to the heart to have those mementoes of his lost one
about him--said her dear jewelry constantly reminded him of happy days
he should never again see--and so he gathered it together and raffled it
off for three hundred and fifty dollars! He feels easier after that,
no doubt. His lacerated heart will be able to stand it for awhile, now,
perhaps.

The reaction dethroned him from his high place among the passengers.
When they reflected that he won all the jewelry himself that was worth
having--that what they got was pinch beck; and that he had either been
heartless enough to part with his dead wife's jewelry under shameful
circumstances, or else he had no wife and had presumed to lie to his
betters; they felt ashamed of themselves, and from that moment Isaac was
tabu! For two days, now, he has been unmercifully snubbed at every turn,
and already an act of his that won applause at first is quoted against
him to further damn him. I refer to his having prevailed with the
good-hearted Captain to take a modest-looking young German girl out of
the steerage, where she was constantly subject to insult, and put her in
the second cabin. They say now, that he was actuated by none but selfish
motives, and had rascally designs against her. They do say that when a
man starts downhill everybody is ready to help him with a kick, and I
suppose it is so.

Last night, as usual, Isaac intruded upon the Captain's dog-watch
lunch--which is, or should be, sacred to himself--and got into trouble.
One of the passengers put something into his tea that came near making
him throw up his boots. But some people will never learn anything. He
went into the Captain's room to-day, uninvited, and fell into another
trap provided for him by a passenger. He found a bottle--he always
drinks from bottles wherever he finds them, whether asked to do it or
not. He drank from that bottle, and then retired to his stateroom and
has been patiently disgorging ever since.

A LEGEND FROM THE CAPTAIN

We have been sailing placidly along the coast of Guatemala all day--a
broad, low land, densely clad in a green, tropical vegetation, among
which the cocoa-nut tree is prominent; occasionally we see a thatched
native hut. In full view are three noble mountains--tall, symmetrical
cones, with sides furrowed with wrinkle-like valleys veiled in a dreamy,
purple mist that is charming to the eye, and summits swathed in a grand
turban of rolling clouds. They say these are volcanoes, but we cannot
see any smoke. No matter--it is a fairy landscape that is very pleasant
to look upon.

"Do you see that ship anchored yonder?" The young lady addressed said
she did see the ship.

"Well," said Captain W., "she's a whaler. She's trying out oil. The
first time I ever was along here was seventeen years ago. I didn't know
anything about whaling then, bless you. It was in the night, just after
dark, and just where you see that ship there now, I saw a ship all on
fire! I laid-to immediately and ordered out a boat's crew, and says,
'Pull, boys, for your life! Don't miss a stroke--don't you lose a
minute! Tell the Captain not to lose his grip. I'll lay here a week
and give him all the help I can, and then I'll take him and his crew to
California, and do the very best I know how by 'em.' Well, we lay-to and
waited and waited--all the passengers on deck and anxious for the boat
to come back with the awful news. But nine o'clock, no boat; ship still
burning, and glaring out on the black ocean like a sun dropped out of
the sky. Ten o'clock--no boat; passengers beginning to get tired, and
two or three quit and went to bed. Eleven--no boat; and one by one
they sidled off to roost--give it up, you see all gone but me and one
solitary motherly old soul--me marching slow up and down the deck and
she gazing out across the water at the burning ship. We were just so
until half-past 11, and then we heard the sound of oars. We closed up
to the railing and stood by for them. Pretty soon the boat ranged up
alongside--I tell you I felt awful--something made me hanker to look
down into that boat, and yet something held me back. The officer of the
boat reported: 'The ship ain't burning, sir; (I felt relieved then;)
he says he's in big luck--is full of oil, and ready for home, and
so they're cooking doughnuts in the fat and having a grand blow-out,
illumination and jollification. But he's uncommon thankful for the
good intentions you've shown, and hopes you'll accept this lot of A 1
sea-turkles.' The old woman leaned over the rail and shaded her eyes
from the lantern with her hand, and she see them varmints flopping their
flippers about in the boat and she says:

"'For the land's sake!--I've sot here, and sot here, and sot here all
this blessed night cal'latin' you'd fetch a boat-load of sorrowful
roasted corpses, and now it ain't nothing but a lot of nasty cussed
mud-turkles--it's a dern thieving shame, that's my opinion of it!'"

SAN JUAN AND CHOLERA

DECEMBER 29th.--One sea voyage is ended anyhow. We have arrived at San
Juan del Sur, and must leave the ship and cross the Isthmus--not to-day,
though. They have posted a notice on the ship that the cholera is raging
among a battalion of troops just arrived from New York, and so we are
not permitted to go ashore to-day. And to the sea-weary eyes of some
of our people, no doubt, bright green hills never looked so welcome,
so enchanting, so altogether lovely, as these do that lie here within
pistol-shot of us. But the law is spoken, and so half the ship's family
are looking longingly ashore, or discussing the cholera news fearfully,
and the other half are in the after cabin, singing boisterously and
carrying on like a troop of wild school children.

ASHORE

GREYTOWN, January 1st.--While we lay all night at San Juan, the baggage
was sent ashore in lighters, and next morning we departed ourselves. We
found San Juan to consist of a few tumble-down frame shanties--they
call them hotels--nestling among green verdure and overshadowed by
picturesque little hills. The spot where we landed was crowded
with horses, mules, ambulances and half-clad yellow natives, with
bowie-knives two feet long, and as broad as your hand, strapped to their
waists. I thought these barefooted scoundrels were soldiers, but no,
they were merely citizens in civil life. Here and there on the beach
moved a soiled and ragged white woman, to whom the sight of our ship
must have been as a vision of Paradise; for here a vast ship-load of
passengers had been kept in exile for fifteen days through the wretched
incompetency of one man--the Company's agent on the Isthmus. He had sent
a steamer empty to San Francisco, when he knew well that this multitude
of people were due at Greytown. They will finish their journey, now, in
our ship.

Our party of eight--we had made it up the night before--being the first
boat-load to leave the ship, was entitled to the first choice of the
ambulances, or the equestrian accommodations that were to convey us the
twelve miles we must go by land between San Juan and Virgin Bay, on
Lake Nicaragua. Some of the saddle-horses and mules--many of them,
in fact--looked very well; but if there was any choice between the
ambulances, or especially between the miraculous scarecrows that were to
haul them, it was hardly perceptible. You never saw such harness in your
life, nor such mules, nor such drivers. They were funny individually and
funny in combination. Except the ghastly sores on the animals' backs,
where the crazy harness had chafed, and scraped, and scarified--that
part of it would move anybody's pity for the poor things.

We climbed into one of the largest of the faded red ambulances (mud
wagons we call them in the mountains), with four little sore-backed
rabbits hitched to it, and cleared for Virgin Bay. The driver commenced
by beating and banging his team and cursing them like a furious maniac,
in bad Spanish, and he kept it up all through that twelve-mile journey
of three hours and a half, over a hard, level, beautiful road. We envied
the people who were not crippled and could ride horseback.

But we clattered along pretty lively, and were a jolly party. The first
thing the ladies noticed as we lost sight of the sea, and wound in among
an overshadowing growth of dewy vines and forest trees, was a
"dear, dear little baby--oh, see the darling!"--a vile, distempered,
mud-colored native brat, making dirt-pies in front of an isolated cabin;
and the first thing the men noticed was--was--but they could not make
it out; a guide board perhaps, or a cross, or the modest grave-stone of
some ill-fated stranger. But it was none of these. When we drew nearer
it turned out to be a sign nailed to a tree, and it said "Try Ward's
shirts!" There was some round abuse indulged in, then, of Ward and
plantation bitters men, and all such people, who invade all sacred
places with their rascally signs, and mar every landscape one might
gaze upon in worship, and turn to a farce every sentimental thought that
enters his brain. I know that if I were to go to old Niagara, and stand
with his mists blowing in my face and his voice thundering in my ear,
I would swell with a noble inspiration and say, "Oh, grand, sublime,
magnificent--" and then behold on his front, "S. T. 1860 X Plantation
Bitters," and be incensed. It is a shame.

THE PROCESSION UNDER WAY

The bright, fresh green on every hand, the delicious softness and
coolness of the air (it had just showered a little before we started),
the interest of unknown birds and flowers and trees, the delightful new
sensation of the bumping and rattling of the ambulance--everything so
cheery and lively, as compared with our old dull monotony and shoreless
sea on board the ship--wrought our party up to a pitch of joyous
animation and enthusiasm that I would have thought impossible with such
dry old sticks. I ask pardon of the ladies--and even of the gentlemen,
also. All hands voted "the Nicaragua route forever!" [N.B.--They used
to do that every day or two--and then every other day or two they would
damn the Nicaragua route forever. Such are the ways of passengers, all
the world over.]

About every two hundred yards we came across a little summer-house of a
peanut stand at the roadside, with raven haired, splendid-eyed Nicaragua
damsels standing in attitudes of careless grace behind them--damsels
buff-colored, like an envelope--damsels who were always dressed the same
way: in a single flowing gown of fancifully figured calico, "gathered"
across the breast (they are singularly full in the bust, the young
ones), and ruffled all round, near the bottom of the skirt. They have
white teeth, and pleasant, smiling, winning faces. They are virtuous
according to their lights, but I guess their lights are a little dim.
Two of these picturesque native girls were exceedingly beautiful--such
liquid, languishing eyes! such pouting lips! such glossy, luxuriant
hair! such ravishing, incendiary expression! such grace! such voluptuous
forms, and such precious little drapery about them! such--tooth"--

"But you just prospect one of them heifers with a fine-tooth"--

This attempted interruption was from Brown, and procured his banishment
at once. This man will not consent to see what is attractive, alone, but
always unearths the disagreeable features of everything that comes under
his notice.

These groups of dark maidens keep for sale a few cups of coffee, tea or
chocolate, some bananas, oranges, pineapples, hard-boiled eggs, a dozen
bottles of their vile native liquors, some ornamental cups carved from
gourds of the calabash tree, a monkey or two--and their prices were so
moderate that, in spite of all orders and remonstrances to the contrary,
the steerage passengers have been overloading their stomachs with all
sorts of beverages and edibles, and will pay for it in Asiatic cholera
before they are many days older, no doubt.

Our road was smooth, level, and free from mud and dust, and the scenery
in its neighborhood was pleasing, though not particularly striking. Many
of the trees were starred all over with pretty blossoms. There was no
lack of vegetation, and occasionally the balmy air came to us laden with
a delicious fragrance. We passed two or three high hills, whose bold
fronts, free from trees or shrubs, were thickly carpeted with softest,
greenest grass--a picture our eyes could never tire of. Sometimes birds
of handsome plumage flitted by, and we heard the blythe songs of others
as we rode through the forests. But the monkeys claimed all attention.
All hands wanted to see a real, live, wild monkey skirmishing among his
native haunts. Our interest finally moderated somewhat in the native
women; the birds; the calabash trees, with their gourd-like fruit; the
huge, queer knots on trees, that were said to be ants' nests; the lime
trees; and even in a singular species of cactus, long, slender and
green, that climbed to the very tops of great trees, and completely
hid their trunks and branches, and choked them to death in its winding
folds--so like an ugly, endless serpent; but never did the party cease
to consider the wild monkey a charming novelty and a joy forever.

MASQUERADING ON THE ROAD

Our four hundred passengers on horseback, muleback, and in four-mule
ambulances, formed the wildest, raggedest and most uncouth procession
I ever saw. It reminded me of the fantastic masquerading pageants
they used to get up on the Fourth of July in the Western States, or
on Mardigras Day in New Orleans. The steerage passengers travelled
on muleback, chiefly, with coats, oil-skin carpet sacks, and blankets
dangling around their saddles. Some of the saddles were new and good,
but others were in all possible stages of mutilation and decay. There
were not a dozen good riders in the two hundred and fifty that went on
horseback, but every man seemed to consider that inasmuch as the animals
belonged to "the Company," it was a stern duty to ride them to death,
if possible, and they tried hard to do it. Such racing and yelling, and
beating and banging and spurring, and such bouncing of blanket bundles,
and flapping and fluttering of coat-tails, and such frantic scampering
of the multitude of mules, and bobbing up and down of the long column of
men, and rearing and charging of struggling ambulances in their midst, I
never saw before, and I never enjoyed anything so much.

I never saw Brown's equanimity so disturbed as it was that day, either.
The philosopher had received a charge at San Francisco--a widow, with
three children and a servant girl. Every day on the trip, he had been
obliged to go down among the sweltering stenches of the ship's hold, to
pull and haul Mrs. B.'s trunks out from among piles of other baggage,
and rummage among them for a shirt for Johnny, or a bib for Tommy, or
a shawl for the mother or the maid, or a diaper for the baby, but these
vexations were nothing to his Isthmus transportation troubles. He had
to take his party horseback, and in order to keep them together amid
the confusion of the procession, he tied his five mules together, end to
end, and marched in single file--the forward horse's tail made fast to
the next one's nose, and so on. He rode the leading horse himself,
with the baby in his arms; Mrs. B. and the two boys came next, and the
servant girl brought up the rear. It was a solemnly comical spectacle.
Everything went well, though, till the racing began, and then the
philosopher's mule got his ambition up and led the party a merry dance.
Brown tried to hold him back with one hand for a while, and then triced
the baby up under his left arm, and pulled back with both hands. This
had a good deal of effect, but still the little detachment darted
through the main procession like the wind, making a sensation
wherever it went, and was greeted with many a whack and many a laugh.
Occasionally Brown's mule stopped and fell to bucking, and then his
other animals closed up and got tangled together in a helpless snarl. Of
course, Brown had to unlimber the baby and straighten things out again.
He swore hard, but under his breath, and sweated as no man ever sweated
before. The entire procession had arrived at Virgin Bay and were stowed
on the boat before he got there. But his beasts had grown tranquil
enough by that time. Their heads were all down, and it was hard to tell
which looked the most jaded and melancholy--themselves or their riders.
It was like intruding a funeral cortege upon the boisterous hilarity of
the balance of the ship's family.

ALL QUIET AGAIN

Comfortably quartered on the little steamer, we sat in the shade and
lunched, smoked, compared notes of our jolly little scamper across the
Isthmus, bought handsome mahogany walking-canes from the natives, and
finally relapsed into pensive and placid gazing out upon the rippling
waters of Lake Nicaragua and the two majestic mountains that tower
up out of its blue depths and wrap their green summits in the fleecy
clouds.

Alta California, March 16, 1867

Steamer SAN FRANCISCO,

New Year's Day.

THE TWIN MOUNTAINS

Out of the midst of the beautiful Lake Nicaragua spring two magnificent
pyramids, clad in the softest and richest green, all flecked with shadow
and sunshine, whose summits pierce the billowy clouds. They look so
isolated from the world and its turmoil--so tranquil, so dreamy, so
steeped in slumber and eternal repose. What a home one might make among
their shady forests, their sunny slopes, their breezy dells, after he
had grown weary of the toil, anxiety and unrest of the bustling, driving
world. These mountains seem to have no level ground at the bases but
rise abruptly from the water. There is nothing rugged about them--they
are shapely and symmetrical, and all their outlines are soft, rounded
and regular. One is 4,200 and the other 5,400 feet high, though the
highest being the furthest removed makes them look like twins. A
stranger would take them to be of equal altitude. Some say they are
6,000 feet high, and certainly they look it. When not a cloud is visible
elsewhere in the heavens, their tall summits are magnificently draped
with them. They are extinct volcanoes, and consequently their soil
(decomposed lava) is wonderfully fertile. They are well stocked with
cattle ranches, and with corn, coffee and tobacco farms. The climate is
delightful, and is the healthiest on the Isthmus.

SANDWICHES, ETC.

Our boat started across the lake at 2 P.M., and at 4 A.M. the following
morning we reached Fort San Carlos, where the San Juan River flows
out--a hundred miles in twelve hours--not particularly speedy, but very
comfortable.

Here they changed us to a long, double-decked shell of a stern-wheel
boat, without a berth or a bulkhead in her--wide open, nothing to
obstruct your view except the slender stanchions that supported the
roof. And so we started down the broad and beautiful river in the gray
dawn of the balmy summer morning.

At eight we breakfasted. On the lake boat they fed us on coffee and tea,
and on sandwiches composed of two pieces of bread enclosing one piece of
ham. On this boat they gave us tea, coffee, and sandwiches composed
of one piece of ham between two pieces of bread. There is nothing like
variety.

In a little while all parties were absorbed in noting the scenery on
shore--trees like cypress; other trees with large red blossoms; great
feathery tree ferns and giant cactuses; clumps of tall bamboo; all
manner of trees and bushes, in fact, webbed together with vines;
occasionally a vista that opened, stretched its carpet of fresh green
grass far within the jungle, then slowly closed again.

THE GRAVE OF THE LOST STEAMER

In this land of rank vegetation, no spot of soil can be cleared off and
kept barren a week. Nature seizes upon every vagrant atom of dust and
forces it to relieve her over-burdened store-houses. Weeds spring up
in the cracks of floors, and clothe the roofs of huts in green; if a
handful of dust settles in the crotch of a tree, ferns spring there and
wave their graceful plumes in the tropic breeze. Filibustering Walker
sunk a steamboat in the river; the sands washed down, filled in around
her, built up a little oval island. The wind brought seeds thither, and
they clothed every inch of it in luxuriant grass. Then trees grew and
vines climbed up and hung them with bright garlands, and the steamer's
grave was finished. The wreck was invisible to us, save that the two
great fore-and-aft braces still stood up out of the grass and fenced in
the trees. It was a pretty picture.

ANCIENT CASTILLO

About noon, we swept gaily around a bend in the beautiful river, and a
stately old adobe castle came into view--a relic of the olden time of
the old buccaneering days of Morgan and his merry men. It stands upon
a grassy dome-like hill, and the forests loom up beyond. They say that
Lord Nelson once captured it and that this was his first notable
feat. It cost him several hours, with 250 men, and good, hard, bloody
fighting, to get it. In our time, Walker took it with 25 men, without
firing a shot--through the treachery of the Commandante, they say.

There is a little straggling village under the hill, a village composed
of a single rank of houses, extending some three hundred yards down
the shore. There is a dangerous rapid here. It is said to be
artificial--formed by man in former times to keep the pirate boats from
penetrating the interior. We had to get ashore here, walk around the
rapids, and get on another stern wheeler. Every house we passed was a
booth for the sale of fruits and provisions. The bananas, pine-apples,
cocoa-nuts and coffee were good, and the cigars very passable, but the
oranges, although fresh, of course, were of a very inferior quality.
Cheapness is the order of the day. You can buy as much of any one
article as you can possibly want for a dime, and a sumptuous dinner for
two or three for half a dollar. Bring along your short bits when you
come this way. It is the grand base and foundation of all values, and is
better received, and with less suspicion, than any other coin.

AN UNPEOPLED PARADISE

As we got under way and sped down the narrowing river, all the
enchanting beauty of its surroundings came out. All gazed in rapt and
silent admiration for a long time as the exquisite panorama unfolded
itself, but finally burst into a conversational ecstasy that was alive
with excited ejaculations.

The character of the vegetation on the banks had changed from a rank
jungle to dense, lofty, majestic forests. There were hills, but the
thick drapery of the vines spread upward, terrace upon terrace, and
concealed them like a veil. We could not have believed in the hills,
except that the upper trees towered too high to be on the bank level.

And everywhere in these vine-robed terraces were charming fairy harbors
fringed with swinging garlands; and weird grottoes, whose twilight depth
the eye might not pierce; and tunnels that wound their mysterious
course none knew whither; and there were graceful
temples--columns--towers--pyramids--mounds--domes--walls--all the shapes
and forms and figures known to architecture, wrought in the pliant,
leafy vines, and thrown together in reckless, enchanting confusion.

Now and then a rollicking monkey scampered into view, or a bird of
splendid plumage floated through the sultry air, or the music of some
invisible songster welled up out of the forest depths. The changing
vistas of the river ever renewed the intoxicating picture; corners and
points folding backward revealed new wonders beyond, of towering walls
of verdure-gleaming cataracts of vines pouring sheer down a hundred
and fifty feet, and mingling with the grass upon the earth--wonderful
waterfalls of green leaves as deftly overlapping each other as the
scales of a fish--a vast green rampart, solid a moment, and then, as
we advanced, changing and opening into Gothic windows, colonnades--all
manner of quaint and beautiful figures!

Sometimes a limbless veteran of the forest stood aloof in his flowing
vine-robes, like an ivy-clad tower of some old feudal ruin.

We came upon another wrecked steamer turned into an emerald
island--trees reaching above the great walking-beam framework, and the
tireless vines climbing over the rusty and blistered old locomotive
boiler. And by-and-by a retreating point of land disclosed some lofty
hills in the distance, steep and densely grown with forests--each
tree-top a delicate green dome, touched with a gleam of sunshine, and
then shaded off with Indian-summery films into darkness; dome upon dome,
they rose high into the sunny atmosphere, and contrasted their brilliant
tints with the stormy purple of the sky beyond.

Along shore, huge alligators lay and sunned themselves and slept;
birds with gaudy feathers and villainous hooked bills stood stupidly on
overhanging boughs, and startled one suddenly out of his long cherished,
dimly-defined notion that that sort of bird only lived in menageries;
parrots flew by us--the idea of a parrot flying seemed funny
enough--flying abroad, instead of swinging in a tin ring, and stooping
and nipping that ring with its beak between its feet, and thus
displaying itself in most unseemly attitude--flying, silently cleaving
the air--and saying never a word! When the first one went by without
saying "Polly wants a cracker," it seemed as if there was something
unnatural about the bird, but it did not immediately occur to me what
it was. And there was a prodigiously tall bird that had a beak like
a powder horn, and curved its neck into an S, and stuck its long legs
straight out behind like a steering oar when it flew, that I thought
would have looked more proper and becoming in the iron cage where it
naturally belonged. And I will not deny that from the moment I landed on
that Isthmus, the idea of a monkey up a tree seemed so consumedly absurd
and out of all character, that I never saw one in such a position but
I wanted to take him and chain him to a wagon wheel under the Bengal
tiger's cage, where he would necessarily feel more at home and not look
so ridiculous.

THE BORE

"What sort of a crooked, spready, cur'us looking tree is that out
yonder?"

I looked at the speaker. He was by nature, constitution and habit a
Bore--I could see that. I said:

"I don't know. "I wanted to say, savagely, "How the devil should I know?
Do I look like I ever was in this kind of a country before?"

"Looks like it might be an oak, or a slippry ellum, or something, but I
reckon it ain't, maybe?"

"I don't know. Maybe it is, maybe it ain't."

"It's got big blossoms on it like a hollyhock."

"I don't know--it may be a hollyhock."

"Oh, no--I didn't mean that--I meant--Geeminy! see that monkey jump!
What kind of a noise do they make--do they squawk?"

"Now, I don't know anything whatever about monkeys. They may squawk, or
they may not--I hope to God they do!"

"Why?"

I struck my colors. This serene simplicity where I expected to make a
telling shot, completely nonplussed me. I left without saying a word.

This fellow used to corner me and bore the life out of me with trivial
reminiscences out of his insignificant history; with trifling scraps of
information I had possessed from infancy; with decayed, worm-eaten jokes
that made me frantic, and with eternal questions concerning things I
knew nothing about and took no earthly interest in. One always meets
such people on voyages, but I never met a specimen before that so
completely tallied with my idea of a tiresome, exasperating, infernal
bore.

On this second stern-wheel boat they gave us tea, coffee, and sandwiches
formed by ingeniously secreting a slice of ham between two slices of
bread. Truly, there is nothing like variety. It gives a zest to the
simplest diet.

SANDWICHES, ETC.

The boys smoked, sang, shot at alligators, discussed the lignum-vitae,
mahogany, bastard-cocoa and other curious trees, and gazed at the
bewitching panorama of the river the livelong happy day, and at night we
tied up at the bank within 30 miles of Greytown. Those who had hammocks
swung them, and those who hadn't made beds of their overcoats, and soon
the two dingy lanterns, hung forward and aft, shed a ghostly glimmer
over the thick-strewn and vaguely defined multitude of slumberers. As I
said before, the whole boiler-deck was wide open; just before day light
a chilly shower came driving in and roused everybody out. There was some
complaining of sore bones by women and certain gentlemen who were unused
to sleeping on hard, bare floors, but these little troubles were soon
forgotten when the galley boys came up and the usual frenzied and
famishing rushing and crowding and shouting of "Sandwiches! Sandwiches!"
took place and disclosed the happy truth that we had not only the usual
tea and coffee and sandwiches for breakfast, but also cheese! Verily,
variety is the spice of life. Nobody said anything about sore bones
anymore.

A PEOPLED PARADISE

We got to Greytown early on the last day of the year, and saw the
steamer at anchor that was to take us to New York. The town does not
amount to much. There is a good deal of land around there, and it is
curious that they didn't build it larger--but somehow they didn't. It is
composed of two hundred old frame houses and some nice vacant lots, and
its comeliness is greatly enhanced, I may say is rendered gorgeous, by
the cluster of stern-wheel steamboats at the waterfront.

The population is 800, and is mixed--made up of natives, Americans,
Spaniards, Germans, English and Jamaica negroes. Of course the spoken
language is Spanish. Some of the negro babies do not wear any clothes at
all, and the cows march through the public thoroughfares with a freedom
which pen cannot describe. The inhabitants are not vain, and do not care
for luxury and furniture. Most of them keep for sale small cigars called
"poco tiempos"--ten cents a grab--and native brandy, tropical fruits and
sea-grass hammocks. They sell everything cheap--even excellent foreign
wines and such things, for import duties are light. The transit business
has made every other house a lodging camp, and you can get a good bed
anywhere for a dollar. It does not cost much to keep a Greytown bed in
order; there is nothing to it but a mattress, two sheets and a mosquito
bar. The town is ornamented with cocoa-nut trees, the outskirts are
bordered with chaparral, and everywhere the pink bachelor button
blossoms of the sensitive plant smile among the grass. [Smile among the
grass is good.--M. T.]

The Santiago de Cuba brought the cholera to the Isthmus last trip, and
thirty-five people died of it. A young man, a resident of Greytown, also
died of it, which exasperated his mother very much. So the citizens
got up a Board of Health, and prohibited the cholera from coming ashore
there anymore. While we were up town the stern-wheeler containing our
steerage and second cabin passengers arrived, and was at once warned to
anchor in the stream and let no one come ashore! Not until we had been
there twenty-four hours, and were ready to take final leave, did those
crowded and cursing passengers discover what bred the tabu. It then
came out that while Brown was drinking some native brandy in one of the
saloons, he remarked that he had tasted milder stuff; but then, he said,
he had escaped cholera on the Isthmus and smallpox among the steerage
folks, and he guessed he could survive that drink. A citizen at once
reported the remark to the Board of Health, and hence the order--and
never a steerage passenger got a chance to go ashore at Greytown. There
was some talk in the steerage of hanging Brown, but it never came to
anything.

NICARAGUA

The Republic of Nicaragua has some populous cities in it. Leon, 48,000;
Massaye, 38,000; Rivas, 30,000; Managua, 24,000; Granada, 18,000;
Chinandaga, 18,000; and several other towns of 3,000 and 4,000. The
total population is 320,000--all in towns and cities, nearly. Only
property-holders who are declared citizens can vote. Greytown is not
represented in the councils of the nation at all. The property there
is held by temporary residents--foreigners--who care nothing about
politics.

There are a good many gold and silver mines in the country. The
Choutales--gold quartz--(English Company--cost £250,000)--is worked by
rude native machinery, but has new, modern machinery on the way.
It's first clean-up (my notes say) was £200,000. For the sake of our
reputation we will consider that that was meant for £20,000 and it is
unquestionably large enough, even at that.

A Company of Californians have bought two mines--the Albertin and
Petaluma--and have just begun work. They paid $70,000 for one of them.

An English Company are just beginning work on a mine which they paid
£30,000 for.

There are also coal, silver, copper and opal mines. One of the latter,
near the road between San Juan and Virgin Bay, has produced opals which,
in the rough, were as large as almonds.

The Republic also has, among its numerous attractions and sources
of commercial prosperity, some lakes and rivers of sulphur, and some
extinct volcanoes--(an American Company has bought one of these and are
sinking on it--they think they can make it go again.)

Nicaragua exports parrots and monkeys, India-rubber, logwood, sugar,
hides, cochineal, coffee, deerskins, mahogany, chocolate, gold, opals,
sarsaparilla, tortoise shells (quite a heavy business), and tropical
fruits.

The rubber trade is large; last year Greytown alone exported $112,000
worth. Rubber is worth 28 cents a pound when it starts--in Europe, 54.

One man does all the mahogany business that is done on the northern
coast of Nicaragua. He had one log, worth $12,000, which was so large it
had to lay several years before there was water enough to float it over
the bar. He will clear $500,000 this year, they say.

There is a very heavy export trade in logwood. Also in cacao
(chocolate). Some of the plantations are very extensive. One owned by
the Menier Manufacturing Company, of France, cost $500,000.

They could export cocoa-nut oil profitably, but no one takes hold of it.

There is an ad valorem duty of ten per cent on imports for Greytown, and
a sort of incomprehensible tariff of forty per cent for the interior.

Laborers' wages in the interior are 20 to 40 cents a day and found.
But it don't cost anything to board them; they never eat anything
but plantains, and they eat them green, ripe or rotten--they are not
particular--they would as soon have them one way as the other.

There is an English steamer monthly from Greytown to Jamaica and one or
two other points, and thence to Southampton.

The Transit Company's charter has been extended to fifty years, and
now it is expected that they will improve the accommodations on the
stern-wheel boats. I don't see any room for it, however, unless they
can hatch out some more of those happy variations on the sandwiches. The
waters of the Colorado and San Juan Rivers are to be joined together,
however, dykes built, and other projects instituted tending to the
improvement of the Greytown harbor, that will eventually make it
possible for ships to come inside the reef, no doubt, instead of
pitching and charging at anchor in the open roadstead as at present.

THE BORE CONQUERED

We slept ashore in Greytown, and for the want of something better to do,
I suppose, Brown cornered the Bore and fell to instructing him that an
alligator could not climb a tree. The Bore said he knew that before,
but the philosopher went into elaborate details and demonstrated anyhow,
unmindful of protests and interruptions, and finally wore out the victim
and drove him off a frantic and vanquished man. Brown may have done
it for a joke, but surely there was no semblance of it in his voice or
manner. If he had not really set his heart in good faith on proving that
an alligator could not climb a tree, I was not able to discover it. But
I never enjoyed anything better.

Alta California, March 17, 1867

Steamer SAN FRANCISCO,

At sea, January 1st.

UNDER WAY AGAIN

ALL this morning the surf-boats were busy bringing New York passengers
ashore from the steamer San Francisco, and carrying us out to take their
places--and all in the midst of a heavy sea and a drenching rain. We
took our places in the surf-boat at 8 A.M. and with the first stroke of
the oars we were soaked to the skin. Yet it was very pleasant. It was
quite a picture to get a misty and momentary glimpse of the boat ahead
of us through the driving rain, as it rose high upon the crest of a
lofty wave, and then sank down, leaving nothing visible in all the wide
horizon but the rainy sea.

It was dreary enough on the ship when we got there, squatting around on
the wet promenade deck watching baggage and looking soaked, woe-begone
and disconsolate. We were well satisfied, though, for the boat loads
that were leaving the vessel every moment were bound for vastly drearier
quarters. We sailed at noon.

OUR CONFOUNDED CHOIR

MIDNIGHT--There goes that choir again:

"God save the good ship as onward she flies!

We're homeward bound! homeward bound!"

That is well enough--I like that. But usually they do sing the
wretchedest old songs in the world. Think of them sitting up there,
under these jeweled skies, with all the ocean around them glistening
with white-caps, piping "Just Before the Battle, Mother!" and "Johnny
Comes Marching Home!" and "Lily Dale!" and "Dog Tray." When they sing
hymns they do well enough and make good music, but perdition catch their
other efforts! "Homeward Bound" and the "Larboard Watch Ahoy!" nobody
objects to, because they are in keeping with our surroundings--but what
in the nation is there in common between the shoreless sea, the gemmed
and arching heavens, the crested billows, the stately ship ploughing
her gallant way and leaving a highway of fire behind her, the thousand
thoughtful eyes gazing out upon the ocean, lost in dreams of the homes
that shall soon bless their sight again--and Dog Tray! Why is Dog Tray
to be intruded upon circumstances of such moral and physical sublimity
as these? What has Dog Tray got to do with such matters? Confound Dog
Tray!

BROWN DELIVERED OF A JOKE:

KEY WEST (Florida), January 6th.--We soon got accustomed to the new ship
and her officers, and liked them well. And, behold, we had ice-water!
That was a treat. There was plenty of it, and so all hands did little
else but drink it while the novelty was fresh. We could not well help
liking a ship that kept plenty of ice on board. She was a good ship, but
she kept breaking a bolt-head or a king-pin, or whatever its name was,
every now and then. The first time it broke the passengers were in a
sweat; they thought it must be something terrible that could keep the
ship lying still on the water for two hours at night. Next day it broke
again, and again we floated an hour or so till it was mended. Two
days afterward it broke again, and again we lost several hours--the
passengers getting scared for fear we should get disabled
entirely--disabled! when we had canvas enough to supply two ships; but
passengers are usually just about as reasonable as that. The last time
the accident happened, Brown came up from his orgies in the cabin, late
at night (it was storming like everything), and roused me out of
my slumbers. "What the devil do you want?" "Why, I want to tell you
something." "Out with it--quick!"

"Why, I know why they call this the tri-monthly line of steamers."

"Well-hurry."

"It's because they go down to Greytown one month, and then they try all
next month to get back again!"

"Leave the room!"

And he left--else I would have brained him on the spot.

On the other side, when this lunatic first came in sight of the Isthmus,
he gazed, and gazed, and gazed at it as if he had found something so
wonderful he could hardly realize it. Finally he said, reflectively:
"The Isthmus--and so this is the old, regular, simon-pure Isthmus--the
place where all the butter comes from!" I suppose you can appreciate
that in California.

THE "WEST-SOU'-WESTER"

We had a rare good time on the San Francisco. The old Captain was jolly,
and a gentleman--formerly a Lieutenant Commander in the navy. The Purser
was a long, gangly, first-rate fellow--perfect gentleman--and told the
oldest, rattiest, last-century stories, and told them with the worst
grace! We had a very jolly time. The cholera was in the ship, medicines
were nearly out, and we had to be jolly. It wouldn't do to get
melancholy for a moment. Brown and Smith (my room-mates) invented a
harmless tropical drink (I thought I had tasted it before) which they
named "west-sou'-wester;" and every day, before each meal, all the boys
were drummed forward to take it. It was built thus:

R.--White sugar--lbs. 3/4 Ice.--lbs. 1 1/2 Limes--dozen 1 Lemon--1
Orange--1 Brandy--bot. 1/2

Put in 3/4 gal. ice-pitcher, and fill up with water.

The smoking room was always full of lovers, teething babies and seasick
women, and so Brown and I had to take it turn about getting sick every
night. The idea of this was, so that we might have a large ship's
lantern in our state-room instead of the dingy little spark of a
swinging lamp usually provided for passengers, and which must be blown
out promptly at ten o'clock. Only sick people can have ship-lanterns,
and burn them as long as they want to see how the medicine operates,
and play seven up. We never worried much about the medicine--we let it
operate or not, just as it came handy, because it wasn't anything but
west-sou'-westers anyhow--but we used to be very regular about getting
the room crammed full of cigar-smoke and boys, and listening to the
purser's infamous old stories, and playing pitch seven-up till midnight.

THE MONKEY

The monkey was a well-spring of joy--one of the passengers got him at
Greytown and kept him in a locker near our room on the upper deck--and
we used to get him as tight as a brick occasionally, on a banana soaked
in cherry brandy, and then it was fun to see him reel away and scamper
up the rigging and miscalculate his jumps and fall thirty feet and catch
by his tail on another rope and save himself. He was dressed up by the
ladies in a gray Scotch cap and pantaloons, gray coat with cuffs and
collar of brilliant red and gold, and a belt and wooden dagger, and was
as comical and happy-spirited a scoundrel as ever lived. He was never
idle--never still; always prospecting and rummaging in staterooms
or galloping up the rigging to the very masthead. The gale, and the
quivering mast, and the plunging ship, were nonsense to him on his dizzy
perch. One morning when he was tight and the weather was cool, he went
and got into bed with a sick woman who was asleep--drew the covers down
carefully, one after the other, watching her face all the time with his
sharp eyes--then turned back the sheet and sprung in! He nestled snugly
up to the lady, keeping up his low, gratified squeak all the time, and
drew up the bedclothes till nothing of him was visible but the brim of
his cap and the end of his gray nose. His squeaking woke the woman, and
she looked once at the diminutive old face on her pillow, and then she
screamed like a locomotive and sprang out of bed. The next moment the
monkey was at the masthead, infinitely worse scared than she was.


MISS SLIMMENS

When the monkey and all other sources of amusement failed, the
passengers talked gossip. But the chief of this was the lady they dubbed
Miss Slimmens. Not one soul in the cabin escaped her. She told fearful
stories about everybody. And she never told one that didn't make her
victim wince as if he were skinned. She is a newspaper correspondent,
and I think she must be a right spicy one. Everybody was in misery on
her account, but the climax that filled every heart with anguish was the
poem she wrote, and into which she compressed all her monstrous stories.
It scorched them! Human nature could not stand this. It had to be
resented; and one of the boys in the after cabin served her up to the
tune of "Auld Lang Syne." Everybody read it, but they did not want to go
further than she did, and so they never sang it. There were eight verses
of home-spun doggerel. I will give a brief extract:

"She gave M. T. an awful shot, And Kingdom she did lift; From White and
Thayer the fur did fly--Lord! how she snuffed out Smith! "She crowded
Lewis till he swore If she would stop the war, He'd take the cussed
newspaper She corresponded for. "She said 'twas funny Baker's charms No
woman could withstand, But if she saw where those charms lay, She wished
she might be destroyed."

Brown always spoke reverently of Slimmens as "the correspondent"--but
it was small distinction, because he always spoke of me in the same way,
and the same way of the monkey.

THE CHOLERA

Most of the steerage passengers ate quantities of fruit on the Isthmus
and drank aguadiente--a dangerous combination, even for a native--and we
had hardly got to sea before the effects of their imprudence appeared.
In my log I find these entries:

"JANUARY 2d.--Two cases cholera in the steerage reported this morning."

"4 P.M.--Surgeon has just reported to the Captain that 'two of the cases
are mighty bad, and the third awful bad.' So there is a new one, it
seems."

"9:10 P.M.--One of the sick men died a few minutes ago, and was at once
sheeted and thrown overboard. Rev. Mr. Fackler read the prayers."

"MIDNIGHT.--Another patient at the point of death--they are filling him
up with brandy. These are sad times."

"1 A.M.--The man is dead."

"2 A.M.-He is overboard. Expedition has to be used in our
circumstances."

"JANUARY 4th.--Off coast of Cuba. Another man died this morning--of
cholera, everybody in the ship said, of course--but it was not. Old case
of consumption."

"JANUARY 5th.--We are to put in at Key West, Florida, to-day, for
coal, so they say, but no doubt it is to cool down the fright of the
passengers as well. Some are lively, but others are in a terrible way.
Seven cases sickness yesterday--one a first cabin passenger."

"NOON.--Another man said to be dying of cholera--the young man they call
'Shape."'

"Half a dozen on the sick list now. The blockheads let the diarrhea run
two or three days, and then, getting scared, they run to the surgeon and
hope to be cured. And they lie like all possessed--swear they have just
been taken, when the doctor knows better by their symptoms. He asked a
patient the other day if he had any money to get some brandy with?--said
'no,' and so the ship had to furnish it--when the man died they found
forty-five dollars in his pocket. Maybe it was all the money the poor
fellow had, but then he needn't have spoken falsely about it when the
chances were all in favor of his going to the bottom anyway, and then he
wouldn't want it."

"'Shape' been walking the deck in stocking feet at midnight last
night--getting wet--exposing himself--going to die, they say."

"The disease has got into the second cabin at last, and one case in
first cabin. The consternation is so great among some of the passengers,
that several are going to get off at Key West (if quarantine regulations
permit it) and go north overland."

"The Captain and the Surgeon go through with the regular daily
inspection of every nook and corner and stateroom in the ship, as usual.
It is a good regulation, and more than ever necessary now."

"Shape is dead--sick about twelve hours."

"2 P.M.--The Episcopal clergyman, Rev. Mr. Fackler, is taken--bad
diarrhea and griping. He has buried all the dead, and he is a
good-hearted man and it always affected him so to see those poor fellows
plunge into the sea. Pure distress of mind has made him sick--nothing
else. He started out to read prayers over 'Shape,' and when he came in
sight of the sheeted corpse he fainted and fell down by the capstan."

"All hands looking anxiously forward to the cool weather we shall strike
twenty-four hours hence, to drive away the sickness."

"4 P.M.--The Minister has got a fit--convulsions of some kind. They are
nursing him well; everybody likes him and respects him."

"Just heard the Captain give the order to Purser to put up a sign, in
letters large enough for all to read: 'No charge for medical attendance
whatever.' It is a good idea--we have found some more like that fellow
that died and didn't want to buy brandy."

"5:30 P.M.--As the boys came to the room, one after the other, I
observed a marked change in their demeanor. They report that the
Minister--only sick such a short time--is already very low; and that
a hospital has been fitted up in the steerage and he removed thither.
Verily the ship is fast becoming a floating hospital herself--not a
single hour passes but brings its new sensation--its melancholy tidings.
If ever a group of earnest countenances assemble on any part of the
deck, you will see everybody flock there--they know there is some more
news of dire import. When I think of poor 'Shape' and the preacher, both
so well when I saw them yesterday, it makes me feel gloomy.

Since the last two hours, all laughter, all cheerfulness, have died out
of the ship. A settled sadness is upon the faces of the passengers."

"The last arrival says the Minister is dying. The passengers are
fearfully exercised, and with considerable reason, for we are about to
have our fifth death in five days, and the sixth of the voyage."

"That bolt-head broke several days ago, and we lost two hours while it
was being mended. It broke again the next day, and we lost three or four
hours. It broke again this afternoon, and again we lay like a log on the
water (head wind,) for three or four hours more. These things distress
the passengers beyond measure. They are scared about the epidemic and so
impatient to get along that a stoppage of an hour seems a week to them,
and gets them nervous and excited. One or two insist that we are 'out of
luck,' and that we are all going to the very dickens, wherever that may
be. Good many patients in the hospital. One well man is in a terrible
way--can't bear the idea of dying and being buried at sea--as if his
dead carcass would be more comfortable being eaten by grub-worms than
sharks. Has got sixty-eight articles on cholera and its treatment--does
nothing but read them. He tried hard to get the Captain to promise not
to throw him overboard in case he died--offered him a hundred dollars.
He is determined to quit the ship at Key West, and so are twenty or
thirty others."

JANUARY 6th.--At two o'clock this morning, the Rev. Mr. Fackler died,
and half an hour afterwards we landed at Key West. It is Sunday. Two of
us attended Episcopal service here, and retired when they prepared to
take the sacrament, and left a request at the pastor's house that he
would preach the funeral sermon. We visited the cemetery in the edge of
town, and then, supposing there was plenty of time, strolled through the
principal streets and took some notes. When we got to the ship, a little
after one o'clock, they said the funeral was already over.

Alta California, March 23, 1867

Key West,

January 6th.

KEY WEST

THIS ranks as an excellent harbor, and looks like an open roadstead.
They say the hundred little flat islands, or keys, scattered all around
keep off sea and storm. It is a pretty little tropical looking town,
green all over with the cocoa-nut tree peculiar to this latitude, which
has a short, thick trunk and tall, curved branches, which give it
the semblance of a colossal feather-brush. The gardens have a
bastard-looking orange tree in them, also, and tamarinds, Rose of
Sharon, and oleanders, and something that looks like the century plant;
and among the chaparral in the outskirts are thousands of gigantic
prickly pears. The country is level, and is precious few inches above
the sea. The formation is a rock that is white, looks like limestone,
and is made of infinitesimal spheres like mustard seed compacted
together. There is no soil upon it of any consequence, and so I do not
see how they manage to grow anything. I didn't hear of any farms or
vegetable gardens around. If a man wanted to start a farm there, he
would have to bring one in a ship.

The town has houses enough in it to contain 3,000 people, but many of
them are not occupied. The place has no commerce with the outside world.
It don't raise anything and don't manufacture anything, and there seems
to be no country back of it. And so I marched through and through the
place, wondering how under heaven the people got their living. Finally
it struck me, though after comparing notes with the Purser and the
passengers: There is a great fortification there--Fort Taylor; a
lighthouse or so, a great military barrack, and a Custom House. So they
live off the Government; they keep numberless whiskey mills for the
soldier trade, and they make something out of the weekly New Orleans and
Havana steamer that touches there; and two or three times a year a stray
ship wanders in there, and is a godsend. They scorch her!

Everybody was afraid the Health Officers would not allow us to land
there with our cholera. Vain delusion! If a Health Officer were to stand
between them and their livelihood in that way they would discharge him.
They don't mind pestilences. They have their protection in the salubrity
and singular healthfulness of their climate and situation. Their Doctor
called our cholera "malignant diarrhea," and cheerfully let us land and
spend $3,000 or $4,000. That will last them till fortune betrays another
ship into their hands. For one hundred tons of coal and a few stores
and medicines, our ship paid $2,011.20. Labor bill for putting the coal
aboard was $205; it would have been $25 in New York. But the funniest
thing was our restaurant experience. There were ten grown persons and
two children at the dinner--(we furnished the wines ourselves); had weak
soup, ham and eggs, coffee, an abominable stew of some kind or other
that no man could eat, and a piece of custard pie all around. The bill
was two dollars and a quarter apiece. We left good fare on the vessel to
go and eat such a villainous mess as that. If they keep on in that way,
a Key Wester will be a curiosity in Heaven here after.

I say nothing against Key West cigars, though. We laid in a heavy stock
of them at four dollars a hundred--real Havana tobacco, and a better
cigar than one can get in San Francisco at any price whatever. The
tobacco is imported from Havana and then made into cigars by Spaniards.
The duty on raw tobacco is only one-third of its market value, but the
duty on the manufactured article is just three times its value. Hence
they do not import cigars, but make them.

There are few handsome or elegant dwellings in the place--none, I
might almost say. The dwellings of the "plebeians" are one-story frame
cottages, with cheap colored paints hung on the walls, and neither mats
nor carpets on the floors, and without glass windows--nothing but great
heavy board shutters, solid like a door, and an inch thick. I think I
saw a hundred such. I couldn't understand it. I meant to ask why they
did not use glass windows, but I forgot it. I wish I knew.

At a little distance the town looks whitewashed and very pretty, but a
closer inspection discovers that the whitewash is dingy, and that the
whole concern hath about it a melancholy air of decay--Ben Bolt.

The negroes seemed to be concentrated in a single corner of the town, to
leeward of the whites--so their fragrance is wasted on the desert air,
and blows out to sea. As this fragrance blows straight out from near the
lighthouse, it has its value--because the storm-tossed mariner with a
delicate sense of smell could follow it in, in case the light chanced
to go out. We met very few negroes in the town proper, which might have
been because it was Sunday and a holiday.

The roadways in and about Key West are in triple paths, with belts of
grass growing between--a circumstance which might have been suggestive
of one-horse vehicles, only there were no horse-tracks in the middle
path, and no wheel-tracks in the outside ones. We did see two cows and
three horses, but that is not enough to justify me in saying there are
thousands of them in Key West.

I attended Episcopal service, and they gauged me at a glance and gave
me a back seat, as usual. And such style! and such fashion! Why, I might
have imagined myself in Grace Cathedral, or some other metropolitan
temple. Three hundred and fifty elegantly dressed ladies and children,
and twenty-five men! The men were out selling little groceries and
things to our army of rusty looking passengers from the San Francisco,
no doubt. But where all that style came from was a mystery to me, in
this decaying, windowless town, guiltless of commerce, agriculture, or
manufactures. They must have been families of officers of the Custom
House, and of the two great military establishments. Several of the
gentlemen were unquestionably Southern bloods, though--slim, spruce,
long-haired young fellows, in broadcloth, black kids, whalebone canes,
ruffled shirts, and funny little cravats, an inch wide, made of flaming
yellow silk ribbon.

Finally, two gentlemen began to hand around plates that seemed to have
large pound-cakes on them. Everybody took a slice, but still the cakes
grew no smaller. I wondered at that. However, when the cake-passers got
toward my end of the church, I saw that those things were only imitation
cakes with holes in their tops, and that the people were putting
something in them instead of taking from them. I asked a boy what it was
all about. He said those were contribution boxes. That had occurred to
me a moment before, but I heard nothing rattle in them. You see, they
were using postal currency, and it was our first experience in that
line. We got better acquainted with it before the day was over, though.
In a grocery where Brown bought something, they gave him a five-cent
stamp in change, with a portrait of Gideon Welles on it, but he handed
it back, with many regrets, and said he couldn't make any use of the
grocery-man's picture, because he "didn't keep no photograft album."

Fort Taylor, an immensely strong fortification, sits in the edge of
the sea and commands the entrance to the harbor, but we did not visit
it--the walk would have been too great.

Well, we are really in "the States" again, but I cannot quite realize it
yet.

AT SEA AGAIN

NEW YORK, January 12th.

We remained at Key West a day and night, and left on the morning of the
7th, and with a thinned complement of people; for twenty-one passengers
had quitted the ship on account of the cholera--among them Isaac, who
had latterly so fallen below all esteem or even recognition, that he had
been going pretty much in a gang by himself ever since we left Greytown;
and among them, also, went the man with the cholera scrapbook, who
wanted to pay the Captain $100 to insure his not being buried at sea if
he died.

HILARITY RESTORED

But the ship had regained her ancient cheerfulness as by magic. Of the
eighteen who were sick when we landed, eleven were already well again,
and all the fright about the disease was gone--went with the twenty-one.
The dismal spell was removed, and it was really jolly at breakfast that
morning--laughter rang out clear and hearty everywhere. They even got to
chaffing each other about the scare, and telling extravagant stories on
each other about things done under the influence of fear. They accused
Kingdom of being scared, but he denied it--said he had never been scared
since he loaded the old Queen Anne's musket for his father once. And he
told the

LEGEND OF THE MUSKET

"You see, the old man was trying to learn me to shoot blackbirds and
beasts that tore up the young corn and such things, so that I could be
of some use about the farm, because I wasn't big enough to do much. My
gun was a little single-barrel shotgun, and the old man carried an
old Queen Anne's musket that weighed a ton and made a report like a
thunderclap, and kicked like a mule. The old man wanted me to shoot the
old musket sometimes, but I was afraid. One day, though, I got her down
and thought I'd try her one riffle, anyhow, and so I took her to the
hired man and asked him how to load her, because the old man was out in
the fields. Hiram said, 'Do you see them marks on the stock--an X and
a V on each side of a Queen's crown?--well, that means 10 balls and 5
slugs--that's her load. 'But how much powder?' 'Oh,' he says, 'it don't
matter; put in three or four handfuls.' So I loaded her up that way,
and it was an awful charge--I had sense enough to know that--and started
out. I levelled her on a good many blackbirds, but every time I went to
pull the trigger I shut my eyes and weakened: I was afraid of her kick.
Towards sundown I fetched up at the house, and there was the old man
resting himself on the porch.

"'Been out hunting, have ye?'

"'Yes, sir,' says I. "

"'What did you kill?'

"'Didn't kill anything, sir--didn't shoot her off--I was afraid she'd
kick.' [ I know'd d----d well she would.]

"'Gimme the gun!' the old man says, mad as sin.

"And he took aim at a sapling on the other side of the road, and I began
to drop back out of danger. And the next minute I heard an earthquake
and see the Queen Anne whirling end over-end in the air, and the old man
spinning around on one heel, with one leg up and both hands on his jaw,
and the bark flying from that sapling like there was a hail-storm! The
old man's shoulder was set back four inches, and his jaw turned black
and blue, and he had to lay up for three days. Cholera, nor nothing
else, can ever scare me the way I was scared that time."

THE TALE OF THE "BIRD OF A NEW SPECIE"

That reminds me of another of Kingdom's experiments as a boy. He says:

"One day when me and my brother were out in the woods, he shot a
chicken-hawk and a crow, and while we were lolling in the shade under a
tree, he pulled the tails out of the birds and then fooling around
and talking, he finally built the crow's tail into the chicken-hawk's
transom. When we saw what a neat job it was, we thought we would keep
it. When we got home we were late for supper, and we just dropped it on
the porch and rushed in. We had a sort of sneaking hope that the old
man and our uncle would get bit with it anyway, because they were always
pattering over geology or natural history, or something they didn't know
anything about. While we were at supper, they came along and found
the bird, and we heard them discussing it and talking all sorts of
astonishment. Directly the old man came in--had the bird by the leg and
says:

"'Boys, where'd you get this?'

"'Shot him in the woods, sir.'

"'Did you ever come across any more birds like this around here?'

"'No, sir--this is the first one.'

"'Boys, do you know what you've done? You've discovered something
that'll make ye known everywheres. This bird's of a new specie.'

"And then he walked out, and we heard him and uncle conclude that they'd
label it with their names and send it to Professor Hagenbaum, at Albany.
Pretty soon, though, the old man took hold of the tail and it pulled
out, and we heard both of them swear a little. When we came out, the
bird was laying on one side of the fence and the tail on the other. We
didn't dare to laugh nor to let on about overhearing their talk either.
But about a month after this there came along the rattiest specimen of
a boy you ever saw, and wanted to stop with us. He was all rags and
tatters, and tired out with running away from his master somewhere. His
shirt was hanging at half-mast through his trowsers, and two-thirds of
the tail of it was a piece of blue flannel that had been sewed on.
While the poor devil was eating his dinner, uncle and the old man were
studying up what they'd better do with him. And finally they said, by
George, they didn't know what to do with him. Just then the boy rose up
and swung his colors into view, and brother Bob says:

"'Father, you might send him to Professor Hagenbaum, at Albany!'

"It was the first the old man knew we'd overheard the bird-talk, and so
he whaled us both. He says, 'I'll learn you to play jokes on your old
father!"

THE GULF STREAM

I go back to my log again:

"JANUARY 8th--Man named Belmayne died to-day of dropsy, and was buried
at sea.

"The temperature of the Gulf Stream here (they try it every two hours
for the information of the Navy Department) is 76 degrees, atmosphere
72 degrees. We are comfortable enough now, while we are in this fluid
stove, but when we leave it at Cape Hatteras it will be terribly cold.
The speed of the Stream varies from one third of a mile to three and
one-half miles an hour. We have been making 210 to 220 miles a day
heretofore, but in this current we can turn off 250, 260 and 275 miles.

"The ship has beautiful charts, compiled by Lieut. Maury, which are
crammed with shoals, currents, lights, buoys, soundings, and winds,
and calms and storms--black figures for soundings, and bright spots for
beacons, and so on, and an interminable tangle, like a spider's web, of
red lines denoting the tracks of hundreds of ships whose logs were sent
to Maury--everything mapped out so accurately that a man might know what
water he had, what current, what beacon he was near, what style of wind
he might expect, and from which direction, on any particular day in the
year, at any given point on the world's broad surface. 'They that go
down to the sea in ships see the wonders of the great deep'--but this
modern navigation out-wonders any wonder the scriptural writers dreampt
of. To see a man stand in the night, when everything looks alike--far
out in the midst of a boundless sea--and measure from one star to
another and tell to a dot right where the ship is--tell the very spot
the little insignificant speck occupies on a vast expanse of land
and sea twenty-five thousand miles in circumference! Verily, with his
imperial intellect and his deep-searching wisdom, man is almost a God!

"In the strongest current of the Gulf Stream at 4 o'clock this morning,
off Jupiter Inlet--3 1/2 miles an hour. Numerous bets we wouldn't make
250 miles--made 271 in the 24 hours ending at noon. The current for the
next 24 hours will not be so strong."

"JANUARY 10th.--At noon shall be off Hatteras, 26 days out from San
Francisco. We shall leave this warming pan of a Gulf Stream to-day, and
then it will cease to be genial summer weather and become wintry cold.
We already see the signs--they put feather-beds and blankets on the
berths this morning. It is warm, now, and raining.

"Eight sick--five diarrhea--two better--three convalescent.

"Passing out of the Gulf Stream rapidly. At 2 P.M., temperature of the
water had fallen seven degrees in half an hour--from 72 degrees down to
65 degrees. Already the day is turning cold, and one after another the
boys adjourn from the deck a moment and then come back with overcoats
on. At 2:30, temperature of water two degrees lower--viz., 63 degrees.
At 3, it was 61 degrees. It fell eleven degrees in an hour and a half.
Then we passed out, and the weather turned bitter cold."

MORE JOURNALIZING

"11: 30 P.M.--Dark, stormy, and villainously cold. Snow blew in my face
as I fought the wind, and came forward to the wheelhouse.

"JANUARY 11th--7 P.M.--Been in bed all day, trying to keep warm; can't
get near the steam pipes in the smoking-room on account of the babies
and the sick women. If they like it in there, they're welcome; but
they'll freeze if they persist in leaving the windows open. It is
Brown's turn to be sick to-night; I will turn out and find him, and drum
the boys forward for seven-up.

"JANUARY 12th--1 A.M.--Man named Peterson is just dead--not cholera. We
are nearing New York. He died on soundings, and so we shall not bury him
in the ocean."

BROWN'S LOG-BOOK

I captured Brown's journal, and I mean to make an extract from it,
whether it be fair or not.

"MONDAY MORNING.--Found my old girl setting in her old place by the
taffrail, sighing and pensive, just as she always is, and also reading
poetry and picking her nose with a fork. I cannot live without her.

"TUESDAY--This purser has got his own way for making out what he calls
his Custom House statement. Says they have to have it, but they never
read it, so it isn't particular how it's done. He was scratching away
at it, busy, in his office. I asked him how in the nation he found out
every passenger's age and trade, and nationality, and all that sort of
thing? 'Guess 'em, myself,' he said. 'If a man's name's Molineux, of
course he's a Frenchman; if his name's O'Flannigan, of course he's an
Irishman; if his name's Smith, set him down for any place that's handy;
as to his age or his trade, who the devil's business is that?--put 'em
down what you please--Custom House people don't read it anyway--all
pursers do it this way--the law's a farce, got up by some ass of a
back-country Congressman, that had never been at sea in his life.
'Well,' says I, 'let's see how you've got some of us down.' And he
showed me:

"'Wm. Brown.--Missionary--age, 98--native of Timbuctoo.

"'Mark Twain--Short card sharp--age, 24--South Sea Islander.

"'Miss Slimmens--Milliner and moral philosopher--age, 62--native of
Terra del Fuego.'

"That is the way that long-legged humbug prejudices Government against
respectable people."

SAFE AT LAST IN "THE STATES"

We swore the ship through at quarantine, which was right--she hadn't had
any real cholera on board since we left Greytown--and at 8 o'clock this
morning we stood in the biting air of the upper deck and sailed by the
snow-covered, wintry looking residences on Staten Island--recognized
Castle Garden--beheld the vast city spread out beyond, encircled with
its palisade of masts, and adorned with its hundred steeples--saw the
steam-tug and ferry-boats swarming through the floating ice, instinct
with a frenzied energy, as we passed the river--and in a little while we
were ashore and safe housed at the Metropolitan.

After comparing notes, all decided that the voyage had been exceedingly
pleasant, notwithstanding its little drawbacks, and that we would like
very well to leave the cholera ashore and take the trip over again.

The Nicaragua Steamship Company are building three splendid new
steamers, all of them fast and commodious--and six weeks hence the first
one will start around the Horn to do duty on the other side. They claim
that she will be able to make fifteen knots right along with twenty
pounds of steam. I would like to go in one of their new ships and see
that beautiful scenery on the Lake and San Juan River again.

Alta California, March 28, 1867

New York,

Feb. 2d, 1867.

THE OVERGROWN METROPOLIS

THE only trouble about this town is, that it is too large. You cannot
accomplish anything in the way of business, you cannot even pay a
friendly call, without devoting a whole day to it--that is, what people
call a whole day who do not get up early. Many businessmen only give
audience from eleven to one; therefore, if you miss those hours your
affair must go over till next day. Now if you make the time at one
place, even though you stay only ten or fifteen minutes, you can hardly
get to your next point, because so many things and people will attract
your attention and your conversation and curiosity, that the other three
quarters of that hour will be frittered away. You have but one hour
left, and my experience is that a man cannot go anywhere in New York in
an hour. The distances are too great--you must have another day to it.
If you have got six things to do, you have got to take six days to do
them in.

If you live below Twenty-fifth street, you are "down town;" and if you
live anywhere between that and Seven Hundred and Seventy-fifth street
(I don't know how far they run--have quit trying to find out), you will
never get down town with out walking the legs off yourself. You cannot
ride. I mean you cannot ride unless you are willing to go in a packed
omnibus that labors, and plunges, and struggles along at the rate of
three miles in four hours and a half, always getting left behind by fast
walkers, and always apparently hopelessly tangled up with vehicles
that are trying to get to some place or other and can't. Or, if you can
stomach it, you can ride in a horse-car and stand up for three-quarters
of an hour, in the midst of a file of men that extends from front
to rear (seats all crammed, of course,)--or you can take one of the
platforms, if you please, but they are so crowded you will have to hang
on by your eye-lashes and your toe-nails.

I room in East Sixteenth street, and I walk. It is a mighty honest walk
from there to anywhere else, and very destructive to legs, but then
the omnibuses are too slow during this mixed rainy, snowy, slushy and
hard-frozen weather, and the cars too full--there is never room for
another person by the time they get this far down town. The cars do not
run in Broadway, anyhow, and I do not like to wander out of that street.
I always get lost when I do. The town is all changed since I was here,
thirteen years ago, when I was a pure and sinless sprout. The streets
wind in and out, and this way and that way, in the most bewildering
fashion, and two of them will suddenly come together and clamp the last
house between them so close, and whittle the end of it down so sharp,
that it looms up like the bow of a steam ship, and you have to shut one
eye to see it. The streets are so crooked in the lower end of town that
if you take one and follow it faithfully you will eventually fetch up
right where you started from.

THE MODEL ARTISTS

When I was here in '53, a model artist show had an ephemeral existence
in Chatham street, and then everybody growled about it, and the police
broke it up; at the same period "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was in full blast
in the same street, and had already run one hundred and fifty nights.
Everybody went there in elegant toilettes and cried over Tom's griefs.
But now, things are changed. The model artists play nightly to admiring
multitudes at famous Niblo's Garden, in great Broadway--have played
one hundred and fifty nights and will play one hundred and fifty nights
more, no doubt--and Uncle Tom draws critical, self-possessed groups of
negroes and children at Barnum's Museum. I fear me I shall have to start
a moral missionary society here. Don't you suppose those friends of mine
in San Francisco were jesting, when they warned me to be very choice in
my language, if I ever lectured here, lest I might offend?

In '53 they called that horrid, immoral show I was speaking of, the
"Model Artists," and people wouldn't go to see it. But now they call
that sort of thing a "Grand Spectacular Drama," and everybody goes. It
is all in a name. And it is about as spectacular as anything I ever saw
without sinking right into the earth with outraged modesty. It is
the wickedest show you can think of. You see there is small harm in
exhibiting a pack of painted old harlots, swathed in gauze, like the
original model artistes, for no man careth a cent for them but to laugh
and jeer at them. Nakedness itself, in such a case, would be nothing
worse than disgusting. But I warn you that when they put beautiful
clipper-built girls on the stage in this new fashion, with only just
barely clothes enough on to be tantalizing, it is a shrewd invention
of the devil. It lays a heavier siege to public morals than all the
legitimate model artist shows you can bring into action.

The name of this new exhibition that so touches my missionary
sensibilities, is the "Black Crook." The scenic effects--the waterfalls,
cascades, fountains, oceans, fairies, devils, hells, heavens,
angels--are gorgeous beyond anything ever witnessed in America, perhaps,
and these things attract the women and the girls. Then the endless
ballets and splendid tableaux, with seventy beauties arrayed in dazzling
half-costumes; and displaying all possible compromises between nakedness
and decency, capture the men and boys--and so Niblo's has taken in
twenty four hundred dollars a night, (seven nights and a matinee a
week,) for five months, and sometimes twenty-seven hundred dollars. It
is claimed that a multitude equal to the entire population of the State
of California, Chinamen included, have visited this play. The great
Herald newspaper pitched into it, and a sensation parson preached a
sermon against it; this was sufficient to advertise it all over the
continent, and so the proprietor's fortune was made.

The scenery and the legs are everything; the actors who do the talking
are the wretchedest sticks on the boards. But the fairy scenes--they
fascinate the boys! Beautiful bare-legged girls hanging in flower
baskets; others stretched in groups on great sea shells; others
clustered around fluted columns; others in all possible attitudes;
girls--nothing but a wilderness of girls--stacked up, pile on pile, away
aloft to the dome of the theatre, diminishing in size and clothing,
till the last row, mere children, dangle high up from invisible ropes,
arrayed only in a camisa. The whole tableau resplendent with columns,
scrolls, and a vast ornamental work, wrought in gold, silver and
brilliant colors--all lit up with gorgeous theatrical fires, and
witnessed through a great gauzy curtain that counterfeits a soft silver
mist! It is the wonders of the Arabian Nights realized.

Those girls dance in ballet, dressed with a meagreness that would make
a parasol blush. And they prance around and expose themselves in a way
that is scandalous to me. Moreover, they come trooping on the stage in
platoons and battalions, in most princely attire I grant you, but always
with more tights in view than anything else. They change their clothes
every fifteen minutes for four hours, and their dresses become more
beautiful and more rascally all the time.

ALL DRAMADOM AFFECTED

I have been sitting here blushing so long that I might as well finish
the subject, now. The Worrell Sisters, (at the Broadway) are playing
a fairy piece, also, which enables them to undress to suit the popular
taste. However, they do not take off enough, by any means, and so they
cannot hope to achieve supreme success.

But our Sallie Hinckley, late of San Francisco, discounts the "Black
Crook." She is playing a nude fairy piece, also, and in the last act she
makes a lovely statue of herself, and stands aloft before the audience,
and dressed about like the Menken. She looks very beautiful--but
heaven help her assistants! She has got about thirty padded, painted,
slab-sided, lantern-jawed old hags with her who are so mortal homely
that nothing tastes good to them. And to see those lank, blear-eyed
leathery old scalliwags come out and hop around in melancholy dance,
with their cheap, ragged, nine-inch dress-tails flapping in the air--Oh,
it is worth going miles to see! And when one of them finishes her poor
little shindig and makes her wind up stamp in the orthodox way, sticking
out a slipper like a horse trough, with a criminal attempt at grace, I
want to snatch a double-barrelled shot-gun and go after the whole tribe.

Edwin Booth and the legitimate drama still draw immense houses, but the
signs of the times convince me that he will have to make a little change
by-and-by and peel some women. Nothing else can chain the popular taste,
the way things are going now.

THE BEWITCHING NEW FASHIONS

Who shall describe the exquisite taste and beauty of the new style
of ladies' walking dresses? Taken as a class, women can contrive more
outlandish and ugly costumes than one would think possible without
the gift of inspiration. But this time they have been felicitous in
invention. The wretched waterfall still remains, of course, but in a
modified form; every change it has undergone was for the better. First
it represented a bladder of scotch snuff; next it hung down the
woman's back like a canvas covered ham; afterwards it contracted, and
counterfeited a turnip on the back of the head; now it sticks straight
out behind, and looks like a wire muzzle on a greyhound. Nestling in the
midst of this long stretch of head and hair reposes the little batter
cake of a bonnet, like a jockey-saddle on a race-horse. You will readily
perceive that this looks very unique, and pretty, and coquettish.
But the glory of the costume is the robe--the dress. No furbelows, no
flounces, no biases, no ruffles, no gores, no flutter wheels, no hoops
to speak of--nothing but a rich, plain, narrow black dress, terminating
just below the knees in long saw-teeth, (points downwards,) and under it
a flaming red skirt, enough to put your eyes out, that reaches down
only to the ankle-bone, and exposes the restless little feet. Charming,
fascinating, seductive, bewitching to see a lovely girl of seventeen,
with her saddle on her head, and her muzzle on behind, and her veil
just covering the end of her nose, come tripping along in her hoopless,
red-bottomed dress, like a churn on fire, is enough to set a man wild. I
must drop this subject--I can't stand it.

THE CENTURY CLUB

By permission, I visited the Century Club last night. The most
unspeakably respectable Club in the United States, perhaps. It was
storming like everything, and I thought there would necessarily be a
small attendance, but this was not the case; the reading and supper
rooms were crowded, and with the distinguished artists, authors and
amateurs of New York. I averaged the heads, and they went three sizes
larger than the style of heads I have been accustomed to. In one of the
smaller rooms they averaged best--thirteen heads out of the twenty-seven
present were what I choose to call prodigious. I never felt so
subjugated in my life. And I was never so ashamed of wearing an 8
1/4 before. Many of these gentlemen were old, but very few of them
bald--isn't that singular? It isn't that way in California. Most men are
bald there, young and old. You know of a Sunday when it rains, and the
women cannot go out, a church congregation looks like a skating pond. It
is just on account of the shiny bald heads--nothing else.

Article I of the Constitution will inform you of the character of the
Century Club:

"This Association shall be composed of authors, artists and amateurs of
letters and the fine arts."

This has a tendency to exclude parties who have bank accounts and
pedigree, but no brains. It is too thundering exclusive.

The Club is ten years old. Its membership is limited to 500, its list is
full, and when vacancies occur there are always a number of candidates
patiently waiting to fill them. One visitor told me he had been waiting
three years, but expected to get in sometime or other. I have some idea
of putting in my application--I won't need to belong till I get old.

The initiation fee is $100, and dues $3 a month. The Club owns
the premises (a three-story brick) and forty feet of vacant ground
adjoining, whereon they mean to build, and $40,000 in bank. Conversation
there is instructive and entertaining, and the brandy punches are good,
and so are the lunches. What more could a man want?

Bancroft, the historian, is President of the Club, and was on duty last
night. Among the list of members I observed the following names--many
others are distinguished both here and on your side of the continent,
but you know these best, perhaps: Edwin Booth, Wm. H. Aspinwall, H. W.
Bellows, C. Astor Bristed, Albert Bierstadt, Wm. Cullen Bryant, E. H.
Chapin, J. H. Cheever, Church, the painter, F. O. C. Darley, Frederick
S. Cozzens, Geo. W. Curtis, Ashar B. Durand, Cyrus W. Field, Parke
Godwin, Wilson G. Hunt, Thos. McElrath, Fred. Law Olmstead, Putnam, the
publisher, Edmund C. Stedman, A. T. Stewart, Stoddard, the poet, Launt
Thompson, Bayard Taylor, Julian C. Verplanck, Lester Wallack, and so
forth and so on. There is a constellation of celebrated names for you! I
carried away some of the hats with me for specimens. They average about
No. 11.

Alta California, March 30, 1867

New York,

February 18th, 1867.

MY ANCIENT FRIENDS, THE POLICE

THE police of Broadway seem to have been selected with special reference
to size. They are nearly all large, fine looking men, and their blue
uniforms, well studded with brass buttons, their jack boots, and their
batons worn like a dagger, give them an imposing military aspect. They
are gentlemanly in appearance and conduct. These remarks will apply
pretty well to the police force throughout the city. I hear them praised
on every hand for their efficiency, integrity and watchful attention to
business. It seems like an extravagant compliment to pay a policeman,
don't it? I am charmed with the novelty of it.

One cannot walk a hundred yards in any part of the city, day or night,
without stumbling upon one of these soldierly officials. In Broadway,
especially down below the City Hall Park, where drays, carriages, carts
and pedestrians keep the great thoroughfare in a constant state of
crowding, struggling, chaotic confusion, the police are as thick as
they are at headquarters in San Francisco at the changing of the evening
watch. And how they work!--how they charge through the tangled vehicles,
and order this one to go this way, another that way, and a third to
stand still or back!--how they wade through mud and slush, piloting
women safely through the fearful jams. They are extremely useful--in
fact, they present the anomaly of a police force that is an absolute
necessity to the well-being of the city, and they earn every cent they
get. From one end of town to the other they march to and fro across
Broadway with women on their arms the whole day long. The women like it.
I stood by for two hours and watched one of them cross seven or eight
times on various pretences, and always on the same handsome policeman's
arm.

SUNDAY AMUSEMENTS

You know they have got a new Excise law here, which closes up all places
on Sunday where liquor is sold. You cannot get a taste of the villainous
wines and liquors of New York on the Sabbath, for love or money. You
cannot even keep them on private account, in your own house, if the
police find it out.

And all possible places of amusement and public resort are closed
up also. The town looks dead and deserted. I could not even find a
bootblack yesterday, or a newsboy, or a place open where I could buy a
newspaper. What was left for me to do? Simply to follow the fashionable
mania, and go to church. You cannot imagine what an infatuation
church-going has become in New York. Youths and young misses, young
gentlemen and ladies, the middle-aged and the old, all swarm to church,
morning, noon and night every Sunday. If it rains, or snows, or turns
biting cold, they stay away from the theatres, but an earthquake could
not keep them from the churches. They brave miles of stormy weather
to worship and sing praises at the altar, and criticise each other's
costumes. Concerning the weather, a bad little boy once said it was too
rainy to go to school, but just about rainy enough to go fishing. When
that kind of weather prevails here, it is considered too rainy to go
fishing, but just about rainy enough to go to church. In the theatres,
a certain new-fangled "reserved" seat system has been reduced to a state
of rascally perfection; and you can enter at ten o'clock, when the place
seems crowded, and get one of the reserved seats in the front part of
the parquette, or the second row of the dress circle, by paying a dollar
and a half for it; and you can select and buy the seat from a peddler in
the streets, or in Brooklyn or Albany, and find it all correct; buy
it for any night you want it--a fortnight ahead, if you want to; the
theatre has been paid for it long ago by the peddler or the storekeeper
who sells it. But they haven't any reserved system in the churches
but the old regular one; and so, if you do not know an accommodating
pew-owner, you have got to go before breakfast and sit in the gallery.
Crowds cross the river on the coldest mornings to hear

HENRY WARD BEECHER

I have been in a pious frenzy myself for a while. I went over two weeks
ago, (the thermometer was at 180 degrees below zero, I should judge),
and I walked as stiff-legged as a Chinaman, because the nerves all
through me were frozen as taut as fiddle strings. I had been promised a
seat in the pew of a New York editor, who told me to come 'early.' I
was at the church at ten o'clock Sunday morning. I thought that was
early--and I knew precious well it was earlier than any Christian ought
to be out of his bed on such a morning. The pavements were crowded with
people trying to get in, and when I told the usher I was accredited to
pew No. 46, he answered with an offended air:

"Forty-six!--pretty time of day to come for forty-six!--full an hour
ago!"

I said, apologetically:

"I tried to get over day before yesterday, sir, but--"

[Scorning the sarcasm]--"Go up stairs, where the galleries are, and when
they're done praying maybe you can get a chance."

I said, humbly: "But I don't want a chance to pray--I only--"

"Now, move on--don't stand there bothering me with your cussed
foolishness--there's five hundred people behind you, waiting to get in,
and you're blocking the way." [He did not say that, but he looked it,
with two hundred horse-power.] So I went upstairs and crowded in and
captured a little stool from an usher and jammed it into a vacancy among
the multitude, about large enough to accommodate a spittoon, and had the
satisfaction of knowing I was the last individual that got a seat in Mr.
Beecher's Church that day. The church was large, and the wide gallery
extended around three sides of it. Every pew above and below was filled
with elegantly-dressed people, and the aisles and odd spaces in both
places occupied with stools like mine.

Mr. Beecher's altar is an elevated, carpeted, unrailed platform--a sort
of stage--with a little pedestal at its front edge for a pulpit. Mr. B.
sat in a chair against the wall, his head and body inclining backward,
with the comfortable air of a manager who has got a good house and
expected it. The choir over his head sang charmingly, and then he got
up and preached one of the liveliest and most sensible sermons I ever
listened to. He has a rich, resonant voice, and a distinct enunciation,
and makes himself heard all over the church without very apparent
effort. His discourse sparkled with felicitous similes and metaphors
(it is his strong suit to use the language of the worldly,) and might be
called a striking mosaic work, wherein poetry, pathos, humor, satire and
eloquent declamation were happily blended upon a ground work of earnest
exposition of the great truths involved in his text.

Whenever he forsook his notes and went marching up and down his
stage, sawing his arms in the air, hurling sarcasms this way and that,
discharging rockets of poetry, and exploding mines of eloquence, halting
now and then to stamp his foot three times in succession to emphasize a
point, I could have started the audience with a single clap of the hands
and brought down the house. I had a suffocating desire to do it.

To illustrate some point in his discourse, he spoke of how he had
watched a wonderful loom in Lowell once--how, all alone, and with no
apparent intelligence but its own to guide it, it went steadily on about
its business, weaving all manner of beautiful and intricate figures,
always preserving a faultless harmony in the designs, yet never
hesitating a moment or making a mistake--and then pausing impressively
a second or two, he said that reflecting upon the mental calibre of some
of the people to whom the elective franchise is accorded in America,
he had never been able to get rid of the notion that it was a sin and
a shame that that machine wasn't allowed to vote! Then the congregation
let go and laughed like all possessed.

Mr. Beecher is a remarkably handsome man when he is in the full tide of
sermonizing, and his face is lit up with animation, but he is as homely
as a singed cat when he isn't doing anything.

"BISHOP SOUTHGATE'S MATINEE"

I attended Bishop Southgate's matinee yesterday afternoon, in pursuance
of my desire to test all the amusements of the metropolis. The ungodly
are not slow to get up nick-names for sacred things here. All the pretty
girls, and also all the young men who dote on them, go to the Sunday
afternoon services at Bishop Southgate's Church, in Thirty-eighth
street, and they call it the Bishop's "matinee;" and there is Dr.
Bellows' Church, in Fourth avenue, somewhere above Twentieth street--it
is the wildest piece of architecture you ever saw--gridironed all over
with alternate short bars of showy red and white, like a Confederate
flag--so the ungodly call it the "Church of the Holy Zebra."

It was fearfully cold yesterday, but nevertheless the Bishop's matinee
was a success. There were platoons of lovely girls there--and all
arrayed in the charming new street costume, with its loosely
hanging jacket, its short, narrow dress, terminating well up in long
bugle-fringed points over a red under-dress--trimmed with bugles all
over, I should rather say--bless me, when the girls filed up the aisles
yesterday, rattling their fringes against the pews, you could shut your
eyes and imagine you were out in a hail-storm. When I see a pretty girl
in this charming costume, I want to fall down and worship her. And yet
she is bound to look a good deal like a Chinawoman when her back is
toward you. This costume will provoke many a smile in San Francisco,
where the Chinawomen abound.

The Bishop's church is not large, but its fancy altar, its gas-lights,
and its stained windows, brilliant with yellow saints and scarlet
martyrs, make it very showy. All the side windows are for memorials.
They are to be painted with "Sacred to the memory of" such and such
parties as may die worthy of the honor. I told this to Brown, and he
said: "If I had a grudge against one of them saints, and he was to die
before I got even with him, I'd break his window the first thing."

At 3 o'clock the performance commenced. The organist played a
schottische first and then changed to an exquisite waltz, that set the
young people's feet itching and their heads to swaying to the undulating
movement of the harmony. This soon changed to the loveliest air from
"Trovatore," and "the full-toned choir awoke." It was beautiful music,
and the voices seemed so rich and mellow to my uncultivated ears. The
Bishop sat on one side of the chancel, facing the orchestra, and looked
as if he were thinking: "Now you dare to make a false note, and I'll
dock your wages for you!" I know that was what he was thinking, without
being told it.

The choir chanted the Litany, and a young fellow read a chapter from the
Bible, another man preached a very good sermon, and then the Bishop
read some verses from the Sermon on the Mount, gave out a multitude
of religious advertisements about forthcoming meetings, Society
assemblages, etc., pronounced the Benediction and the organist fiddled
the people out of the church to a tune that sounded like the Sailor's
Hornpipe, with variations. All the time the portly, complacent Bishop
was reading his handful of Scripture verses, the organ accompanied him
with a mixture of funeral and fandango music, to suit the sense of the
text. Perhaps I can aid you in conceiving of the effect:

BISHOP--"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall inherit the
earth."

ORGAN--"Maxwelton braes are bonny--(being suggestive of the property
inherited by the defendant.)

BISHOP--"Blessed are the peacemakers, for--"

ORGAN--"Your little hands were never made to tear each other's eyes."

BISHOP--"Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after--"

ORGAN--"Give me three grains of corn, mother."

And so forth and so on.

I have used an extravagant simile, maybe, but it is not far out of the
way. The truth was, the organ drowned the Bishop out, generally, so that
you could not hear him at all. Brown said he had been ciphering on the
matter, and he was satisfied the church could get along without
the Bishop--that he didn't do anything to speak of except read
advertisements for meetings, and so it would be economy to discharge
him and set up a bulletin board. The man is not responsible for what he
says. He does not know any better.

I liked the sermon. I thought some of the organ's flights of fancy were
a little startling, considering the character of the place, but I shall
not soon forget the beautiful music of the choir. The Bishop's matinee
is well calculated to seduce the sinner into coming within the sound of
the preached Gospel. There is Wisdom in the idea, no doubt.

ST. ALBAN'S

I went to that church last night. Walked all the way from Sixteenth to
Forty-seventh street in the bitter cold to do it. Behold what religious
enthusiasm, just flavored with worldly curiosity, can do! Bishop
Southgate's is "high church," but St. Alban's is higher. I should say
that the latter was Roman Catholic in disguise. The altar is showy
with bright colors and pictures, and tall wax lights towering up from
seven-branched candle-sticks. It lacked a picture of the Virgin, though.
Presently the organ began to murmur in soft, dreamy cadences, and a
sound of distant singing floated up from below--it grew stronger and
closer, and soon a dozen surpliced little boys, bearing a tall cross,
and half a dozen surpliced clergymen, filed up from the basement, making
all the building resound with music. They bowed as they passed the
altar, and ranged themselves on opposite sides of the chancel. The boys
chanted the litany, and there was something infinitely thrilling and
inexpressive in the ringing bugle-tones of their young voices. It was
worth a pilgrimage to hear. I must not speak further of the services--my
Bishop's performances in the Sandwich Islands were as a mere side-show
to a circus, in comparison.

THE VAGARIES OF AN INNOCENT

This simple comrade of mine keeps me in hot water all the time. He takes
a fancy to every sort of foolishness. He wants to hire a mulatto and put
him in livery, like the nabobs of the town. He had almost consummated
his diabolism when I discovered his intent. I said:

"What is that fellow doing in the hall with that blacking box label on
his hat and that fantastic costume on?"

"Him? Why, he's my footman--he's in livery."

"Well, you get him out of livery just as quick as you can--that's all."

Saturday, when I was talking with a young lady in Broadway, he touched
me on the shoulder and said: "How's this?" He was dressed like a Tartar
chief, and was shouldering a vast rat poison sign around.

I hunted everywhere for the fellow this morning, and found him at last
in full police uniform, lugging young women across Broadway, at the
junction of Vesey street. I was speechless, but he chirped out in his
cheerful way:

"Oh, no; this ain't no good thing, I don't reckon!" and seized a young
girl and charged through the confusion of vehicles with her, ordering
the drivers to stand still, and thus checking the tide of three miles of
commerce, and wasting hundreds of dollars' worth of mercantile time--for
you know when one cart stops there, the endless procession must wait
till it moves again. I have got to kill this fellow--I foresee that.

STEREOTYPING MACHINE

I have been examining a machine to-day, partly owned by a Californian,
which will greatly simplify, cheapen and expedite stereotyping. With
a single alphabet of type, arranged around a wheel, the most elaborate
book may be impressed, letter after letter, in plaster plates, ready for
the reception of the melted metal, and do it faster than a printer could
compose the matter. It works with a treadle and a bank of keys, like a
melodeon. It does away with cases of types, setting up and distributing,
and all the endless paraphernalia of a printing office. The little
machine could prepare Webster's Unabridged for the press in a space no
larger than a common bath-room. By this invention, a man could set up,
as a stereotyper, on a large scale, on a capital of $200. It will
either print or stereotype music with the utmost accuracy. An elaborate
"border" may be printed in three minutes, by repeated impressions of a
single type. The funniest part of it is that the inventor does not know
anything about the art of printing. But then he has invented all sorts
of curious machines (among them a flying-ship,) without any mechanical
education, and paints well in oils, and performs on the guitar and
piano without having ever received musical instruction. The stereotyping
machine has been patented in the United States, England and Prussia, and
is to be exhibited at the Paris Exposition. The patent rights have been
sold for fabulous sums. I send a rough specimen of the machine's work.

Alta California, April 9, 1867

New York,

March 2d, 1867.

GRAND EUROPEAN PLEASURE TRIP

PROMINENT Brooklynites are getting up a great European pleasure
excursion for the coming summer, which promises a vast amount of
enjoyment for a very reasonable outlay. The passenger list is filling up
pretty fast.

The steamer to be used will be fitted up comfortably and supplied with
a library, musical instruments and a printing-press--for a small
daily paper is to be printed on board. The ship is to have ample
accommodations for 150 cabin passengers, but in order that there may
be no crowding, she will only carry 110. The steamer fare is fixed at
$1,250, currency. The vessel will stop every day or two, to let the
passengers visit places of interest in the interior of the various
countries, and this will involve an additional expense of about $500 in
gold. The voyage will begin the 1st of June and end near the beginning
of November--five months--but may be extended by unanimous vote of the
passengers.

Outward bound, a day or two will be spent at Gibraltar, and about ten
days at Marseilles, which latter will give an opportunity of looking in
at the Paris fair. If desired, passengers may tarry longer at Paris, and
then pass down through Switzerland and rejoin the ship at Genoa, where
she will remain ten days. From Genoa, excursions will be made to Milan,
the Lakes of Como and Maggiore, and to Verona, Padua and Venice. Also,
the party may visit Parma, Bologna and Florence, and rejoin the vessel
at Leghorn. Pisa and Lucca can likewise be added to the programme. From
Leghorn to Naples the route will be along the coast of Italy, close
by Caprera, Elba and Corsica, and arrangements have been made to pay
Garibaldi a visit. Eight days will be spent at Naples, and visits will
be made to Herculaneum, Pompeii, Vesuvius, Virgil's tomb, and the ruins
of ancient Paestum. A day will next be spent at Palermo, in Sicily.
Thence through the group of Aeolian Isles, in sight of the volcanoes of
Stromboli and Vulcania, through the Straits of Messina, with Scylla on
the one hand and Charybdis on the other, along the east coast of Sicily,
and in sight of Mount Etna--along the south coast of Italy, the west and
south coast of Greece, in sight of ancient Crete, up Athens Gulf into
the Piraeus, Athens will be reached. A day will be given to Corinth, and
then the voyage will be extended through the Grecian Archipelago, the
Dardanelles, and the Sea of Marmora, to Constantinople. After a day or
two at the latter place, a sail through the Bosphorus and across the
Black Sea will bring the party to Sebastopol and Balaklava--thence back
again and along the coasts of ancient Troy and Lydia in Asia, to Smyrna,
from which point Ephesus will be visited. The steamer will stop at
Beirout and time allowed to visit Damascus, and then proceed to Joppa
and remain there ten or twelve days, so that the passengers can go to
Jericho--I mean to Jerusalem--and to the other side of Jordan, the Sea
of Tiberias, Nazareth, Bethany, Bethlehem, and other points of interest
in the Holy Land.

A stop of four or five days will be made at Alexandria, in Egypt, and
the ruins of Caesar's Palace, Pompey's Pillar, Cleopatra's Needle, the
Catacombs, the site of ancient Memphis, Joseph's Granaries, and the
Pyramids. They don't go to Cairo, but I do not mind that, because I
have been to Cairo once (in Illinois), and that was enough for the
subscriber.

In the remainder of the programme I find mention of such points as
Malta, Cagliari (in Sardinia), Palma (in Majorca), Valencia (in Spain),
Alicant, Carthagena, Palos, Malaga, Madeira, the Peak of Teneriffe, the
Bermudas, and so forth and so on, to the crack of doom.

A man may stay aboard the ship all the time if he wants to. It is
essentially a pleasure excursion, and so private caprices will be
allowed full scope. Isn't it a most attractive scheme? Five months of
utter freedom from care and anxiety of every kind, and in company with
a set of people who will go only to enjoy themselves, and will never
mention a word about business during the whole voyage. It is very
pleasant to contemplate.

"REV. MR. TWAIN"

I started down with a Tribune man to make some inquiries about this
trip. We met a friend and he said it was a very stylish affair, was not
gotten up for a speculation, it was not intended that its projectors
should make any money out of it, and that the character and standing
of every applicant for passage had to undergo the strictest assay by a
Committee before his money would be received and his name booked.
This was an appalling state of affairs. However, we went on, and were
received at the office of the concern with that distant politeness
proper toward men who travel muddy streets on foot, go unshaven, and
carry countenances like--like ours, for instance. My friend--Smith, for
short--said:

"I suppose you are the chief officer of the European pleasure excursion,
sir. We have called to make some inquiries about it. Allow me to
introduce the Rev. Mark Twain, who is a clergyman of some distinction,
lately arrived from San Francisco."

"I am glad to meet you, sir. Be seated, gentlemen. Twain--Twain-."

"Oh, you probably have not heard of me; I have latterly been in the
missionary business--

Smith, interrupting--"Oh, devil take it, don't use those villainous
slang expressions--you'll expose everything." And then he said aloud,
"Yes, he has been a missionary to the Sandwich Islands during a part of
the last year, but officiating in the open air has injured his health,
and--"

"And my congregation concluded to start me out traveling for my health.
I would like to take some stock--I mean I would like to ship--that
is, book my name for this pleasure trip. I hear that Mr. Beecher is
going--is that so?"

The reply was affirmative, and then Smith said:

"We felt some solicitude about that, because my friend would naturally
like to take part in the services on board, and we feared that
possibly Mr. Beecher might not be willing to permit ministers of other
denominations to do any of the preaching."

I said, with a show of humility: "Yes, that's it--I am only a Baptist,
you see, but I'd like to have a show."

"Oh, d----it!" Smith whispered, "you'll ruin everything with that
slang." Then aloud: "Yes, my friend is a Baptist clergyman, and we
feared that inasmuch as Mr. Beecher is a Universalist, he--"

"Universalist! Why, he is a Congregationalist. But never mind that--I
have no doubt he would be sincerely glad to have Mr. Twain assist him in
the vessel's pulpit at all times--no doubt in the world about that."

I had to laugh out strong, here I could not well help it. The idea of
my preaching time about with Beecher was so fresh, so entertaining, so
delightful. However, Smith said: "Now you are laughing again at that
same old occurrence up the street--well, it was funny." This saved
us from exposure, and I sat there and said no more, but listened
to instructive remarks about my missionary services and my Baptist
congregation in San Francisco till the misery of trying to keep from
laughing was unbearable, and we left.

I went back yesterday with another friend, acknowledged my true
occupation, entered my name for the voyage and paid the forfeit money
required to secure a berth--the remainder of the $1,250 is not to be
paid till the 15th of April, when all such accounts have to be squared.
I also left references as to my high moral character, for that Committee
"to chaw on," as Brown expressed it, and I do not envy them the job.
They have got about all they can attend to for the next six weeks to get
up a spotless character for me. If they succeed, I will get a copy of
it and have it framed. Among others, I referred to Rev. Mr. Damon, of
Honolulu, and it lies heavy on my conscience, because I stole a book
from him, which I have not returned yet. For my other references I
chose men of bad character, in order that my mild virtues might shine
luminously by contrast with their depravity. There was sagacity in the
idea. I expect to go on this excursion to the Holy Land and the chief
countries of Europe, provided I receive no vetoing orders from the
ALTA--and against all such I fervently protest beforehand.--[No veto. He
has been telegraphed to "go ahead."-EDS. ALTA.]

HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN!

Now that Barnum is running for Congress, anything connected with him is
imbued with a new interest. Therefore I went to his Museum yesterday,
along with the other children. There is little or nothing in the place
worth seeing, and yet how it draws! It was crammed with both sexes and
all ages. One could keep on going upstairs from floor to floor,
and still find scarcely room to turn. There are numerous trifling
attractions there, but if there was one grand, absorbing feature, I
failed to find it. There is a prodigious woman, eight feet high, and
well proportioned, but there was no one to stir her up and make her show
her points, so she sat down all the time. And there is a giant, also,
just her own size; but he appeared to be sick with love for her, and so
he sat morosely on his platform, in his astonishing military uniform,
and wrought no wonders. If I was impressario of that menagerie, I would
make that couple prance around some, or I would dock their rations.
Two dwarfs, unknown to fame, and a speckled negro, complete the list of
human curiosities. They profess to have a Circassian girl there, but I
could not find her. I think they have moved her out, to make room for
another peanut stand. In fact, Barnum's Museum is one vast peanut stand
now, with a few cases of dried frogs and other wonders scattered here
and there, to give variety to the thing. You can't go anywhere without
finding a peanut stand, and an impudent negro sweeping up hulls. When
peanuts and candy are slow, they sell newspapers and photographs of the
dwarfs and the giants.

There are some cages of ferocious lions, and other wild beasts, but they
sleep all the time. And also an automaton card writer; but something
about it is broken, and it don't go now. Also, a good many bugs, with
pins stuck through them; but the people do not seem to enjoy bugs
anymore. There is a photograph gallery in one room and an oyster saloon
in another, and some news depots and soda fountains, a pistol gallery,
and a raffling department for cheap jewelry, but not any barber shop. A
plaster of Paris statue of Venus, with little stacks of dust on her nose
and her eyebrows, stands neglected in a corner, and in some large glass
cases are some atrocious waxen images, done in the very worst style
of the art. Queen Victoria is dressed in faded red velvet and glass
jewelry, and has a bloated countenance and a drunken leer in her eye,
that remind one of convivial Mary Holt, when she used to come in from a
spree to get her ticket for the County Jail. And that accursed eye-sore
to me, Tom Thumb's wedding party, which airs its smirking imbecility in
every photograph album in America, is not only set forth here in ghastly
wax, but repeated! Why does not some philanthropist burn the Museum
again?

The Happy Family remains, but robbed of its ancient glory. A
poor, spiritless old bear--sixteen monkeys--half a dozen sorrowful
raccoons--two mangy puppies--two unhappy rabbits--and two meek Tom cats,
that have had half the hair snatched out of them by the monkeys, compose
the Happy Family--and certainly it was the most subjugated-looking party
I ever saw. The entire Happy Family is bossed and bullied by a monkey
that any one of the victims could whip, only that they lack the courage
to try it. He grabs a Tom cat by the nape of the neck and bounces him
on the ground, he cuffs the rabbits and the coons, and snatches his own
tribe from end to end of the cage by the tail. When the dinner-tub is
brought in, he gets bodily into it and the other members of the family
sit patiently around till his hunger is satisfied or steal a morsel and
get bored heels over head for it. The world is full of families as happy
as that. The boss monkey has even proceeded so far as to nip the tail
short off of one of his brethren, and now half the pleasures of the poor
devil's life are denied him, because he hain't got anything to hang
by. It almost moves one to tears to see that bob tailed monkey work his
stump and try to grab a beam with it that is a yard away. And when his
stump naturally misses fire and he falls, none but the heartless can
laugh. Why cannot he become a philosopher? Why cannot he console himself
with the reflection that tails are but a delusion and a vanity at best.

Barnum puts a play on his stage called the "Christian Martyr," and in
the third act all the mules and lions, and sheep, and tigers, and pet
bulls, and other ferocious wild animals, are marched about the stage
in grand procession preparatory to going through the Christian. In the
final act they throw the Christian into a cage with a couple of lions,
but they were asleep, and all the punching the Martyr could do, and all
the cursing he could get off under his breath failed to wake them; but
the ignorant Roman populace on the stage took their indifference for
Providential interference, and so they let the doomed Christian slide.
Barnum's lions prefer fresh beef to martyrs. I suspect they are of the
same breed as those we read of that were too stuck up to eat good old
Daniel.

Barnum's show is not a very good one. If he has no better show to get to
Congress, he ought to draw out of the canvass.

THE ARABIAN NIGHTS REPEATED

History repeats itself, and so does romance. There is something in the
"Arabian Nights," if my memory serves me, which is a little like the
incident I am going to set down here, with the difference that this is
true and the story in the book was doubtless an invention. Two weeks
ago, a woman in great distress, applied to a Ladies' Benevolent Society
here for means to bury her husband. They made due inquiry, and then gave
her the necessary amount of money. One of these ladies had for a long
time been praying to her Heavenly Father for a questionable blessing in
the shape of a child, and contracting that if her prayers were answered
she would perform some deed of notable benevolence as a stand-off.
Her prayers were answered in the most complimentary manner--she had
triplets. She had triplets, and naturally her husband shut down on her
devotions. But that has got nothing to do with my story. She heard of
this sorrowing woman, and she thought it a good time to comply with her
contract. She went to the house of mourning, and counted out one hundred
dollars in greenbacks on the dead man's coffin, and the weeping widow
blessed her. It is considered the fair thing here to pay praying debts
in greenbacks. The charitable lady had not been gone many minutes before
she discovered she had left her gloves behind her. She rushed back to
the abode of death, and found that infernal corpse sitting up in the
coffin, examining the greenbacks with a Bank Note Reporter! They plague
the benevolent lady a good deal, but she does not mind it. In fact, she
is rather proud of raising the dead with a handful of greenbacks.

THE GREAT MASQUERADE

The grand Bal d'Opera came off at the new Academy of Music last night. I
suppose there may have been ten or twelve hundred people present, but it
was hard to make estimate in so large a building. The great majority of
both sexes wore neither masks nor fancy costumes, and yet were allowed
to come on the floor long before the hour for unmasking. This had an
embarrassing effect, of course, and consequently what should have been a
hilarious carnival was a good deal more like a funeral for the first two
hours.

I got myself up in flowing royal robes, and purported to be a king of
some country or other, but I only felt like a highly ornamental butcher.
If everybody else felt as solemn and absurd as I did, they have my
sympathy. I could not dance with any comfort, because I was in danger
of tripping in my petticoats and breaking my neck every moment, and so I
deserted soon, and went to promenading in the broad halls in the rear of
the balconies. Dukes and princes, and queens and fairies met me at
every turn, and I might have managed to imagine myself in a land of
enchantment, but for remarks I was constantly overhearing. For instance,
I heard Joan of Arc say she would give the world for a mess of raw
oysters, and Martin Luther said he didn't feel well, because he had been
playing poker for the last forty-eight hours. The Wandering Jew chatted
and laughed like a school-girl, and vivacious Charles II. was as dismal
as an owl. Dukes and Emperors called each other "Jim" and "Joe," and
spoke in the most plebeian way of going out to take a drink. I even
heard the Queen of the Fairies say she wished she had some cheese. These
little things have a tendency to destroy the pleasant illusions created
by deceptive costumes.

I did not feel happy at that ball, but I never felt so particularly
unhappy in my life as I do at this moment.

Alta California, May 13,1867

St. Louis,

March 15th, 1867.

HAPPY

EDITORS ALTA: We took passage in the cars of the New Jersey Central at
8 P.M. of the 3d of March, and left port in the midst of a cheerful
snow-storm. I call it cheerful because there is something exquisitely
satisfactory in whistling along through a shrouded land, following
blindly wherever the demon in the lead may take you, yet sensible that
he knows the way, and will steer his unerring course as faithfully as if
it were noonday; sensible also that you are as safe there as anywhere,
sitting with back against the bulkhead, and feet crossed on the
next seat, and hat drawn down to shade the eyes from the lamp
overhead--sitting thus by the comfortable fire, smoking placidly and
dreaming of other times and other scenes, taking small heed of the
storm without, yet scarcely conscious that it is snowing and is blowing
drearily across the bleak moor as well, and that some people are out
there suffering in it, and distressed, but that you ain't; that, on the
contrary, you are perfectly happy, and tranquil, and satisfied, sitting
thus, and smoking, and dreaming, and being timed and soothed by the
clatter of the wheels--well, you know there is something unspeakably
comfortable about it.

UNHAPPY

That was the way I felt from eight till a little after twelve; (the
sleeping-cars were full and I had to sit up all night.) I had been
talking latterly to a young soldier who had been all through the wars,
from Bull Run to Lee's surrender--a beardless veteran full of battle
experiences and tales of camp and prison life and was now within
a hundred miles of his home, almost, for the first time in six
years--handsome, modest, honest, good-hearted boy of twenty-three, and
more ready to tell about his school-boy days than his six charges at
Antietam--but gone the warrior was, and I was alone. Then I began to
feel crampy a little, and then chilly--and presently I noticed that the
fire was very low, and remembered that I had seen no one doctor it for
over three hours. I got up and tried to open the stove door, but could
not do it. A drowsy neighbor said it was locked, to keep the passengers
from burning too much coal! I looked again, and found the keyhole--so
it was true. The man said this was done "on all them d----d Jersey
monopoler roads." I grew chilly fast, then, and gradually grew peevish
and fretful, also. I observed that the furniture was mean and old, and
that the train moved slowly, and stopped to land a passenger every three
hundred yards. After that, every time we stopped I cursed the railroad
till we started again, and that afforded me some little satisfaction. I
observed, also, that the usual mean man was aboard, who kept his window
a little open to distress his fellows. And after that I noticed how
fearfully dismal and unhappy the passengers looked, doubled up in
uncomfortable attitudes on short seats in the dim, funereal light--like
so many corpses, they looked, of people who had died of care and
weariness. And then I said I would rather walk than travel that route
again, and I wished the Company would burst up so completely that there
wouldn't be money enough left to give the Directors Christian burial,
but I hoped they might need it shortly.

I shall never be able to express how glad I was when the gray dawn stole
over the plain, and the sun followed and cheered the scene, and the
train stopped and I gave my limbs a grateful stretch, and steeped my
sorrowful soul in inspiring coffee.

INSIGNIFICANCE IN OFFICE

The conductor was pompous and discourteous, as natural wood-sawyers in
office are apt to be. Your dog with a brass collar with his master's
name on it, is ever prone to snub the undecorated dog. Brown plied the
fellow with questions at every opportunity, and scorned all rebuffs. He
asked him with fine irony, if that train ever ran by a town before
they could stop it; and when he was fiercely answered "No," he said he
thought such a thing might be possible, but he had not gone so far as
to consider it probable. And he wanted to know if this was the country
where the "Jersey lightning" of history came from, and if they had any
of it aboard that train. When we finally ran over a cow, he felt better
satisfied about the speed of the train, because, as he said, he knew we
must be going along tolerably lively else we could not have overtaken
the cow.

Brown said to the brakeman, "Your brother, the conductor, gets forty or
fifty thousand dollars a year, maybe, I reckon?"

"No-he gets ten or fifteen hundred, if it's anything to you."

"Possible? Why I wouldn't have thought that a man could afford to put on
forty-five thousand dollars' worth of frills for fifteen hundred without
losing money and getting discouraged."

PHOTOGRAPH OF PITTSBURG, ETC.

We got to Pittsburg at 2 P.M., 431 miles, 18 hours out, 25 miles an
hour. Pittsburg, as we saw it, is a vast, impenetrable bank of black
smoke, and two or three long bridges stretching across a river. It is
very picturesque. All through Pennsylvania the houses looked old and
shabby--that is, all through the country.

We supped at Alliance, Ohio, and took sleeping cars for Indianapolis.
And what a luxury the berth was, both in anticipation and reality!
Knowing I had a bed sure, I had no occasion to hurry. So I smoked till
three in the morning and then undressed and turned in. It was a sort
of palace. The berth was wide enough for three, and I had the whole
stateroom to myself. I compelled Brown to sit up all night, so that he
could come and tell me in case the train ran off the track.

It was worth the forty hours I had gone without sleep to feel the
luxury of lying down between clean sheets and stretching out at full
length--and drawing up and stretching out again--and turning over and
fetching another celestial stretch. The music of the wheels was so
tranquilizing, too. I dropped off to sleep, lulled by the ceaseless
racket, and woke up at Indianapolis at 9 A.M.

I will mention here that one does not need a map to tell him when he
crosses the boundary of one State and enters another. He can discover it
in a moment by the appearance of the passengers that come on board. If
they had Ohio or Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana or Illinois written
on their foreheads, one could not detect their abiding places much
easier.

From Indianapolis to St. Louis we did as we had from the first--stopped
at some shanty or other every fifteen minutes to discharge or take
in forty cents worth of passengers, and if there is anything more
aggravating than that, I do not know what it is. We reached St. Louis,
eleven hundred miles from New York, fifty-two hours out, and if we had
come straight through we might have done it in half the time. I went
straight home and sat up till breakfast time, talking and telling other
lies.

CALIFORNIANS

I find S. R. Weed, an ancient California newspaper man, of the days
when Kendall and Frank Soule, and some of the rest of you were in
your frolicsome youth. He is in the insurance business now, but still
corresponds with the ALTA and the New York Tribune, and sends telegrams
to the Chicago Tribune, Cincinnati Commercial and New Orleans Times. He
was on the Democrat here for a long time, and they say that he was war
correspondent of the Herald and Tribune both for four years, and worked
up his battles so differently for each, by making them rebel victories
for one and Union victories for the other, that he was not suspected by
his employers. He is doing quite a lively insurance trade now, and is
gradually cutting loose from newspaperdom.

Mose Flannigan, formerly of San Francisco, owns considerably in the
Olympic Theatre here, and built it.

This reminds me that Felix McClusky, another San Franciscan, and an
innocent, matter-of-fact man, is in Washington, and holds, or did hold,
an office there which did not require that its occupant should know
more than thirty-five or forty men ought to know--he had charge of the
heating apparatus of the Capitol. They say that he had a steam engine in
his department which he was very proud of, and was always showing it and
expatiating upon it to visitors. One day one of these asked him what its
capacity was--how many horse-power? "Horse-power, h--l!" he says, "it
goes by steam!"

And that reminds me about an anecdote concerning Gen. Sherman, who
is now a resident of St. Louis. On his march down toward Atlanta,
he constantly astonished the rebels with the facility with which he
restored the railroad bridges they destroyed at his approach. They would
annihilate a bridge just before he arrived, and the next morning there
it was again, just as it had been before they touched it. At last a
light dawned upon them. The original plans for the bridges had all been
furnished from Cleveland, Ohio, and before Sherman started he took those
plans, had each bridge duplicated in all its timbers and iron work, took
the pieces in a "shook" state on his trains, and so, when he found a
bridge gone, he had nothing to do but get its mate out of the freight
cars, bolt it together, and put it up. This thing worried the rebels a
good deal when they found it out. One day they proposed to destroy the
Dalton tunnel, to hinder Sherman's march, but an exasperated Confederate
said: "What in the nation's the use? That d----d old Sherman's prob'ly
fetched another one along with him from Cleveland!"

SOCIABLES

Sociables appear to be the rage here. They are pretty well named. From
fifty to a hundred lady members of a church meet at a private house, or
in the lecture-room of a church, and all day long they sew--all day
long they make pink cravats and ruffled shirts for the poor heathen in
distant lands, and discuss their neighbors' characters, likely, and at
night they serve up an elegant ungodly supper of cold turkey and salads
and hot coffee and pies, and about that time a crowd of gentlemen arrive
and each lady is privileged to choose any gentleman she pleases and
escort him down to the table and wait on him. And after that they talk
and get more and more sociable until an hour of unchristian lateness,
and then they go home satisfied that they have been helping the poor
heathen along powerfully. They go home feeling as the girl felt when the
Minister asked her how she felt when he was wading out with her after
baptizing her and washing her pure of the sins that had so long stained
her girlish innocence. She said she felt bully. The sociables are
usually held on Thursday evenings, and each congregation gives one every
week or two. They are considered to be altogether the pleasantest things
yet invented for the comfort of people who are debarred from the charms
of the dance and the intoxicating bottle.

CHARACTERISTIC

In San Francisco, as soon as you arrive, some friend hails: "How
d'y--do?--When'd-you get down?--How's things in the mountains?--When you
going back?--Howd-you like Sanfcisco?--Take a drink?--So-long; see you
again."

In New York they say: "Ah, when'd you arrive?--How long you going to
stay?--How do you like New York?--Good morning."

Here they say: "Hello! glad to see you, by George!--When'd you get
here?--Why, you look as natural as a cow!--How do you like St. Louis
since you got back?--Come, go to my room; want to have a smoke with
you."

But, don't you observe, they all ask that same old question: "How do
you like San Francisco?--How do you like New York?--How do you like St.
Louis?" It is almighty aggravating. Cannot people think of something
else besides that? It wouldn't make any difference if only one or two
people asked the question; but to be bored with it twenty times a day is
insufferable. It has set me to speculating about the other world. A man
who has lived a long life, and been around a good deal, will probably
meet as many as twenty or thirty thousand people there he was acquainted
with on earth; they say we shall preserve our natural instincts--now,
think of being bored all through Paradise or perdition with that same
wretched old question of "how you like it." Why, it wouldn't make any
difference which locality you landed in--you would get so harried and
badgered that you would wish you had gone to the other place. And yet,
that would not mend the matter, because communication is open between
the two. You remember that Dives easily recognized Lazarus, and hailed
him. I wish I knew if Lazarus asked--however, it is no matter. The
subject distresses me beyond measure. I do wish they would invent a
new formula to inflict on strangers, because even if it were no more
interesting than the old one, it would at least bear the evanescent
charm of novelty. I hate that question as I do the hackneyed topic of
the weather. However, when one is tired hating anything he can always go
to bed. I will.

THE "EUCHRE HORNS"

P.S.--But I must not go to bed till I have spoken of the "Euchre Horns."
This is what they would call a "stag" sociable in the mountains. Twelve
to sixteen or twenty gentlemen, composing the Euchre Horns' Club, meet
once a week at each other's residences and play euchre for a little of
gilded and ribboned deer horns. The partners first scoring seventeen
games are declared champions. Two gentlemen may then challenge them for
the next meeting. Of course, all the other parties are playing in the
meantime, but only for amusement. A party challenging for the horns and
failing to win them, cannot challenge again for several meetings. This
gives all a chance in turn. This Club has existed over two years, and
its records have been strictly kept in a small minute book. One brace of
gentlemen held the horns for six successive meetings.

These are the very pleasantest entertainments I have attended in a long
time. There are no ladies present, and so you haven't got to be kept
under the tiresome restraints of proper conduct all the time. The ladies
of the house stay in the dining room, where wines and a cold collation
are set out, and wait on the gentlemen, who drop in in small squads
every now and then to refresh between games. You are not obliged to go
in every time you finish a game, but then it is just as convenient to
do it, and it makes things more uniform, you know. I never have won the
horns yet, but I always beat the free lunch.

The items of each contest are published in the morning papers next day.

Suppose you try the Euchre Horns in San Francisco? You might make it the
Poker Horns if Euchre is too mild.

Alta California, May 19, 1867

St. Louis,

March 25th, 1867.

AT HOME AGAIN

EDITORS ALTA: I landed here in my old home more than three weeks ago,
and have been very busy visiting old friends ever since. The changes
that years have wrought in the city are not apparent to me. It is
because they have chiefly been made at both ends of the town, and I have
not been out of its centre yet. And, also, the buildings that have been
put up all through my part of the city are so blackened and begrimed
with coal smoke that I cannot persuade myself that I have not been
perfectly familiar with them in the old times. When I left St. Louis she
had a population of 150,000, and they called it 175,000; now she has a
population of 204,000, and they call it 250,000. But you will admit
that an increase of over fifty thousand in less than seven years is
remarkable for an inland town.

Bremen and Carondelet are great cities now, and are so knitted to the
main city that the dividing lines are obliterated. They tell me that one
may ride ten or twelve miles in a straight line north and south without
changing street cars--I mean to test the truth of it.

One of the things that is constantly surprising me is the way the
reality diminishes sizes and distances that have been lying on record
in my memory so long. In my recollection, the Court House was something
prodigious--almost awe-inspiring; but when I came to look at it the
other day, it had shrunken so much that I could not understand how it
had ever held so large a place in my memory. The house I had always
lived in had undergone the same wonderful process of seeming reduction.
But you who have revisited your homes, after years of absence,
understand this.

Localities which, in my memory, were long distances apart, I am
astounded to find close together now. I start out for a moderate walk,
and am amazed to find myself at the Mound or the Shot Tower--and right
in town at that. Or I go in another direction and stumble on the Soulard
Market, when I thought it was miles away. I find the Cave, and Camp
Springs, and La fayette Park, when I am no more expecting them than I
am expecting to stumble upon Great Salt Lake City. Why, sixteen or
seventeen years ago, nobody thought of walking to these distant places;
we made important Sunday excursions to them in omnibuses, at long
intervals.

WHERE THE CHANGE IS

I find no change of consequence in grown people, I do not miss the dead.
It does not surprise me to hear that this friend or that friend died at
such and such a time, because I fully expected that sort of news. But
somehow I had made no calculation on the infants. It had never occurred
to me that infants grow up to be men and women in the course of years,
and so I caught myself making such inquiries as, "Well, how is little
Johnny; does he eat as much candy as ever?" and getting replies that
made me feel inexpressibly old--such as, "No, little Johnny is married
now, and is Captain of a steamboat." Infants I had not seen for twelve
or fifteen years had remained infants to me during all that time. These
unexpected changes, from infancy to youth, and from youth to maturity,
are by far the most startling things I meet with. Girls I used to trot
on my knee could trot me that way now, if they wanted to--but somehow
they don't. I meet these infants every day; and in place of the little
short dresses and bibs and neglected noses I cherished in my memory,
I find stately women, and long trails, and awful waterfalls. It is
perfectly stunning. However, I am generally allowed a kiss for old
acquaintance sake, and I am sorry now that I didn't know all the female
babies in the country when I left. One of my old sweethearts I have been
dreaming of so long has got five children now. It was a great blow to
me. If she had had fifty I couldn't have stood it at all.

STEAMBOATING

I find the long levee bordered with steamboats its entire length, as
formerly, and now that the Mobile and Ohio Railroad is mostly under
water, they are doing a heavy business South. The other river trades
are good also. A great daily line of splendid boats, which connects with
European steamers at New Orleans, does most of the carrying, both in
freight and passengers, but it has not paid, and it is thought that the
company will sell out this summer and quit.

The lower river boats are being made larger and larger every year.
The Great Republic, just finished at Louisville, will carry in the
neighborhood of three thousand tons--possibly more; even her Custom
House measurement is twenty-five hundred tons. The largest load I ever
saw one steamboat take into New Orleans was eighteen hundred tons, and
that was bragged about for a long time.

FEMALE SUFFRAGE

The women of Missouri have started a sensation on their own hook. They
are petitioning the Legislature to so provide for the amending of the
Constitution as to extend to them the privilege of voting (along with
us and the nigs., you know). They published one of these petitions a few
days ago, with about two hundred names to it, and among them were those
of some of the best known and most influential ladies of St. Louis.
Thirty-nine members of the Legislature have declared in favor of the
movement. Don't you know that such a showing as that is amazing, in view
of the colossal dimensions of the proposed innovation? It strikes
me that way. If four or five hen-pecked husbands, or badgered and
bully-ragged old bachelors, had been driven into a support of the
measure, nobody would have been surprised; but when the list soars up to
thirty-nine, it is time for all good men to tremble for their country.

I attacked the monster in the public prints, and raised a small female
storm, but it occurred to me that it might get uncommon warm for one
poor devil against all the crinoline in the camp, and so I antied up and
passed out, as the Sabbath School children say.

I don't want to say much about this subject in the ALTA, because the
ladies may take it up on the Pacific next, and I don't want to get
myself into trouble there also.

PREACHING AGAIN

I went to church twice last Sunday, and to Sunday School three times
(all my folks live here, and I have got to go mighty slow, you know;
I infest all the prayer meetings and church "sociables," and conduct
myself in a manner which is as utterly unexceptionable as it is
outrageously irksome. I have kept up my lick so far, as the missionaries
say, but I don't think I can stand it much longer. I never could bear to
be respectable long at a stretch). Sunday afternoon, the Superintendent
of one of those populous Sunday Schools came around to my pew and
asked me if I had ever had any experience in instructing the young--in
addressing Sunday Schools. I said, "My son, it is my strong suit." (I
was still keeping up my lick, as the missionaries say.)

He said he would be glad if I would get up in the altar and make a few
remarks, and I said it would be the proudest moment of my life. So I got
up there and told that admiring multitude all about Jim Smiley's Jumping
Frog; and I will do myself the credit to say that my efforts were
received with the most rapturous applause, and that those of the solemn
deacon's to stop it were entirely unheeded by the audience. I honestly
intended to draw an instructive moral from that story, but when I got
to the end of it I couldn't discover that there was any particular moral
sticking out around it anywhere, and so I just let it slide. However,
it don't matter. I suppose those children will cipher a moral out of
it somehow, because they are so used to that sort of thing. I gained my
main point, anyhow, which was to make myself respected in California,
because you know you cannot help but respect a man who makes speeches to
Sunday Schools, and devotes his time to instructing youth.

I did not intend to lecture in St. Louis, but I got a call to do
something of that kind for the benefit of a Sunday School; and as long
as I had to keep up my lick anyway, I thought I had better go ahead. So
I preached twice in the Mercantile Library Hall. I haven't vanity enough
to print all that the newspapers said, but I will venture to extract a
fourth of the Republican's notice:

"The audience was large and appreciative, and financially and every
other way, the entertainment proved a complete success. In fact, Mark
Twain achieved a very decided success. He succeeded in doing what we
have seen Emerson and other literary magnates fail in attempting--he
interested and amused a large and promiscuous audience. We shall attempt
no synopsis of his entertainment. Ostensibly it was on the Sandwich
Islands but while it contained not a little valuable information and
many passages of felicitous description, it also embraced many other
topics geographically and otherwise foreign to the matter in hand, and
had many a piquant piece of humor interwoven, which, with the bright
flash of genuine wit, startled with laughter and kept alive the
attention of the audience."

I think that is pretty complimentary, considering that when I delivered
that lecture I was not acquainted with a single newspaper man in St.
Louis. I do not do anything here but gad around among old friends. But
if you want to know the places where audiences are jolly, and where they
snap up a joke before you can fairly get it out of your mouth, they are
St. Louis, San Francisco, San Jose and Carson City.

BAD GOVERNMENT

The Mayor of St. Louis is elected by the people, and the Board of
Police Commissioners is appointed by the Governor of the State. The
Commissioners appoint the Chief of Police, the Street Inspector, the
police force, etc. This plan pretty effectually prevents the turning
of the police part of the City Government into a machine for hoisting
demagogues and politicians into power, and is a good feature. But for
some reason or other the Mayor and the Commissioners have fallen out
with each other and do nothing but fight like cats and dogs all the
time. One party accuses the other of all sorts of outrageous things in
newspaper publications, and the next day out comes a furious reply
from the other side. It spices our breakfast handsomely, anyhow. The
Commissioners say that during the cholera season, when people were dying
so fast that carts were sent around and dead bodies dumped in by the
dozen without the formality of being shrouded first, the Mayor kept two
hundred corpses stacked up on a sandbar at the lower end of the city,
and refused for four days to let them be buried by the servants of the
city--said it was the county government's place to bury them; the county
held out obstinately, and so did the Mayor; so the Commissioners had to
fill a detachment of policemen full of whiskey, so that they wouldn't
mind the lively flavor of the departed, and stand guard over them as
long as they held together, and they say that all those twenty-two
policemen had to be kept full of whiskey during all that four days at
a ruinous expense--and you know yourself that you could bury a whole
community for less money than it would cost to keep twenty-two policemen
in soak for four days. It stands to reason that you could. And finally,
the citizens in the neighborhood, not being fortified with whiskey,
began to consider the perfume from the dead-house as rather
disagreeable, and so they went to work and burned it down, with all its
fearful cargo. Since I have been in the city, the child of an indigent
woman has lain four days unburied because of this quarrel between the
police, the Mayor, and the county. However, the child was not dead, and
so I suppose there wasn't really any occasion to bury it. But it showed
the animus of the thing, you know. The Commissioners say the Mayor
shelters the gamblers and thieves, protects them from arrest when he
can, and gets them out of prison when they are incarcerated. In return,
the Mayor says the Commissioners do not make the Street Officer do his
duty; that dead-falls and pit-holes are left exposed everywhere, with
not even a lantern near them at night to warn the stranger; says they
lie about him, and never attend to their own duties; and he says he
disguised himself one night and walked eighty squares without ever
finding a policeman, except a squad of half a dozen, whom he caught
warming themselves at a stove in a gin-mill. I guess that story is
pretty straight. You know yourself that when a policeman is cold he is
going to hunt a place to warm himself the first thing, and when he is
warm he will skirmish around for a cool place; and whenever things get
dull, and he can't find anything in the world to do to pass away the
time, he will just get reckless and go on his beat awhile, maybe. You
can't tell me anything about the police, because I know them by the
back. I like the police well enough, but I don't consider it judgment to
bet on them.

This Mayor here is a mighty plain-spoken man. He wrote to the Convention
that he had never sought an office and never wanted one; that he had
served two terms as Mayor, but never thanked the people for electing
him, and never thanked the Convention for nominating him; said he
didn't want the office now and wouldn't thank them to nominate him, and
wouldn't thank the people if they elected him. He wanted that understood
plainly beforehand--he was not going to be under obligations to anybody.
And they went ahead, nevertheless, and nominated him by a vote of about
ten to one. He will be elected, I suppose, and if he has got a spark of
humanity in him he will start a graveyard on his own private account to
bury disputed corpses in.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The public schools of St. Louis are in a far more flourishing condition
than those of any other Southern city or state. A two mill tax and the
revenues from ample school lands furnish all the money necessary to
build or rent all the school-houses needed, and furnish them with
teachers and other furniture. The total value of property used for
school purposes in St. Louis is $533,440.95. The average number of
teachers employed is 204; the number of pupils enrolled is 14,556--this
is an increase of 5,000 in nine years. Two-thirds of the pupils were
born in St. Louis. The Normal School shows a graduating class of twenty
six this year. The High School graduating class numbers twenty seven.
The total number of public school-houses in the city is thirty.

The Superintendent's Report, now before me, says of the colored schools
ordered by State law, that "the efforts of the Board to establish
schools for colored children have not as yet been successful," but that
a special committee has been ordered to rent proper buildings and open
such schools without any delay that can possibly be avoided. The new
Webster and Carroll school-houses, just completed, rank among the finest
edifices in the city. They cost respectively $35,000 and $40,000.

As to wages of teachers, the female Principal of the Normal School
gets $2,000 a year; one female assistant $1,100 and one $850. The male
Principal of the High School gets $2,750; one male assistant, $2,000;
three male assistants, $1,700 each; one female assistant, $1,200; two
female assistants, $1,000 each, and another $700. Nine male Principals
of the District Schools get $1,700 each; three others $1,500 each; three
female Principals get $l,000 each; eight female Principals get $900
each; and then there is a whole raft of small-fry female teachers who
get from $550 to $700. Two music teachers get $1,500 each.

They don't teach French or Latin or such things in the District
Schools, but they run a good deal of German and mental arithmetic, and
a new-fangled study they call Moral Culture. I don't recollect it in our
school.

Alta California, May 26, 1867

New York,

APRIL 16, 1867.

NOTABLE THINGS IN ST. LOUIS

EDITORS ALTA: Well, I had to bid good-bye to St. Louis at last. I found
it and left it the same happy, cheerful, contented old town--a town
where the people are kind and polite, even to strangers--where you can
go into a business house you never saw before and speak to a man you
never heard of before, and get a perfectly civil answer. It reminded me
of the Pacific Coast.

Of course I noticed some little unusual odds and ends of things that set
me to thinking. I heard people say "prink" to express that they had been
"fixing up;" and heard them say they had been "peeking" through a
crack, for instance, instead of "peeping;" and heard them say "cal'late"
instead of "reckon" (which latter is a perfectly legitimate word, as the
ALTA readers may see by reference to the 18th verse of the 8th chapter
of Romans;) and heard them say "I admire to do so and so," (which is
barbarous;) and heard them say "bosket" for basket, and "gloss" for
glass; and "be you goin' home" for "are you going home;"--and heard them
say "she is quite pretty" when they meant "she is right pretty"--the
one expressing perfection and the other merely a degree of excellence.
I heard those and many other unhappy provincialisms which warned me
that many New England people have gone westward and are going to mar the
ancient purity of the Missourian dialect if somebody don't put a stop
to it. But the funniest thing to me was to hear those same immigrants
criticising our manner of speaking, and calling attention to what they
honestly considered infelicities of language on our part. I couldn't
stand that right well.

And I noticed and was glad to see that the Nicolson pavement was used a
good deal in St. Louis.

And I also noticed that the ladies did not dress in full fashion--which
is a thing that always distresses me. No woman can look as well out of
the fashion as in it.

And I noticed that the children in St. Louis have thin legs as a general
thing. You see they haven't any hills to climb.

And I noticed that few young men were bald-headed--which is not the case
on the Pacific Coast.

And I noticed that whenever people hadn't anything to do, they washed
their hands. They use a great deal of coal there, and the air is always
filled with invisible coal-dust that soils everything it touches.

And I noticed that flour was nineteen dollars a barrel.

And I observed that the political bitternesses engendered during the
war are still about as strong as they ever were. Individual friends
and whole families of old tried friends are widely separated yet--don't
visit and don't hold any intercourse with each other. If you give a
dinner party for either gentlemen or ladies, or both, it is much the
best policy to invite Democrats only or Republicans only. Even Church
congregations are organized, not on religious but on political
bases; and the Creed begins, "I believe in Abraham Lincoln, the
Martyr-President of the United States," or, "I believe in Jefferson
Davis, the founder of the Confederate States of America." The genuine
Creeds begin that way, although to keep up appearances they still go
through the motions and use the ancient formula, "I believe in Jesus
Christ," etc.

And one of the pleasantest things I noticed was, that those
old-fashioned twilights still remain, and enrich all the landscape with
a dreamy vagueness for two hours after the sun has gone down. It is such
a pity they forgot to put in the twilight when they made the Pacific
Coast. And it is another pity that they forgot to put in any splendid
sunsets, too, when the country is so large, and there would have been
such a fine opening for them.

UP THE MISSISSIPPI

I went up to Hannibal, Quincy and Keokuk, on the Upper Mississippi.
The first and the last named are enjoying a season of rest, but not
refreshment--the railroads have stricken them dead for a year or two,
and I cannot help fearing for Quincy also, now that she is going to
build a bridge and let her trade cross the Mississippi, and go through
without stopping. St. Louis is doing the same, and somebody has got to
suffer for it some day, no doubt.

The railroads have badly crippled the trade of the Keokuk packets, too.
They used to go crowded with passengers and freight all the time, but
they have room and to spare now. And they don't set a good table any
more, either. They never did set a very good table, for that matter,
but it was at least better than it is now. Their officers are princes,
though.

HANNIBAL--BY A NATIVE HISTORIAN

Hannibal has had a hard time of it ever since I can recollect, and I was
"raised" there. First, it had me for a citizen, but I was too young then
to really hurt the place. Next, Jimmy Finn, the town drunkard, reformed,
and that broke up the only saloon in the village. But the temperance
people liked it; they were willing enough to sacrifice public prosperity
to public morality. And so they made much of Jimmy Finn--dressed him
up in new clothes, and had him out to breakfast and to dinner, and so
forth, and showed him off as a great living curiosity--a shining example
of the power of temperance doctrines when earnestly and eloquently set
forth. Which was all very well, you know, and sounded well, and looked
well in print, but Jimmy Finn couldn't stand it. He got remorseful about
the loss of his liberty; and then he got melancholy from thinking about
it so much; and after that, he got drunk. He got awfully drunk in the
chief citizen's house, and the next morning that house was as if
the swine had tarried in it. That outraged the temperance people and
delighted the opposite faction. The former rallied and reformed Jim once
more, but in an evil hour temptation came upon him, and he sold his
body to a doctor for a quart of whiskey, and that ended all his earthly
troubles. He drank it all at one sitting, and his soul went to its
long account and his body went to Dr. Grant. This was another blow to
Hannibal. Jimmy Finn had always kept the town in a sweat about something
or other, and now it nearly died from utter inanition.

After this, Joe Dudding, a reckless speculator, started a weekly stage
to the town of Florida, thirty miles away, where a couple of families
were living, and Hannibal revived very perceptibly under this wild new
sensation.

But then the scarlet fever came, and the hives, and between them they
came near hiving all the children in the camp. And so Hannibal took
another back-set. But pretty soon a weekly newspaper was started, which
bred a fierce spirit of enterprise in the neighboring farmers, because
when they had any small potatoes left over that they couldn't sell, they
didn't throw them away as they used to do, but they took them to the
editor and traded them off for subscriptions to his paper. But finally
the potato-rot got him, and Hannibal was floored again.

However, somebody started a pork-house, and the little village showed
signs of life once more. And then came the measles and blighted it. It
stayed blighted a good while, too.

After a while they got to talking about building a plank road to New
London, ten miles away, and after another while, they built it. This
made business. Then they got excited and built a gravel road to Paris,
30 or 40 miles. More business. They got into a perfect frenzy and talked
of a railroad--an actual railroad--a railroad 200 miles long--a railroad
from Hannibal to St. Joseph! And behold, in the fullness of time--in ten
or fifteen years--they built it.

A sure enough prosperity burst upon the community, now. Property went
up. It was noted as a significant fact that instead of selling town-lots
by the acre people began to sell them by the front foot. Hannibal grew
fast--doubled its population in two years, started a daily paper or two,
and came to be called a city--sent for a fire engine and had her out,
bedecked with ribbons, on Fourth of July, but the engine-house burned
down one night and destroyed her, which cast a gloom over the whole
community. And they started militia companies, and Sons of Temperance
and Cadets of Temperance. Hannibal always had a weakness for the
Temperance cause. I joined the Cadets myself, although they didn't allow
a boy to smoke, or drink or swear, but I thought I never could be
truly happy till I wore one of those stunning red scarfs and walked in
procession when a distinguished citizen died. I stood it four months,
but never an infernal distinguished citizen died during the whole time;
and when they finally pronounced old Dr. Norton convalescent (a man I
had been depending on for seven or eight weeks,) I just drew out. I drew
out in disgust, and pretty much all the distinguished citizens in the
camp died within the next three weeks.

Well, Hannibal's prosperity seemed to be of a permanent nature, but St.
Louis built the North Missouri Railroad and hurt her, and Quincy tapped
the Hannibal and St. Joe in one or two places, which hurt her still
worse, and then the war came, and the closing years of it almost
finished her.

Now they are trying to build a branch railroad to some place in the
interior they call Moberly, at a cost of half a million, and if that
fails some of the citizens will move. They only talk Moberly now. The
church members still talk about religion, but they mix up a good deal
of Moberly in it. The young ladies talk fashion and Moberly, and the
old ones talk of charity and temperance, piety, the grave, and Moberly.
Hannibal will get Moberly, and it will save her. It will bring back the
old prosperity. But won't they have to build another road to protect the
Moberly? and another and another to protect each enterprise of the kind?
A railroad is like a lie--you have to keep building to it to make it
stand. A railroad is a ravenous destroyer of towns, unless those towns
are put at the end of it and a sea beyond, so that you can't go further
and find another terminus. And it is shaky trusting them, even then, for
there is no telling what may be done with trestle-work. Which reminds me
of

JIM TOWNSEND'S TUNNEL

He was a stockholder in the "Daly" mine, in Virginia City, and he heard
that his Company had let a contract to run a tunnel two hundred and
fifty feet to strike the ledge. He visited the premises, and found a man
starting a tunnel in very near the top of a very sharp hill. He said:

"You're the man that's got the contract to run this tunnel, I reckon?"

"Yes."

"Two hundred and fifty feet, I hear?"

"Yes."

"Well, it's going to be a mighty troublesome tunnel--and expensive."

"Why?"

"Because you've got to build the last hundred and sixty five feet of it
on trestle-work--it's only eighty-five feet through the hill!"

KEOKUK AND QUINCY

The ups and downs I have exaggerated a little in Hannibal's case will
fit a good many towns in the Mississippi Valley, and Marysville and one
or two others on the Pacific Coast. Keokuk, Iowa, was one of the most
stirring and enterprising young cities in America seven years ago, but
railroads and land speculations killed it in a single night, almost, and
for six years it has been sleeping. It is reviving, now, though, and a
new and vigorous prosperity is promised it. Its chances are more to be
depended upon than Hannibal's, I think.

But Quincy is a wonderful place. It has always thrived--sometimes slowly
and steadily, sometimes with a rush--but always making an unquestionable
progress. It claims a population of 25,000 now, and it looks as if
the claim were well founded. It is the second city of Illinois, in
population, business, activity and enterprise, and high promise for the
future. I have small faith in their project of bridging the Mississippi,
but they ought to know their own business.

I spent a night at General Singleton's--one of the farmer princes of
Illinois--he lives two miles from Quincy, in a very large and elegantly
furnished house, and does an immense farming business and is very
wealthy. He lights his house with gas made on the premises--made from
the refuse of petroleum, by pressure. The apparatus could be stowed in
a bath-room very conveniently. All you have to do is to pour a gallon or
two of the petroleum into a brass cylinder and give a crank a couple of
turns and the business is done for the next two days. He uses seventy
burners in his house, and his gas bills are only a dollar and a quarter
a week. I don't take any interest in prize bulls, astonishing jackasses
and prodigious crops, but I took a strong fancy to that gas apparatus.

Alta California, June 2, 1867

New York,

April 19th, 1867.

THE MORMONS

EDITORS ALTA: The Mormons were holding a grand pow-wow at Keokuk, when
I was there a week ago, the object of which was to devise ways and means
of ousting Brigham Young from office and putting young Joe Smith in his
place. Four hundred of the Saints were present, from various places in
Missouri and Illinois, and young Joe, a simple, well-meaning, and very
dull preacher was with them. They came to town dressed in homely jeans,
and bringing horns, and cymbals, and trumpets and all the ungodly
paraphernalia of their choir service as I used to hear it performed in
the Mormon Church in St. Louis years ago. They are good, honest people,
believe thoroughly in their religion, and are earnest in their hope of
getting Joe Smith placed at the head of the whole Church. They say
they will accomplish it. They call Brigham a wicked imposter and his
new-fangled Mormonism a swindle. They claim that polygamy is not a tenet
of genuine Mormonism.

It is strange how this lost tribe has kept its faith through so many
years of sorrow and disaster. These are people who were scattered in
tents for miles and miles along the roads through Iowa when the Mormons
were driven out of Nauvoo with fire and sword, twenty-five years ago.
Their heavy misfortunes appealed so movingly to the kindly instincts of
the Iowa people that they rescued them from starvation, and gave them
houses and food and employment, and gradually they became absorbed into
the population and lost sight of--forgotten entirely, in fact, till
this Convention of young Joe's called them out, and then from every
unsuspected nook and cranny crept a Mormon--a Mormon who had for many
a year been taken for a Baptist, or a Methodist, or some other kind of
Christian.

But young Joe had better look out, for it has been a well credited rumor
in Keokuk for two years or more that Brigham has set a price upon his
head and keeps a destroying angel or so on his track all the time, ready
to kill him when the opportunity offers. And they say that if these
Mormons were to start to Salt Lake, young Joe would never get out of
sight of Council Bluffs alive.

BAD HOTEL, BUT GIFTED PORTER

I stopped at the Heming House in Keokuk. It used to be a good hotel, but
that proves nothing--I used to be a good boy, for that matter. Both of
us have lost character of late years. The Heming is not a good hotel.
The Heming lacks a very great deal of being a good hotel. Perdition is
full of better hotels than the Heming.

It was late at night when I got there, and I told the clerk I would
like plenty of lights, because I wanted to read an hour or two. When I
reached No. 15 with the porter, (we came along a dim hall that was clad
in ancient carpeting, faded, worn out in many places, and patched with
old scraps of oil cloth--a hall that sank under one's feet, creaked
dismally to every footstep,) he struck a light--two inches of sallow,
sorrowful, consumptive tallow candle, that burned blue, and sputtered,
and got discouraged and went out. The porter lit it again, and I asked
if that was all the light the clerk sent. He said, "Oh no, I've got
another one here," and he produced another couple of inches of tallow
candle. I said, "Light them both--I'll have to have one to see the other
by." He did it, but the result was drearier than darkness itself. He
was a cheery, accommodating rascal. He said he would go "somewheres"
and steal a lamp. I abetted and encouraged him in his criminal design.
I heard the landlord get after him in the hall ten minutes afterward.
"Where are you going with that lamp?" "Fifteen wants it, sir."

"Fifteen! why he's got a double lot of candles--does the man want
to illuminate the house?--does he want to get up a torchlight
procession?--what is he up to, anyhow?"

"He don't like them candles--says he wants a lamp."

"Why what in the nation does--why I never heard of such a thing? What on
earth can he want with that lamp?"

"Well, he on'y wants to read--that's what he says."

"Wants to read, does he?--ain't satisfied with a thousand candles, but
has to have a lamp!--I do wonder what the devil that fellow wants that
lamp for? Take him another candle, and then if--"

"But he wants the lamp--says he'll burn the d----d old house down if he
don't get a lamp!" (a remark which I never made.)

"I'd like to see him at it once. Well, you take it along--but I swear
it beats my time, though--and see if you can't find out what in the very
nation he wants with that lamp."

And he went off growling to himself and still wondering and wondering
over the unaccountable conduct of No. 15. The lamp was a good one, but
it revealed some disagreeable things--a bed in the suburbs of a desert
of room--a bed that had hills and valleys in it, and you'd have to
accommodate your body to the impression left in it by the man that slept
there last, before you could lie comfortably; a carpet that had seen
better days; a melancholy washstand in a remote corner, and a dejected
pitcher on it sorrowing over a broken nose; a looking-glass split across
the centre, which chopped your head off at the chin and made you look
like some dreadful unfinished monster or other; the paper peeling in
shreds from the walls.

I sighed and said: "This is charming; and now don't you think you could
get me something to read?"

The porter said, "Oh, certainly; the old man's got dead loads of books;"
and he was gone before I could tell him what sort of literature I would
rather have. And yet his countenance expressed the utmost confidence in
his ability to execute the commission with credit to himself. The old
man made a descent on him:

"What are you going to do with that pile of books?"

"Fifteen wants 'em, sir."

"Fifteen, is it? He'll want a warming-pan, next--he'll want a nurse.
Take him everything there is in the house--take him the barkeeper--take
him the baggage-wagon--take him a chamber-maid! Confound me, I never saw
anything like it. What did he say he wants with those books?"

"Wants to read 'em, like enough; it ain't likely he wants to eat 'em, I
don't reckon."

"Wants to read 'em--wants to read 'em this time of night, the infernal
lunatic! Well, he can't have them."

"But he says he's mor'ly bound to have 'em; he says he'll just go
a-rairin' and a-chargin' through this house and raise more hell, there's
no tellin' what he won't do if he don't get 'em; because he's drunk
and crazy and desperate, and nothing'll soothe him down but them cussed
books." [I had not made any threats, and was not in the condition
ascribed to me by the porter.]

"Well, go on; but I will be around when he goes to rairing and charging,
and the first rair he makes I'll make him rair out of the window." And
then the old gentleman went off, growling as before.

The genius of that porter was something wonderful. He put an armful
of books on the bed and said "Good night" as confidently as if he knew
perfectly well that those books were exactly my style of reading matter.
And well he might. His selection covered the whole range of legitimate
literature. It comprised "The Great Consummation," by Rev. Dr.
Cummings--theology; "Revised Statutes of the State of Missouri"--law;
"The Complete Horse-Doctor"--medicine; "The Toilers of the Sea," by
Victor Hugo--romance; "The Works of William Shakespeare"--poetry. I
shall never cease to admire the tact and the intelligence of that gifted
porter. I moved to the Tepfer house next day--a hotel which is well
furnished, well conducted, and altogether a satisfactory place to live
in.

MARION CITY

Is hardly worth mentioning, but there are thousands in California who
know the place well, and would like to learn its fate, maybe. I find it
thus described among my notes:

"Half a dozen ruined frame houses just ready to cave into the river; a
ruined frame church, with roof full of holes; it has grown weak in the
knees from floods and neglect, and has settled clear down till its eaves
rest upon the ground, just as if it had sunk--nothing is left of it but
the roof and the crazy, leaning steeple; the poor thing looks like a
melancholy hen sitting on a hopeless nest of eggs. Marion City used to
be an important shipping point. The railroads killed it."

BOUND EAST AGAIN

We came East in an express train this time. It had fewer inconvenient
features about it than that gravel train we went West in. It had one
important one, though. We never could get a complete meal. We could eat
a few minutes at a time, very often, but there was not a great deal of
satisfaction about that. About the time you get fairly to eating, they
yell, "All aboard for Cleveland!" and you have to start. Brown said he
ate eleven dollars' worth the first day and then got into the sleeping
car hungry.

And there were the peddlers. I bought out the pop-corn boy to get rid
of him, because I was trying to compose a poem for a young lady's album.
But he came right back with a stock of peanuts. I took a few and hurried
him away and he returned with some ice-cream candy. I do not like
ice-cream candy and peanuts together, but I invested at once because a
lucky rhyme had been born to me and I wanted to set it down before it
slipped me. Then the scoundrel came back with tobacco and cigars, and
afterwards with oranges, imitation ivory baby-whistles, fig-paste
and apples, and then he went away and was gone some time, and I was
encouraged to hope the train had run over him. Such was not the case. He
was only keeping his most malignant outrage for the last. He was getting
his literature ready. And from that time onward that degraded youth did
nothing but march from one car to the other and afflict the passengers
with specimen copies of the vilest blood and thunder romances on
earth--"Lionel Warburton, or the Perjurer's Doom;" "Godfrey de
Langley, or the Carnival of Blood;" "One-Eyed Bill, or the Desperado's
Revenge"--those were some of his mildest works; and on their backs were
pictures of stabbing affrays, and duels, and people shoving other people
down precipices, and wretched wood cuts of women being rescued from
terrific perils of all possible kinds--and they were always women who
were so disgracefully homely that any right-minded man would take a
placid satisfaction in seeing them suffer a sudden and a violent death.
But that peddler peddled those books right along for hours together, and
I gave up my poem and devoted all my energies to driving him away and
trying to say things that would make him unhappy.

PROGRESS AND PROSPERITY

Such wonderful cities as we saw, all the way through Ohio, New York and
New Jersey. It seemed to me that every fifteen minutes we passed through
a Sacramento, and every hour and a half through a San Francisco--and
verily I believe we did. And they looked so flourishing, and so cheerful
and handsomely built, and so fiercely busy. Ah, my boy, it is good to
come to the States occasionally, and see what a great country it is. Now
I always thought that Cleveland, and Columbus, and Newark, and Paterson,
were only villages, and so do thousands of other people but they are
great cities. And we passed through many a city like Sacramento that I
had always imagined was little more than a blacksmith shop and a Post
Office, and we saw any number of towns of 5,000 to 8,000 inhabitants
that I honestly believe I had never heard of before. I was just in a
condition of lively astonishment all through those three States. No
wonder Englishmen make mistakes about America when we know so little
about it ourselves.

And speaking of Cleveland reminds me that I saw flaming posters there
announcing "Miss Lotta's Last Night!" A man who got on the cars there
told me that Miss Lotta was the best actress that ever lived, and
he didn't care a cent where the next one came from. Well, she is a
California girl, and I hope she will make everybody think as that man
did. I heard Lotta's acting well spoken of in St. Louis.

But isn't it funny that there are no drinking saloons in the depots? I
have no recollection of seeing a solitary gin-mill in a depot-building
from St. Louis to New York--a distance of nearly twelve hundred miles
by the route I came. At Cincinnati there were 250,000 people moderately
drunk, but that was an accident. At a great fire, a large number of
barrels of whiskey had been bursted open, and the stuff ran down to
the river, got into an eddy, was pumped into the water-works and was
distributed throughout the city in the form of weak whiskey punches. It
was said that there was more water drank in Cincinnati that day than was
ever drank there in one day before. It is likely.

PERSONAL

George Butler has been working hard at Washington to get the Consulship
at Panama, but did not succeed because his uncle, Gen. Butler, is
so unpopular at the White House. George said he worked all possible
purchases, but they failed; he proved himself a good Democrat at the
White House, and a good Radical at the Capitol, and became so expert
in duplicity at last, and so admirably plausible that he couldn't tell,
himself, when he was lying and when he wasn't. Somebody told him to keep
up the dodge of pretending to belong to both parties--it was first-rate
Washington policy to carry water on both shoulders. George said as long
as he only had to carry the water on his shoulders, he could stand it,
but he was too good a Democrat to carry any in his stomach! Good, wasn't
it? He said that at first he tried to buy off all candidates for the
Consulship, but they came so fast he found it would break a mint to
succeed in that way; next he tried moral suasion on them, and that
failed; and finally he concluded to whip all the applicants that came,
but he soon found that there were not hours enough in the day or days
enough in the year for that. So the office has gone into other hands,
and I am not the only man who is sorry George did not get it.

Maguire is here, and his Japs are playing in Philadelphia and
Washington. Hingston is making great preparations for their reception
in London, and says they will draw $1,500-houses every night for a good
many weeks.


Webb ("Inigo") has fixed up a volume of my sketches, and he and the
American News Company will publish it on Thursday, the 25th of the
present month. He has gotten it up in elegant style, and has done
everything to suit his own taste, which is excellent. I have made
no suggestions. He calls it "THE CELEBRATED JUMPING FROG, AND OTHER
SKETCHES, by 'Mark Twain.' Edited by C. H. Webb." Its price is $1.50
a copy. It will have a truly gorgeous gold frog on the back of it, and
that frog alone will be worth the money. I don't know but what it would
be well to publish the frog and leave the book out. Mail your orders
either to C. H. Webb or the American News Company, New York.

As per order of the ALTA, just received by telegraph, I have taken
passage in the great pleasure excursion to Europe, the Exposition and
the Holy Land, and will sail on the 8th of June. You could not have
suited me better. The ship is the Quaker City, and she is being
sumptuously fitted up.

Alta California, June 10, 1867

New York,

April 30th, 1867.

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS

ONE of the most praiseworthy institutions in New York, and one which
must plead eloquently for it when its wickedness shall call down the
anger of the gods, is the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals. Its office is located on the corner of Twelfth street and
Broadway, and its affairs are conducted by humane men who take a genuine
interest in their work, and who have got worldly wealth enough to make
it unnecessary for them to busy themselves about anything else. They
have already put a potent check upon the brutality of draymen and others
to their horses, and in future will draw a still tighter reign upon such
abuses, a late law of the Legislature having quadrupled their powers,
and distinctly marked and specified them. You seldom see a horse beaten
or otherwise cruelly used in New York now, so much has the society made
itself feared and respected. Its members promptly secure the arrest of
guilty parties and relentlessly prosecute them.

The new law gives the Society power to designate an adequate number of
agents in every county, and these are appointed by the Sheriff, but work
independently of all other branches of the civil organization. They can
make arrests of guilty persons on the spot, without calling upon the
regular police, and what is better, they can compel a man to stop
abusing his horse, his dog, or any other animal, at a moment's warning.
The object of the Society, as its name implies, is to prevent cruelty to
animals, rather than punish men for being guilty of it.

They are going to put up hydrants and water tanks at convenient
distances all over the city, for drinking places for men, horses and
dogs.

Mr. Bergh, the President of the Society, is a sort of enthusiast on the
subject of cruelty to animals--or perhaps it would do him better justice
to say he is full of honest earnestness upon the subject. Nothing that
concerns the happiness of a brute is a trifling matter with
him--no brute of whatever position or standing, however plebeian or
insignificant, is beneath the range of his merciful interest. I have in
my mind an example of his kindly solicitude for his dumb and helpless
friends.

He went to see the dramatic version of "Griffith Gaunt" at Wallack's
Theatre. The next morning he entered the manager's office and the
following conversation took place:

Mr. Bergh--"Are you the manager of this theatre?"

Manager--"I am, sir. What can I do for you?"

Mr. B.--"I am President of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals, and I have come to remonstrate against your treatment of that
pig in the last act of the play last night. It is cruel and wrong, and I
beg that you will leave the pig out in future." "That is impossible! The
pig is necessary to the play."

"But it is cruel, and you could alter the play in some way so as to
leave the pig out."

"It cannot possibly be done, and besides I do not see anything wrong
about it at all. What is it you complain of?"

"Why, it is plain enough. They punch the pig with sticks, and chase him
and harass him, and contrive all manner of means to make him unhappy.
The poor thing runs about in its distress, and tries to escape, but is
met at every turn by its tormentors and its hopes blighted. The pig does
not understand it. If the pig understood it, it might be well enough,
but the pig does not know it is a play, but takes it all as reality, and
is frightened and bewildered by the crowd of people and the glare of the
lights, and yet no time is given it for reflection--no time is given
it to arrive at a just appreciation of its circumstances--but its
persecutors constantly assail it and keep its mind in such a chaotic
state that it can form no opinion upon any point in the case. And
besides, the pig is cast in the play without its consent, is forced to
conduct itself in a manner which cannot but be humiliating to it, and
leaves that stage every night with a conviction that it would rather die
than take a character in a theatrical performance again. Pigs are
not fitted for the stage; they have no dramatic talent; all their
inclinations are toward a retired and unostentatious career in the
humblest walks of life, and--"

Manager--"Say no more, sir. The pig is yours. I meant to have educated
him for tragedy and made him a blessing to mankind and an ornament to
his species, but I am convinced, now, that I ought not to do this in the
face of his marked opposition to the stage, and so I present him to you,
who will treat him well, I am amply satisfied. I am the more willing
to part with him, since the play he performs in was taken off the stage
last night, and I could not conveniently arrange a part for him in the
one we shall run for the next three weeks, which is Richard III."

Mr. Bergh does everything in the behest of the Society with the very
best of intentions and the most honest motives. He makes mistakes,
sometimes, like all other men. He complained against a Jewish butcher,
and required his arrest, for cutting the throat of an ox instead of
knocking it on the head; said he was cruelly slow about terminating the
animal's life. Of course, people smiled, because the religious law which
compels Jewish butchers to slaughter with a consecrated knife is as
old as the Pyramids of Egypt, and Mr. Bergh would have to overthrow the
Pentateuch itself to accomplish his point.

THE MIDNIGHT MISSION

This is peculiarly New Yorkish. The Midnight Mission is composed of
sincere and zealous religious men who, in a good work, are ironclad
against jeers and insult, and they go about these streets at dead of
night, trying to rope in the prostitutes that infest the alleys and
byways of this teeming hive of humanity, and bring them back to the walk
of virtue. Talk about courage! I had rather face the guns of Fortress
Monroe than brave the tongues of those foul-mouthed she-dragons. Such
dauntless intrepidity smacks of the crusading days of Coeur de Lion and
his mailed legions.

The Midnight Mission flourishes, and accomplishes actual results. It
has reclaimed many girls, and set them to earning honest livings, as
servants in respectable families and in other capacities. It seems
wonderful, and very improbable, too, but it is true, nevertheless. The
office of the Mission is in the same building as the Cruelty Society I
have been talking about, and I visited both on the same day. I had some
notion of joining the Mission, but then I thought I had better continue
to hold on to my position as a Sandwich Island Missionary and let these
people worry along the best way they can. I wish them well, though.
Their main depot is next door to one of the largest houses of ill fame
in the city, and so you can see they mean business.

SINGULAR

Considering the gigantic war the country has just passed through, I am
constantly surprised at the utter absence of military beggars. I fully
expected to find legless heroes begging their bread at every corner.
I haven't seen the very first one so occupied yet--not one. I see a
cripple with a soldier-coat on occasionally, but always working for a
living--never begging. We import our beggars chiefly. By some wonderful
process or other, the soldiers of both armies have been quietly and
mysteriously absorbed into civil life, and can no more be distinguished
from the children of peace. It is hard even for an American to
understand this. But it is a toiling, thinking, determined nation, this
of ours, and little given to dreaming. It appreciates the fact that
the moment one thing is ended, it must be crossed out and dropped, and
something else begun. Our Alexanders do not sit down and cry because
there are no more worlds to conquer, but snatch off their coats and fall
to shinning around and raising corn and cotton, and improving sewing
machines.

A Herald's war correspondent told me he was in Richmond when the
rebel forces were disbanded, and that a party of Confederate officers
discarded their uniforms and got up a great express company within
twenty-four hours afterward; and that three days only had transpired
when he saw rebel Colonels, Majors and Captains, connected with the new
express enterprise, helping the porters handle heavy boxes and barrels,
and with their coats off and sleeves rolled up, too! He said that sort
of thing came easy enough in America, and could occur in France, but
that an English Colonel could not come down to such a thing as that
without many a heart-ache and many a twinge of wounded pride.

WASHINGTON SECOND

I saw this harmless old humbug in Broadway yesterday. His knee-breeches
are gone, his black velvet coat is seedy, his long white hair waves
in the wind all guiltless of powder or queue, his cocked hat has given
place to a battered plug, from head to foot he is seedy and dilapidated,
and his ancient self-complacency has departed out of his countenance,
and age and weariness and a sort of dreary sadness reign there instead.
Poor old fellow, it made me feel sorry when I contrasted his desolate
figure of yesterday with the gay and gorgeous Washington II of San
Francisco, so picturesque in his faultless legs and his benignant
dignity.

Old Uncle Freddy has outlived the day of his pride, outlived his
usefulness, outlived all those whom he cared for or who cared for
him--and to-day he stands solitary and alone, in the midst of this
unpitying city, a helpless, hopeless, melancholy old man.

"The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has pressed In their bloom;
And the names he loved to hear, Have been carved for many a year On the
tomb."

He still goes about in an absent sort of way, tracking up Tom Maguire,
and proclaiming, as formerly, that Maguire owes him forty thousand
dollars; but I fear me that death will soothe away all his sorrows and
bring peace to his troubled spirit before many months shall pass away.

PERSONAL

Webb has gotten up my "Jumping Frog" book in excellent style, and it
is selling rapidly. A lot of copies will go to San Francisco per this
steamer. I hope my friends will all buy a few copies each, and more
especially am I anxious to see the book in all the Sunday School
Libraries in the land. I don't know that it would instruct youth much,
but it would make them laugh anyway, and therefore no Sunday School
Library can be complete without the "Jumping Frog." But candidly, now,
joking aside, it is really a very handsome book, and you know yourself
that it is a very readable one. I have sent a copy to Honolulu for my
old friend, Father Damon.

Our ship in which we are to sail for the Holy Land, is to be furnished
with a battery of guns for firing salutes, by order of the Secretary of
the Navy, and Mr. Seward has addressed a letter to all foreign powers,
requesting that every attention be shown General Sherman and his
party. We have got a piano and a parlor organ in the cabin, and a snare
drummer, a base drummer and a fifer, and the passengers are instructed
to fetch along all their old guitars, fiddles, Hutes and sheet music. If
they have a choir in that ship I mean to run it. I have got a handsome
stateroom on the upper deck and a regular brick for a roommate. We have
got the pleasantest and jolliest party of passengers that ever sailed
out of New York, and among them a good many young ladies and a couple
of preachers, but we don't mind them. Young ladies are well enough
anywhere, and preachers are always pleasant company when they are off
duty. We sail the 8th of June, positively.

I am to lecture here, at the Cooper Institute, next Monday evening.

Alta California, June 16, 1867

New York,

May 17th, 1867.

JEFF. DAVIS

IT WAS just a lucky circumstance that I happened to be out late night
before last, else I might never have been permitted to see the chief of
the late Confederacy in life. I was standing in front of the New
York Hotel at midnight, or thereabouts, talking with a clerk of the
establishment, when the Davis party arrived, and I got a tolerably good
look at the man who has been raising such a dust in this country for
years. He is tall and spare--that was all I could make of him--and then
he disappeared.

There was no crowd around, no torchlight processions, no music, no
welcoming cannon--and better than all, no infuriated mob, thirsting for
blood and vengeance. The man whose arrival in New York a year or two
ago would have set the city wild with excitement from its centre to its
circumference, had ceased to rank as a sensation, and went to his hotel
as unheralded and unobserved as any country merchant from the far West.
He was a fallen Chief, he was an extinguished sun--we all know that--and
yet it seemed strange that even an unsuccessful man, with such a
limitless celebrity, could drop in our midst in that way, and go out as
meekly as a farthing candle.

Yesterday it was the same. There were no lion-hunters gaping around
the hotel doors, inquiring in infamous grammar, "Which is him?" The
autographers were not on hand. A few personal friends called on the
ex-President. That was all. The newspapers gave column after column of
songs of praise to the old worn-out, played-out, ragged, and threadbare
sensation of eight months ago--Ristori--the wretched foreign woman who
has come over here and humbugged the people into the notion that because
sweet music is sweet music still, whether one can understand the words
to it or not, a good story must be a good story also, even if the
audience can't comprehend a word of it, and don't know what in the
mischief the teller of it is driving at--the newspapers, I say, gave the
usual acres of laudation to Ristori yesterday, and only a dozen meagre
lines to Jefferson Davis, head, and heart, and soul of the mightiest
rebellion of modern times--and with the fact patent that the one was
an old sensation and the other a brand new one. Verily, some things are
stranger than others, and man is but grass, and a very poor article of
grass at that. I am glad I am not Jefferson Davis, and I could show him
a hundred good reasons why he ought to be glad he ain't me.

Mr. Davis is going to Canada in a day or two.

BILLY FALL

Wm. C. Fall, well known in San Francisco, Marysville and Carson, and
whom we all call "Billy" for short, got into a quarrel with Harry
Newton, an old citizen of Esmeralda in the palmy days of that camp, in
Broad street, day before yesterday, and they fired several pistol shots
at each other, but without wounding anybody but a telegraph operator,
who had nothing to do with the matter, and was both surprised and
mortified when he received a bullet in his ribs.

Two eye-witnesses of the fracas told me that Fall and Newton met in a
crowd, and commenced abusing each other, when Newton struck Fall with
his fist, and immediately drew his pistol and fired. Fall followed suit,
and they fired four or five shots between them in very quick succession,
but damaged nobody but the telegraph operator, as above mentioned. The
crowd was very large--it always is in Broadstreet--but they took no
interest in bombardments, and went away--and all went first, as near as
they could come at it.

Newton made his escape, and Fall tried to, but failed. He hid in the
fourth story of a neighboring building, but was ferreted out by the
police, and imprisoned. All I can learn of the cause of the quarrel is
that Fall wrote Newton a letter about a matter of business, and Newton
returned no reply. His conduct exasperated Fall, and he sought the
opportunity of expressing his opinion personally to Newton.

To fire pistols at people, or even to carry such furniture about the
streets, is a grave offence in New York; and both these men are in a
very unenviable situation at present.

THE MENKEN

A newspaper friend has been showing me some photographs, taken in Paris,
of Alexandre Dumas, the novelist, and Adah Isaacs Menken, the poor woman
who has got so much money, but not any clothes. In one of them Dumas is
sitting down, with head thrown back, and great, gross face, rippled with
smiles, and Adah is leaning on his shoulder, and just beaming on him
like a moon--beaming on him with the expression of a moon that is no
better than it ought to be. In another picture, the eminent mulatto
is in his shirt-sleeves, and Adah has her head on his breast, and arms
clasping his neck, and this time she is beaming up at him--beaming up at
him in a way which is destructive of all moral principle. On the backs
of these photographs is written, in French:

"To my dearest love,

"A. DUMAS."

And Menken's note accompanying the pictures betrays that she is
extravagantly well pleased with the photographer for publishing and
selling thousands and thousands of these pictures to the Parisian
public. She knows the value of keeping herself before the world in new
and startling situations.

Somehow I begin to regard Menken's conduct as questionable,
occasionally. She has a passion for connecting herself with
distinguished people, and then discarding them as soon as the world
has grown reconciled to the novelty of it and stopped talking about it.
Heenan suited her caprice well enough for a while, and then he had to
vacate; the same was Orpheus C. Kerr's experience; and the same was
the Davenport Brother's; and the same was the experience of some less
notorious favorites of hers. And now comes the great Mulatto in the Iron
Mask, and he is high chief for the present. But can he hold his position
against all comers? Would he stand any chance against a real live
gorilla from the wilds of Africa? I don't know. Menken is mighty shaky.
Menken can't resist a splendid new astonisher. Menken is a good hearted,
free-handed, charitable soul--a woman who does white deeds enough,
kindly Christian deeds enough, every day of her life to blot out a
swarming multitude of sins; but, Heaven help us, what desperate chances
she takes on her reputation!

The latest news is that Dumas is prosecuting the photographer for
publishing those pictures, but maybe that is only a regular part of the
sensation programme. These photographs are to be reproduced here.

A BIT OF HISTORY

I have attended social reunions of various kinds since I have been here,
but one of the pleasantest was a club dinner with a party of Nantucket
people. A good many good things were said during the evening, but the
thing that struck me most was a bit of ancient Nantucket history dropped
by one of the gentlemen.

He said that in our old wars with Great Britain, Nantucket was the
object of a vast amount of solicitude on the part of both nations--more,
in fact, than the importance of the place really justified. It contained
a population made up pretty equally of English and Americans, and of
course neither Government could gracefully desert its own children--and
yet the place was so situated that it would have required all the ships
of one navy to besiege it, and all of the other to defend it. That
wouldn't pay, of course. And so the two countries wisely agreed to just
leave Nantucket clear out of the quarrel, remove all implements of war
from it, disarm its citizens, and consider the place neutral ground
entirely. So the middle-aged waxed old and died--as neutrals; and the
young grew up and flourished--as neutrals. All were imbued with the
neutral spirit; all respected the ancient compacts and none desired to
do anything to impair the time honored, hallowed good faith.

Years swept by, and Nantucket felt within herself one day a yearning to
do as other communities did, and have a fine squad of militia to show
off on great days. They raised one. They armed it and equipped it. But
when they came to frame the by-laws, the honest reverence for the spirit
of neutrality, which had lived in their bosoms so long, cropped out in
gravest phrase in their Military Constitution, thus:

"ARTICLE I.--This Company shall be called the Nantucket Guard.

"ARTICLE II.--It shall be kept at all times completely armed and
equipped and ready for service in the field.

"ARTICLE III.--In case of war, it shall immediately disband!"

No member of the Nantucket Guard ever seemed to understand that those
by-laws read wonderfully like a broad joke. They dropped that absurd
third article, as a matter of course, and nothing more than an earnest
of their fidelity to the ancient good faith of their fathers.

Another gentleman present said that Nantucket horses were celebrated
for their general worthlessness, imbecility, and marvellous slowness.
He said a citizen sold one to a cavalry officer during the war, and
warranted him to be a good war-horse. The soldier came back afterwards
in a towering passion and said he had been swindled.

"As how?" said the Nantucketer.

"Why there's not a bit of 'go' in him--and yet you warranted him as a
good war-horse."

"Yes, I did, and by George he is a good war-horse--he'd sooner die than
run!"

RISTORI

Well, it is a marvel to me. It shows what determined newspapers and
shrewd managers can do. Max Maretzek drew upon himself the hostility of
several of the city newspapers, and among them that colossal power, the
New York Herald. The consequence is, that those papers take a genuine
pleasure in giving any manager a lift who is a rival of his. So Ristori,
who had been a great light in Europe, but had long ago begun to burn
dimly and had almost flickered out, latterly, is brought over here by
Mr. Grau, and straightway the newspapers fall to work and set every man,
woman and child in the country crazy about her jam, her houses at three
or four dollars a head, with people who don't know any more about what
she is raving about in her unearthly Italian than if she were talking
Chinese--people who gape, and stare, and wish to Heaven they knew what
she was up to, till an incomprehensible harangue winds up with a grand
climax of sound and fury and foreign jabbering, and then the house comes
down!

And so heralded, she goes abroad into the innocent interior--besieges
Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburg, Rochester, St. Louis, Memphis--goes
everywhere and charges just what she pleases, and deceives the people
into the belief that they have been blessed with a bliss beyond all
price in being permitted to listen for three hours to a frenzied
clattering of words that carried no possible meaning under the sun to
their dazed understandings.

And yet these same Americans flock to the Academy of Music here and
show no appreciation of the able Japanese speeches of the manager of
the wonderful jugglers. It is a shame. They understand that eloquent
Jap just as much as they understood Ristori, and yet, if he were to play
Queen Elizabeth, ten to one they would complain of his incomprehensible
language, and even go so far as to say it was a radical defect.

It beats me, entirely. I believe the newspapers can do anything, now.
Without them, Ristori would not have made her board in America; with
them, she has made a fortune. She can command. She says noone who is not
in full evening dress shall enter her sacred theatre to-night, and she
will be obeyed. The place will be crowded, and not a soul, except it be
some newspaper man who knows his strength and scorns all laws of men's
making, will dare to present himself there in any unholy costume.

It is curious. The newspapers could have set the city boiling and
surging about Jeff. Davis, but they did not choose to do it, and so
Jeff. Davis is powerless to make a stir on his own account--a thing he
is very glad of, no doubt, for if any man longs for rest and quiet and
oblivion, it is he, we can all believe.

REV. DR. CHAPIN

Now there is a preacher for you. There is a man who can just seize a
congregation and hold on to it as many hours as he wants to. There is an
invisible wire leading from every auditor's soul straight to a battery
hidden away somewhere in that preacher's head, and down those wires
travels in ceaseless flow the living spirit of words that might fall
cold and empty and meaningless from other lips. I do not know that I
ever looked upon faces so eager, so wrapt, so fascinated as those I see
in Chapin's church.

I have wondered what it was that chained the congregation so, (because I
couldn't believe that every Tom, Dick and Harry who came there had
sense enough to appreciate his magnificent orations,) but at last I
have concluded that it must be Mr. Chapin's strong, deep, unmistakable
earnestness. There is nothing like that to convince people. Nobody can
have confidence in cold, monotonous, inanimate utterances, though
they were teeming with truth and wisdom. Manner is everything in these
cases--matter is nothing. The most outrageous lies that can be invented
will find believers if a man only tells them with all his might. Now
there is Governor Nye--however, I will not go into particulars.

Mr. Chapin is large, and rather stout; is about forty five, or
thereabouts; is full of action and energy, and has a noble voice,
and knows how to use it. His eloquence is genuine, free from show and
unsubstantial flummery, meant for use, not ornament. I think one of
his own illustrations of a point in his sermon last Sunday might not
describe it ungracefully. He said:

A King and an Italian Knight were riding together upon a lonely road,
in the old crusading days, and the King could not refrain from remarking
upon the rusty, battered old sword the Knight wore, and calling
attention to his own, which was brightly burnished and brilliant with
precious stones. The Knight said quietly:

"Mine is the more beautiful, Sire."

The King smiled, and drew his splendid weapon, and flashed it in the
sun. "Behold! Sir Knight!"

"Behold! Sir King!" The Knight drew his, and in the self-same instant
six hundred men-at-arms sprang from an ambush, and said: "Command us to
the death, my lord!"

"I yield. Thy sword is more beautiful, Sir Knight!"

There is no fuss and nonsense about Chapin's eloquence. It is the true
steel. It is a power, and he knows well how to wield it. He has a
large and handsome church at the corner of Fifth avenue and Forty-fifth
street, and a full congregation. He is a man of wide-spread and potent
influence, and a recognized leader in all the progressive movements of
the day. He never moves till his mind is made up for good and all, and
then he moves like an avalanche.

SAN FRANCISCO SHOWMEN

Make your mark in New York, and you are a made man. With a New York
endorsement you may travel the country over, like Ristori, without
fear--but without it you are speculating upon a dangerous issue. Our old
San Francisco Minstrels have made their mark here, most unquestionably.
They located themselves boldly in Broadway, right opposite the
Metropolitan Hotel, and their very first performance gave them a hold
upon the popular favor which has never loosened its grip to this day.
Every night of their lives they play to packed houses--every single
seat full and dozens of people standing up. I have good reason to know,
because I have been there pretty often, have always paid my way but
once, and I had to buy a box the last time I went. They go straight
ahead from month to month, like the "Black Crook," and their receipts
for the last twelve months, as furnished to the Revenue officers, were
only a fraction under $110,000. What do you think of that? The firm
remains the same--Birch, Backus, Wambold and Bernard. They have made an
extraordinary success, and wisely they try to keep up with the spirit of
the times and deserve a continuance of it.

Tom Maguire's Japanese Jugglers have taken New York by storm. They threw
all the other popular sensations completely in the shade--shed a perfect
gloom over them. It has to be a colossal sensation that is able to set
everybody talking in New York, but the Japs did it. And I got precious
tired of it for the first few days. No matter where I went, they were
the first subject mentioned; if I stopped a moment in a hotel, I heard
people talking about them; if I lunched in a Dutch restaurant, there was
one constantly recurring phrase which I understood, and only one, "das
Japs;" in French restaurants, it was "les Japs;" in Irish restaurants,
it was "thim Japs;" after church the sermon was discussed five minutes,
and then the Japs for half an hour. Maguire plays them in the great
Academy of Music, and charges heavy prices; but the first night he
turned hundreds away after finding accommodations for three thousand
spectators. And the seventh day, at eight in the morning, I saw fifty
people strung down the pavement, Post Office fashion, waiting to secure
seats, each in his regular turn, when they knew the box-office would not
open till nine o'clock. The Japs are a prodigious success.

The Worrell girls have come back and taken the New York Theatre, a sort
of half-frog, half-tadpole affair, which used to be a church, and hasn't
got entirely over looking like a church yet. I am told the girls have
fine houses, are doing well, and are as popular as they were at the
Broadway. At the Broadway--those were great days for them--they turned
the heads of half the young men in the country--not in New York alone,
but all around. Lovesick youths from far in the interior of Jersey,
Connecticut, New York, and everywhere about, came in on the trains and
basked in the beauty of their idols every night, and went sleepless
to work next day, drivelled along through it, and fetched up in
the Broadway again at night, as far gone as ever. There was even an
institution called the "WORRELL BRIGADE--a great company of devoted
youths and young men who wore a handsome badge, composed of red, white
and blue enamel, upon which was wrought the cipher "W." in fancy work
of some kind. They were faithful attendants of the theatre every night,
were a regularly organized military sort of institution, with officers
bearing such titles as Colonel, Captain, Lieutenant, etc., and were
always suffering for a chance to destroy somebody by way of showing and
proving their devotion. They were always on hand to assist the Worrells
from their carriage before the evening's performance, and hand them back
to it when the play was over. I have first-rate authority for all this,
otherwise I should be inclined to doubt it. The Worrels must have done
well, because I know of a fabulous offer that was made them and they
refused it. Also, that they had bought the dwelling 209 1/2 Ninth
street--so one good authority said, and another good authority said they
had only rented it--but in either case liberal money would have to be
forthcoming, because I have been in the house often, last January, and
know that to buy it or rent it either would break me easy enough.

I saw little Miss Lotta yesterday. She is stopping at the Metropolitan
with her father and mother. Her voice is very husky and she says she
cannot sing at all, hardly, but hopes to be able to appear shortly
again. She has an engagement at one of the city theatres. Lotta looks as
young as ever, and just as pretty.

I am talking pretty freely about our show-people, and pretty strongly,
too, but I am telling only the truth. I so seldom speak of them at all,
that I don't like to mince matters when I do speak of their first-rate
successes.

I had a first-rate success myself at the Cooper Institute the other
night, but I am not going to say much about that, because you can get
it out of the newspapers. The Californians worked the thing up, and got
about twenty-five hundred people into the house--which was well, because
on my own merits I could not have accomplished it, perhaps. I lectured
once in Brooklyn afterwards, and here again last night, and came out
handsomely, notwithstanding I managed to get everything wrong end
foremost and hopelessly tangled in the matter of announcing last night's
performance. It will keep me jumping, now, to write up promised sketches
and correspondence in time to sail on the 8th of June, and so I shall
not lecture anymore, except perhaps in one or two neighboring towns
where engagements have already been made, and to which I can go and
return to New York the same night.

But I do want to say one thing. Governor Nye promised to introduce me to
my audience at Cooper Institute, and I published it; but he was not at
his hotel when the carriage went for him, has not been seen since, and
has never sent a word of explanation. However, it is a matter of no
consequence. Introduced myself as well as he could have done it--that
is, without straining himself.

Alta California, June 23, 1867

New York,

May 18th, 1867.

THE NUISANCE OF ADVICE

"RIP goes another shirt!"

"Why, Brown!"

"Buy your clothes in Paris! buy your clothes in Paris! Blame my cats,
the next man that tells me to buy my clothes in Paris, I'll break him in
two! I've been trying to hold on and buy 'em in Paris, just as all these
thieves tell me, but that Quaker City ain't ever going to sail, I don't
believe, and by the time she does I won't have nary rag left--"

"Brown, calm yourself-your grammar is infamous."

"Don't talk to me about grammar! I'm fit to cuss or cry, or anything
that comes handy now. I was going to get a pair of boots built two
weeks ago, and that snivelling Baxter said hold on and buy 'em in
Paris--cheaper and better every way--and I've held on till these boots
are letting go everywheres, and it rains here every four hours, and I
fetch home a bucket of water in 'em every night, and socks can't stand
it, and they get caked to my feet, and the bottoms pull out every night,
and I wish I may die if I haven't wore out a hundred and fifty pair
in--"

"Be reasonable, son."

"I know what I've done. I ain't got but just one sock left, and the
bottom of that'll fetch away when I pull that starboard boot off; and
don't you see that old corn hanging out at that hole in the port boot?
Buy your clothes in Paris! I've hung on, and hung on, and hung on, till
my coats are all gone to seed, and my pants are all frizzled out at
the bottoms, and my boots are busted all out, and my hat is a perfect
outrageous old ruin--it is, by George it looks like the picture of that
there ratty old ancient Colosseum at Rome all sick, and sorrowful, and
rusty, and battered up, and gone in generally. Confound the confounded."

"Brown, Brown, go slow, lad."

"Buy your clothes in Paris! There's my last solitary shirt come back
from the wash with all the after guard clean gone, flush to the waist!
and there used to be a thousand buttons on that shirt, and now there
ain't nary one of 'em left! I wisht I had a chance to eat a washerwoman
once, I do. I'd clean her up so good that they couldn't any more
identify her at the resurrection than----"

"Brown, you can't think how it pains me to hear you talk so."

"I don't care--I don't care for nothing, the way I am now. I want to
make trouble. I want to do something that's outrageous. I want to set
a house a-fire--I want to start a riot--I want to commit a nuisance,
anything that will make Rome howl is what I'm fixed for at this present
writing. Buy your clothes in Paris! All the scoundrels I know have told
me that, and now I ain't got any more clothes than they wear in the
'Black Crook,' and I'm a living shame and a degraded lunatic. That's me.
Here, you, black them boots, and black the holes in 'em particular."

I am glad he has gone to see that the fellow blacks the holes in his
boots "particular," because I can have some peace now. But between you
and I, this thing of swallowing everybody's advice has got one or two
drawbacks about it. I have been holding on myself, to buy my clothes
in Paris, and I have held on so faithfully that I havn't got a rag
of every-day clothing left that is fit to wear in the public street,
hardly--and yet the ship will not sail for three weeks yet. And when
we get to Paris, suppose they tell us to buy our clothes in
Constantinople--how shall we feel then?

The advice we have received from travelled people would fill a volume.
We must buy veils for Egypt, saddles for Palestine, field-glasses for
landscapes, books for the ship--Oh, a thousand and one things we must
do, when I wouldn't give a cent for anything but a Shakespeare, and a
deck of cards, and a couple of shirts. Perdition take the advice--I will
none of it.

THE EXCISE LAW

You are aware that in New York, after twelve at night, on week days, you
cannot buy a glass of wine or liquor for love or money, and you cannot
buy it on Sunday at any time. It is a great thing for the morals of
New York, but it is demoralizing to the vicinage. It inflicts twenty
thousand beer-swillers upon Hoboken every Sabbath. You remember the
pious girl who said, "I found that my ribbons and gew-gaws were dragging
me down to hell, and so I took them off and gave them to my sister."
Well that is the way we are doing for Hoboken. We found that beer
drinkers were debauching our morals, and so we concluded to turn them
over to our neighbor. The ferry-boats go over packed and crammed with
people all day Sunday, and the beer and such stuff drank in Hoboken on
these occasions amounts to oceans, to speak liberally. They say that
they are going to inaugurate an excise law over there, next Sunday, and
then what will thirsty New York do?

Well, it suits me. The excise has made a sort of decent, orderly place
out of this once rowdy, noisy, immoral town. You don't hear ribald songs
in beer cellars at dead of night now. You don't hear lawless roughs
prowling and howling through the streets at midnight anymore. You don't
hear shouts, and curses, and blows, and the watchman's shrill whistle
and the clatter of flying feet under the sorrowing moon in these better
times that are upon us. At one o'clock in the morning you may walk fifty
blocks, sometimes, and not see fifty persons other than policemen--and
such citizens as you do see will be orderly, and quiet and proper. It
used to be very different here.

Some of the people growl bitterly because the country governs the city
through the Legislature, but I cannot see but that the country does it
much more wisely than ever the city would. New York, in some respects,
is a big, overgrown, rascally place; but it improves--it improves all
the time.

Why, they had an election here a week or two ago, and kept the gin-mills
closed all day, and I never heard of three fights in the twelve hours,
and never a sign of a riot. How does that sound, for a village with a
round million of inhabitants?

THE TRAVELLERS' CLUB

That is a human institution. Its President is a Californian, and its
members hail from more places than there are on the Atlas. They have
kindly complimented me with the privileges of the place for a month, and
I went up the other night at ten and spent a very pleasant evening till
two or three o'clock in the morning.

Of course I met pleasant people, because nothing so liberalizes a man
and expands the kindly instincts that nature put in him as travel
and contact with many kinds of people. An Englishman, an Irishman, a
Scotchman, an Italian or so, several Frenchmen and a number of Americans
were present, and you couldn't ask a question about any possible country
under the sun, but some fellow in the crowd had been there and could
give the information from personal experience. The Club occupies a
worshipful five-story brownstone front on ineffable Fifth Avenue, far
up town in the midst of the odor of sanctity that prevails in that
thoroughfare, which is so peculiarly sacred to greenbacks and fashion.
The drawing-rooms are luxuriously furnished and decorated, and the
premises are supplied with a library, reading-rooms, billiard tables,
supper saloons, and a couple of elegant grand pianos. Of course there is
a sufficiency of wines and liquors there, and within those charmed walls
the unholy excise intrudeth not.

They said they were going to send me a formal invitation to make a
speech before the Club, as Du Chaillu did, and I said I would be glad to
accept it, but I did not know then that they go and invite a whole raft
of ladies to be present on such occasions, to look at a poor victim
and make him lose his grip, and so I hope they will forget to send the
invitation, now.

You ought to start a Travellers' Club in San Francisco. You have got
an abundance of material, and that sort of an organization is much
pleasanter than political one-idea affairs, such as clubs generally are.

THE BROADWAY BRIDGE

The iron bridge over Broadway and Fulton streets is finished at last,
and the people troop over it in crowds now, while it is a novelty. It is
really only a necessity in the slushy, snowy winter time, but must be
a great convenience at any and all times. There is never a season in
daylight when it is not a troublesome job to ferry yourself across
Broadway or Fulton street, at that point, through the swarming vehicles.

Somehow, the young ladies haven't taken kindly to it, yet, but I suppose
they will after a while. But the men and boys and old women hang around
it, and tramp over it, and loiter on it to gaze up Broadway, and so it
does a very respectable amount of business. Curiosity runs high here. I
saw a washerwoman coming along with three or four hundred pounds on
her back to-day, and eyeing the bridge with great interest, and I said,
principally to myself, I wonder if that old scalliwag really meditates
lugging that clothing-store up that tiresome stairway now, when the
street below is comparatively free from vehicles? And she not only
meditated it, but did it! She tugged, and sweated, and climbed, till she
reached the top, cast a critical eye up Broadway, went down on the other
side, toiled up again, crossed over to her original point of departure,
and went off about her business. There is a great deal of human nature
in people.

I have not been by that bridge for a month without yearning to cross it.
I have abused the tardy workmen in my heart for keeping this pleasure
from me. I have fairly ached to cross it, and have thought I would give
anything in reason or out of reason for the privilege, but the entrances
were pitilessly closed, and I had to move on and sigh and suffer in
silence. But to-day all obstructions were gone and no soul was there
to forbid me. I was free to cross as often as I wanted to. But I didn't
want to. As soon as the obstructions were gone the desire went also.
Verily, there is a large amount of human nature in people.

Crowds stand around all day long and criticise that bridge, and find
fault with it, and tell with unlimited frankness how it ought to have
been planned, and how they would have built it had the city granted them
the $14,000 it cost. It is really refreshing to hang around these
and listen to them. A foreigner would come to the conclusion that all
America was composed of inspired professional bridge builders.

I have tried to be odd, and refrain from criticism, but it isn't human
nature and I cannot do it. I am bound to say it was absurd to paint such
portions of the structure as were untouchable a good substantial brown,
and paint the hand-rails white, when anybody might know that any inky
printer's devil, with a spark of proper human nature in him, would
go four blocks out of the way just for the luxury of defiling those
stainless railings with his dingy hands. Why, the things are all black
as a hat already. And I could not forbear criticising the absurdity
of putting four grand costly lamps on the corners of the bridge, when
everybody knows that that locality is the most desolate and deserted in
New York after nightfall, and that no soul will ever have need of either
bridge or lamps between the setting and the rising of the sun, from now
till doomsday. I have nothing to say against the shape and general style
of the bridge, though. Both are good, I think, both are ornamental, and
certainly both are in every way satisfactory to me.

IN THE STATION HOUSE

I have been in the Station House. I staid there all night. I don't
mind mentioning it, because anybody can get into the Station House here
without committing an offence of any kind. And so he can anywhere that
policemen are allowed to cumber the earth. I complimented this police
force in a letter some time ago, and felt like a guilty, degraded wretch
when I was doing it, and now I am glad I got into the Station House,
because it will teach me never to so far forget all moral principle as
to compliment a police force again.

I was on my way home with a friend a week ago--it was about
midnight--when we came upon two men who were fighting. We interfered
like a couple of idiots, and tried to separate them, and a brace of
policemen came up and took us all off to the Station House. We offered
the officers two or three prices to let us go, (policemen generally
charge $5 in assault and battery cases, and $25 for murder in the first
degree, I believe,) but there were too many witnesses present, and they
actually refused.

They put us in separate cells, and I enjoyed the thing considerably for
an hour or so, looking through the bars at the dilapidated old hags, and
battered and ragged bummers, sorrowing and swearing in the stone-paved
halls, but it got rather tiresome after a while. I fell asleep on my
stone bench at 3 o'clock, and was called at dawn and marched to the
Police Court with a vile policeman at each elbow, just as if I had been
robbing a church, or saying a complimentary word about the police, or
doing some other supernaturally mean thing.

We sat on wooden benches in a lock-up partitioned off from the Court
Room, for four hours, awaiting judgment--not awaiting trial, because
they don't try people there, but only just take a percentage of their
cash, and let them go without further ceremony. We were a pretty
cheerful crowd, but a rather haggard and sleepy one. Three first-rate
young fellows, and well dressed, were in the lot--one a clerk, one a
college student, and one an Indiana merchant. Two had been soldiers on
the Union side, and one on the other, and all had battled at Antietam
together. The merchant was arrested for being drunk, and the other two
for assault and battery. An old seedy, scarred, bloated and bleeding
bummer was present, who had been kicked out of a gin mill by the
barkeeper, he said, and got arrested for it. He said he had been in the
Station House a good many times before. I said: "What will they do with
you?"

"Ten days, likely," (with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder, and an
expressive shrug). A negro man was there, with his head badly battered
and bleeding profusely. He had nothing to say.

A bloated old hag sat in the corner, with a wholesome black eye, a
drunken leer in the sound one, and nothing in the world on but a dingy
calico dress, a shocking shawl, and a pair of slippers that had seen
better days, but long enough ago to have forgotten them. I thought I
might as well prospect my company thoroughly while time dragged along,
and so I went over and started a conversation with her. She was very
communicative; said she lived in the Five Points, and must have been
particularly drunk to have wandered so far from home; said she used to
have a husband, but he had drifted off somewhere, and so she had taken
up with another man; she had had a child, also--a little boy--but it
took all her time to get drunk, and keep drunk, and so he starved, one
winter's night--or froze, she didn't know which--both, maybe, because it
snowed in "horrible" through the roof, and he hadn't any bedclothes but
a window-shutter. "But it was a d----d good thing for him, anyway,"
said she, "because he'd have had a miserable rough time of it if he'd
a lived"; and then she chuckled a little, and asked me for a chew of
tobacco and a cigar. I gave her a cigar and borrowed the tobacco for
her, and then she winked a wink of wonderful mystery and drew a flask
of gin from under her shawl, and said the police thought they were awful
smart when they searched her, but she wasn't born last week. I didn't
drink with her, notwithstanding she invited me. She said she was good
for ten days, but she guessed she could stand it, because if she had as
many dollars as she had been in limbo she could buy a gin-mill.

Two flash girls of sixteen and seventeen were of our little party, and
they said they had been arrested for stopping gentlemen in the street
in pursuance of their profession, but averred that the charge was
false, and that the gentlemen had made the first advances; and then
they cried--not because they felt ashamed of having been locked up in a
Station House, but because they would have to suffer in jail for several
days, in company a little rougher than they were used to. I felt sorry
for those two poor girls, and thought it was a pity that the merciful
snow had not frozen them into a peaceful rest and forgetfulness of life
and its weary troubles, too.

Towards 8 o'clock fresh jail birds began to arrive, and my three
young gentlemen grew cheerful, and sang out to each newcomer, "Another
delegate! Your credentials, if you please, sir. The clerk will enter
the gentleman's name on the records and make honorable mention of
it--assault and battery, sir?--or disorderly?--theft? arson? highway
robbery?--ah, drunk, is it?--set him down drunk, but pertinent. Room,
gentlemen and ladies, room for the honorable delegate from the purlieus
of the Five Points!"

And so we chaffed the cheerful hours away. At last I beheld a
hand-writing on the wall that made me start! I felt as if an accusing
spirit had been raised up to mock me. The legend read (how familiar it
was!) "THE TROUBLE WILL BEGIN AT EIGHT o'clock!"' How well I remembered
inventing that sentence in the Morning Call office when I was writing
the advertisement for my first lecture in San Francisco--and behold how
little did I think then that I should live to see it inscribed upon the
walls of a prison-house, many and many a hundred miles away! I smiled
at the conceit when I first wrote it, but when I thought how sad hearted
and how full of dreams of a happier time the poor fellow might have been
who scribbled it here, there was a touching pathos about it that I had
never suspected it possessed before. I am not writing a fancy sketch,
now, but simply jotting down things just as they occurred in that
villainous receptacle for rascals and unfortunates down town yonder.

At 9 o'clock we went out, one by one, under guard, and stood up before
the Judge. I consulted with him about the practicability of contesting
my case on the ground of unjust imprisonment, but he said it would be
troublesome, and not worth the bother, inasmuch as nobody would ever
know I had been in the Station House unless I told it myself, and then
he let me go. I staid by and watched them dispense justice a while,
observed that in all small offences the policeman's charge on the books
was received as entirely sufficient, and sentence passed without a
question being asked of either accused or witnesses--and then departed,
glad I had been in the Station House, because I knew all about it now
from personal experience, but not anxious to pursue my investigations
any further in that line.

PERSONAL INQUIRY

I am to visit two more of the great churches next Sunday, in company
with a California preacher, and Monday night I am to go through the
hardest and vilest underground dens and hot-beds of crime round about
the Five Points, with two detective policemen. I may chance to stumble
upon some of my late fellow-lodgers there, possibly. It is well. They
were pretty good sort of people, anyhow, though a little under the
weather as to respectability. But even the worst in the lot freely
offered to divide her gin with me. It isn't everybody without a cent
that would do so much.

Alta California, June 30, 1867

New York,

May 19th, 1867.

CALIFORNIA WINES

CALIFORNIA wines are coming more and more into favor here in the East,
and are to be found on sale pretty much everywhere. I see the sign about
as often as I see the signs for shoe stores or candy shops. The Catawba
wines had a great hold on public favor several years ago, but it seems
to be conceded now that all native American brands must yield precedence
to the California wines.

Some of the wholesale California wine establishments here are quite
extensive. One of the largest, if not the largest, is that of Messrs.
Perkins, Stern & Co., which is the New York department of the Kohler &
Frohling house in San Francisco. The two houses were formerly distinct
from each other, but are united now. It looks like business, here, to go
through their wine vaults, and see the mighty array of boxes, barrels,
casks and hogsheads, all filled with California wines, and note the
machinery they bring into play for handling it with facility and filling
orders with alacrity.

Last year this house sold California wines to the amount of $250,000,
and nearly as great an amount the year before. They say that this year
the New York agencies will sell the whole California crop, and continue
to do it every succeeding year without fail. It is destined to become a
very important article of trade, and the firm I speak of hope to get it
all into their own hands eventually. It is certainly worth the effort.

NOT GOING TO PARIS?

The people are leaving here by ship-loads for France. It is a perfect
exodus. Every sailing vessel goes out full, a thing which is a pleasant
novelty to them, no doubt, for they have long been unused to it, and
if you want to travel by the great steamer lines you must engage
your state-room a month before hand and pay for it. The idea of the
Exposition proving a failure, as was the talk a while back, is absurd,
if other countries are rushing money and people over there as fast as we
are doing. We are shipping ten and maybe even twelve thousand persons
a month from the port of New York alone, and if all our other ports
together are doing half as much, America will have sent considerably
over a hundred thousand persons to Europe, (chiefly to Paris,) this year
before the time for travel in that direction is up. It is as much as
I can do to scare up an individual who will acknowledge in a calm,
unprejudiced manner that he is not going to Paris this year. I cannot
begin to estimate the number of people to whom I have given the probable
date of my arrival in the French capital, and who said I must hunt
them up there. It is Wonderful! Thought I had run across about all
acquaintances who were going, and yet when I took a lady friend down
last Saturday, to ship her on the Ville de Paris, I found quite a number
housed on board who never had said anything about going.

Mr. Brown, of whom you have heard, has come finally to consider the
whole nation as packing up for emigration to France. He bought a
handkerchief yesterday, and when the man could not make change, Brown
said:

"Never mind, I'll hand it to you in Paris."

"But I am not going to Paris."

"How is--what did I understand you to say?"

"I said I am not going to Paris."

"Not going to Paris! Not g--well then, where in the very nation are you
going to?"

"Nowhere at all."

"Not anywhere whatsoever?--honest Injun, now--not any place on earth but
this?"

"Not any place at all but just this--stay here all summer."

I looked for an explosion here--a boisterous display of admiration on
Brown's part, a wringing of the man's hand, and all that sort of thing.
But nothing of the kind occurred. My comrade took his purchase and
walked out of the store without a word--walked out with an injured look
upon his countenance. Up the street apiece he broke silence and said
impressively: "It was a low, mean, disgraceful lie--that is my opinion
of it!"

NEW YORK WEATHER

Sometimes it makes me mad--sometimes it makes me fearfully mad--but as a
general thing, I like it. When May dawned upon us, I said, behold there
is no gainsaying that this is genuine spring-time, with a good two
months margin to back it, and now of course we can shed our overcoats.
That was three weeks ago, and yet, if I have seen one evening since then
which could pass muster without an overcoat, and a heavy one at that,
I have no recollection of it now. I went out to-night without one,
and shivered all the way downtown and shivered all the way back. It is
wretchedly cold every night, and a good many of the days, too--most of
them, I think. And, as for rain--well, it is California in winter all
over again, and all the time; only with this difference, that there you
know when it is going to rain, and here you don't know when it isn't.
When it don't know anything else to do here, to put in the time, it
rains. If you haven't got an umbrella, it rains. If you have got an
umbrella, and leave it at home, it rains. You cannot keep it from
raining in any way but just to carry an umbrella along with you all the
time. The sun will dog you then until you are sick of it. If there was
a cloud overhead with fifty oceans of rain in it, then, it would go off
and rain in Pennsylvania somewhere. These things aggravate me beyond
measure, sometimes. I have got an umbrella at the Everett House. It is
a very fine one. I bought it from a peddler to stop a thunderstorm with.
He said he could recommend it because he got it of a man who had used it
twelve years; but whenever it rains, I am a mile downtown, and when I go
up after my umbrella it always stops before I can get there. It has only
rained once to-night; but there is nothing in that, it is probably just
fixing.

And yet when you come to add it all up, this uncertain climate has its
pleasant features. All life demands change, variety, contrast--else is
there small zest to it. Here you have rain, snow, bleakness; but after
it is all gone, what an imperial green all vegetation puts on! It
is worth a winter of suffering to see the rich coloring even these
city-bred trees and lawns robe themselves in. No feeble, dingy grass
and dusty leaves, but dewy, dense, luxurious carpets, and a gleaming
magnificence of foliage, fit to shelter the beloved of God in the bowers
of Eden. And perhaps you know how sick one gets of the eternal fair
weather of San Francisco, and how he longs for lightning, thunder, and
tempest! how he feels as if he wanted to tear the glaring sun out of the
sky, and blot the firmament with a purple pall, and cleanse it down from
zenith to horizon with shafts of fire!

"Ah, me! this lifeless nature

Vexes my heart and brain;

Oh! for a storm and tempest,

And lightning, and wild, fierce rain."

I don't suppose I have quoted that right, because remembering verses is
not my strong suit. It is good poetry, though, and carries well the
idea of that impatient Egyptian wench, Cleopatra, who has grown tired
of lolling in a hammock, gazing out upon a dreamy, listless summer
landscape, and stirs herself up and gets off an explosion to the above
effect.

"HERALD" "PERSONALS"

You may sit in a New York restaurant in the morning for a few hours,
and you will observe that the very first thing each man does, before
ordering his breakfast, is to call for the Herald--and the next thing he
does is to look at the top of the first column and read the "Personals."
Such is the fascination mystery has for the human race! Your man has not
the least idea in the world that there is ever going to be a Personal in
the paper that will be of private individual interest to himself, and
he knows very well that he cannot make head or tail of those he finds
there, and that as a vehicle for fun they do not amount to much--yet, as
I have said, he is bound to read those "Personals" the very first thing.
There is such a toothsome flavor of mystery about them! It is the whole
secret. The advertising public appreciate the value of a word under that
"Personal" head, and many are the dodges they invent to get an airing
for their wares there. But it don't succeed. The ingeniously-worded
squibs are ruthlessly set aside and buried in the midst of solid cases
of advertisements in the desert wastes of the paper, where a man might
hunt them with a blood-hound and not find them. True, I have seen
three of these dodges win, lately, but they never hinted at a single
attraction in the matters they were meant to advertise--mentioned places
of business--that was all--nothing but the barest mention. For instance:

"CAROLINE--Be in the same place, at Worrell Sisters' performance,
to-night. White rose, left temple. Do not fail, dearest.

ROBERT."

And again:

"IF THE GENTLEMANLY MANAGER OF THE NEW YORK Theatre, who was smiled
upon by a lady in the dress circle last night, and who was generously
befriended by him in Philadelphia two years ago, will approach the
footlights again to-night, he will recognize her by the lily in the
parting of her hair."

And get smiled on again, likely, poor devil. Here is the third:

"THE LADY WHO LEFT A PAIR OF GLOVES AT MRS. MILLS' Mammarial Balm and
Bust Elevator establishment, Washington place, can have them returned by
calling or sending address."

I will bet a million dollars, seller ten, no deposit, that that
advertisement read "Celebrated Mammarial," etc., etc., etc., originally,
and the Herald people scratched it out. That worried Mrs. Mills, no
doubt. It must have made the old bust elevator feel a little humiliated.
[Which reminds me that I have not been through the mammarial bust
establishments yet. I must make a note of that. I might as well go there
and get busted as anywhere else.]

The "sick" kind of personals are very frequent. For instance, this:

"BLACK EYES--OH, DEAR, HOW ANXIOUS I AM TO HEAR from you!

W. DE ANGELO."

And this:

"HENRY--DON'T KILL ME. REMEMBER, FOURTH AVENUE car runs all night.

SWEET KATE."

That is suggestive, to say the least. She don't want to be killed, but
if he is determined to do it, why, he knows where she puts up, and the
Fourth avenue car offers every facility for murder.

'And how is this?'

"H.--HAVE RECOVERED FROM ACCIDENT. WILL SEE YOU at the old place in
Thirteenth street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues, on Friday, at
half-past four, rain or shine.

EMMA FRANCIS W.

She calls it an accident. Well, accidents will happen, even in the best
regulated families.

But this is the usual style, and altogether the most nauseating:

"SIX P.M., BLEECKER STREET CAR, UP FROM FULTON Ferry. Will the lady who
was embarrassed in making change and was kindly assisted by a gentleman,
whom she smiled upon and who smiled upon her and bowed when she got out,
please address Harold, Herald office, stating where an interview may be
had?"

There seems to be a pack of wooden-headed louts about this town, who
fall in love with every old strumpet who smiles a flabby smile at them
in a street car, and forthwith they pop a personal into the Herald,
beseeching an "interview"--a favor they could have had with infinitely
less circumlocution if they were half as full of gab as they are of
self-complacency. And behold, if a respectable woman dares to look at
one of these by accident, or to see if he has got hind legs and a brass
collar on, up comes the inevitable personal, with a lot of stuff in it
about "the lady who kindly took notice of a gentleman," and so forth
and so on, and the equally inevitable supplication for an "interview."
Perdition catch these whelps! But how is this one?

"MR. WM. F. LAWLER, LATE LANDSMAN, U.S. NAVY, WILL call at 271 Broadway,
to receive some money.

"CHIPMAN, HOSMER & Co."

That has got a very comfortable ring about it, after all that gruel and
nonsense. Only a landsman in the Navy, yet they call him "Mr." Lawler?
That appears to me to suggest that Lawler is to receive something more
than a month's back wages. These Broadway firms do not call a plebeian
Mr. without due and sufficient cause.

And here is a sad one; it tells its own story:

"MARY--COME BACK HOME, AND ALL WILL BE FORGIVEN. My old heart is
breaking.

"YOUR MOTHER."

Many a New Yorker is proof against the seductions of the Cable's
despatches, but none of them can resist the Herald's "Personals."

INFORMATION WANTED

The Philadelphia Commercial List says that California will have exported
230,000 tons of flour and wheat during the statistical year which will
end on the 30th of next month. This sounds like an astonisher to me,
and I guess, on the whole, it isn't so. I know that California has been
shipping flour to the States ever since I landed here, and I know, also,
that I have heard four or five bakers and restaurant people say that
they preferred California flour to any other, but when we come to talk
about such figures as those I have quoted, I have to confess that I
think someone has been imposing upon that Philadelphia paper. If that
were all flour, instead of flour "and wheat," it would make two million
and three hundred thousand barrels. I wish the statement were correct,
because there is a fine opening here for flour, and I would like to see
California prosper; and, besides, they cut their bread mighty thin
in New York, and I would like it if something could induce them to
liberalize the slices some.

HOTELS

Flour brings me easily and comfortably to the subject of hotels. New
York has inaugurated a new fashion in the way of hotels--at least, it is
new for America. She has adopted the European system: Room in the house
and eat where you please. If you choose to eat in the hotel, very well.
Ring for a servant, specify the dishes you want for breakfast, and by
the time you are washed and dressed it will be on the table. And in
the cheerfulest breakfast room you can imagine, too. Not a great public
square in the second story, with an army of hyenas camped around you,
grinding bones and clattering spoons and forks, but an elegant little
apartment, richly furnished, glistening with burnished silver-ware and
bright warm colors, a few little round tables clad in snowy cloths and
garnished like a jeweller's window, and everything quiet, and genteel
and orderly. And you are on the main floor, too, and close to beautiful
plate-glass windows, only one pane to the whole side of the house, (I
stretched it a little, then,) and you can read your paper and sip your
coffee and look out at the fellows caught far from home in the rain, and
enjoy it ever so much!

That is the style. It is costly, but it is comfortable--prodigiously
comfortable. The great caravan hotels do an immense transient business
(try to get a room at one of them if you doubt it,) but when a man of
good sound judgment gets ready to settle down and live and be happy, he
goes to one of the dozen little palaces kept on the European plan.

PERSONAL

I have got a flattering lot of invitations to lecture before various and
sundry literary societies, but I have to forego the pleasure, and what
is more, the profit, of complying, because literary contracts have
got to be fulfilled, and I have got rather more of that kind of
work (together with laying in cider and other supplies for the
Mediterranean,) than I can get through with anyhow, between this and the
8th of June.

Alta California, July 7, 1867

New York,

May 20th, 1867.

FOR CHRISTIANS TO READ

I WAS to have gone with a detective policeman through all the
underground dens of vice and rascality in the Five Points and other and
still more infamous localities of New York, last night, but orders from
headquarters employed the officer otherwise, and we had to put off the
expedition until next Saturday night. So, as human nature delights in
contrasts, and I have considerable human nature in me, I thought I would
go through one of the chief among the fountain-heads of civilization
in this great city, (if not the chief,) and then compare to-day's
experiences with next Saturday's, and see which I like best. I wandered
through the great Bible House for nearly three hours, to-day, in company
with one of its officers, and without meaning to be irreverent, I can
say that I enjoyed the time more than I could possibly have done in any
circus.

The Bible House is a huge, handsome brick structure five stories high,
and fills up one small block by itself. It was built by the American
Bible Society out of funds secured by special donation for that
particular purpose, and therefore the Association's regular finances
were in no way concerned in the matter.

The American Bible Society is fifty years old, having been organized
in 1816. Its first President was Elias Boudinot, of New Jersey, and its
seventh and present President is James Lennox, of New York. Its business
is to translate, print, publish and distribute Bibles to all the nations
of the earth, and at cost price, no penny being made on any volume. They
print the Bible, now, in nearly fifty different languages and dialects.
Some of these lingoes are curious enough. For instance, they print
Bibles in the Arrawack (South America,) Hawaiian, Hindu, Hindi, Urdu,
Zulu, the Shikh, the Hindustanee, the Tamil, the Telugu, Creolese, the
Syriac, the Arabic, Micronesian Islands, the Esthonian, the Benga,
the Grebo, Fuh-Chau colloquial and Mandarin colloquial, and the
Armeno-Turkish, and now are stereotyping Bibles to print in Slavonic and
also the ancient Bulgarian. The Arabic plates now being prepared under
the supervision of the translator, Rev. Dr. Van Dyck, will give the
Bible to a hundred and twenty millions of people! When I tell you that
over a million Bibles a year are now printed in the Bible House, and
that a large portion of these are for our private home consumption, and
that the supply cannot possibly be kept up to the demand, with all their
immense facilities, you will easily understand that while this is
the case with our little 40,000,000 of population, it would hardly be
worthwhile to try to supply those thirsty myriads of Arabs with
the water of life without outside help. So, the Society are making
electrotype plates for the Bible House, also for the establishment in
Beirout, and also for the British Society in London. When they all get
started, then let the Arabs stand from under.

Now I will give you another dose of languages in which the Bible is
printed at the Bible House and its branches: Modern Greek, Hebrew,
Spanish, Turkish, Mahratta, Armenian, Gujerattee (some kind of Irish, I
suppose,) Sanscrit, Portuguese, Persian, Siamese, Malay, Bujis, Dyack,
Japanese, Marquesas, Mpongwe, Dikele, Zulu-Kaffir, Cherokee, Choctaw,
Creek, Osage, Ojibbewa, Ottawa, Seneca, Abenequis, Sioux or Dakota,
Pawnee, and three languages in Oregon. On the first floor of the
building is the Bible Society's Library (it is very extensive,) and,
appropriately enough, there isn't a solitary thing in it but Bibles! I
shall send them a copy of my book, so as to make a little variety. In
that library they have got Bibles in every tongue that was spoken at the
Tower of Babel, and some that have been invented since; Bibles in all
sorts of crooked characters; Bibles in raised letters for the blind; and
even Bibles in short-hand. It makes a man cross-eyed to go through it.
I suppose, next, they will get up a Bible loud enough for the deaf and
dumb to use. They have got Bibles there which were printed when Caxton
was an apprentice, and other Bibles (Hebrew rolls on vellum,) musty and
yellow with age, that may have been used in Solomon's Temple--who
shall be able to say they were not? But the handsomest of all are the
beautiful Arabic and Armenian Bibles, beautiful as Italian script. The
Armenian ones have been compared with fine manuscripts in the Astor
Library, 800 years old, and found to be in no wise inferior to them in
execution. The Arabs consider it profanation to put their language
in vulgar print for a Bible, but the Arabic Bible I have mentioned so
fascinates them by its wonderful elegance that they gracefully yield and
eagerly read it. And, in truth, born Christian as I am, it fascinated me
rather more than the old regular Bible I am accustomed to does. I have
got an Arabic Bible, and it has its little drawbacks--but it has its
advantages, too, because you have to begin at the fag end of it,
and read it backwards and left-handed. It was a sort of a fresh, new
sensation to see the last end of the good book, because I hadn't been
there before for some time. [Sift out the nonsense, and go after the
wholesome facts. I have necessarily got to comment some.]

Since its organization, the American Bible Society has printed and
distributed 22,640,404 Bibles, and the British Society in London, twelve
years older, has printed and distributed 50,000,000. The two Societies
work a good deal together, and together they have sent out over
70,000,000 Bibles! And now at this day, with the demands from the old
regular quarters fearfully augmenting all the time, comes this new
Arabic contract for about 100,000,000 more, and when they are fully
under way with China I suppose there will be a call for three times
as many more! Has the world gone mad after Bibles? It looks like
it. Suppose the descendants of the sacred historians still held the
copyrights! Dividends?

The war brought the Bible House an immense business--a prodigious
business added to the already colossal labors of the Bible House
presses. The Christian Commission ordered and distributed to rebels,
freedmen and United States soldiers, fifteen hundred thousand
Bibles!--and during the pressure of 1863, '64, and part of '65, the
Bible House printers turned out, all bound and ready for shipment, TEN
BIBLES A MINUTE! It looks large--it is 6,000 a day, counting ten hours
to the day--but with their present increased facilities they turn out
5,000 a day and do not run late at night. They had to go night and day
then, however, and probably produced 10,000 or 12,000 a day. They have
got to go to working harder than ever, now, though, because orders flow
in faster than their nineteen great Adams' steam presses can print
the books. And yet the Society has branches in Germany, India, China,
Beirout--everywhere, almost--whose presses are chattering all the time.

THE DEPARTMENTS

Two hundred and fifty women and one hundred and fifty men--four hundred
operatives in all--are employed in the Bible House.

In the fifth story I found all sorts of compositors setting type in all
manner of barbarous languages. Among them the Rev. Father Agapius, a
Cossack by birth, and a priest of the Greek Church, was setting up the
Gospels in tangled-up Arabic type. A printed page of his work looks
like ever so many elegant fishing-worms out on a spree. A Circassian--a
scholar of mighty learning, and in former times a soldier of the Emperor
Nicholas's Body Guard--was setting up the Bible in Russian. In a room
close by, Rev. Dr. Van Dyck was reading proofs of the Arabic Bible. Japs
and Indians and Kanakas all around.

In a great hall adjoining, vast piles of paper were being wet down for
the presses.

In a small room on the same floor they were making matrices and moulding
Arabic type. One man can mould about a thousand an hour. They have
to have 1,100 matrices for the Arabic characters;--our alphabet and
accompanying points only requires about fifty. Fancy an Arab printer
prowling around through a case with eleven hundred boxes in it and
hoping to live the allotted years of man!

Still on this fifth floor is a huge room with nineteen large Adams'
steam presses, all manned by women (four of them confounded pretty,
too), snatching off Bibles in Dutch, Hebrew, Yamyam, Cherokee, etc., at
a rate which it was truly fructifying to contemplate. (I don't really
know the meaning of that word, but I heard it used somewhere yesterday,
and it struck me as being an unusually good word. Any time that I put
in a word that doesn't balance the sentence good, I would be glad if you
would take it out and put in that one.)

Adjoining was another huge room for drying the printed sheets, (very
pretty girls in there, too, and young,) and pressing them, (the sheets,
not the girls.) They use hydraulic presses, (the three prettiest of them
wore curls and never a sign of a waterfall,--the girls, I mean,) and
each of them is able to come down with the almost incredible weight of
eight hundred tons of solid, simon-pure pressure (the hydraulics I am
referring to now of course,) and one has got blue eyes and both of
the others brown, ah, me! I have got this hydraulic business tangled
a little, but I can swear it is no fault of mine. You needn't go to
blaming me about it. You have got to pay for this letter just the
same as if it were as straight as a shingle. I can't afford to go into
dangerous places and then get my wages docked into the bargain.

On the fifth floor is likewise the electrotyping department. Nobody but
men in there.

On the fourth floor is the immense folding-room. Eighty girls there
(some of them very pretty), folding book-sheets at the rate of over
5,000 forms a day apiece. Book-folding is one of the most interesting
operations I ever witnessed. I staid there about four hours and a half.

In the next room was the "gathering" department. A woman stands inside
of a long oval pen, the top of which looks enough like a bar-counter
to rivet the interest of even the most thoughtless. On this counter are
laid piles of folded chapters of the Bible, side by side--piles of the
Books of Esau, Isaac and Jacob, Matthew, Mark and Genesis, Chapter 1, 2,
3, and so on, each chapter to itself--and that woman shins around inside
of that counter and snakes off a chapter from each pile as fast as a
printer picks up types, and before you could ask her out to drink
she has stacked up a complete Bible straight through from Exodus to
Deuteronomy! It went ahead of anything that ever I saw. There were about
a dozen of these book-stackers in as many pens (but they don't allow
outsiders to go in the pens--you have to stay on your own side of the
fence and keep your hands off), and when a Bible is properly stacked
together it is pressed in another lot of those same hydraulic
arrangements (1,300 tons pressure), and conveyed to the adjoining

STITCHING ROOM,

Where, of course, the volumes are stitched together, and where you don't
see anything but waterfalls, waterfalls, waterfalls. They don't turn
around when you pass through. That is, only in a very general sort of
way.

On the third floor was the place where they put the covers on the books;
next to it was the room where they put on the gold-leaf in the rough,
and in another room they add the gorgeous finishing touches, with all
sorts of furnaces and complicated instruments; and down on the

Second floor was the Repository--dead loads of books all piled up ready
for shipment to all quarters of the globe.

On the first story is the packing and shipping department, sales-rooms,
offices, library, convention-room of the Society officers, and so on.

The Bible House is a wonderful institution, truly. It turns out the
cheapest books in America, and the most of them. You can buy a Bible
there of any size, from a flag-stone down to a cake of soap, and buy
it cheaper than you can let it alone, too. Their highest price Bible, a
splendid affair, in morocco, on exquisite paper, beautiful letter-press
and gilt edges, is sold at $14--worth $40 if anybody else published
it. And they will sell you a complete Bible, well bound in sheep, for
forty-five cents. Therefore, why need men be ignorant of the Word? The
great city of New York has within her limits no institution she has more
reason to be proud of than this colossal Bible Association.

I had almost forgotten to mention that the heavy pressure now crowding
the presses is occasioned by unlimited orders from the South. The orders
are received faster than they can be filled. They appear to have run
pretty short of Bibles down there, especially among the freedmen. The
freedmen are literally voracious for Bibles. They are feeding them upon
shiploads of St. John, now, till they can get ahead far enough with the
presses to let loose a freshet of New Testaments entire upon them.

MISSIONARY BUSINESS

While I am on this religious subject, I might as well make a clean
deal of it, I suppose. There are thousands of Christians on the Pacific
Coast, and they will read it. I don't write for the sinful altogether.

In the Bible House are the headquarters of the American Church
Missionary Society, the Children's American Church Missionary Society,
and the Evangelical Knowledge Society.

The object of the American Church Missionary Society is to send
preachers around, wherever they may be needed. It was established in
1860, and is a creation of the Evangelical portion of the Protestant
Episcopal Church. A yearly membership in it costs $3, and a life
membership $100. A donation of $500 lifts a man to the dignity of
Patron. Admiral Dupont was President of the Society at the time of his
death. Jay Cook holds the office now. Geo. D. Morgan is Treasurer. Rev.
Franklin S. Rising, well known and esteemed in California and Nevada,
is Financial Secretary and General Agent--office, 3 Bible House,
where orders for missionaries will be attended to with promptness and
despatch, either in small lots or by the cargo. The latter preferred, of
course. At present the Society is engaged only in supplying orders for
home consumption. However, the facilities afforded by the Government
for exporting, duty free, may induce them to enlarge their business and
embark in the foreign trade to some extent hereafter.

The Society publishes a monthly pamphlet periodical called the "American
Church Missionary Register," price 50 cents a year. She used to
be issued sometimes every now and then, sometimes bi-monthly and
occasionally seldom, but they have got her regulated down to a monthly
now, and they can depend on her. She don't miss fire any more. Mr.
Rising edits her, and she is a credit to him. I do not write for her,
but would, if so requested. Her circulation is extending rapidly. She
has added nearly 3,000 paid subscribers to her lists in the last five
months.

The receipts of the Society, the first year, were $4,000. Last year they
were $50,000. This year, from last October to the end of this month of
May, they foot up $67,000. It is good stock.

Mr. Rising got up the Children's American Missionary Society himself,
and it is flourishing. A yearly membership costs 50 cents, and a life
membership $10. To each is given an exquisite chromo-lithographic
certificate worth double the money. Every three months a children's
illustrated paper is issued and forwarded to the members of the Society
gratis. The membership is immense, naturally enough, because nothing
pleases a child so much as to be a member of something or other. Your
rightly constituted child don't care shucks what it is, either. I joined
the Cadets of Temperance, once, when I was a boy. That was an awful
take-in; no smoking or anything allowed--not even any bad language; but
they had beautiful red scarfs. I stood it three months, and then sidled
out. I liked the red scarfs well enough, but I could not stand the
morality.

But, as I was saying about this Children's Missionary Society, (Bishop
Lee, of Iowa, is the President of it,) they just turn out the Society
every now and then for drill and to recruit, and the young people come
forward in armies. They filled Steinway's Hall here on the 24th of
April; on the 17th of May they filled Concordia Building, in Baltimore;
and on the 18th they crammed the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. And
what do they do? Sing! Sing like all possessed--2,000 voices in chorus!
They sing--and they join the Society--and they badger their parents for
pennies to contribute. Because you know a child likes to contribute
to things. I know about these things, because when I was young I never
could keep a cent; I used to bet it away on the missionaries and come
home broke every Sunday regularly. And so with these children. It is
well. The pennies come from their fathers, and go to a good and worthy
cause, instead of being spent for liquors and other luxuries. There is
good sense in it. These unthinking children--however, that is a slander,
for I believe they do think some, and feel more heartily, and take a
warmer, a hotter interest in their benevolent enterprises than the large
majority of adults do--are doing much to send the gospel abroad into
the waste places of the land, and will do vastly more yet, for this
flourishing new Society is nothing, either in numbers, ability or
influence, to what it will be a few years hence. Come, do your share
towards moving it along.

Now I have got down to the Evangelical Knowledge Society. (How these
Societies slather the syllables around, don't they? If the Prodigal
Son's fortune consisted of seven jointed words, he could have come to
New York and run through his property precious soon putting up names for
religious Societies.) I haven't got the half of that name up there--I
couldn't recollect it. The object of the Society is to publish and
distribute books and all sorts of tracts for the use of the Evangelical
something or other; my notes are blurred--but the books are for the use
of the Church. The people I am writing for will understand what I mean.
I am rusty on these matters, but I am doing the best I can.

Rev. Dr. Dyer is Secretary of the Society. The organization is twenty
years old, and during that time has printed and published some six
hundred different works--large editions of each. It publishes the Book
of Common Prayer in several different sizes, and also a book called
the Mission Service, which is a prayer-book with the Church service
attached, and is intended for the use of straggling communities in
out-of-the-way places, where people become unfamiliar with the routine
of the service. Last year the Society issued 10,500 copies of the Prayer
Book, and 10,000 copies of the Mission Service. They began to publish
these books eight years ago, and since that time they have issued over
140,000 copies of the former and 100,000 of the latter.

This Society works in harmony with the American Church Missionary
Society, and Dr. Dyer is Corresponding Secretary for both. One
association sends out the printed Word, and the other forwards a man to
preach it.

The particular institution I am writing about publishes a couple of
monthly periodicals--the Parish Visitor, for adults, and the Standard
Bearer, for children. Their combined circulations reach somewhere in the
neighborhood of 30,000 copies.

The total cash receipts of the Society last year, from all sources, were
$40,000.

I believe I am done. I haven't had such a moral siege for a year. I will
now go out and blackguard somebody till I begin to feel natural again.

P.S.--I am growing more worthy every day. I have mailed to Father Damon,
in the Sandwich Islands, the Hawaiian History I stole from him a
year ago. Everywhere I have been here in the States, the papers have
mentioned my arrival in complimentary terms, and then published that
crime against me--so as to put the hotel-keepers on their guard, I
suppose. The consequence was I haven't been able to carry off a solitary
spoon yet. But I have yielded to the pressure, and sent the book home.

Alta California, July 14, 1867

New York,

May 2nd, 1867

THE BLIND ASYLUM

IT IS a huge, castellated granite block of buildings, with a broad
grassy yard in front, situated in the Ninth avenue, between Thirty-third
and Thirty-fourth streets. I was loafing around that part of town this
afternoon and stumbled upon it. I recognized it in a moment. I went out
there once when I was stopping near the City Hall, thirteen years
ago. It was a great journey, then, those two and a half miles, and my
recollection of it is that the place was isolated, and had a seeming as
of belonging to the country, rather than to the city. It is in the heart
of the town, now, though, and is walled in with elegant brown-stone
dwellings of the first-class.

It was unrulable to admit me, to-day, because it was not visiting-day,
but they let me in because I was a newspaper reptile and a stranger. A
young woman, quick of gesture and speech, and a nimble walker, conducted
me through the school-rooms, music-rooms, work-rooms, map-rooms, chapel,
sleeping-wards, dining-room, factories, and so forth, and I never
suspected that she was blind until it was all over. She was not entirely
blind, but might as well have been. They said she would not run over
a chair in daylight, because she would detect a dark shape in her way,
though she would not be able to say what it was without feeling it. And
this reminds me that throughout that large establishment everything that
one could run over seemed carefully kept out of the way.

I watched a dozen boys weaving mats, some on looms and some by hand.
They worked fast and with decision, and as they generally seemed to look
at what they were doing, I could not feel satisfied, somehow, that they
were sightless.

We stopped at the foot of a stairway, and the girl told me to go up and
see the boys making brooms. I went up softly, and stood on the landing
without having made a noise. The work men were noisy, and all were
gossiping freely and chaffing each other. Presently one of them,
half-a-dozen steps in front of me, and with his back to me, leaned over,
and looked intently at some object at the other end of the room, and
also seemed to be listening. Then he shook his head and fell to work
again. Presently he took another long look, and then went softly and
spoke to his neighbors and then stopped talking; so did they all, a
moment after; and I said, to myself, surely this fellow sees me in
a mirror somewhere, though I don't see one. I felt like a detected
eaves-dropper, however, and went up and asked him what he had been
looking at? "At you," he said. "But you looked almost in the opposite
direction from where I was," I said. He smiled and made no reply. I
spoke to the girl about the matter when I went down, and she said he
probably could see a little out of the extreme back corner of his eye,
but was blind to all objects before or beside him. She said such a case
was not unusual.

In another place I talked some time with three women and a man who were
making hair mattresses, and I thought they were gifted with sight. The
fact is, one needs to be reminded all the time that he is among blind
folks. Their dreadful eyes shock him once, and after that he looks at
those organs no more; and so there is nothing left save a stoop in the
shoulders, a painful one-sided twist in the face and a sort of sideways
inclination of the head, to suggest to him that there is something
unusual the matter with these people; but at the same time, these things
need not necessarily suggest to him that their trouble is blindness.

They walk about the rooms freely, go from place to place and lean over
and speak to each other, and yet never grope, or hesitate, or stumble,
or bump their heads. They act a good deal as other people do.

We went into a room where fifteen or twenty girls, from nine years to
sixteen, were making little fancy bead baskets and such things. Most
of them were cheerful and chatty, but some looked very sober and were
silent; one or two looked sad, I thought, and one child, sitting by a
window, with her tedious basket in one hand half finished, had dropped
her head upon her arm and forgotten all her troubles in slumber.

Those little ornamental open-work baskets look simple enough, but when
you come to understand how they are made, and how the little wire
must wind its devious course and be passed many times through the same
mustard-seed of a bead, you comprehend that the workmanship is wearisome
and intricate. One girl had arrived at a point in her labors where the
wire had travelled its course many times through handles and sides and
top and bottom, and had to be thrust for the fourth time through a tiny
bead. And every time she tried, she failed; the wire bent, or the bead
slipped, or something else happened that prevented the consummation.
But patiently and without a word, the girl tried and tried again, and in
anxiety and tribulation I watched the operation, and my spirits rose as
she almost succeeded, and fell again when the cursed bead slipped--and
when at last she did get it through, I wanted to give a good round three
cheers with a will!

In another part of the house a dozen or so of blind young ladies were
knitting all manner of elaborately-figured tidies, and such things. One
of them was pretty--the only pretty girl I saw, except the wide-awake
one at the office down below who admitted me. It seemed strange to me
that Nature should have so sorely afflicted these unfortunate girls, and
then made them so fearfully and wonderfully homely into the bargain--a
thing in itself which the sex hold in proper horror. The knitters
were talking with all their might, and seemed perfectly jolly and
contented--at least the majority of them did. But it didn't cheer me up
a particle. It was the saddest place I ever got into. I don't mind blind
boys--they ought all to be blind, for that matter--and deaf and dumb,
and lame and halt and paralyzed, and shaken up by earthquakes and struck
by lightning--just to make them behave themselves, you know--but I felt
so sorry for those girls. They could not see the sun, or the moon, or
the ocean, the green trees, or the flowers, the gilded clouds or the
rainbow--they could not even see the faces they loved. It were better to
be dead and buried. They seemed to be happy, but I could not understand
how they managed to come at it.

A matron gave a girl a needle, in order to show how deftly she could
thread it--a girl who was as blind as a brick bat. The needle was a No.
6, the matron said, and I judged that the thread was about No. 14. It
was thick enough to be. The girl did it, and quickly. Then the same
service was required at the hands of another girl, and she performed it,
too, but in an unusual way--she put the end of the needle in her mouth
and worked the thread through the eye with her tongue. The matron said
either of them could thread a No. 10 needle with great facility. I
expressed cordial surprise at that, although my admiration was modified
some by the fact that I didn't know just what style of a needle a No. 10
might be.

Several methods of teaching the blind to write are used. In some cases
the paper is placed upon a board in which groove like depressions have
been made, and these grooves prevent the pen from wandering abroad. But
this is but a shabby system at best, because after the poor devil has
spent months and years in learning to write, he cannot read his own work
when it gets cold, because he cannot see it. A new method has come into
vogue in the New York and Missouri asylums, which is in high favor with
the blind. By it they learn to write in a few months, and another blind
person can read the manuscript easily. It consists in punching a series
of letters and signs (they were suggested by the telegraphic signs) with
a blunt awl; then they turn the paper over and spell out the sense
of the raised perforations with the finger ends. But see how many
difficulties the blind have to labor under anyhow: of course when they
turn the paper over to read, all the writing is reversed; so, the pupil
must learn to write one way and read another--must write upside down and
read right side up. Still, this new system, which is called the Braille,
is immensely popular with these unfortunates.

The blind have books to read, of course--books printed on coarse paper
in heavy raised lower-case sharply-angular letters (no capitals,)
without ink. They have a Bible, in eight monstrous volumes, each one a
heavy load for a school-girl, and the whole set a cargo for a pack-mule.
And they have the History of England and of America--but that seems to
be about all. The deaf and dumb scholar can smouch a poem or a sensation
novel and revel in it in secret, but they have got the blind child in
the door. It has to confine itself to the most substantial literature.

One of the girls read the ninth chapter of Second Corinthians for me.
She spelled the words rapidly with her fingers, and when she came to
familiar biblical words like wherefore, therefore, lo, behold, etc.,
she recognized them with a single nervous touch and went on. She made no
mistakes.

One room was hung with great maps of all parts of the globe, carved out
of wood--with raised knobs for islands, nail heads for cities, veins or
grooves for rivers, etc., but no names written anywhere. On a table was
a great map of the United States, all sawed to pieces--each State sawed
apart and the whole put together like a puzzle. A little girl pulled
this map to pieces and jumbled the States up like a pile of bricks,
and then the young disunionist repented of her work, and quickly
reconstructed her country again--did it about as fast as she could pick
up the several States, pass her hand across their faces and lay them
down again. And she mentioned the capital of each State and described
its location correctly. I was granted the privilege of questioning her
and testing her geographical knowledge, but did not try it. Those
blank wooden maps were little more intelligible to me than a flag-stone
pavement would have been.

Another girl played on the piano, and played very sweetly and without
any flourishes. They use no written music in the asylum, but are taught
bar after bar, till they know a piece by heart. It is a tedious process.

WHAT BLINDED THEM

There are 124 pupils on the books of the asylum--about half boys and
half girls. The statistics which show the various causes of their
blindness are curious enough. Out of 844 blind persons who have been
cared for at the asylum, 150 inherited blindness from their parents. The
cases of apthalima number 196; amourosis, 77; cataract, 21; small pox,
22; scarlet fever, 16; measles, 16; syphilis, 19; mal-practice, 10;
overdose of arsenic, 1; vaccination, 1; pen-knife wounds, 11; gun-shot
wounds, 16. Then we have blindness resulting from all sorts of
accidents. Blowing glass; blow of an arrow; blow of a stone; blow of
a hammer; blast; fall; kick of a horse; looking at the sun; pitchfork
wound; run over; sawdust in the eyes; sand in the eyes; silver in the
eyes; sting of insect; scissors wound; singing broadcloth; sun stroke;
whip-lash; verdigris.

SINGULAR INSTANCES

In two cases, repulsive sights seen by mothers caused their infants to
be born blind. In one case the mother frequently saw a house servant who
had very sore eyes, and in the other the mother looked at the skinned
head of a calf, with the eyes in it. In both instances the eyes of the
children were like those of the objects of dislike.

"YOU'RE A FRAUD!"

That is the new word for "dead beat" and the other slang expressions
used to express the same thing. If any slang term can have a merit,
this one has, in that it may succeed in entirely expelling two or
three frightful vulgarisms from our dialect as spoken outside of
drawing-rooms, (yes, and sometimes in them) "You are a fraud"--he is a
fraud--they are frauds--you hear the term used here every day and at
all hours of the day and night. Sometimes drunken men get it "You're
a frog"--and then it sounds funny. If you cannot get along without
adopting Eastern slang, adopt this; and if you must invent slang
yourselves, invent none that is more repulsive.

"SUT LOVINGOOD"

It was reported, years ago, that this writer was dead--accidentally shot
in a Tennessee doggery before the war; but he has turned up again,
and is a conductor on a railway train that travels somewhere between
Charleston, S.C., and Memphis. His real name is George Harris. I have
before me his book, just forwarded by Dick & Fitzgerald, the publishers,
New York. It contains all his early sketches, that used to be so popular
in the West, such as his story of his father "actin' hoss," the lizards
in the camp-meeting, etc., together with many new ones. The book abounds
in humor, and is said to represent the Tennessee dialect correctly. It
will sell well in the West, but the Eastern people will call it coarse
and possibly taboo it.

THE BOOTBLACKS

Sometimes, down about the City Hall Park, it does seem to me that every
little ragamuffin in New York has bought a brush and a foot-box, and
gone in the boot-blacking business. "Blackin', sir, blackin' I" "Shine,
sir?--nice shine, sir, only five cents!" So they assail a man at every
step, and persecute him from the rising of the sun till the going down
thereof. If you give one of them a job, half a dozen of them will crowd
around and sit on the ground to see it done and criticise it; and to
blackguard each other in a slang that no Christian can understand; and
make remarks about the sensation of the day; and speak familiarly and
disrespectfully of the gentlemen of the City Government, and abuse their
stupidity; and drop critiques concerning "the Japs," discuss the leaders
in the Herald, the Tribune and Times, and even find fault with Mr.
Seward's statesmanship, and the general conduct of the National
Government. I notice that they usually speak of great personages as
"old" Seward, "old" Johnson, etc. It is because these free-souled young
blackguards scorn to be respectful to anything or anybody. After they
have got through discussing the new Russian Possessions purchase, they
fall to pitching pennies and engaging in other disreputable species
of gambling, and combine business with it as before, in the matter of
persecuting passers-by.

I saw a sign on a house in an obscure street, yesterday, which read,
"Boot-Black Brigade Chapel," and found out that some well meaning
enthusiast is in the habit of drumming a lot of these gamins de New York
together two or three times a week, and preaching to them and praying
for them, under the extraordinary impression that he can save their
souls. I certainly wish him well, but I bet nothing on his success.

I went in, and found a preacher earnestly exhorting about two hundred
of the rattiest lot of little outlaws that any city can produce. Most
of the time they listened pretty intently, but critically--always
critically, for behold, the bootblack is nothing if not critical. Part
of what the preacher said they seemed to receive as square and proper
enough, and part they seemed to receive under mild protest--but when he
said that Lazarus was brought to life after he had been dead three days,
there was a pretty general telegraphing of incredulity from eye to eye
about the assemblage, and one boy with a shock head and rags all over
to match nudged his neighbor, and said in a coarse whisper, "I don't go
that, Bill, do you?--'cause he'd stink, wouldn't he?"

And when the preacher told how the five thousand were miraculously fed
with twelve loaves and several little fishes, a boy said:

"Say, Jimmy, do you suck that?"

"Well, I do'no. It mought a ben, mebbe, if they warn't many of 'em
hongry. I see the time, though, when I could a et them twelve loaves
myself, I could, less'n they was busters."

And so they criticised all the while, and cast disrepute upon every
statement that seemed a little shaky to them, and the longer I staid the
less confidence I had in the speculation of trying to get material for
salvation out of the bootblack brigade.

I attended the Old Bowery Theatre in the evening, and there, in the
pit, I found the whole tribe. I suppose there were three hundred of them
present, closely packed together in their rags and dirt, and the way
they guyed the actors and criticised the performance was interesting.
They applauded all the "ranting" passages furiously, and hurled
uncompromising scorn and contempt upon the sentimental ones.

I asked one of them what he thought of the leading man as an actor?

"Oh, he ain't no force. You'd ought to hear Proctor--Oh, geeminy!--why,
you can hear Proctor f'm here to Central Park when he lays hisself out
in Richard Third."

Up in the fifth tier--the gallery--there was a multitude of negroes,
and a sprinkling of bootblacks and women of the town. There was a bar
up there, and two of the women came forward and asked us to treat. A
bootblack, who had just blacked my boots and perhaps felt a personal
interest in my welfare on that account, tipped at me a wink of wonderful
complexity and mystery, and I went and asked him to translate it. He
said:

"You keep away f'm them women. I've been around here four years, and I
know all about 'em. Don't you go no wheres with that curly-headed one,
nor 'tother one either--they'd go through you for everything you've got.
That's their style. You ask any cop (policeman,)--they'll tell you.
Why, that curly girl's rid in the Black Maria (conveyance for prisoners)
oftener'n she's rid in the street cars. And don't you touch that liquor
in there--don't tell anybody I told you, 'cause they'd highst me out of
this, you know--but don't you drink that dern swipes--it's pison."

I thanked the philosopher for his advice, and followed it. The
bootblacks and newsboys, who did not happen to be present at the play,
were all outside in front of the theatre, I think. There were dozens
of them--all holding out their hands for checks, when we started home
between the acts. We delivered up ours, and a noisy, struggling scramble
ensued for their possession. They are a wild, lawless, independent lot,
those bootblacks and street boys, and would make good desperado stuff to
stock a new mining camp with.

BOOTBLACK SCRIPTURIST

It was a cultivated bootblack--a bootblack who had attended the chapel
I spoke of above, and become learned in sacred history and felicitous in
explaining and expounding it--who so happily accounted for the absence
of all apparent fear on the part of both Daniel and the lion, in a
picture representing the prophet in the den. Another bootblack could
not understand what it was that gave both so much confidence--could not
understand what made each seem so serenely indifferent to the other.
This wise boy explained it. He said:

"Humph! the lion don't give a d--n for Dan'l, and Dan'l don't give a
d--n for the lion--both of 'em relies on the protection o' Prov'dence."

Alta California, July 21, 1867

New York,

May 26th, 1867.


THE SEX IN NEW YORK

EDITORS ALTA: They do not treat women with as much deference in New York
as we of the provinces think they ought. This is painfully apparent
in the street-cars. Authority winks at the overloading of the
cars--authority being paid for so winking, in political influence,
possibly, for I cannot bring myself to think that any other species of
bribery would be entertained for a moment--authority, I say, winks
at this outrage, and permits one car to do the work of at least two,
instead of compelling the companies to double the number of their cars,
and permits them, also, to cruelly over-work their horses, too, of
course, in the face of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals. The result of this over-crowding is to set the people back
a long stride toward semi-civilization. What I mean by that dreadful
assertion is, that the over-crowding of the cars has impelled men to
adopt the rule of hanging on to a seat when they get it, though twenty
beautiful women came in and stood in their midst. That is going back
toward original barbarism, I take it. A car's proper cargo should be
twenty-two inside and three upon each platform--twenty-eight-and no
crowding. I have seen fifty-six persons on a car, here, but a large
portion of them were hanging on by the teeth. Some of the men inside had
to go four or five miles, and naturally enough did not like to give up
their seats and stand in a packed mass of humanity all that distance.
So, when a lady got in, no man offered her a seat--no man dreamt of
doing such a thing. No citizen, I mean. Occasionally I have seen a man,
under such circumstances, get up and give his place to a lady, but the
act betrayed, like spoken words, that he was from the provinces. I have
seen negroes sitting stuck up comfortably in a car, and lovely young
white ladies standing up before them, block after block, clinging to
the leather supports that depended from the roof. And then I wanted a
contraband for breakfast.

When I am with the Romans I try to do as the Romans do. I generally
succeed reasonably well. I have got so that I can sit still and let a
homely old maid stand up and nurse her poodle till she is ready to drop,
but the young and the blooming, alas! are too many for me. I have to
get up and vacate the premises when they come. Someday, though, maybe, I
shall acquire a New York fortitude and be as shameless as any.

The other day an ill-bred boy in a street-car refused to give up his
seat to a lady. The conductor very properly snatched him out and seated
the lady. Consequence: Justice Dowling fined that conductor a month's
wages--sixty dollars--and read him a lecture worth sixty dollars more.
Now, I think that was shameful. I think that was perfectly shameful,
if the lady was young and beautiful. And it was just as shameful if the
woman was old and feeble, too, no doubt.

In other cities men make way for women to their own discomfort, but
complain that they get no thanks for it--not even a smile or a bow--but
they don't make way here. I suppose the sex in New York have learned by
hard experience how to value a concession from a strange gentleman. They
thank one in unmistakable terms for such a kindness, even at the risk
of being called on for a "personal interview" through the Herald's
"Personals" the next day for it. A lady must not so far forget herself
as to "kindly notice" a human puppy in a street car here if she does not
want to figure in the "Personals."

Now I hate to say it, but women even have to stand up in omnibuses here
when those vehicles are over-crowded--especially if she be so dead to
all principle as to be sinfully homely. New York is fast arriving at a
state of things. That is my opinion. I have no business to express it,
perhaps, and I may get myself in trouble by it; but I care not; even
though I perish, I shall still say it and stick to it, that this town is
arriving at a state of things. And in that day, what will become of the
wretched place? Verily, no man knoweth.

HARRIS

Well, surely, there is no accounting for things in this world. It is
published that Harris--His Excellency C. C. Harris, of Honolulu--is
to visit Washington as a sort of Envoy Extraordinary to engineer a
Reciprocity treaty between the Hawaiian Government and ours. I have
got to call on Harris. I owe it to my country to do it. I must conjure
Harris by the new dignity that has been conferred upon him of the Grand
Cross of the Legion of something or other; and by this other dignity of
being by far the most extraordinary Envoy Extraordinary that ever was
created by any Government history hath mentioned; and by the love and
the respect he once bore this land of his nativity before he was born
again as a royalty-worshipping Kanaka, not to lay his unsanctified hand
upon anything here that he can't carry. It is his unhappy instinct to
gobble, gobble, gobble--gobble up and carry off. Whether it be to
gouge native chiefs, or seek distinction on high as an Elder in
Bishop Staley's Church and pass around the hat, (oh, blind and deluded
congregation that would trust him with it) or grab all the heavy
offices, from Minister of Finance down to Attorney-General-by-brevet,
and try to run the whole Hawaiian Government by himself, his instinct is
the same, and it is always to gobble. So I must warn him.

And he must not swell around Washington and make eloquent speeches that
seem to be splendid flights of oratory, but won't stand a fire-assay for
sense, and won't wash for coherence, either, because we have got people
in Congress who are just as good as he is at that, and so he won't
attract any attention.

I must tell him to mind his own business--to mind his reciprocity
treaty, and keep his hands off the things. If he does his work just
exactly as he wants to do it, and as only his tireless industry and his
marvellous cheek can do it, he can succeed in clinching a treaty that
will make American interests very sick in the Sandwich Islands. The
Herald's Honolulu correspondence of this morning rather warns Congress
to look out for Harris, and I am inclined to think the warning was very
well put in, and would find an echo from every American in the Islands.
I still continue in my set opinion that Harris won't do.

THAT SINGULAR SHIPWRECK

Californians talk wickedly about the beaching of the Santiago de Cuba
a day or two ago, and the passengers by that ship are loud in their
denunciations of the mismanagement that caused that accident. They say
it is on record that the Santiago had a narrow escape off Hatteras,
and actually touched bottom--and further, that she touched on her two
preceding trips. Some say that Captain Behm was drunk; all agree that
the ship was running a curious course, considering that the weather
was foggy, and that there was considerable room in the Atlantic Ocean
further eastward and no shoals to imperil her. The Captain himself says
that the ship was steering a proper course, but that an unknown current
must have carried her in those nineteen miles from where she ought
to have been. A miss is as good as a mile, we all know--but it is
questionable whether a miss is as good as nineteen miles.

They say the Captain was below, drunk, and not attending to his
business. Part of that charge is rather far-fetched--because the
accident occurred out of the Captain's watch, and at a time when he had
a right to be below, or in bed, or anywhere else he pleased. I suppose
the ship's log will show where the vessel was at noon, and the courses
she was put upon at eight in the evening and every few hours in the
night; so if there was anything wrong about the direction the Captain
ordered that she should be steered, it is easy to determine it.

I sailed with Captain Behm, in the San Francisco, from Greytown to New
York, and saw a good deal of him. I never saw him drunk, or any approach
to it. I did see him eternally figuring at his navigation books and
charts, though, or looking up his subordinates and keeping them to their
duties. It seemed to me at the time that he was a singularly faithful
officer, and I know that no one thought of such a thing as feeling
concerned for the safety of the ship while she was under his management.
What they may say now, however, when he is unfortunate, is another
matter.

I have talked with several of the Santiago's passengers, but of course
no satisfactory solution of the problem of this curious accident could
be arrived at. I expect, though, that if the truth were known,
the officer on watch, or the man at the wheel, misunderstood the
instructions by a point of the compass, or possibly even a couple of
points; and it is also possible that the wheelsman may have been
drowsy (it was the sleepiest watch in all the six), and didn't steer by
instructions or anything else. A sleepy steersman often gets so far off
his course on a sailing vessel that the sails flap in the wind and stir
up the heedless officer of the deck--but on a steamer he might drowse
on for hours if no warning canvas were spread. I hope Captain Behm will
come out of this difficulty with a clear record, and somehow I cannot
help but think he will. All who have sailed with him would be glad to
see him found blameless in this matter.

THE PRESSURE

Dull times begin to tell. The monstrous rents I spoke of some time ago
are diminishing. Mayday told the story. Everybody offered to remain in
rented houses and apartments at reduced rates, and were refused--and
so everybody moved. Where the mischief they went to, nobody knows, but
certainly rooms to rent and houses and even stores to let are quite
plenty, now, whereas they were wonderfully scarce three months ago.
Rents of rooms and dwellings have fallen off forty per cent. since the
first of this month of May, and if business does not grow better there
must be a still further reduction. Even stores are renting considerably
cheaper now than they were before the 1st inst. "For rent," and "To
let," are getting to be quite common signs, now, about the city.

BLOOD

The old Washoe instincts that have lain asleep in my bosom so long are
waking up again here in the midst of this late and unaccountable freshet
of blood-letting that has broken loose in the East. The papers, all of a
sudden, are being filled with assassinations, and second-degree murders,
and prize-fights, and suicides. It is a wonderful state of things. From
a careless indifference to such matters, I have been roused up to an
old-time delight in them, and now I have to have my regular suicide
before breakfast, like a cocktail, and my side-dish of murder in the
first degree for a relish, and my savory assassination to top off with
while I pick my teeth and smoke. A breakfast would be insipid, now,
without these condiments. If I were to order a beef-steak rare and a
murder in the first degree, and only got the former, I believe I would
have to retire and wait for the evening papers.

All the air is filled with blood and crime. In this morning's paper is
a suicide, with bloody details; a stabbing affray; a tremendous forgery
case; two prize fights; a church robbed; a grave desecrated; a lot of
minor crimes, and a continuation of the evidence in the case of Bridget
Dergan, who is charged with murdering her mistress, some time ago in
Jersey. A day or two ago an ex-policeman stepped out from behind a
tree-box in a lonely place in Brooklyn, and blew a hole through a worthy
citizen with a sinful air-gun, and for ten days we have been assailed
with paragraphs charging our detectives with being partners with a gang
of thieves and rascals, and helping them commit sundry great crimes (but
which it couldn't be, you know). It is a dreadful state of things. I do
not know whether I am in the heart of morality and civilization, or not.
I begin to waver. All things look shaky to me, and I sigh for a Holier
land.

But that Dergan case is a curious one. Mrs. Corriell's husband left her
at home with her young child and the servant, Bridget Dergan, on a snowy
winter's night. Toward midnight, neighbors heard sounds of struggling,
and of beating, and banging, and smashing of furniture, and cries as
of someone in mortal distress. They covered up their heads with the bed
clothes to shut out these horrid noises; some took a frightened glance
toward Mrs. Corriell's house, saw the shadow of figures darting hither
and thither athwart the window curtains, and ran shuddering to bed
again. Finally, Bridget, in her stocking feet and half dressed, came
with the baby in her arms, after all was still, and called for admission
at a house, and said there was trouble at Dr. Corriell's. Then she went
to a preacher's house and waited dismally, and they let her in, and she
said, before she was asked, that she believed Mrs. Corriell had been
murdered--she didn't know, but she thought so--but she didn't know
whether the house was on fire or not! [She made a pretty good stagger
at it in the way of a guess, though, for it had been set on fire by
somebody.] Bridget sat down in her night-dress, and when she noticed
that the astonished preacher was staring at a great splotch of blood,
as big as two hands, upon its front, she quietly rose up and folded that
portion under her and sat down on it. The poor baby's eyes were fixed
and it made no sound--was scared, the preacher's wife thought. Well,
when the neighbors gathered in Mrs. Corriell's house they found her
lying gashed and battered, and sweltering in her blood--dead; and the
furniture was smashed and turned upside down, and the bed had been
saturated with camphene and set on fire and was still burning. The
points of bloody fingers were upon the door-facing--fingers that had
been cut in three places with a knife, and corresponding wounds were
found upon Bridget's fingers.

The savage murderer had bitten the dead woman's cheek. The thoughtful
preacher took a neat cast of the wound, and, afterwards, a plaster-cast
taken of Bridget's teeth was found to be exactly like it, and exactly
like nobody's else. Snow was on the ground, and Bridget's shoeless
tracks were in it, but not anybody's else. Yet Bridget says two men came
at 8 in the evening and scared her mistress, and then came later, and
her mistress told her to seize the child and run, and she did so, and
that is all she knows about the matter.

It is in evidence that Bridget is a mild, amiable, well conducted girl,
who loved her mistress and her household, and bore a blameless character
among all who knew her. I suppose the world has never produced so
strong a case of pure circumstantial evidence against any creature as
is against Bridget Dergan, (for mind you there is none whatever but
circumstantial evidence, and will not be, as the prosecution has closed
its case,) and I suppose that stronger evidence of temporary insanity
on the part of the accused has seldom been met with--and yet Bridget's
counsel announces his intention to prove that she did not commit this
murder--is utterly innocent of having had any hand in the killing,
and sets this forth as his line of defence. He remotely hints at
weak-mindedness, or idiocy, on her part, and barely mentions her having
speculated in fits to some extent, but says never a word about trying to
clear her on the ground of insanity. That looks very singular. I don't
know how he is going to get around that bite, and those teeth, and that
bloody hand on the door, and the absence of all tracks going from the
house or approaching it, save Bridget's. This line of defence, this
claiming of innocence where a plea of insanity would fit so much better,
gives this trial a splendid interest, and all the East will watch it
closely to the end. It is perfectly invaluable to me since I have become
so bloodthirsty.

INFORMATION FOR THE CHOLERA

By an Inspector's report for 1864, it was shown that one-half the
population of New York city--in round numbers 500,000 souls--lived in
tenement houses--lived in 15,000 tenement houses--an average of eight
families to a house, though some houses contained fewer and some swarmed
with two or three hundred persons. The city is said to contain over
a million inhabitants, now, and half of them are packed away in these
holes and dens and cellars of tenement houses, where unimaginable dirt
is the rule and cleanliness is a miracle--would be a miracle, I mean,
but they don't have it.

They are going to have these tenement houses all white washed inside,
but that will hardly save the occupants when the cholera comes. It
will be here soon, and it will sweep those sinks of corruption like a
conflagration. You know how the telegraph thrilled us every day, a
year ago, with accounts of the scourging of the great plague here, in
Cincinnati, St. Louis and other places. I find now--at least they tell
me--that respectable people did not die from it. The term is a hard one,
but it describes well. Only the poor, the criminally, sinfully, wickedly
poor and destitute starvelings in the purlieus of the great cities
suffered, died, and were hauled out to the Potter's field--the
well-to-do were seldom attacked. It seems hard, but truly humiliation,
hunger, persecution and death are the wages of poverty in the mighty
cities of the land. No man can say aught against honest poverty. The
books laud it; the instructors of the people praise it; all men glorify
it and say it hath its reward here and will have it hereafter. Honest
poverty is a gem that even a King might feel proud to call his own, but
I wish to sell out. I have sported that kind of jewelry long enough.
I want some variety. I wish to become rich, so that I can instruct
the people and glorify honest poverty a little, like those good,
kind-hearted, fat, benevolent people do.

But, as I was saying, there is a place here for the cholera--its
lodgings are set apart and made ready for it--and in the fullness of
time it will enter in and occupy them. It is no need to growl at the
Government, either State or municipal, about the pestilence-breeding
tenement-houses, for they cannot help the matter much. They are doing
all they can. They are making the landlords go to the expense of
whitewashing the tenement-houses throughout, and when the landlord has
done that he will gently raise the rent, and that will raise some of the
tenants out, and then how much better off will they be? The cholera will
follow them to the street.

PERSONAL

R. L. Ogden, ("Podgers"), San Francisco correspondent of the New York
Times, arrived here yesterday from Panama, and is at the Metropolitan.
Also, Johnny Skae, and many other Californians and Washoe people, whom
I have not yet met. They are all going to Europe, of course. So is
everybody else. I am afraid the French language will not be spoken in
France much this year. I shall feel mighty sick if, after rubbing up
my rusty French so diligently, I have to run the legs off myself
skirmishing around Paris, hunting for such a sign as "Ici on parle
Francais."

Marshall, the painter of the famous Lincoln portrait (and the engraver
of it also), is hard at work on a portrait of General Grant, now, from
life. It is to be engraved on copper, and I suppose it will be published
by Ticknor & Fields, the publishers of the Lincoln picture.

Alta California, July 28, 1867

New York,

May 28th, 1867.

ACADEMY OF DESIGN

EDITORS ALTA: I am thankful that the good God creates us all ignorant.
I am glad that when we change His plans in this regard, we have to do it
at our own risk. It is a gratification to me to know that I am ignorant
of art, and ignorant also of surgery. Because people who understand art
find nothing in pictures but blemishes, and surgeons and anatomists see
no beautiful women in all their lives, but only a ghastly stack of
bones with Latin names to them, and a network of nerves and muscles and
tissues inflamed by disease. The very point in a picture that fascinates
me with its beauty, is to the cultured artist a monstrous crime against
the laws of coloring; and the very flush that charms me in a lovely
face, is, to the critical surgeon, nothing but a sign hung out to
advertise a decaying lung. Accursed be all such knowledge. I want none
of it.

The art critics have been so diligently abusing everything in and about
the Academy of Design, for weeks past, that I was satisfied that a visit
there could produce nothing but unhappiness. I wandered into the place
by accident to-day, how ever, and staid there three hours. I could have
staid a week. I was not cultivated enough to see the dreadful faults
that were so glaring to others' eyes. There were some three hundred
pictures on exhibition, and, to me, about thirty or forty were very
beautiful. I liked all the sea views, and the mountain views, and the
quiet woodland scenes, with shadow-tinted lakes in the foreground, and I
just revelled in the storms.

There was a dreamy tropical scene--a wooded island in the centre of
a glassy lake bordered by an impenetrable jungle of trees all woven
together with vines and hung with drooping garlands of flowers--the
still lake pictured all over with the reflected beauty of the
shores--two lonely birds winging their way to the further side, where
grassy lawns, and mossy rocks, and a wilderness of tinted foliage, were
sleeping in a purple mist. I thought it was beautiful, but I suppose it
wasn't. I suppose if I were not so ignorant I would have observed that
one of the birds' hind legs was out of line, and that the coloring
was shaky in places, and that some of the "effects" were criminal
transgressions of the laws of art.

And I know I ought to have admired that picture, by one of the old
masters, where six bearded faces without any bodies to them were glaring
out of Egyptian darkness and glowering upon a naked infant that was not
built like any infant that ever I saw, nor colored like it, either. I am
glad the old masters are all dead, and I only wish they had died sooner.

There were two pictures that suited me, but they were so small and so
modest that I was ashamed to let the other visitors see me looking
at them so much, so I gazed at them sidewise, and "let on" to be
worshipping the "old master" rascalities. I had no catalogue, and did
not want any--because, if a picture cannot tell its own story to us
uncultivated vagrants, we scorn to read it out of a book. One of these
pictures represented two libertines of quality teasing and jesting
with a distressed young peasant girl, while her homely brother, (or
sweetheart, maybe,) sat by with the signs of a coming row overshadowing
his face. The other was racy. In a little nook in a forest, a splendid
gray squirrel, brimful of frisky action, had found a basket-covered
brandy flask upset, and was sipping the spilled liquor from the
ground. His face told that he was delighted. Close by, a corpulent old
fox-squirrel was stretched prone upon his back, and the jolly grin on
his two front teeth, and the drunken leer of his half-closed eye told
that he was happy, and that the anxious solicitude in the face of the
black squirrel that was bending over him and feeling his pulse was all
uncalled for by the circumstances of the case.

More than half the paintings in the Academy are devoted to the usual
harmless subjects, of course. You find the same old pile of cats asleep
in the corner; and the same old party of kittens skylarking with a
cotton ball; and the same old excited puppy looking out of a window; and
the same old detachment of cows wading across a branch at sunset; and
the same old naked libels marked "Eve;" and the same old stupid looking
wenches marked "Autumn," and "Summer," etc., loafing around in the
woods, or toting flowers, and all of them out of shirts, in the same
old way; and there were the everlasting farmers, gathering their eternal
squashes; and a "Girl Swinging on a Gate;" and a "Girl Reading;" and
girls performing all sorts of similar prodigies; and most numerous and
most worn-out of all, there was the usual endless array of vases and
dishes full of grapes and peaches and slices of watermelon, and such
stuff; and the same tiresome old tom cat "laying" for a gold-fish.
However, I ought to be circumspect in the matter of these
fruit-pictures, because those are the first things the young ladies look
at when they come in, and the last they examine before they go out.

Now, after four or five years of terrible warfare, there is only one
historical picture in the Academy--Lincoln's entry into Richmond--and
that is execrable. There isn't a single battle piece. What do you
suppose is the reason?

There is one fine piece of statuary--Eve--but she had three apples--two
in her left hand, and one in her right, which she was getting ready
to bite. I thought our common mother only plucked one apple. When this
sculptor makes another Eve he had better get her a basket.

Now, I suppose I have gone and done the very same thing the art critics
do--left unmentioned the works I liked, and mentioned only those I did
not like. However, let it go. I must abuse the building these things are
in, though. Outside, it is barred, and cross-barred, and streaked, and
striped, and spotted, and speckled, and gilded, and defiled from top to
bottom, with infamous flummery and filagreed gingerbread, to that degree
that the first glance a stranger casts upon it unsettles his mind for a
week. First, he thinks it is a church--but then it flashes upon him that
no God-fearing Christian would worship in such a church; then he thinks
it is a hotel--and forthwith it occurs to him, that a man that has got
sense enough to keep a hotel has got more sense than to build such
a house as that; next, he thinks it is a huge dwelling house--but he
acknowledges in a moment that no man could keep his brains straight who
tried to live in such an architectural nightmare of a mansion as this;
then he thinks it may be a lunatic asylum, built upon plans furnished
by the inmates--but immediately he is ashamed of this mean insinuation
against the helpless and unfortunate; at least he concludes that it is a
preposterous stable, invented by some vulgar sporting man who has grown
suddenly rich--but never, never, never, does he become so lost to all
honorable feeling as to conceive that that wretched pile of marble,
paint and gold-leaf was created for the National Academy of Design. No
man could fall so low as that. I speak only the truth when I say that
the architecture of this Academy of Design is more atrocious than that
of young Dr. Tyng's new church, and several other new churches that have
sprung up here, and somehow are left undestroyed by the lightnings of
heaven. The Academy people call their costly stack of architectural
deviltry "the Moorish style"--as if the atmosphere of antiquity and
poetry and romance, that cast a charm around that style in its ancient
home beyond the seas, could be reproduced here in the midst of railroads
and steamboats, and business rush and clamor, and acres of brownstone
fronts--and as if it could be anything but clownish and repulsive
without that atmosphere! They might as well have put up a wigwam there,
and expected it to be romantic and picturesque without its natural
surroundings of flowers and grass and brooks, and the solemn silence of
dim old forests.

GREELEY AND JEFF.

Mr. Greeley has put his foot in it, in the Jeff. Davis bail bond matter,
but with characteristic courage and independence he stands up for what
he has done and refuses to go back an inch. He is catching it on all
sides, and in language that despises elegant forms of speech, but
goes straight to the matter in hand with a meat-axe earnestness and
bluntness. Mr. Greeley has shown conclusively enough that his motives
were good and worthy, that his record has been clear from the first, and
that his conduct in this transaction was not in any respect inconsistent
with that record. So far, so good. That part of Mr. Greeley's case is
strong, and those who argue against it lose their labor. The Nation says
that for the leader of the Northern sentiment that for six years has
charged all manner of atrocities upon Davis, to come forward at the
last and take this arch-criminal to his arms, was repulsive--and in that
light, no doubt, the people view it. After convicting a man, by argument
and testimony, of murder, and robbery, and perjury, and treason, and
other acts of an indelicate character, it is ungraceful to shake hands
with him and ask him home to dinner.

It is contended that if Davis had been so friendless and forlorn that
no man would come forward and bail him, it would have been a grand
and magnanimous deed for his ancient enemy to save and succor him--but
considering that Davis had a thousand friends at his back and could have
got millions of dollars on his bond if necessary, there was no call for
that ancient enemy to compromise with him at all--especially as that
enemy was a representative man and his action might be taken as a
compromise endorsed by the millions of men he represented. I think the
very strongest argument that could be made in this thing, against
Mr. Greeley, would be that he had no right to go on Jeff. Davis' bond
because the millions he represented would not have done it--because
he was not, and could not be, merely Mr. Horace Greeley, under such
circumstances, but was the embodiment of a nation or a national
sentiment--because he was Public Opinion, and had no right to
misrepresent his character. Horace Greeley's position and antecedents
render it impossible for him to act in great public matters as a private
individual--he cannot shed his representative character as he could his
coat. Mr. Jones, or Mr. Brown, or Mr. Smith might go on Jeff. Davis'
bond, if they chose, because, being obscure and unknown, they could not
implicate a nation, and because, being essentially private individuals,
they have a right to do their own private will--but representative men
possess no such rights. Mr. Greeley ought to have let the majority rule
in a momentous matter like the bailing of Jeff. Davis. He ought to have
sunk his character as one unimportant private individual, and assumed
his public one as the representative of a great party and a wide-spread
political sentiment, and acted as that character would have made it
proper for him to act.

FOOLISHNESS


They are making a great fuss in Springfield, Mass., because a young lady
school teacher has unmercifully flogged one of her boy pupils. Now,
that is a nice subject for a public excitement, isn't it? Why, I used
to catch it that way three times a day when I went to school, and nobody
ever thought of getting up a general indignation about it. I never got
any sympathy. It used to take me all vacation to grow a new hide in
place of the one they flogged off me during the school term. They
whipped boys, then, for every little thing; for throwing "spit-balls" at
the teacher; for fixing pins in the benches for boys to sit down on; for
catching flies during morning prayers, and even for throwing rocks
at passing strangers, in recess, when the motive was in no wise
dishonorable, the only object in view being to surprise the stranger.
For these things they whipped boys, and, what was more degrading still,
every boy had to furnish his own hickories. Boys had no friends in those
dark days. They were persecuted on all occasions, and there was never
any popular excitement about it. We pulled down a stable once (it was
only an old stable, and very shabby, and the cow that was in it could
have got out if she had wanted to--she had plenty of time), and once
we burned a carpenter's shop--it was an ugly, shameful old affair, and
spoiled the looks of the town--and merely for doing these things we were
punished. As usual, no popular excitement. They took outrages like these
very easy in those barbarous times.

But now things are different. School-marms cannot be such bloody pirates
nowadays. They haul them up before the Courts and put them under $200
bonds to appear and answer. Oh, unfeeling Greeley that would sign one of
them! But schoolmarm instincts have not changed. The boy was getting the
best of this one in Springfield, but she called for reinforcements,
and another teacher came. They doubled teams on him. It is the old, old
story. We had one of our old maids nearly flaxed out once--we had her
to the edge of the well, and we would have got her in in another minute,
but the unprincipled old harridan piped for assistance.

The times are changed. The world progresses. It is but another evidence
of advancing civilization when public sympathy speaks up for the
persecuted school-boy.

THE FORREST DIVORCE

An application by Mr. Edwin Forrest, yesterday, for an injunction to
restrain his divorced wife from collecting the alimony awarded her in
the celebrated divorce suit fifteen years ago, was denied. The award
was $4,000 a year, but Mr. Forrest has managed, by appealing and
re-appealing the case from time to time, to stave off payment, till the
alimony bill has at last run up to about $60,000. It is supposed
that all the various legal subterfuges for escaping payment have been
exhausted, and that Mr. Forrest will have to liquidate, now. There is
no telling, however. There may be some more holes in the legal net large
enough for a man of Mr. Forrest's size to get through.

STEWART'S PALACE'

This unsightly pile, with its once white but now dingy filagree columns
and pilasters boarded up with unpainted planks, still mars the beauty of
the noblest street in America--the Fifth Avenue. They say it has already
cost two millions of dollars, and that when it is finished and furnished
it will have cost three. There are two hundred and fifty dwellings in
the same street that are handsomer, more graceful, more elegant and
richer in appearance than Stewart's is, and not one of them cost a
twentieth of the money. Verily it is one thing to have cash and another
to know how to spend it. The man ought to die a violent death that put
it into people's heads to try to make cherished, beloved, sacred homes
out of such cold, ghostly, unfeeling stuff as marble a material which
God intended only for gravestones. You can build a house out of it, and
put a door-plate on it, and call it a dwelling, but it isn't any use, it
is bound to look like a mausoleum, after all. Stewart's house looks
like a stately tomb, now, and after it is finished it will never look
entirely natural without a hearse in front of it.

Stewart's dwelling is calculated to mislead people. It looks like the
new Herald building, diminished in size, just enough like it to make
poor, unoffending drunken men, when they stumble on it, think they have
got nearly to the foot of Broadway, in some unaccountable way, and start
them out on a weary march towards Central Park. It is shameful to impose
upon the helpless.

Nothing could be more beautiful, more refined, more elegant, than the
brown stone used in facing buildings here; and for light, graceful
architecture, nothing could be more charming than the rich,
cream-colored Portland stone which has lately come into vogue, and which
so fascinates the eye of a stranger, as he saunters up the new end of
the magnificent avenue. But these didn't suit Mr. Stewart, and so he had
to send to Italy and get some dismal ornamental tombstones, carved out
at immense expense by those foreigners, and have them brought over
here and piled on high in the midst of that cheerful street, to dampen
people's spirits, and set them to thinking of the grave, and death, and
the hereafter. It is all wrong. He could have beautified the city and
yet spent his money right here in America, if he had chosen to do it.

I believe he is trying to see how much money he can spend on that
mausoleum. He has put $10,000 worth of gas and water piping into it,
and not a yard of it is visible to the eye. And after all, it is just
possible that he is disappointed in his fine house, for they say he
has given it, or is going to give it to the Ladies' Society for the
Reclamation of Abandoned Women. It is a good idea. If anything could
make a lost woman feel miserable and set her to reflecting, it would be
to shut her up in that awful tomb.

MISCELLANEOUS

Eighty-five passengers are booked for the Palestine excursion in the
Quaker City, and more are to join at Marseilles. The ship is newly
painted and handsomely fitted up throughout. I have got a nice moral
room-mate, and he has got many shirts, and a History of the Holy Land,
a cribbage-board and three thousand cigars. I will not have to carry any
baggage at all. Gen. Sherman is not going. That is lucky. His state-room
is fitted and furnished like a palace. I will naturally get that, now,
because I stood No. 2 in the schedule, and come first in the order of
promotion. There will be room for more baggage, then, if necessary.

Miss Maggie Mitchell and her mother have joined the expedition. There
were to be amateur theatrical performances on the ship, anyhow, and now
we shall have a star. Scenery is being prepared, and a stage will be
erected in one end of the ship and a pulpit in the other. I will have a
chance now. Young Beach, of the Suns is going to publish a newspaper on
board. This will afford me an opening for a berth.

Massachusetts is getting shaky on the subject of compulsory temperance,
and is going to submit the question of licensing people to sell rum to a
popular vote again. Evidence has been brought forward which proves that
prohibition only drives drunkenness behind doors and into dark places,
and does not cure it or even diminish it. In one town in New Hampshire,
the hotel-keepers have shut up their houses, and almost brought business
to a dead stop, very much to the consternation of the community. The
landlords say they will not open till they can sell liquor, and the
people have thus been forced to entertain the motion, and are now
discussing it with powerful interest. Excise is a rife subject all over
the land, and it does so exercise the people that I think they ought to
add that middle syllable to the word.

Alta California, August 4, 1867

New York,

June 2d, 1867.

"THE DOMES OF THE YOSEMITE"

THAT is the name of Bierstadt's last picture. The art critics here
abused it without stint when its exhibition began, a month ago. They
ridiculed it so mercilessly that I thought it surely could not be worth
going to see, and so I staid away. I went to-day, however, and I think
it is very well worth going to see. It is very beautiful--considerably
more beautiful than the original.

You stand twelve hundred feet above the valley, and look up it toward
the east, with the North Dome on the left and the South Dome on the
right. The rugged mountain range beyond the latter sweeps round to the
right and shuts up the valley, and, springing up among the clouds in the
distance, you see one or two great peaks clad in robes of snow. Well,
the bird's-eye view of the level valley, with its clusters of diminished
trees and its little winding river, is very natural, and familiar, and
pleasant to look upon. The pine trees growing out of clefts in a bold
rock wall, in the right foreground, are very proper trees, and the grove
of large ones, in the left foreground, and close at hand, are a true
copy of Nature, and so are the various granite boulders in the vicinity.

Now, to sum up the picture's merits, those snow-peaks are correct--they
look natural; the valley is correct and natural; the pine trees clinging
to the bluff on the right, and the grove on the left, and the boulders,
are all like nature; we will assume that the domes and things are drawn
accurately. One sees these things in all sorts of places throughout
California, and under all sorts of circumstances, and gets so familiar
with them that he knows them in a moment when he sees them in a picture.
I knew them in Bierstadt's picture, and checked them off one by one,
and said "These things are correct--they all look just as they ought to
look, and they all belong to California." But when I got around to the
atmosphere, I was obliged to say "This man has imported this atmosphere;
this man has surely imported this atmosphere from some foreign country,
because nothing like it was ever seen in California." I may be mistaken,
for all men are liable to err, but I honestly think I am right. The
atmospheric effects in that picture are startling, are full of variety,
and are charming. It is more the atmosphere of Kingdom-Come than of
California.

The time is early morning; the eastern heavens are filled with shredded
clouds, and these afford the excuse for the dreamy lights and shadows
that play about the leftward precipices and the great dome--a rich
blending of softest purple, and gray, and blue, and brown and white,
instead of the bald, glaring expanse of rocks and earth splotched with
cloud-shadows like unpoetical ink-blots which one ought to see in
a Californian mountain picture when correctly painted. Some of Mr.
Bierstadt's mountains swim in a lustrous, pearly mist, which is so
enchantingly beautiful that I am sorry the Creator hadn't made it
instead of him, so that it would always remain there. In the morning,
the outlines of mountains in California, even though they be leagues
away, are painfully bold and sharp, because the atmosphere is so pure
and clear--but the outlines of Mr. Bierstadt's mountains are soft and
rounded and velvety, which is a great improvement on nature.

As a picture, this work must please, but as a portrait I do not think
it will answer. Portraits should be accurate. We do not want feeling and
intelligence smuggled into the pictured face of an idiot, and we do not
want this glorified atmosphere smuggled into a portrait of the Yosemite,
where it surely does not belong. I may be wrong, but still I believe
that this atmosphere of Mr. Bierstadt's is altogether too gorgeous.

A CURIOUS BOOK

In one of the libraries here I have found an edition of 1621 of the
Apochryphal New Testament. It is rather a curious book, as one may judge
by the titles to some of the chapters:

"Christ kissed by a bride made dumb by sorcerers, cures her. A leprous
girl cured by the water in which the infant Christ was washed, and
becomes the servant of Joseph and Mary. The leprous son of a Prince
cured in like manner.

"A young man who had been bewitched and turned into a mule, miraculously
cured by the infant Savior being put on his back, and is married to
the girl who had been cured of leprosy. Whereupon the bystanders praise
God."

[Extract.] "33. After the marriage of this girl, Joseph and Mary tarried
there ten days, then went away, having received great respect from those
people:

"34. Who, when they took their leave of them and returned home, cried,

"35. But especially the girl."

This book has many chapters devoted to the infancy of the Savior and the
miracles he wrought. For instance:

"Chapter 15. Jesus and other boys play together and make clay figures
of animals. Jesus causes them to walk; also makes clay birds which he
causes to fly, and eat and drink. The children's parents are alarmed
and take Jesus for a sorcerer, and order them to seek better company. He
goes to a dyer's shop and throws all the clothes into the fire and works
a miracle there with. Whereupon the bystanders praise God."

It appears that Joseph had a shop and was regularly in business as a
carpenter, although his work was not remarkable for its excellence. The
infant Savior was of great assistance to him, sometimes:

"Chapter 16. Christ miraculously widens or contracts gates, milk pails,
sieves or boxes, not properly made by Joseph, he not being skillful at
his carpenter's trade. The King of Jerusalem gives Joseph an order for
a throne. Joseph works on it for two years and makes it two spans too
short. The King being angry with him, Jesus comforts him--commands him
to pull one side of the throne while he pulls the other and brings it to
its proper dimensions. Whereupon the bystanders praise God."

"Chapter 19. Jesus charged with throwing a boy from the roof of a house,
miraculously causes the dead boy to speak and acquit him; fetches water
for his mother, breaks the pitcher and miraculously gathers the water
in his mantle and brings it home; makes fish-pools on the Sabbath, and
causes a boy to die who broke them down; another boy runs against him,
whom he also causes to die. Whereupon the bystanders, etc., etc."

"Sent to a schoolmaster, refuses to tell his letters and the
schoolmaster going to whip him, his hand withers and he dies."

"Kills a boy; causes blindness to fall upon his accusers, for which
Joseph pulls him by the ear."

The young Savior's resentments were so frequent, and always of so
exceedingly prompt and practical a turn, that Joseph finally grew
concerned about the matter and gave it his personal attention:

"16. Then said Joseph unto Mary, henceforth we will not allow him to go
out of the house, for everyone who displeases him is killed."

His society was pleasant, but attended by serious drawbacks.

Further on in this quaint volume of rejected gospels is an epistle
of St. Clement to the Corinthians, which was used in the churches and
considered genuine fourteen or fifteen hundred years ago. In it this
account of the fabled phoenix occurs:

"1. Let us consider that wonderful type of the resurrection, which is
seen in the Eastern countries, that is to say, in Arabia.

"2. There is a certain bird called a phoenix. Of this there is never but
one at a time, and that lives five hundred years. And when the time of
its dissolution draws near, that it must die, it makes itself a nest of
frankincense, and myrrh, and other spices, into which, when its time is
fulfilled, it enters and dies.

"3. But its flesh, putrefying, breeds a certain worm, which, being
nourished with the juice of the dead bird, brings forth feathers; and
when it is grown to a perfect state, it takes up the nest in which the
bones of its parent lie, and carries it from Arabia into Egypt, to a
city called Heliopolis:

"4. And flying in open day in the sight of all men, lays it upon the
altar of the sun, and so returns from whence it came.

"5. The priests then search into the records of the time, and find that
it returned precisely at the end of five hundred years."

Well, business is business, and there is nothing like punctuality,
especially in a phoenix.

The few chapters relating to the infancy of the Savior contain many
things which seem frivolous and trifling, and not worth preserving.
A large part of the remaining portions of the book read like good
Scripture, however, and one is inclined to wonder why the conclave of
318 Bishops who compiled our New Testament in the fourth century, from a
mass of ancient manuscripts, rejected them. One Sabinus, a plain-spoken
Bishop of Heraclea, explains the matter in this wise: He says that
that conclave of compilers was composed of "a set of illiterate, simple
creatures, that understood nothing!" Well, of course we do not know
anything about that, and besides, Sabinus was doubtless prejudiced. But
there is one verse in the back part of the book that ought not to have
been rejected, because it so evidently prophetically refers to the
general run of Congresses of the United States:

"199. They carry themselves high, and as prudent men; and though they
are fools, yet would seem to be teachers."

STREET LIVELIHOODS

A few months ago "puzzles" were all the rage with the street peddlers.
A man could not walk three blocks without having some new invention of a
ten-cent puzzle offered him to tangle his brain with. There were puzzles
consisting of iron rings with handles to them, and iron rings strung
on a stick, and iron rings linked together, and forty other puzzle
nuisances. People bought these things--thousands and hundreds of
thousands of them--and figured at them till they got them apart, and
then figured at them till they got them together again; and then they
saw the vanity of such things and did no more invest in them. And so the
puzzle mania died.

Then there was an irruption of blind people from somewhere. Blind people
led by a friend; blind people led by dogs; blind people who felt their
way with a stick; blind people who sat on doorsteps with horrid poetry
labelled on their hats, and a tin cup alongside, with a penny nest-egg
in it; blind men who tortured charity from foot passengers by grinding
dismal music out of a thing like a mud turtle. The blind business was
immensely popular--for three days. Everybody who had a blind friend
borrowed him and trotted him out. It was a short-lived excitement, but
it was fine while it lasted.

Next came a villain who shrieked and whistled like a mocking bird, and
who almost split people's ears when he happened upon them unawares. He
carried a basket full of vile inventions, which were able to make other
people as capable of dispensing his kind of misery as himself. I have
lost sight of him, latterly. He is dead, maybe. I hope so.

The popular rage now runs to little painted horses, clowns, chickens,
etc., suspended from India-rubber strings. On every corner is a vagrant
peddling these wonderfully trifling toys. No invention, since the game
of croquet, has reached such miraculous triviality. And, by-the-way,
this toy-on-a-string business had its origin in a thing invented by a
Brooklyn man about two years ago, and which consisted of nothing more
extraordinary than a ball attached to an elastic cord. Its sole virtue
was that when expelled from one's hand, it returned again, provided the
end of the string was firmly held. This gave great satisfaction to the
performer. Everybody bought this toy and played with it--men, women
and children--everybody neglected graver pursuits, and revelled in the
fierce intoxication of this amusement. The happiness it occasioned was
universal. The inventor found himself suddenly famous and as suddenly
wealthy. But mark you the moral. The fates favored him only to deceive.
They promised him a long life blessed with the comfort and the serenity
that go with a competence honestly earned. But behold, an ex-policeman
waylaid the favorite of fortune in the streets of Brooklyn at dead of
night a week ago, and shot him to death with an air-gun. Riches will
still take wings and fly away, and so also will life--and nothing can
assist them in their flight better than an ex-policeman.

A CHARACTER

It takes all kinds of people and more to make a world. We all know that.
The world would not have been entirely complete, I think, without Capt.
Summers of the navy. He is very old, now, and very proud of his long
and honorable career, too, in the service of his country. He entered the
navy "through the hawse-holes," as the phrase goes, and worked himself
up to his present high rank by hard labor and close attention to duty.
He is just a little illiterate, is eminently practical, has no poetry
in his composition, and can abide no nonsense. He is entirely free from
everything in the shape of sentiment. I had heard a good deal of him,
and went to his favorite saloon, last night, purposely to hear him
talk--you see he is on the retired list, and has nothing to do but spin
yarns and sip away his pay in hot whiskey punches. I spent a pleasant
evening and picked up many a queer item which I mean to print after a
little, and did intend to in this letter, but it has already grown too
long. Still, as I have mentioned the old Captain, I must tell one story
they have on him, at any rate.

Twenty or thirty years ago, when missionary enterprise was in its
infancy among the islands of the South Seas, Capt. Summers anchored his
sloop-of-war off one of the Marquesas, I think it was. The next morning
he saw an American flag floating from the beach, union down. This
excited him fearfully, of course, and he sent off a boat at once to
inquire into the matter. Presently the boat returned, and brought a
grave-looking missionary. The Captain's anxiety ran high. He said:

"What's the trouble out there?--quick!"

"Well, I am grieved to say, sir," said the missionary, "that the natives
have been interrupting our sacerdotal exercises."

"No!--blast their yaller hides. I'll--what--what was it you said they'd
been doing?"

"It pains me, sir, to say that they have been interrupting our
sacerdotal exercises."

"Interrupting your--your--h--l! Man them starboard guns! Stand by, now,
to give 'em the whole battery!"

The astounded clergyman hastened to protest against such excessive
rigorous measures, and finally succeeded in making the old tar
understand that the natives had only been breaking up a prayer-meeting.

"Oh, devil take it, man, is that all? I thought you meant that they'd
stopped your grog!"

ARTEMUS WARD

The body of poor Artemus Ward arrived here per steamer to-day, from
England, and was received by Chas. Dawson Shanley, and the other
American executors of the deceased, and will be forwarded to the old
homestead in Maine on Monday, for final interment.

Artemus stipulated in his will that his little valet should be
apprenticed for two years to the best printer in America, to "learn the
value of learning," and then sent to college.

Alta California, August 11, 1867

New York,

June 5th, 1867.

NEW YORK

EDITORS ALTA: I have at last, after several months' experience, made
up my mind that it is a splendid desert--a domed and steepled solitude,
where the stranger is lonely in the midst of a million of his race. A
man walks his tedious miles through the same interminable street every
day, elbowing his way through a buzzing multitude of men, yet never
seeing a familiar face, and never seeing a strange one the second time.
He visits a friend once--it is a day's journey--and then stays away from
that time forward till that friend cools to a mere acquaintance,
and finally to a stranger. So there is little sociability, and,
consequently, there is little cordiality. Every man seems to feel that
he has got the duties of two lifetimes to accomplish in one, and so he
rushes, rushes, rushes, and never has time to be companionable--never
has any time at his disposal to fool away on matters which do not
involve dollars and duty and business.

All this has a tendency to make the city-bred man impatient of
interruption, suspicious of strangers, and fearful of being bored, and
his business interfered with. The natural result is, that the striking
want of heartiness observable here, sometimes even among old friends,
degenerates into something which is hardly even chilly politeness
towards strangers. A large party of Californians were discussing this
matter yesterday evening, and one said he didn't believe there was any
genuine fellow feeling in the camp. Another said: "Come, now, don't
judge without a full hearing--try all classes; try everybody; go to the
Young Men's Christian Association." But the first speaker said: "My son,
I have been to the Young Men's Christian Association, and it isn't any
use; it was the same old thing--thermometer at 32 degrees, which is
the freezing notch, if I understand it. They were polite there,
exasperatingly polite, just as they are outside. One of them prayed for
the stranger within his gates--meaning me--but it was plain enough that
he didn't mean his petition to be taken in earnest. It simply amounted
to this, that he didn't know me, but would recommend me to mercy,
anyhow, since it was customary, but didn't wish to be misunderstood as
taking any personal interest in the matter."

Of course that was rather a strong exaggeration, but I thought it was
a pretty fair satire upon the serene indifference of the New Yorker to
everybody and everything without the pale of his private and individual
circle.

There is something about this ceaseless buzz, and hurry, and bustle,
that keeps a stranger in a state of unwholesome excitement all the time,
and makes him restless and uneasy, and saps from him all capacity to
enjoy anything or take a strong interest in any matter whatever--a
something which impels him to try to do everything, and yet permits
him to do nothing. He is a boy in a candy-shop--could choose quickly if
there were but one kind of candy, but is hopelessly undetermined in the
midst of a hundred kinds. A stranger feels unsatisfied, here, a good
part of the time. He starts to a library; changes, and moves toward a
theatre; changes again and thinks he will visit a friend; goes within a
biscuit-toss of a picture-gallery, a billiard-room, a beer cellar and
a circus, in succession, and finally drifts home and to bed, without
having really done anything or gone anywhere. He don't go anywhere
because he can't go everywhere, I suppose. This fidgety, feverish
restlessness will drive a man crazy, after a while, or kill him. It
kills a good many dozens now--by suicide. I have got to get out of it.

There is one thing very sure--I can't keep my temper in New York. The
cars and carriages always come along and get in the way just as I want
to cross a street, and if there is anything that can make a man soar
into flights of sublimity in the matter of profanity, it is that. You
know that, yourself. However, I must be accurate--I must speak truth,
and say there is one thing that is more annoying. That is to go down
West Tenth street hunting for the Art building, No. 51. You are tired,
and your feet are hot and swollen, and you wouldn't start, only you
calculate that it cannot be more than two blocks away, and you almost
feel a genuine desire to go and see the picture on exhibition without
once changing your mind. Very well. You come to No. 7; and directly
you come to 142! You stare a minute, and then step back and start over
again--but it isn't any use--when you are least expecting it, comes that
unaccountable jump. You cross over, and find Nos. 18, 20, 22, and then
perhaps you jump to 376! Your gall begins to rise. You go on. You get
on a trail, at last, the figures leading by regular approaches up toward
51--but when you have walked four blocks they start at 49 and begin to
run the other way! You are perspiring and furious by this time, but
you keep desperately on, and speculate on new and complicated forms
of profanity. And behold, in time the numbers become bewilderingly
complicated: on one door 18 a3 on a little tin scrap, on the next a 17
in gold characters a foot square, on the next a 19, a5 and a 137, one
above the other and in three different styles of figuring! You do not
swear any more now, of course, because you can't find any words that
are long enough or strong enough to fit the case. You feel degraded and
ignominious and subjugated. And there and then you say that you will go
away from New York and start over again; and that you will never come
back to settle permanently till you have learned to swear with the
utmost fluency in seventeen different languages. You become more
tranquil, now, because you see your way clearly before you, how that,
when you are properly accomplished, you can live in this great city and
still be happy; you feel that in that day, when a subject shall defy
English, you can try the Arabic, the Hungarian, the Japanese, the
Kulu-Kaffir, and when the worst comes to the worst, you can come the
Hindostanee on it and conquer. After this, you go tranquilly on for a
matter of seventeen blocks and find 51 sandwiched in between Nos. 13 and
32,986. Then you wish you had never been born, to come to a strange land
and suffer in this way.

Well, I intended, when I started out, to give my views of the pleasant
side of New York, but I perceive that I have wandered into the wrong
vein, and so I will stop short and give it up until I find myself in a
more fortunate humor. I do not think that I could twist myself around
now any easier than I could turn myself inside out.

BRIDGET DURGAN

They left out the insanity business in this woman's case and tried her
on the plain guilty-or-innocent merits of the charge against her. Of
course they brought her in guilty of murder in the first degree and
without any recommendation to mercy. After the verdict was rendered, she
went out of the Court-room smiling, and seemingly in excellent
spirits. The woman is either a fiend or a fool. Her case is utterly
incomprehensible. The circumstantial evidence shows that she cut and
hacked and stabbed her victim in many places, and bit her on the neck,
and then wore out some of the furniture beating her with it. And yet,
not the shadow of a motive can they discover that she had for harming
her mistress at all! Unless Bridget Durgan goes and spoils everything
by confessing, before they hang her, this dark and bloody murder will
be the most relishable mystery of the age. It is said, however, that she
has intimated that in due time she will confess, not that she did the
deed, but that she saw it done, and will furnish to the world all the
dread particulars of the assassination. The story would be read here
with a ravenous interest. Another woman is to be tried shortly, as her
accomplice.

GENERAL SUTTER

It is said that a sumptuous banquet was given to Gen. Sutter by the
gentlemen of the Traveller's Club on the night of May 31st. They must
have kept it very quiet. The cards of invitation gave out that the
reception would take place on the evening of June 1st, and I went there
to report the proceedings, along with a Herald man. But it was a fraud
on us newspaper men--there was nothing whatever going on, and so we were
just unfeelingly gouged out of a dinner. I think they dated the cards
ahead on purpose to impose on us and escape a famine. That may be
fair, but we do not so regard it. It might have been excusable but that
utterly innocent parties had to suffer for it eventually--because we
went and took dinner at a restaurant which had just been opened and had
not yet acquired a lucrative run of custom. How ought the Travellers'
cheeks to burn with shame when this fact comes to their ears!

General Sutter is said to be in excellent health and spirits, and has
been receiving many and distinguished marks of attention at the hands of
the citizens of New York.

THE INDIAN ROW

I wonder if you are in as much distress about the Indians as we are? We
talk Maximilian and his possible execution some, but our main dependence
for solid conversation is the Indians. The Herald, Tribune, and World
attend to the Indians in editorials, and the Times gives three columns
of statistics which really show that all the fuss is made up out of very
slender material; yet the talk goes on, and the telegrams, and official
orders, and the sundry other notes of preparation that fill the air with
warnings serve to swell the interest of the thing and constantly augment
its importance. An educated and highly-cultivated American lady, who
speaks French and Italian, and has travelled in Europe and studied the
country so faithfully that she knows it as well as another woman would
know her flower-garden, said to me yesterday that she had some very
dear friends in San Francisco and other parts of Idaho, and these Indian
rumors gave her unspeakable uneasiness; she believed that for seven
nights she had hardly slept at all, with imagining the horrors which are
liable at any moment to fall upon those friends; and she said she had
friends in Santa Fe and Los Angeles, but she did not feel so worried
about them because she believed the Indians did not infest the
Cariboo country as much as they did the Farrallone Mountains and other
localities further West. I tried to comfort her all I could; I told her
I honestly believed that her friends in San Francisco and other parts of
Idaho were just as safe there as they would be in Jerusalem or any other
part of China.

Here she interrupted me, and told me with a well-bred effort to keep her
countenance, that Jerusalem was not in China. I apologized, and said it
was a slip of the tongue--but what I had meant to express was that her
friends would be just as safe in Santa Fe and other parts of Cariboo as
they would be in Damascus, or any other locality in France.

And she interrupted me again, and this time she did laugh a little
bit, and told me modestly and in a way that could not hurt anybody's
feelings, that Damascus was not in France.

I excused my stupidity again, and said that what I was trying to get
at was, that her people might be even in the perilous gorges of the
Farrallone Mountains and districts further west, and still fare as well
as if they were in Hongkong or any other place in Italy.

And then she did not laugh, but looked serious and said, "Are you so
preposterously ignorant as all this amounts to, or are you trying to
quiz me?" And I said, "Don't you go to Europe anymore till you know a
little something about your own country." I won.

It is funny, the absurd remarks people make about the Far West, and the
wild questions they ask about it when they are discussing the Indian
difficulties. It is humiliating to me to consider how high an opinion
we have of our importance out there in the Pacific regions, and then
to discover how very little some people know about us. A late number of
Blackwood spoke of Andrew Jackson as being still alive, and I wondered
at it at the time, but I do not wonder at it so much now. Why, I have
seen one man who possessed ordinary intelligence, who was under the
impression that silver bricks came from the mine just as they were. He
could understand that, easily enough, because it looked reasonable--but
how the assayer's stamp came there was what worried him! It surprises me
to reflect how much I taught that man in the next fifteen minutes, and I
did not charge him anything for it.

I meet people occasionally, poor fellows, who wish to inquire after
unknown and unheard-of mines in all manner of impossible places, and
who bought at round prices a year or two ago, and somehow have not heard
from their mines or anybody connected with them for many months. They
uniformly wound up by asking what they had better do. I always advise
them to sell. Now I consider that a deep and a subtle joke, but in their
wretched ignorance they never know enough to laugh at it.

I am waiting patiently to hear that they have ordered General Connor out
to polish off those Indians, but the news never comes. He has shown that
he knows how to fight the kind of Indians that God made, but I suppose
the humanitarians want somebody to fight the Indians that J. Fenimore
Cooper made.

There is just where the mistake is. The Cooper Indians are dead--died
with their creator. The kind that are left are of altogether a different
breed, and cannot be successfully fought with poetry, and sentiment, and
soft soap, and magnanimity.

GREAT TEMPERANCE PICNIC

The strong effort being made to break down the Excise law has aroused
the temperance societies to renewed activity. They hold meetings,
they have lectures, print addresses, circulate petitions, project
processions--do everything they can, in fact, to keep the interest of
temperance devotees from flagging or failing. They feel that their cause
and their Excise triumph are in some peril, and appreciate the necessity
for union and energy. Their ingenuity culminated a few days ago in a
grand picnic, but alas! the picnic culminated in a grand drunk! Some
miscreant invaded the camp with whiskey, and many of the crusaders fell.
New converts could not resist their old love, and some of the elder
knights that did resist courageously were overcome at last. Then there
was a fight, and several very Good Templars blacked each other's eyes
and flattened each other's noses.

It was very sad. The enemies of temperance were beginning to grow
hopeless again, and a few more processions and proclamations would have
sent them cowering to their dens, nevermore to brave the cause of right
and virtue, perchance, when these Good Templars forgot themselves and
their great work and got drunk! Why is it that Good Templars will always
go and get drunk when they have picnics? Why is it? It is such a public
occasion that a temperance society cannot get drunk at a picnic without
exciting remark. I have uniformly noticed that when temperance societies
get drunk at picnics, people speak of it. Why cannot such societies
choose their officers with some judgment? Unhappily, it is too often the
case that these officers are chosen by partiality, and not by personal
merit. The consequence is that the affairs of the organization
are conducted in a loose, slipshod way, and every day exposes the
inefficiency of the chief officers. What result must inevitably follow
this official poverty of judgment? Plainly this, that instead of getting
drunk in the privacy of the meeting-room, the society goes off and gets
drunk at a vile public picnic. This is all wrong, and has a bad
effect. It does more to retard the cause of temperance than can well
be estimated. It is because the example it sets is questionable.
Organizations of this kind should jealously guard against any conduct,
as a society, which can be considered questionable. No temperance
society which is well officered and which has the real good of our
fellow-men in view, will ever get drunk save in the seclusion of its
temperance hall. I speak feelingly upon this subject, because I have
seen so much of this thing. I have been a member of three zealous,
hard-working, and sincere temperance organizations, whose influence for
good, in each case, became permanently impaired through their persisting
in getting drunk in public every Saturday night. I warned them
repeatedly that this was bad judgment, but they could not comprehend
how this could be, and so the result was as I have stated. A little
self sacrifice on their part would have saved the cause and saved the
societies themselves much adverse criticism. But no, they refused to get
drunk in private.

With my experience, I know what is to befall these societies here
that are arrayed against the Excise law. The example of that one
ill-officered organization will entrap them all into the error that
public debauches are proper, and so they will now proceed to ruin their
great cause by getting drunk at their picnics instead of in private.
I grieve to contemplate this unfortunate state of things, and would
willingly do everything to avert the disaster these people are about to
bring upon themselves, but now that they have got started I know of no
way to do it, and therefore must hope against hope and sadly leave them
to their destiny.

Alta California, August 18, 1867

New York,

June 6th, 1867.

HARRY HILL'S

AMONG the many attractive and fashionable places of resort with which
New York is so well stocked, I wish to call particular attention to
Mr. Harry Hill's Club House in Crosby street, two or three blocks from
Broadway. It is a retired spot, and is cheerful and peculiar. I was
coming down street with a couple of friends last night, and they
suggested that we drop in at Harry Hill's. It was in my head somehow
that Harry Hill's was where the savants were in the habit of meeting
to commune upon abstruse matters of science and philosophy--men like
Agassiz and Ericsson and people of that stamp. I felt in a reflective
mood, and I said I would like to go to Harry Hill's and hear those great
men talk much better than to trifle away the time in the follies of
gayer localities.

We started through a little sawdusted den of a tenth rate rum-hole,
and I said: "This is just like the eccentricities of those wonderful
intelligences--we never find them surrounded by gilded trappings and
pretentious display."

As we passed through a door at the other end, a mashed-nosed athlete in
his shirt-sleeves shouted to some one whom I could not see: "Now's yer
time, gents, the wizard of the mountings is on next in his inimicable
feats of magic!"

The wise men are seeking to sound the capabilities of human ingenuity,
I thought, and I admired this evidence of their sympathy with matters
of mere minor importance when they could busy themselves with abstruse
problems in mechanics and astronomy, if they chose.

We went upstairs, and found a great many gentlemen, and also a great
many ladies. I was glad to see ladies encouraging science with their
inspiriting presence. I like to pick out great men in a crowd by the
sign and seal of superiority which nature imprints upon their features.
In this case I was troubled to select Agassiz, and hesitated long.
Finally I said: This man is he--this must be he, though, to say truly,
he hath all the seeming of a murderer; and this is Ericsson--this surely
is Ericsson, albeit in another place I might take him for a burglar;
and this must be Professor Morse, I think, notwithstanding the sneaking
villainy in his eye; and this--

Here there was a sound of music, and I marvelled greatly to see the wise
men take each a lady and spin her in the giddy waltz. The ladies, too,
did spin around with such thoughtless vehemence that I was constrained
to place my hat before my eyes. When they had finished, the great
Ericsson embraced his lady publicly, and kissed her; Professor Morse
sat down, and took his lady on his lap (she not observing that her hoops
were mightily elevated), and Professor Agassiz conveyed his lady to a
small bar which I had not before noticed, and called for drinks for the
crowd! I shuddered. I could not help it, because these things seemed so
out of keeping with the grave characters I had thought all philosophers
possessed. So I turned me away, and perused certain placards that hung
upon the walls. One read:

"OBSCENE LANGUAGE AND PROFANITY NOT PERMITTED HERE."

Another read:

"PEOPLE WHO ARE DRUNK MUST LEAVE THE PREMISES.

And still another read:

"LOVERS NOT WANTED HERE."

And yet another:

"ALL EQUALITY HERE--ALL TREATED ALIKE--ALL SOCIABLE--NO LOVERS ALLOWED.

Then, in big letters:

"OBSCENE LANGUAGE AND PROFANITY MOST POSITIVELY FORBIDDEN."

These are all good, wholesome rules, I said within myself--surely I can
find no fault with them. But how dreadfully irregular these philosophers
must be to render such ordinances necessary. There were also large
placards adorned with verses of poetry, but the excellence of it seemed
questionable to me, though I could not believe otherwise than that Mr.
Longfellow or Mr. Bryant must have written it, of course. It was chiefly
laudatory of the merits and attractions of the place.

Presently a man came out on a stage and sang "'Twas a Cold Winter's
Night, and the Tempest was Snarling," and several parties accompanied
him upon violins and a piano. After him came a remarkably black negro,
whose clothes were ragged, and danced a boisterous dance and sang "I'm
a happy contra band," though all his statements regarding himself would
have warranted a different condition, I thought.

After him came a man who mimicked fighting cats, and the buzzing of
mosquitoes, and the squealing of a pig. Then a homely young man in a
Highland costume entered upon the stage and danced--and he ought to have
danced moderately, because he had nothing in the wide world on but a
short coat and short stockings. This was apparent every time he whirled
around. However, no one observed it but me. I knew that, because several
handsomely dressed young ladies, from thirteen to sixteen and seventeen
years of age, went and sat down under the foot-lights, and of course
they would have moved away if they had noticed that he was only partly
dressed.

I had a great desire to become acquainted with Professor Agassiz, and so
I went over and spoke respectfully to a young lady, a very charming girl
barely out of her teens, and said:

"Pardon me, Mademoiselle, but--I suppose that gentleman yonder is the
great philosopher, the renowned Agassiz?"

She gazed upon me with great interest awhile, and then she said:

"You're sick, ain't you, sonny?"

I was surprised at the remark. I hesitated a little, and then I said:

"I--I am not well, as you have deigned to observe, but if that is Mr.
Agassiz--"

"Oh, that be--. It's Bladder-nose Jake."

I thought I should sink through the floor with mortification. I was
going to excuse myself and bid the young person good evening, when she
interrupted with great spirit, and said:

"Oh, if you want to shoot your gab, take me up to the bar, and pizen me,
and then you can yelp till you rot."

I never felt so badly in my life. I purchased her a drink--it was
nothing more harmful than soda-water--and then she wanted me to buy her
an orange, which I did; next she desired me to waltz with her, but I
excused myself because I began to have some suspicions about her; and
finally she asked me to see her home, which I refused to do.

I wanted to go away from there, and my friends consented. When we got
outside, I said,

"Is it possible that old Agassiz and those philosophers go to that place
and carry on that way every night?"

"Philosophers?" said they; "why, there was never a philosopher there in
the world! That is Harry Hill's, one of the worst dens in all New York.
Those men were a very hard lot, except those country bumpkins that were
skirmishing around there--flies in the web, and didn't know it--and the
young girls were street-walkers, and the most abandoned in the city."

When I found that I, a newspaper man, had been drawn into such a place
as that, my indignation knew no bounds, and I said we would go and hunt
up another one.

THE HOLY LAND EXCURSION

Everything is ready, and to-morrow, at 3 P.M., the ship will sail.
To-night all the passengers are to gather themselves together at the
house of Mr. Beecher, in Brooklyn, to consult concerning the voyage,
and to get acquainted. I hope we shall have a pleasant time of it. My
creditors held a social reunion last night, and I am sure that they had
a pleasant time of it at any rate--at least it was as cheerful as the
circumstance of parting with me could make it--and you know I have been
an old stand-by with them. I was the salvation of one of those people.
He was a collector. His business became reduced till he hadn't a bill
left to collect except one against me. That kept him in employment till
a brighter day dawned for him. But all through the long night of his
distress that one solitary wash-bill was a beacon of hope that never,
never went out. Never showed any signs of going out. Never even
flickered, I may say. Naturally, that man reveres my name and looks upon
me as his benefactor. I have been a benefactor to a good many of his
class. I have never mentioned it before. I have gone about doing good
in this unostentatious way, and have never said one word about it until
this moment.

These people drank wine and made merry, last night, until I was ready
to go; then they wept, and presented me with the following beautiful
memorial, wrought upon parchment:

MR. MARK TWAIN.

To Mrs. O'Shaughnessy and 9 children.

To washing, which the same has not been paid for--$18.45

To Hope Restaurant for sustenance--$68.25

To subscription to dinner for benefit of Orphan's Fund, 50 cents, and
to difference between subscription and amount of dinner consumed by
subscriber--$6.30

Several more items of this nature were in the memorial, and also a nice
blank place for "RECEIVED PAYMENT." The blank mars the beauty of the
thing to some extent, but still I suppose it will answer the way it is.
Usually, blanks are unsightly because they are so meaningless, but this
one is full of expression.

A SPECIMEN BRICK

I can give you a specimen of our passengers, if you like, but I am glad
to say he is the only specimen of the kind on the list at least he is
the only one left now. When he heard that General Sherman was going to
remain in the States, he howled fearfully. Indeed, he almost shed tears.
He said:

"There, I just thought so, all along. I just knew how it would be. I
tell you the trip has lost all its charms! I wouldn't give two straws to
go now. I had rather have lost my right arm than that this should have
happened."

This fellow had tried to stipulate that his wife should be introduced
to Miss Sherman early, and have a seat next her at table, and that he
should be permitted to sit next the General himself! And next, I suppose
this flunkey would have waited to hold the General's hat while he washed
his teeth. General Sherman ought to congratulate himself upon his escape
from five months' worship by this bred-and-born slave. If that man goes
in the ship and you hear that somebody has fallen overboard in a dark
and mysterious manner, some night, you can calculate that it is he.

Another passenger--a solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg that
looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity, as Henry Clapp
said of Rev. Dr. Osgood--walked in the other day and stood around for
some time, and finally said he had forgotten, when he took passage, to
inquire if the excursion would come to a halt on Sundays. Captain Duncan
replied that he hardly expected to anchor the ship in the middle of
the Atlantic, but that on shore everybody would be free--no
restrictions--free to travel on Sunday or not, just as they saw fit;
and he had no doubt that some would do one and some the other. The
questioner did not groan audibly, but I think he did inwardly. Then he
said it would be well for people to calculate their chances before doing
wrong; that he had always got into trouble when he travelled on the
Sabbath, and that he should do so no more when he could avoid it; that
he lately travelled with a man in Illinois who would not lay by on
Sunday because he could not afford the time, but he himself laid by and
still beat the sinner and got to the end of the journey first.

Now I respected that man's repugnance to violating the Sabbath until he
betrayed that he would violate it in a minute if he were not afraid the
lightning would strike him, or something else would happen to him, and
then I lost my reverence for him. I thought I perceived that he was not
good and holy, but only sagacious, and so I turned the key on my valise
and moved it out of his reach. I shall have to keep an eye on that
fellow.

SATISFIED CURIOSITY

I have a large share of curiosity, but I believe it is satisfied for the
present. I have seen the horse "Dexter" trot a race but then I know
but little about horses, and I did not appreciate the exhibition; I
was present at the great annual meeting of the Quakers a week ago,
but between you and I it was excessively dull; I went to a billiard
tournament where Phelan and McDevitt played, but I knew beforehand
what to expect, and so there was no chance to get up a revivifying
astonishment; I have been to three Sunday Schools and have heard all
the great guns of the New York pulpit preach, and so that department
is exhausted; I have been through the dens of poverty, crime and
degradation that hide from the light of day in the Five Points and
infinitely worse localities--but I, even I, can blush, and must decline
to describe them; I have been in the Bible House, and also in the
Station House--pleasant experiences of a day, but nothing worth for a
second visit; I have gone the rounds of the newspaper offices and the
theatres, and have contrasted the feverish turmoil of Broadway with the
still repose of Greenwood Cemetery; I have seen Barnum's Museum, and
time and again have looked upon the summer loveliness of Central Park
and stood upon its high grounds and wondered how any landscape could be
so beautiful as that which stretches abroad right and left over Jersey
and far up the river, and yet have no sign of a mountain about it; I
have seen Brooklyn, and the ferry-boats, and the Dunderberg, and the
bootblacks, and Staten Island, and Peter Cooper, and the Fifth Avenue,
and the Academy of Design, and Rosa Bonheur's Horse Fair; and have
compared the noble architecture of Old Trinity church with the cluster
of painted shower baths, they call young Dr. Tyng's church (they
don't dare to call it the church of God, notwithstanding it has got a
safety-iron fence on its roof, and sixty-two lightning rods,) and behold
I have tried the Russian bath, and skated while the winter was here, and
did contract to go up in a balloon, but the balloon didn't go. I have
seen all there was to see even the "Black Crook"--and yet, I say
it, that shouldn't say it--all is vanity! There has been a sense of
something lacking, something wanting, every time--and I guess that
something was the provincial quietness I am used to. I have had enough
of sights and shows, and noise and bustle, and confusion, and now I want
to disperse. I am ready to go.

THE LIFE-RAFT

The departure of Capt. Mikes for Europe on a life-raft was the sensation
of the week. This raft is a thing made of three cylinders, 25 feet long,
each, and 26 inches in diameter, made fast together, side by side. We
have all heard of shipwrecked men drifting for days and days together,
in midocean, on such contrivances not very dissimilar to this, but why
any man should want to start to Europe on one, when he could travel in
a ship and still have a reasonable hope of never getting there, is a
mystery to me. If Capt. Mikes thought this would be a shrewd method of
beating the life insurance companies he missed it a good deal, because
they promptly barred the life-raft. The Captain rigged five sails on his
little hen-coop, and took forty days' rations of water and provisions
for himself and his two men. He expects to reach Havre in twenty-five to
thirty days, but somehow the more I looked at that shaky thing the more
I felt satisfied that the old tar was on his last voyage. He is going to
run in the usual route of the ships, and somebody will run over him some
murky gray night, and we shall never hear of the bold Prussian anymore.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

I shall write very often to the ALTA on this Palestine excursion, of
course. The various issues of the ALTA have a very wide circulation on
the great Plains, the Pacific Coast, the islands of the South Seas,
and in China and Japan, and through my efforts I trust that these
diversified peoples will yet know more about the Holy Land than the
Holy Landers do themselves. I am peculiarly fitted to deal with that
patriarchal country because of my personal experience of life in Great
Salt Lake City. Good-bye, MARK TWAIN.

[Twain for the next few months was on the famous voyage of the Quaker
City and the other Innocents Abroad]

Alta California, January 8, 1868

New York, November 20th.

Home Again.

The steamer Quaker City arrived yesterday morning and turned her
menagerie of pilgrims loose on America--but, thank Heaven, they came
ashore in Christian costume. There was some reason to fear that they
would astound the public with Moorish haiks, Turkish fezzes, sashes from
Persia, and such other outlandish diablerie as their distempered fancies
were apt to suggest to them to resurrect from their curious foreign
trunks. They have struggled through the Custom House and escaped to
their homes. Their Pilgrim's Progress is ended, and they know more now
than it is lawful for the Gods themselves to know. They can talk it from
now till January--most of them are too old to last longer. They can tell
how they criticised the masterpieces of Reubens, Titian and Murillo, in
Paris, Italy and Spain--but they, nor any other man, can tell precisely
how competent they were to do it. They can give their opinion of the
Emperor of France, the Sultan of Turkey, the Czar of Russia, the Pope of
Rome, the King of Italy, and Garibaldi, from personal observation--but,
alas! they cannot furnish those gentlemen's opinion of them. They can
tell how they ascended Mont Blanc--how they tried to snuffle over the
tomb of Romeo and Juliet--how they gathered weeds in the Coliseum, and
cabbaged mosaics from the Baths of Caracalla--how they explored the
venerable Alhambra, and were entranced with the exquisite beauty of the
Alcazar--how they infested the bazaars of Smyrna, Constantinople, and
Cairo--how they "went through" the holy places of Palestine, and left
their private mark on every one of them, from Dan unto the Sea of
Galilee, and from Nazareth even unto Jerusalem and the Dead Sea--how
they climbed the Pyramids of Egypt and swore that Vesuvius was finer
than they; that the Sphynx was foolishness to the Parthenon, and the
dreamy panorama of the Nile nonsense to the glories of the Bay of
Naples. They can tell all about that, and they will--they can boast
about all that, but will they tell the secret history of the trip? Catch
them at it! They will blow their horns about the thousand places they
have visited and get the lockjaw three times a day trying to pronounce
the names of them (they never did get any of those names right)--but
never, never in the world, will they open the sealed book of the secret
history of their memorable pilgrimage. And I won't--for the present, at
any rate. Good-bye to the well-meaning old gentlemen and ladies. I bear
them no malice, albeit they never took kindly the little irreverent
remarks I had occasion to make about them occasionally. We didn't
amalgamate--that was all. Nothing more than that. I was exceedingly
friendly with a good many of them--eight out of the sixty-five--but I
didn't dote on the others, and they didn't dote on me. We were always
glad to meet, but then we were just as glad to part again. There was a
little difference of opinion between us--nothing more. They thought they
could have saved Sodom and Gomorrah, and I thought it would have been
unwise to risk money on it. I never failed to make friends on shipboard
before--but maybe I was meaner than usual, this trip. Still, I was more
placable than they. Every night, in calm or storm, I always turned up in
their synagogue, in the after cabin, at seven bells, but they never came
near my stateroom. They called it a den of iniquity. But I cared not;
there were others who knew it as the home of modest merit. I bear the
pilgrims no malice, now, none at all. I did give them a little parting
blast in the Herald, this morning, but I only did that just to see the
galled jade wince.

A Model Excursion

People always jump to the conclusion that passengers of diverse natures,
occupations and modes of life, thrown together in great numbers on board
a ship, must infallibly create trouble and unending dissatisfaction for
each other. This idea is wrong. Diverse natures (when they are good,
whole-hearted human natures,) blend and dove-tail together on shipboard
as neatly as the varicolored fragments of stone in an exquisite
mosaic--it is your gang of all-perfection, all-piety, all-economy,
all-uncharitableness--like ancient mosaic pavements in the ruins of
Rome, the stones all one color, and the cracks between them unpleasantly
conspicuous--it is a gang like this that makes a particularly and
peculiarly infernal trip. I am tired hearing about the "mixed" character
of our party on the Quaker City. It was not mixed enough--there were not
blackguards enough on board in proportion to the saints--there was not
genuine piety enough to offset the hypocrisy. Genuine piety! Do you know
what constitutes a legal quorum for prayer? It is in the Bible: "When
two or three are gathered together," etc. You observe the number. It
means two (or more) honest, sincere Christians, of course. Well, we held
one hundred and sixty-five prayer meetings in the Quaker City, and one
hundred and eighteen of them were scandalous and illegal, because four
out of the five real Christians on board were too sea sick to be present
at them, and so there wasn't a quorum. I know. I kept a record--prompted
partly by the old reportorial instinct, and partly because I knew that
their proceedings were null and void, and ought not to be allowed to
pass without a protest. I had seen enough of Legislatures to know right
from wrong, and I was sorry enough to see things going as they were.
They never could have stood a call of the house, and they resented every
attempt of mine to get one.

But I am wandering from my subject somewhat. I was only going to say
that people of diverse natures make the pleasantest companionship in
long sea voyages, and people all of one nature and that not a happy one,
make the worst. If I were going to start on a pleasure excursion around
the world and to the Holy Land, and had the privilege of making out
her passenger list, I think I could do it right and yet not go out of
California. This thought was suggested by a dream I had a month ago,
while this pilgrimage was still far at sea. I dreamed that I saw the
following placard posted upon the bulletin boards of San Francisco:

Passenger List

of the Steamer 'Constitution,'

Capt. Ned Wakeman

Which leaves this day on a pleasure excursion around the world,
permitting her passengers to stop forty days in London, forty in Vienna,
forty in Rome, ten in Geneva, ten in Naples, ten in its surroundings,
twenty in Venice, thirty in Florence, fifty in the cities of Spain,
two days in Constantinople, half a day in Smyrna, thirty days in St.
Petersburg, five months in the Sandwich Islands, six in Egypt, forever
in France, and two hours and a half in the Holy Land:

Rev. Dr. Wadsworth, James Anthony, Archbishop Alemany, Paul Morrill,
Rev. Horatio Stebbins, John William Skae, Bishop Kip, T. J. Lamb, Gen.
W. H. French, Asa Nudd, Emperor Norton, Lewis Leland, Old Ridgeway, John
McComb, George Parker, Frank Pixley, Barry & Patten, Admiral Jim Smith,
late of Hawaiian Navy, Captain Pease, Louis Cohn, Aleck Badlam, Charles
Low, Colonel Fry, Jo. Jones, Pete Hopkins, General Drum (absent),
Colonel Catherwood, Squarza, Stiggers' Citizen Sam Platt, Jim Coffroth,
Frank Soule, R. B. Swain, One dozen Doctors, chosen at large, Five
delegates from San Quentin, And Frank Bret Harte, George Barnes, Mark
Twain and 300 other newspaper men, in the steerage.

It was a dream, but still it was a dream with wisdom in it. That tribe
could travel forever without a row, and preserve each other's respect
and esteem. Keep the steerage passengers out of sight, and nothing could
be said against the character of the party, either. The list I dreamt
of, as above set down, could travel pleasantly. They would certainly
make a sensation wherever they went, but they would as certainly leave
a good impression behind. And yet this list is made up of all sorts of
people, and people of all ages. Against the impressive solemnity of
Jim Coffroth, we have the levity of Dr. Wadsworth; against the
boisterousness of R. B. Swain, we have the graveyard silence and decorum
of Alex. Badlam; against General Drum's fondness for showing military
dress, we have the Emperor Norton's antipathy to epaulettes and
soldier-buttons; against the reckless gayety of Bishop Kip, we would
bring the unsmiling, puritanical straight-lacedness of Anthony &
Morrill; against the questionable purity of the five delegates from
San Quentin, we would array the bright virtue of the 300 steerage
passengers. Such was the pleasure party I saw in my dream. There was
a crowd for you that could swing round the circle for six months, and
never get home-sick--never fall out--never mope and gossip--never wear
out a Napoleon carrying it in their pockets--never show disrespect to
honest religion--never bring their nationality into disrepute--never
fail to make Europe say, "Lo! these Americans be bricks!"

To Washington

I am going to Washington to-morrow, to stay a month or two--possibly
longer. I have a lot of Holy Land letters on the way to you that will
arrive some time or other.

Alta California, January 15, 1868

MARK TWAIN IN WASHINGTON

[SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE ALTA CALIFORNIA]

Prospects of the Hawaiian Treaty--A Model Treaty--Putting Officials Out
of the Way--Dark Hints and Surmises--Personal Items--New Postmaster for
San Francisco--Office-Seekers

WASHINGTON, December 10, 1867.

The Hawaiian Treaty.

I have talked frequently with General McCook, United States Minister
to the Sandwich Islands, since I have been here. As you are aware, his
business in Washington is to get the reciprocity treaty between Hawaii
and this country through the Senate. It has been slow work, and very
troublesome, but a fair degree of progress is being made. General McCook
has been to Boston, and procured an endorsement of the proposed treaty
by the Board of Trade of that city; a similar endorsement by the Chamber
of Commerce of San Francisco was received by telegraph a few days ago.
These things have aided matters considerably. The Senate Committee,
which has the affair in charge, called for a concise statement of the
advantages to be gained by the United States through this treaty, and
the Minister has furnished, in reply, what seems to me to be an able
and convincing paper. Yesterday they demanded minute statistics of the
commerce between the two countries, and also a legal opinion as to the
constitutionally of the proposed treaty. Gen. McCook has the materials
at hand for the commercial estimates, and will immediately prepare them.
He asked Associate Justice Field to post him upon the constitutional
points of the case, and received a cordial assent at once. Judge Field
looked up all the authorities that bear upon it, and delivered the
memorandum this morning. This leaves the framing of the legal opinion an
easy task, as Gen. McCook was a lawyer before he was a soldier. I think
the treaty is doing well, now, and is likely to be happily born before
long. The Committee have got the general statistics and will shortly
have the particular ones; they will soon have the legal opinion on the
constitutional points; they can have Harris' opinion any time, if they
want it, because he is here from Honolulu; they have the endorsements of
the Boston and San Francisco Chambers of Commerce; the treaty does not
conflict with the Plymouth Collection of Hymns, nor the Sunday liquor
law. What more these gentlemen can possibly want, is a matter that
is beyond human foresight. I do not see why they don't take to it
instantly, and with enthusiasm. It has got more statistics and more
constitutionality in it than any document in the world. That treaty has
grown and grown upon my reverence until, in my eyes, it has become a
perfect monument of mathematics and virtue. General McCook is getting
a little tired of the delays and vexations of his position--tired of
waltzing around the President, the Secretary of State and the Senate
Committee with arguments and statistics, but he will see the end of it
before he retreats. I have a sort of vague idea that he will begin to
taste constitutionality in his food, and smell of statistics before
long. In concluding these remarks I will observe that I have not said
the treaty is sure to pass; I only say that nothing has been left undone
that could conduce to that end, and that success looks very promising.

A Curious Idea.

It seems a curious idea to me, but at the hotel table the other evening
I overhead two high Government officials express the opinion--in fact,
almost assert--that the Presidents of the United States who have died in
office were "put out of the way." They were put out of the way, not by
their successors, but by parties seeking contracts or offices who were
unpopular with the regular incumbent, but could realize their desires if
the Vice-President were to rise to the throne. They did not even imagine
for a moment that the Vice-Presidents who succeeded were privy to the
taking off, or remotely suspected that it was going to transpire. They
said that our form of government offered the same inducement to an
ambitious or covetous man to put the President out of the way that is
offered by the monarchical form. If he perfectly knew that his fortunes
would be advanced by the Vice-President if he were in power, it was a
strong temptation to a bad man to procure the taking of the President's
life. This conversation was as interesting to me as it was startling.
I had never dreamt of such a thing before as a President's sacred life
being in danger from the knives and poisons of assassins in times of
profound peace. These gentlemen mentioned several curious circumstances
that bore upon the subject. They said that for several days before
President Taylor was taken sick, a restless, uneasy stranger hung about
the White House grounds so much, and acted so singularly as to excite
remark. The day the President fell ill, this person was found in his
bed room. No one could tell how he got there. His own story was full of
contradictions. It was supposed he came there to steal; he was searched,
and a curious powder found on his person, which, when removed, proved
to be dirt. So there is every reason to believe President Taylor was
poisoned.

And then, there was the man--dark, and hairy, and malignant of
expression--who was found at midnight under President Harrison's bed.
He had a keg of powder with him, and a fuse. Nothing saved the President
but this man's stupidity--the providential stupidity of a remark he
made, and which betrayed him. He said: "Could your Excellency lend me
a match? I can't make these d--d things go." That fortunate piece of
carelessness on the stranger's part unquestionably saved the President's
life. He confessed afterwards that he was not there for any good
purpose; considerations which he would not name, he said, had prompted
him to wish that the President were out of the chair. Through anonymous
letters he had tried to frighten him out; by the same means he had tried
to coax him out; when these had failed, he saw with pain that it was
necessary to blast him out. He had come for that purpose; he was sorry
it had not succeeded. This man was quietly pardoned and set a liberty,
and advised to leave the country. He did not do it, however, and
significant circumstances afterward aroused a strong suspicion that he
had procured the President's death by poison, through one of the White
House servants.

The subject is interesting, notwithstanding the incidents above related
have something of an improbable cast about them. That a President's
life is always in very great danger, however, is a truth that cannot be
doubted. That any President ever died in office by a natural death is a
matter that is disbelieved by very wise men in Washington.

Personal.

I have met the California Senators, Messrs. Conness and Cole, and also
Hon. Mr. Axtell, of the Lower House. I believe I have nothing special to
report concerning them.

I have seen Jump, also. He has just returned from Paris, and is here
making caricatures for Frank Leslie's publications.

Mr. Haggin and C. F. Wood are here, and Mr. Chamberlain (late partner
of Mr. Hayward, in his mine) was until yesterday. He has gone away on an
extensive Southern tour.

General Ance McCook, brother to the Hawaiian Minister resident, is
stopping here for a few days. He was formerly an honest miner, and lived
at Nevada City. He is very young, but like the other members of the
McCook family, made a handsome record during the war.

I came across one of the lions of the country to-day at the
Senate--General Sherman. The conversation I had with this gentleman has
considerable political significance, and therefore ought to be reported,
I suppose. I said the weather was very fine, and he said he had seen
finer. Not liking to commit myself further, in the present unsettled
condition of politics, I said good morning. Understanding my little
game, he said good morning, also. This was all that passed, but it was
very significant. It reveals clearly what he thinks of impeachment.
I regard this manner of getting at a great man's opinions as a little
underhanded, but then everybody does it. People do it every day, as you
can see by the papers, and find out as much as I did, and then rush off
and publish it.

The Postmaster for San Francisco has been appointed by the President,
but I am not at liberty to mention his name. His name will come before
the Senate for confirmation shortly. There were twenty-seven applicants
for the position.

Office-Seeking.

Speaking of applicants reminds me that the population of Washington,
even now, seems to be made up of people who want offices. What must it
be when a new President comes in! These office-seekers are wonderfully
seedy, wonderfully hungry-eyed, wonderfully importunate, and
supernaturally gifted with "cheek." They fasten themselves to
influential friends like barnacles to whales, and never let go until
they are carried into the pleasant waters of office or scraped off
against a protruding hotel bill. Their desires are seldom as modest as
their qualifications. There was a fellow here the other day who had
been Consul to some starvation unexplored region of South America (we
notoriously use only indifferent talent in the stocking of Consulships,)
and having graduated in that little business, had come to Washington to
beg for the post of Minister to Mexico! Another, who has been Postmaster
of some village in Arkansas where they have a mail every four weeks, and
it miscarries, then, oftener than it is safely delivered, is here--drawn
hither by a report that the Postmaster General intended to resign. He
wants the berth! I have only heard of one modest office seeker yet. He
came here to apply for the post of Secretary of War, but General Grant
was ahead of him there. So he wants to be Governor of Alaska, now.
That is a retrograde movement that speaks well for him. It shows a
disposition that is competent to adapt itself to circumstances. If any
man can enjoy icebergs, this is he; if any man can maintain his serenity
in the company of polar bears, this is the person; if any man can
sustain the dignity of the Gubernatorial office in spite of such company
and such surroundings, this is certainly that man. He ought to be
appointed.

A. J. Moulder,

formerly of the San Francisco Herald, was married the other day in
Philadelphia, and will shortly arrive here to be chief of the Associated
Press for Washington.

MARK TWAIN.

Alta California, January 21,1868

LETTER FROM "MARK TWAIN"

[SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE ALTA CALIFORNIA.]

Concerning Government Salaries--Female Clerks--Distribution of the
Places--Secretary Seward's Real Estate Bargains--A Shaky Piece of
Property--The Sutro Tunnel.

WASHINGTON, December 14, 1867.

Salaries and Clerkships.

Our Government pays the poorest salaries of any first-Power in the
world, no doubt. She invites her servants, by poor salaries, to steal;
she persuades them, by great opportunities, to steal; she forces them,
by the necessity of keeping up some degree of state, and lack of the
means to do it with, to steal. With poor salaries, she procures the
services of men of second-rate standing and seventeenth-rate ability,
and then debauches their little modicum of honesty, and turns them
adrift considerably worse than they were before.

Members of the President's Cabinet, heads of all great Departments
of the Government, get $8,000 a year--something over $7,000 after the
income tax is subtracted. House rent is $2,500 to $3,000; carriage,
horses, servants, champagne blow-outs and other necessaries, $6,000
(with purchase of vehicle, etc.); wife, daughters, oysters and other
luxuries--well, anything, from $3,000 up to $10,000 a year, according to
the style of your wife and the quality of your oysters. These gentlemen
of the Cabinet represent the great Ministers of State of a monarchy, and
of course are obliged to live in a style somewhat in keeping with the
high dignity of their positions. Not one of them can make his salary
keep and clothe himself and family a year. Here is a temptation to
steal. Have they the opportunity? Probably not one of them is without
opportunities, and most seductive ones withal. I am aware of two cases
where the head of a Department, by rendering a decision in favor of two
great companies, could have profited them to the amount of $7,000,000,
and would have received a "present" of a matter of $600,000 for doing
it. His decision would have been final--from it there would have been
no appeal. The parties benefited would have praised him, the parties not
benefited would have abused him; the general public would not have cared
much about the matter one way or the other. It was a cruel temptation
to set before a man who was striving hard to make his salary support him
and not by any means succeeding. The heads of the great Departments are
assailed by these dazzling temptations every day. Is not an inadequate
salary a bid for corruption? At least is it not a stronger bid than a
full belly and a comfortable livelihood would be?

We pay our European Consuls just enough to keep them out of the
poorhouse, and then we add an exquisite cruelty to this by giving the
majority of them no chance to steal. The necessary consequence is that
we get little, cheap pot-house politicians and other people who--are
just worth the money, and no more. They are not paid to add to the
country's reputation abroad; with the utmost fidelity they don't do
it. Great Britain gets better men for such offices, for she pays better
prices. She educates her servants, and promotes them as they deserve it.
When a French Envoy to Turkey acquits himself well, he becomes a great
Minister of State, next. He has that reward before him all the time.
When a representative of ours learns, after long experience, how to
conduct the affairs of his office, we discharge him and hire somebody
that don't know anything about it.

But the clerkship business in Washington seems to me to be the chief
wonder of this metropolis. The heads of Departments are harassed by
Congressmen to give clerkships to their constituents until they are
fairly obliged to consent in order to get a little peace. I heard one of
these gentlemen say that if he dared dismiss one-third of his clerical
force, he could transact the business of his department infinitely
better with the other two thirds. In one or two of these Departments,
crowded as they are with officers, everything is at odds and ends, and
paper that ought to be found in a moment, by reference to properly
kept indexes, is often chased for miles through the vast Circumlocution
Office and found at last in a basket of loose documents! I have this
from men who have proven it by personal experience.

They tell hard stories about these Departments which employ women. The
women tell these things themselves. I will not enter largely into this
subject. I will only mention a suggestive conversation said to have
occurred lately between a Chief Clerk of a Bureau and a friend of a lady
office-seeker. The clerk excused himself--was sorry, etc., but declined
to make the appointment.

"But," the gentleman said, "the place is vacant, and I have shown you
that the lady is thoroughly competent."

"Competent!--why she is as homely as an oyster!"

This may be a fabrication--I don't know. I only know that the several
hundred girls in the Treasury Seraglio and in the other Government
harems (I get these terms on the street--they are not mine) average
astonishingly well in the matter of youth and beauty. And yet experience
teaches us that young and beautiful clerks are seldom the most
valuable. Forty-two women applied for a vacant clerkship in one of the
Departments, all within three hours, a day or two ago. They were of the
oyster style of comeliness; they didn't get the clerkship; whether the
one fact were the cause and the other the effect of that cause, is a
question I cannot decide. But seriously, very many of the female
clerks are faithful to their duties and bear spotless reputations. If
a different class creep in, it cannot be helped. The labor they have to
perform is better suited to them than to sturdy, able-bodied men, and
the Government has done an act that is not more generous than just in
extending their sphere of usefulness and their opportunity of earning a
livelihood. No man can go into the Departments and pick up hair-pins
and gaze upon the beauty there without being kindly disposed toward the
innovation.

This brings me easily and comfortably to an interesting feature of
this subject. These Departments are crowded with clerks and other small
Government fish. Illinois heads the list. She furnishes four hundred and
fifty of them! Whenever an official tooth needs filling, Mr. Washburne
always stands ready with an Illinois plug, and the thing is done. He is
the most inveterate dentist of them all, and the most successful.

Pennsylvania comes next. She furnishes four hundred. Indiana comes next;
then Ohio, then Massachusetts, and then the great State of New York!
Rhode Island, which is so small that the inhabitants have to trespass
on other States when they want to take a walk, furnishes more than the
whole Pacific Coast put together. Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah,
Arizona, and Washington Territory furnish twelve, all told. There are
plenty of people from those districts who would like well to sit at the
official feast, but they cannot get the chance.

But Mr. Newcomb, of Missouri, has just introduced a resolution into
Congress, inquiring how many clerks are employed in the various
Departments, how long they have held their offices, what salaries they
get, and what Congressional Districts they were recommended from. This
will make a stir; and if there were an inquiry added of how much these
clerks do, and how much they don't do, the stir would become an absolute
flutter. As it was, Mr. Washburne jumped to his feet and objected to the
measure, and so it had to lie over under the rule. But it will come up
again.

Our Purchases.

All Washington is laughing about our unfortunate purchases of territory.
We bought the Island of St. Thomas not long ago. We may have got it at
a bargain, for its inhabitants were all dying off with the fevers of the
country, and it promised to be nothing more than a cemetery in a little
while, and an eligible place to die in. Young Seward was sent down to
pay all the property, and the sailors stole all the money while he was
ashore. More was procured and the business completed; and then began a
series of catastrophes such as never astounded an unsuspecting purchaser
before since the world was created. A storm arose, and the sea swept
the island as clean as a ship's deck. A few days afterward an earthquake
shook it up in a most outrageous way. Before the people had had a chance
to recover their tranquillity, a volcano started up in their midst and
threatened to hoist them all into eternity. The Secretary of the Navy
sent two men-of-war down there to reconnoitre, and another earthquake
rushed them ashore and shook half the timbers out of them. For thirty
days the unhappy island has been torn and drenched and scorched by
earthquakes, by storms, by malignant volcanoes! The inhabitants that are
not too sick with fevers to be astonished, are astonished as they never
were in all their lives before, and distressed beyond all possible
description. Porto Rico is undergoing a similar siege of supernatural
disasters, and the people of Washington begin to suspect, from these
signs, that we must have purchased Porto Rico too, through some secret
treaty that has not yet transpired. Whether the adventures of the St.
Thomas purchase have set the Senate against territorial speculations
or not, I cannot say, but certainly a number of its members refuse to
entertain the idea of paying for our former acquisition--Walrussia.
If the Senate should refuse to pay for it, they would do a very absurd
thing. To offend so powerful a friend as Russia for the trifle
of $7,000,000 would be unwise. Russia, by her simple attitude of
friendship, and without lifting a hand, is able to save us from wars
with European powers that would eat up the price of Walrussia in four
days. But perhaps we had better hold on to that money and buy some more
earthquakes with it.

Return of the Sutro Tunnel from Europe.

Mr. A. Sutro, of the great Sutro Tunnel scheme, arrived yesterday from
Europe, in the Russia. He brought his tunnel back with him. He failed
to sell to the Europeans. They liked the tunnel--they said it was a good
tunnel!--they said it was a good tunnel and a long tunnel, and appeared
to be a straight tunnel, but that they would look around a little before
purchasing; if they could not find a tunnel to suit them nearer home,
they would call again. Many capitalists were fascinated with the idea of
owning a tunnel, but none wanted such a long tunnel or one that was
so far away that they could not walk out, afternoons, and enjoy it.
Evidently these Europeans think a tunnel is some kind of a curious
ivory-handled ornament suitable for a philopene present.

But seriously, the Europeans said they were afraid of American stocks.
That was it. Sutro was received with distinguished courtesy by the
savans and official dignitaries of half a dozen nations, and by the
chiefs of all the great mines in those countries; he showed his ores and
his certified maps and statistics, and astounded them with the wonderful
productiveness of the Comstock, a lode they had never heard of, and
whose richness and extent they would not have believed but for the
attested facts and figures. But they said capital was afraid of American
stocks.

Sutro visited all their little mines, and gathered a mass of information
which will always be interesting if never useful. In all the mines
of Europe he found American pupils. In the great school of mines of
Frieberg he found one hundred and four students, and forty-three of them
were Americans! This is something of an argument in favor of Senator
Stewart's recent bill for the founding of a national mining school in
Nevada.

Mr. Sutro is not discouraged about the great tunnel enterprise, but has
come straight to Washington to see if he cannot get Congress to grant
the corporation some aid, in grants of land or otherwise. Sutro ought to
succeed with his great enterprise. Energy and everlasting industry and
tenacity like his, deserve a generous success. Any other man would have
lost heart and abandoned this thing long before this time.

MARK TWAIN.

Alta California, January 28, 1868

MARK TWAIN IN WASHINGTON

[SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE ALTA CALIFORNIA.]

Stealing a March on Congress--Who Was He?--How State Secrets Leak
Out--Colonel Parker's Little Difficulty--Hawaiian Harris.

WASHINGTON, December 17.

More Mysteries.


A week or two ago, Congress was surprised--and incensed as well--to wake
up one morning and find that the President's Message was being read
in every newspaper in the land, from Rhode Island to California,
long before the official document had had an opportunity to reach the
clerical desk of the Capitol. Angry speeches were made in both
Houses. Members aired their opinions very freely about this breach of
confidence, breach of decorum, contempt of Congress, or whatever
it might be, and talked of arraigning the reporters and
correspondents--talked of punishing the wretch who had forestalled the
national legislature--talked vaguely of Presidential leakiness and lack
of decorum in the matter. Gentlemen connected with the Associated Press
came out in newspaper cards and explained that whatever connection they
had had with the affair was fair and honorable--but did not tell how
they got hold of the document. Individual correspondents published cards
in which they denied being guilty; conventions of correspondents framed
similar cards, and all signed and sent them to the Speaker of the
House--but still the one guilty man could not be found. He failed to
come forward. Everybody knew what he got for the message and who he sold
it to, but there all knowledge ceased. Who he was, remained a dark and
bloody mystery. A printer was suspected; then a chambermaid of the White
House; then a cook--and each of these individuals in turn was a lion in
a small way--a mysterious lion that nobody saw but everybody believed
in. But it turned out that the chambermaid had left town two weeks
before the crime was committed, the printer was in the hospital, deaf,
dumb, blind and an idiot, and the cook was dead--been dead a year. At
any rate he had been dead some time. These were exciting days. But every
sign failed, every suspicion proved at fault. The culprit could not be
discovered, and so, reluctantly, the search was discontinued, and the
wonder passed from the public mind.

But, behold, only a few days ago, when the people knew that a message
from the President was to go to the Senate, to be acted upon in secret
session, (a message concerning Mr. Stanton's removal), and everybody,
Senators and all, were full of curiosity as to what its character would
be, out bursts an elaborate synopsis of the document in the newspapers!
And not only that, but on the day appointed for the session, and before
any Senator had had a chance to hear the official message read, the
document in full made its appearance in the public press! Congress was
puzzled more than ever. The people were surprised almost as much as
they were gratified. Now, how can such things be, and overcome us like
a summer's dream, without our special wonder? There is mystery all about
us. There are dreadful leaks somewhere in the old Ship of State. Dozens
of people know (they don't tell how,) who is to be appointed to an
office, days before the appointment is made--weeks before it is sent to
the Senate for action. Synopses of evidence in great secret inquests
are published long before the Government is ready to make them public.
Intentions of the heads of the Government that will affect the gold
market are known in Wall street long enough before those intentions are
done into deeds to enable the brokers to buy gold or sell it, as the
case shall demand. Now, who is the man? That is the question. Speaking
of these things reminds me of an incident of old-time newspaper
enterprise. It will dovetail into this theme very well. It is true in
every particular. I get it from excellent authority.

How a Mystery was Solved.

During Mr. Madison's Administration the President and the Cabinet were
periodically astonished to find all their little secret state affairs
faithfully reported in a certain New York paper, two or three days after
they had transpired--this was in the old times, when stage-coaches
were used, you will remember. If a line of policy was determined on,
in secret council, the facts appeared in that paper without fail; if a
foreign Minister's conduct was criticised; if somebody was to be turned
out of office; if the conduct of Congress was overhauled; if the
most private and important matters affecting foreign relations were
discussed--no matter, it was all fish for that New York newspaper's
net; and somehow it all found its way there. And what was particularly
surprising, was the accuracy and attention to minute details displayed
in these mysterious reports. At first prying servants were suspected,
but when it was remembered that even long conversations had been
reported, word for word, and at a time when no servant was present,
that idea was cast away as absurd. The upshot of it was, that a
coolness ensued in the Cabinet. The President began to suspect his great
advisers, and they began to suspect him. Things came to such a pass
that these gentlemen sat coldly at the Cabinet meetings, with important
public matters distressing their minds, yet not daring to speak out
freely and honestly, lest some Judas in the party should print his words
in that haunting friend of a newspaper. Matters could not go on in this
way. Neither human nature nor governmental nature could bear it. At
last, one fortunate day, in the midst of one of these dreary silences
of the Cabinet, the mystery was revealed; a suppressed sneeze was heard
beyond a door that was there present--a door that had been unused and
triple-locked for years! Every man sprang to his feet; an armorer was
summoned to unfasten the door; and when it swung open, lo, a well known
stenographer, named Davis, was exposed, wedged into a recess in the
wall, taking notes!

The wall was very thick, and the recess in it had a door opening into
the Cabinet Council room, and another opening into an unused ante-room.
Both doors had been locked for several years, everybody supposed. Davis
had procured a key, and, by feeing a servant, had gained admission to
the recess from the ante-room. For a long time he had been in the habit
of getting himself locked into this place early in the morning, and
remaining there until the Cabinet business was finished. Terrible
threats were made, and there was talk of making an example of him; but
Davis tranquilly invited them to show wherein he had been guilty of
misdemeanor, manslaughter, or any other grave offence against the law,
and they--let him go. It was all they could do. He had the weather-gauge
of them.

Singular.

Col. Eli Parker, of Gen. Grant's staff, was to have married an
accomplished young lady of distinguished family in this city yesterday
morning, but the wedding did not come off, owing to the mysterious
disappearance of the bridegroom on Saturday night. It is feared that he
has met with foul play. Parker was a favorite with Gen. Grant, and was
with him all through the war. Great preparations had been made for the
wedding; cards were issued for it; cards were also issued for receptions
here and in New York; an extensive bridal tour had been mapped out;
General Grant was to have given away the bride in the presence of
a large and select company. The company was duly assembled at the
appointed time. The General was ready. Everybody waited--waited--waited.
The slow minutes dragged heavily along, the guests wondered, the bride
grew distressed. Still the bridegroom did not come. The party broke up
at last, and went home.

Up to this time, more than three days, Col. Parker has not been found or
heard of. The last that was seen of him, he went to Gen. Grant's house
on Saturday night to borrow a military scarf to add to his wedding
outfit. Mrs. Grant brought three downstairs; he selected one, and
went away, and has not since been seen. Col. Parker was an educated,
cultivated gentleman--a thorough gentleman--and therefore no one
suspects him of carelessness or criminal intent in this matter. His name
is perhaps familiar to your readers. It has long been a noted one. He
was an Indian and a Chief; and by the same token a lineal descendant of
old Red Jacket, the friend of Washington. A sketch of his own career
and that of his great ancestor was published in Harper's Monthly two or
three years ago. He was with Grant, and in his confidence, all through
the war, and made a brave record for himself. [Col. Parker subsequently
turned up, and the marriage was duly consummated.--EDS. ALTA.]

Harris.

Harris is here yet. Harris is Lord High Minister of Finance to the King
of the Sandwich Islands when he is at home and it don't rain. But he is
"His Royal Hawaiian Majesty's Envoy to the United States" now, and no
man is sorrier than I am that his wages are stopped for the present. I
met him and conversed with him at the house of a mutual friend a night
or two ago, and that is how I happen to know how to spell his title
all the way through without breaking my neck over any of the corduroy
syllables. I never saw Harris so pleasant and companionable before. He
is really very passable company, until he tries to be funny, and then
Harris is ghastly. He smiles as if he had his foot in a steel trap and
did not want anybody to know it. I can forgive that person anything but
his jokes--but those, never. While Harris continues to joke there will
be a malignant animosity between us that no power can mollify.

Harris' business here is to get our Government to remove our man-of-war
from the Sandwich Island waters. To give this enterprising devil his
due, he has done everything he possibly could do to accomplish his
mission, and it was ungraceful in the King to stop his salary. He could
not accomplish it and I suppose nobody could. It is a good place out
there for a man-of-war; she is not doing any harm; she is not going to
do any harm; and until a fair, reasonable reason is given for banishing
her, she will remain. In placing her there, no offence whatever was
meant to the King or the country, any more than we mean to offend the
Sultan when we anchor a frigate in the harbor of Smyrna.

I have missed Harris during the last day or two. I wonder what is become
of him. I grieve to see a man fail in an honest endeavor; and now that
his King has turned against him, I even wish that Harris could succeed
in his mission.

Personal.

Governor Curry, of Oregon, is here, at Willard's. General Kiernan,
recently United States Consul to some port in China, called a day or two
ago. He spoke of his intention of delivering an address before the New
York and Boston Chamber of Commerce concerning the great and growing
importance of our trade with China. I hear that he wishes to be Minister
of Mexico. His ambition ought to be realized. Those people down there
are of a kind to keep a man moving around pretty lively, and General
Kiernan is accustomed to travelling. I suppose he has learned how to
pack his trunk and dictate his will at the same time. If he went to
Mexico, though, I should think it would be a good idea to go "flying
light"--put his will on record and travel without any baggage at all.

Senator Stewart's family sailed for France last week.

I was at a dinner in the early part of the week, given by Mr. Henry D.
Cook, to the Newspaper Correspondents' Club, of Washington, where
Ben. Perly Poore, a noted writer, said something which gave offence to
General Boynton, late of the Army, but now of the press, and yesterday
the parties quarrelled in the ante-room of the House reporters' gallery.
A duel was talked of all day, but I hear to-night that Mr. Poore has
apologized. It is a great pity. I never have seen a dead reporter.

A. D. Richardson is making a fortune out of his last book, "The
Mississippi and Beyond." He and Swinton ("Twelve Decisive Battles.")
have published the most saleable books, I believe, that have issued from
the press this year. MARK TWAIN.

Alta California, February 5, 1868

MARK TWAIN IN WASHINGTON

[SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE ALTA CALIFORNIA.]

The Great Dickens--An Honest Criticism--Political Gossip--Caning the
President--Winter Festivities--Jump in Washington.

WASHINGTON, January 11th.

Charles Dickens.

I only heard him read once. It was in New York, last week. I had a seat
about the middle of Steinway Hall, and that was rather further away from
the speaker than was pleasant or profitable.

Promptly at 8 P.M., unannounced, and without waiting for any stamping
or clapping of hands to call him out, a tall, "spry," (if I may say it,)
thin-legged old gentleman, gotten up regardless of expense, especially
as to shirt-front and diamonds, with a bright red flower in his
button-hole, gray beard and moustache, bald head, and with side hair
brushed fiercely and tempestuously forward, as if its owner were
sweeping down before a gale of wind, the very Dickens came! He did not
emerge upon the stage--that is rather too deliberate a word--he strode.
He strode--in the most English way and exhibiting the most English
general style and appearance--straight across the broad stage, heedless
of everything, unconscious of everybody, turning neither to the right
nor the left--but striding eagerly straight ahead, as if he had seen
a girl he knew turn the next corner. He brought up handsomely in the
centre and faced the opera glasses. His pictures are hardly handsome,
and he, like everybody else, is less handsome than his pictures. That
fashion he has of brushing his hair and goatee so resolutely forward
gives him a comical Scotch-terrier look about the face, which is rather
heightened than otherwise by his portentous dignity and gravity.
But that queer old head took on a sort of beauty, bye and bye, and a
fascinating interest, as I thought of the wonderful mechanism within it,
the complex but exquisitely adjusted machinery that could create men and
women, and put the breath of life into them and alter all their ways and
actions, elevate them, degrade them, murder them, marry them, conduct
them through good and evil, through joy and sorrow, on their long march
from the cradle to the grave, and never lose its godship over them,
never make a mistake! I almost imagined I could see the wheels and
pulleys work. This was Dickens--Dickens. There was no question about
that, and yet it was not right easy to realize it. Somehow this puissant
god seemed to be only a man, after all. How the great do tumble from
their high pedestals when we see them in common human flesh, and know
that they eat pork and cabbage and act like other men.

Mr. Dickens had a table to put his book on, and on it he had also a
tumbler, a fancy decanter and a small bouquet. Behind him he had a huge
red screen--a bulkhead--a sounding-board, I took it to be--and overhead
in front was suspended a long board with reflecting lights attached to
it, which threw down a glory upon the gentleman, after the fashion in
use in the picture-galleries for bringing out the best effects of great
paintings. Style!--There is style about Dickens, and style about all his
surroundings.

He read David Copperfield. He is a bad reader, in one sense--because he
does not enunciate his words sharply and distinctly--he does not cut the
syllables cleanly, and therefore many and many of them fell dead before
they reached our part of the house. [I say "our" because I am proud
to observe that there was a beautiful young lady with me--a highly
respectable young white woman.] I was a good deal disappointed in Mr.
Dickens' reading--I will go further and say, a great deal disappointed.
The Herald and Tribune critics must have been carried away by their
imaginations when they wrote their extravagant praises of it. Mr.
Dickens' reading is rather monotonous, as a general thing; his voice is
husky; his pathos is only the beautiful pathos of his language--there is
no heart, no feeling in it--it is glittering frostwork; his rich humor
cannot fail to tickle an audience into ecstasies save when he reads to
himself. And what a bright, intelligent audience he had! He ought
to have made them laugh, or cry, or shout, at his own good will or
pleasure--but he did not. They were very much tamer than they should
have been.

He pronounced Steerforth "St'yaw-futh." This will suggest to you that
he is a little Englishy in his speech. One does not notice it much,
however. I took two or three notes on a card; by reference to them I
find that Pegotty's anger when he learned the circumstance of Little
Emly's disappearance, was "excellent acting--full of spirit;" also,
that Pegotty's account of his search for Emly was "bad;" and that Mrs.
Micawber's inspired suggestions as to the negotiation of her husband's
bills, was "good;" (I mean, of course, that the reading was;) and
that Dora the child-wife, and the storm at Yarmouth, where Steerforth
perished, were not as good as they might have been. Every passage Mr.
D. read, with the exception of those I have noted, was rendered with
a degree of ability far below what his reading reputation led us to
expect. I have given "first impressions." Possibly if I could hear
Mr. Dickens read a few more times I might find a different style of
impressions taking possession of me. But not knowing anything about
that, I cannot testify.

Complimentary.

They import wines from Europe, now, into New York, and sell them for
California wines. That is complimentary, isn't it? The California wines
seem to be well liked in the East here, but they cannot compete in price
with the bogus article from the Old World. They told me in New York that
once, lately, the market was so overstocked with the latter that a cargo
of genuine California had to be shipped back--it was worth more in San
Francisco than it would bring on this side. This Italian stuff can be
sold wholesale in New York at twelve cents a gallon after freights and
duties are paid, a wine merchant tells me. It don't cost anything to
call it California wine, and it sells better, and so they christen it
accordingly.

Presidential Presents.

All of a sudden the President has grown mightily in favor, and everybody
that can raise money enough buys a present for him and goes up to the
White House and inflicts it on him. I believe he has received eleven
different kinds of canes in the last three weeks. He got one from that
same old inexhaustible Charter Oak, day before yesterday. Do you suppose
that that relic will ever give out? They have already taken more wood
out of it than would build a couple of steamboats, but still it holds
out.

It all comes from the fact that the Democracy are talking pretty freely
of running the President for reelection. About six others are talked of,
and so it mixes a man up a good deal as to who he ought to send canes
to. Such as are able, supply the whole gang, which is probably the
safest thing to do. Mr. Johnson is willing to be reelected. In fact he
is working hard for the nomination. If you will notice the papers for a
short time back, you will observe that he is getting his "consistency"
record up as well as possible. He is showing that the same political
virtues that made him the people's choice for Vice-President are still
undimmed, and in sufficiently good repair to make a proper and righteous
Chief Magistrate of him.

Jump's Pictures.

Jump, the caricaturist, of San Francisco, is here as artist for Frank
Leslie's. He has made a water-color sketch of Pennsylvania Avenue,
which is attracting a deal of attention. It hangs in the window of the
principal bookstore, and has a cluster of amused folks around it all the
time. It has twenty or thirty portraits in it. This is just the city for
Jump, where the faces of the nation's distinguished men are so familiar.
In this picture he has portraits of Seward, Welles, Banks, Spinner,
Horace Greeley, General Butler, Charles Sumner, Grant, Sherman, Stanton
and others, whose features are well know everywhere. The execution is
excellent, and the hits are good.

Jump recently married a handsome young lady in New York.

Festivities, Etc.

The receptions, weekly, at the President's, Mr. Colfax's and others of
the great officers of the Government are getting under full blast now,
and are beginning to make this slow town look sociable. They had a grand
Eighth of January banquet at the Metropolitan Hotel night before last,
a purely Democratic celebration, with the President of the United States
at the head of it. It is said that a good many things were said there,
but, according to Riley, the best was the unstudied effort of a negro
waiter. He said, "Dey didn't talk 'bout nuffin but nigger--dey 'bused de
nigger all de time--but dey didn't none of 'em give us a cent!"

The Newspaper Correspondents' Club will have its annual banquet this
evening, and a royal affair it will be. The boys have been making great
preparations for it for some time. They tell me I am expected to respond
to the regular toast to Woman. I don't care whether I am expected or
not--I shall respond anyhow. It is my best hold. On all occasions,
whenever woman is mentioned, I am ready to make a statement.

I delivered a lecture here night before last--a new lecture. It went off
well, but it was only a happy accident that it did, for there was
nobody to attend to business. The newspapers are all exceedingly kid and
complimentary, but one of them published a synopsis of the discourse.
I was sorry for that, although it was so well meant, because one never
feels comfortable, afterward, repeating a lecture that has been partly
printed; and worse than that, people don't care about going to hear what
they can buy in a newspaper for less money. I beg that the Coast papers
will not print any synopsis of my sermons they may find floating around.

MARK TWAIN.

Alta California, February 11, 1868

MARK TWAIN IN WASHINGTON

[DELAYED LETTER]

The Presidential Question--The Hancock Vote of Thanks--Washington
Message--British Impudence--The Prince of Wales--Good Advice to a
Senator--Sundry Items.

WASHINGTON, December 23rd [1867]

The President and Vice President.

EDITORS ALTA: The high and growing consideration in which the Pacific
States are held here is evidenced in the fact that both of the great
political parties seem to have an idea that a candidate for President or
Vice President, in the next canvas, ought to be selected from that
part of the country. The latest political gossip is to the effect that
Senator Nye may chance to be the Republican nominee for Vice President.

Then, on the Democratic side of the fence, Judge Field, of California,
is talked of more and more every day in connection with the Presidency
of the United States. Indeed, there is no question that a movement in
his favor has been going on quietly over a wide extent of country; and
that, without a mention in the newspapers, hardly, as a candidate, he
probably stands foremost in the list of candidates to-day. The Democrats
are aware that to run a race with General Grant, with any hope of
success, they must bring out a competitor that is sound in wind and
limb; flaws that were merely damaging in the days of Pierce and Polk
would be damning now. They have decided that there is a bill to be
filled, and that that bill must be utterly and completely filled, even
to the last item. They must have a man whose record as a Union man
is unblemished; whose record as a war man is spotless; and one whose
conservatism cannot be gain-said. Thus far, Judge Field is the only man
they have found who fills this bill. He was a war man and a Union
man; his decisions on the test oath and the decrees of the military
commissions are quoted in proof of his conservatism. The test oath
decision untied the hands of the lawyers all over the South, and
restored to them the privilege of earning a livelihood. This secures to
him a friendship of unquestionable value. Ultra peace men like Pendleton
and Vallandigham are no longer considered at all available by the
Democracy--in the peculiar language of Democracy, "that cat won't
fight." McClellan destroyed many Southern Democrats with bullets and
cold steel, and embittered the lives and wore out the patience of many
more with waiting for him to make up his mind to being to commence
to get ready to make a start to ultimately do something at some dim,
indefinite time or other. Therefore McClellan will not do. General
Hancock fought; and more than this, he hung Mrs. Surratt. Hancock will
hardly do. Nasby will not do. Nasby's Democracy is too genuine and
too straightforward in these piping times of policy. At this present
moment--not next week, but at this present moment--Judge Field stands
fairest on the Democratic list of names for the Presidency. Whether it
will remain so to the end, or whether expediency shall displace him
for another man conceived to be still more available, is a thing which
modern prophecy may not hope to determine.

The President's Last.

The President's last communication, asking Congress to vote a compliment
to Gen. Hancock, has provoked some comment. And not without reason. It
glorifies a servant of the Government!--a subordinate of the glorifier,
the supreme head of the nation's military forces--for what? Simply for
magnanimously conceding to citizens of New Orleans rights which are
guaranteed to every citizen of the United States by the Constitution!
Has a faithful discharge of imperative duty become so rare a thing in
the land that its occurrence is matter for glorification? Is it so rare
that it astonished the President of the United States and makes him
haste to call public attention to the wonder? Is a discharge of
duty become so sublime an event that Congress and the President must
celebrate it with a national hurrah? Truly, it seems so. But the
President loves to be known as the "Defender of the Constitution;"--it
is possible that this is the first time his defence of it has resulted
in a success? The whole affair is funny, when you come to look squarely
at it.

Congress has not yet voted the thanks the President requested for
Hancock. There is a reason, but it has not leaked into print yet, I
believe; nor yet into common conversation. But that reason is a potent
one, and may possibly hold back the vote of thanks for all time. The
facts, as they exist behind the scenes are these: The message and the
suggested thanks were intended to do duty as electioneering guns for
Gen. Hancock. The Republicans had no interest in their success in that
capacity. So it transpired that two resolutions of thanks were drawn up
and canvassed by the two political parties in the House. One of these
resolutions killed the other before either ever came up for action. One
resolution offered the thanks of Congress for the General's faithful
discharge of his onerous duties in New Orleans. The other read:

"And be it further Resolved, That the grateful acknowledgments of
Congress are also tendered to Gen. Hancock for his able and efficient
services in superintending the execution of Mrs. Surratt!"

The Democrats concluded that the vote of thanks which was to have been
such a fine stroke of strategy in behalf of the President's candidate
had better perish unexpressed than go forth with this appalling
compliment dangling to it.

The Big Trees.

Cannot the California Legislature manage somehow to give to that variety
of trees which we delight to call the "Washingtonia," a name which
will stick?--a name which the nations will receive?--a name which even
England will respect? Of all the "cheek" that ever I heard of, the
information that England (and through her, Europe,) has abolished the
title "Washingtonia," conferred upon the Big Trees by America, and
renamed them "Wellingtonia," does strike me as the sublimest effrontery
that has transpired recently. That is English, all over. After Dr. Kane,
steadily and surely destroying his life in a search among polar icebergs
for a lost Englishman, yet doing it earnestly and unselfishly, came back
a dying man, and showed the great English savans his map of the notable
discoveries he had made in those mysterious solitudes of the north, they
showed their gratitude for the suffering he had endured for the behest
of an Englishman, and their appreciation of his great services in behalf
of science and the enlargement of the world's knowledge, by scratching
his American names from his discoveries and substituting the names of a
gang of British bloods and princes! It was eminently English. Wherever
they can stick a name so that it shall glorify anything pertaining to
England, there they stick it. You never hear of an Englishman speak
of the Hawaiian Islands--no, he calls them the Sandwich Islands; Cook
discovered them second-hand, by following a Spanish chart three hundred
years old, which is still in the British Museum, and named them for some
one-horse Earl of Sandwich, that nobody had heard of before, and hasn't
since--a man that probably never achieved any work that was really
gorgeous during his earthly mission, excepting his invention for
confining a slice of ham between two slices of bread in such a manner as
to enable even the least gifted of our race to eat bread and meat at the
same time, without being bewildered by too elaborate a conjunction of
ideas. I suppose, if the real truth were known, some foreigner invented
the Sandwich, but England gave it a name, in her usual cheerful fashion.
They never even speak of the whale that swallowed Jonah merely as a
whale, but as the Prince of Wales. They think it suggests that he was
an English whale. If he was that, that is sufficient. That covers up
any probable flaws in his character. It is nothing to them that he went
about gobbling up the prophets wherever he found them; it is nothing
that he interfered with their business--nothing that he put them
to infinite delay, discomfort and annoyance; it is nothing that he
disgorged prophets in such a condition, as to personal appearance,
that they might well feel a delicacy about preaching in a strange city.
No--being an English whale was sufficient to make this infamous conduct
excusable; and being English, they are willing to let the "great fish"
pass for a whale, notwithstanding a whale's throat is not large enough
to let a man go down. But to come back to the original question, cannot
the California Bear make the British Lion put down our bone? or are the
bears in our coat-of-arms too busy grabbing the potatoes the Goddess of
Liberty is spilling out of her sack?

Senatorial.

I telegraphed you a morsel of Washington gossip, to-day, to the effect
that Mr. Casserly is not eligible to the U.S. Senate for the same reason
that General Shields was not, in his day--namely, that he has not been
an American long enough.

Premising that this gossip may be without foundation, and that Mr.
Casserly may yet take his seat in the Senate, I wish to give him some
fatherly advise, viz.:

That he ought to come by the Isthmus and collect mileage around the
Horn.

He ought not to spend millions in the purchase of volcanoes and
earthquakes, and then "retrench" by cutting off the Senate's stationery
supplies.

He ought not to keep mean whiskey at his rooms and tell his constituents
it is forty years old.

He ought not to draw a salary for his pet Newfoundland dog, under
the name and style of "Clerk of the Senate Committee on So-forth and
So-forth.

He ought not to get the handsome girls places in the Treasury
Department, and tell all the homely ones the places are full.

He ought not to palm off old speeches from the Congressional Globe for
1832 as original, for behold, old speeches are even a more shameless
fraud than new whiskey.

He ought not to shirk important votes and then plead those threadbare
"sick relatives" in expiation and explanation. Something fresh must be
tried--sick relatives are regarded as wild-cat, now.

He ought to write a signature that another man can read, without direct
inspiration from heaven.

And finally, let him never make a speech until he has something to say.
This last is about the hardest advice to follow that could be offered to
a Senator, perhaps.

Miscellaneous.

A. D. Richardson is here, writing a biography of General Grant.

Mary Harris, the young woman who shot her former lover, a Treasury
Clerk, named Burroughs, eighteen months ago, was acquitted on the plea
of insanity. The Insane Asylum report, just published, establishes that
she has been insane ever since. Once she got out of bed in the night and
broke up all her furniture, and on another occasion she tried to stab
a man and did succeed in cutting his clothes. She manifests a strong
disposition to commit suicide, and she says she has no desire to live.

John C. Fremont has brought suit for the restoration of stock in the
Union Pacific Railway of six million dollars, par value, which he
alleges he put into Edward Leonard's hands, with the stipulation that
it should not be sold until the plaintiff was paid $225,000. He alleges
that Leonard has violated the contract and sold the stock.

By the report of the Superintendent of Colored Schools for the cities
of Washington and Georgetown, it appears that there are, in all, 55 free
colored schools, 57 teachers, 2,748 pupils--average attendance, daily,
2,500.

The following said to be from a Western paper, is going the rounds:

"KIPOO, nov the 24 1867

"Deer Zur: Kin you inform me wheather nigger suphrage Was carried at the
late lection. If such ignernat pepul is to voat I want to leav this God
forsaking State and go back to Suthern illinois.

"Yrs trooly." [Twain used this in Huckleberry Finn in the person of
Huck's 'Pap' who vowed "I'll never (hic)vote again." Ed.]

Miss Adelaid Phillips arrived here to-day. She is with Madame La
Grange's opera troupe.

The Christian Statesman, a Philadelphia religious paper, is lending all
its energies to the solution of the question, "Is alcohol food?" The
editor could save himself a deal of trouble by tarrying in Washington a
spell.

MARK TWAIN.

Alta California, February 14, 1868

MARK TWAIN IN WASHINGTON

[SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE ALTA CALIFORNIA]

Fernando Wood's Speech, and Censure by the House--A California
Humbug Abroad--General Grant Receives His Friends--Some of the
Notables--Political Portents.

WASHINGTON, January 16th.

The Wood-Cutters.

I stepped into the reporters' gallery of the House of Representatives,
yesterday, just as Fernando Wood rose to begin a speech, which is famous
all over the land, from here to the Pacific, this morning. I thought,
from the tone of his remarks, that he was nearing a precipice, and that
he would say something directly, in all human probability, that would
pitch him off it. But as usual, the members of Congress all about the
House were reading papers, or holding private conversations with each
other (it is a favorite swindle of theirs, to pretend they are not
listening, no matter who is speaking,) and nobody seemed to be paying
any attention to Mr. Wood. But they were paying attention, though--the
strictest attention. As he proceeded, they began to start occasionally,
and sometimes to wince very perceptibly. They found it hard to keep up
their counterfeited indifference. And when at last that sentence fell
from the speaker's lips that closed with the reckless words:

"The most infamous of the many infamous acts of this infamous
Congress,"--about a hundred of those listless Congressmen sprang
suddenly to their feet! The speaker's gavel struck.

It was a fine sensation. There were hundreds of people in the galleries,
and they stretched their necks forward to see, while all that could,
crowded down to the front seats. A score of voices shouted "Order!" The
body of members who had risen remained standing, while Mr. Bingham, of
Ohio, who seemed to have been the first upon his feet, stated his point
of order, to wit, that Mr. Wood's words were a gross insult to the
House, etc. In accordance with the rule, the language objected was
written down and sent to the Clerk to be read. The Chair ruled that such
language was out of order. The final question was then put, "Shall the
member be allowed to proceed in order?" [Cries of "No! no!" from every
part of the House, Mr. Wood still standing in his place meanwhile.] A
vote immediately settled it that he could not proceed. It was moved that
he be censured, and publicly reprimanded before the bar of the House.
Kerr, of Indiana, moved to lay the motion on the table. [Cries of
"No!--no!--put it to a vote!--call the ayes and nays!"] The motion to
table was lost; the motion to censure was carried, by 114 ayes to 39
nays, amid great excitement. At the command of the Speaker, Mr. Wood
then walked calmly down to the foot of the aisle, and while he was
censured and reprimanded, no sound disturbed the stillness of the House
but the Speaker's voice. The culprit was ordered to his seat, and went
back and took it as comfortably as if he had done his country some
mighty service and was entirely satisfied with his performance. He was
told that the properest reparation he could now make would be to offer
his explanation and a full apology to the House. He simply rose and
said he had no explanation to make. ["Then sit down!" came from twenty
voices, and he sat down.] A suggestion was now made by someone that he
be allowed to go on with his speech, but it was received with a storm of
"Noes!"

I am perfectly satisfied that Mr. Wood had already said all he wanted to
say--that he had come to the House all prepared to heave that bombshell
into its midst, and never expecting to be allowed to go any further. It
was a coup d'etat, which had for its object to gain the applause of
the Democracy of the nation--it was a brilliant piece of strategy,
a purposed martyrdom of himself for political capital--a bid for
reelection, or for the Vice Presidency--even the Presidency itself,
possibly, for what that presumptuous and unprincipled old political hack
would not aim at is unknown to human knowledge. He played for what he
considered would be a valuable notoriety. He cared nothing about the
expense. I think his speech was finished.

Washington II.

This serene old humbug still infests the Eastern cities. A year ago he
was looking very seedy, but latterly his lines have fallen in pleasanter
places, and he crops out occasionally in his fullest San Francisco
bloom, and displays his legs on the street corners for the admiration
of the ladies. In Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington and New York,
he drives a brisk trade in the sale of his own photographs at 25 cents
apiece--especially in New York, where nothing whatever is totally
unsalable, I think. Washington II. had "cheek" enough before the Pacific
Coast had yet come to mourn his loss, but he has more of it now. When
it was proposed to tear down the old Wm. Penn mansion in Philadelphia to
make room for some modern improvements, he actually had the effrontery
to carry around a petition praying the authorities to let it stand,
or confer it on him, during life, on account of his resemblance to
Washington, Franklin and two or three others of America's great men. He
had his photograph taken standing pensively by Franklin's grave, with a
bust of Franklin in his arms, and laurel wreaths encircling his own and
the brows of the bust. The idea was not a bad one, for the pictures sell
well. As Washington failed to get the Penn mansion, it is said that he
proposed to ask Congress to give him the Washington Monument. Congress
might as well do it, for the ungainly old chimney that goes by that name
is of no earthly use to anybody else, and certainly is not in the least
ornamental. It is just the general size and shape, and possesses about
the dignity, of a sugar-mill chimney. It may suit the departed George
Washington--I don't know. He may think it is pretty. It may be a comfort
to him to look at it out of the clouds. He may enjoy perching on it
to look around upon the scene of his earthly greatness, but it is not
likely. It is not likely that any spirit would be so taken with that
lumbering thing as to want to roost there. It is an eyesore to the
people. It ought to be either pulled down or built up and finished; and
if neither of these is to be done, it ought to be turned over to one
or the other of our Washingtons the Second, viz, Uncle Freddy Coombs or
General Hancock--the former, Washington II by his own election, and the
latter created the "Second Washington" by Andrew Johnson, in his curious
Hancock Message to Congress.

Grant's Reception.

We went there, last night, to see what these great receptions are like.
A crowd of carriages was arriving, and a procession of gentlemen and
ladies pouring in at the door. We found a "good house" within, already,
but evidently the reception had not begun. A band of uniformed Dutchmen
were playing brass instruments, and ladies were flitting about from
parlor to parlor like the little busy bee that improves each shining
hour. We removed overcoats, up-stairs, where the gentlemen were
corralled, and at the proper time followed down with the rest. General
and Mrs. Grant stood in one of the back parlors, and the people were
filing past them and shaking hands. At intervals, some lady or gentleman
well known to them, halted for a moment and spoke a few words, and
occasionally some lout that did not know as much as a large dictionary
stopped to say the dozen sentences he had gotten by heart for the
occasion--and he always got pushed along by the crowd, and never had a
chance to finish them; then he felt awkward, and backed on somebody's
feet, and turned to apologize and lowly bowed his head into somebody's
intervening back, and at the same moment stepped on somebody else's
toes--and so, butting, and crushing, and apologizing, he would shortly
be swallowed from sight in the crowd. I stood against the wall, close
by, and watched the reception ceremony for an hour, and I cannot tell
when I enjoyed anything so much. Poor, modest, bored, unhappy Grant
stood smileless, anxious, alert, with every faculty of his mind
intensely bent upon the business before him, and nervously seized each
hand as it came, and while he gave it a single shake, looked not upon
its owner, but threw a quick look-out for the next. And if for a moment
his hand was left idle, his arm hung out from his body with a curve that
was suggestive of being ready for business at a moment's notice. And
so he seized each hand, passed it on, grabbed for the next, passed it,
grabbed again, with his soul in his work and that absorbed anxiety
in his eye; and it reminded me irresistibly of a new hand catching
bricks--a new hand that was full of misgivings; fearful that he might
make a miss, but determined to catch every brick that came, or perish in
the attempt. He is not a large man; he is a particularly plain-looking
man; his hair is straight and lustreless, his head is large, square of
front and perpendicular in the rear, where the selfish organs of the
head lie; he is less handsome than his pictures, and his face, at this
time, at any rate, lacked the satisfied, self-possessed look one sees in
them; he is broad of beam, and his uniform sat as awkwardly upon him as
if he had never been in it before.

General Grant had all my sympathies--I had none for the visitors. The
stylishly dressed old stagers who had been at receptions before, and
knew all about them, moved complacently up, with many a smirk and
stately obeisance, shook hands, laughed pleasantly, said a word, and
swept on, composedly--perfectly well satisfied with themselves. But the
towering boys from the interior, with a kind of human vegetable look
about them, and a painful air of discomfort about their gloved hands
and their unfamiliar Sunday clothes, were in a constant flutter of
uneasiness; they seized the General's hand, gave it a wring and dropped
it suddenly, as if it had been hot, then staggered, in a bewildered way,
discovered Mrs. Grant, came to the scratch again, got tangled as to the
etiquette of the business, thrust out a paw, drew it back, thrust it out
again, snatched it back once more, bent down, far down, in a portentous
salaam, and then reeled away giddily and ground somebody's foot to pulp
under their responsible No. 13's. Every one of them came with his mind
made up as to what he was going to do and say, and then forgot it all,
failed to do it or say it either.

Bye and bye the parlors were crowded. Old Dowagers were there with
marketable daughters; little maids in the blushing diffidence of
girlhood; imperious dames of the F. F. V. in the imposing costumes of a
former generation; chattering young ladies of fashion, with elaborately
painted faces and uncovered bosoms; General officers in uniform; foreign
Ministers with orders upon their breasts; gold-laced naval heroes; and
half a dozen young masculine noodles in white kids a size too small,
scarf-pins that were dazzling, claw-hammers without dust or wrinkle,
hair fearfully and wonderfully done up, and faces whereon were
written--nothing. About one-half the company had the old complaint--they
could not think of anything to say--they could not determine upon an
attitude that was satisfactory to them--they did not know what on earth
to do with their hands. They were an aimless, uneasy, unhappy lot, and
deserved compassion.

General Sheridan was there--a little bit of a round-headed,
broad-breasted, short-legged young Irishman, with hair cropped down to
plush on his large, ungainly head, and with nothing in him that is in
his features save the bright spirit that is in his eye and the bravery
that is in his lip. He is very homely. And Seward was present also, with
his splendid beak, and a scar and an ugly protuberance on his port cheek
that come of the murderous attempt upon his life the night Mr. Lincoln
was shot. The reception was still under headway and Grant was still
wearily "shaking" the old crowds and shaking hands with the new ones
when we departed. His gloves that were so white and smooth at first,
were worn and soiled and greasy then. His exhausting watch was only half
over--it was but little after nine o'clock.

More Sensations.

The most exciting one is the Senate's coup d'etat in the Stanton matter
yesterday. Before the President could make a move to prevent it, General
Grant had resigned the portfolio and Stanton was in possession of the
War Department. Ever since then the air has been thick with rumors of
what the President was going to do, but nothing has yet transpired of
a startling nature. "Data," of the Baltimore Sun, who speaks always "by
authority," (he being the President's Private Secretary,) has published
a paragraph in his correspondence which would make it appear that Mr.
Johnson thinks Grant took snap judgment on him; the suggestion is that
the President had an explicit understanding with Grant that he was not
to give up the War Office to Stanton without first consulting with the
Chief Magistrate upon the subject--yet about the first the President
heard of the surrender of the portfolio was from Grant's official
notification of the fact. General Grant's statement, published to-day,
is to the effect that he has acted precisely as he told the President he
would act, and has not acted in bad faith with him.

There is talk among Congressmen of bringing up impeachment again if
the President refuses to recognize Mr. Stanton as Secretary of War--it
having been stated that the President meant to adopt such a course.

General McClernand has published a card abusive of Badeau, Grant's
biographer, and reflecting upon Grant himself--saying among other
things, that through Grant's interference, he was lately prevented from
getting an office under Government. Grant denies these things also. And
immediately McClernand's name is sent to the Senate for the ministry to
Mexico. It looks very like the President and General Grant would fall
out next. It is considered by all, that the country is at this moment
struggling through the greatest crisis that has ever come upon her since
her birth; and all men are troubled, sorely troubled, to know what fate
is in store for her. For the past few days the strongly radical papers
have been praising the rampant attitude of Congress, and urging it
to continue in the same spirit till the victory is won; the milder
Republican papers say that all this zeal and earnestness have come too
late--the present attitude should have been assumed long ago. Congress
is firm, however, and pays little attention to comments. The members
say they are going to rule this country, and they will break down every
barrier that is placed in the way of it.

MARK TWAIN.

Alta California, February 19, 1868

MARK TWAIN IN WASHINGTON

[SPECIAL TRAVELLING CORRESPONDENT OF THE ALTA.]

The Latest Political Sensation--The McCardle Case--Congress and the
Supreme Court--The Newspaper Correspondent Symposium--How to Keep Ahead
of Time--Crime in Washington.

WASHINGTON, January 12th, 1868.

The Last Sensation.

The chief sensation here at present is a political one entirely, but
it is a lively one. It is exercising both parties a good deal. It is
talked, talked, talked--all the time. In saloons, on the street, at
hotel tables--pretty much everywhere and by pretty much everybody
interested in politics, of whatsoever politics he may be. The shape of
this sensation is as follows: The supremacy of the famous Reconstruction
Acts is threatened. Of course the Democrats want them swept from
existence, and of course the Republicans do not. The Democrats believe
that if the Supreme Court should decide them unconstitutional, and
thus kill negro suffrage, they could carry the Presidency at the next
elections. The Republicans are perfectly satisfied that their own
candidates will win if those acts are sustained by the Court. A case is
now before the Supreme Court, and will doubtless come up for trial
very shortly, that will decide this important question. One McCardle,
a ferocious Vicksburg editor, published certain articles in his paper,
some time ago, denouncing a Convention which was to be held under the
Reconstruction Laws, and advising all white men to stay away from
the polls and not vote. He was arrested and brought before a Military
Commission, charged with printing articles calculated to obstruct the
peaceable operation of the laws. He applies to the Supreme Court of
the United States, and claims that by the terms of the Constitution
no Military Commission has a right to arrest and restrain him of his
liberty in time of peace for expressing his opinions. If the Court
sustains his position and sets him free, the laws which created the
Military Commission that arrested him fall to the ground, and negro
suffrage along with them. The case is far down on the calendar, but its
advancement has been moved by Judge Black and as it is one which affects
the personal liberty of a citizen, it takes precedence. So it will be
heard from soon.

It has been suggested that Gen. Grant come forward and quash the whole
proceedings and set the man free. But this is not favored, because it
would be regarded as an evidence of fear on the part of the Republicans
to submit the constitutionality of the Reconstruction Laws to a
test, amounting even to a sort of virtual acknowledgment of that
unconstitutionality. There are eight Judges of the Supreme Court. The
concurrence of five of them upon a case has always constituted the
decision of the Court. Congress proposes now to make a law requiring
that the concurrence of six Judges shall be necessary to constitute a
decision. The Democracy claim that the Republicans only feel sure of
three of the judicial votes in sustaining the Reconstruction Acts, and
that the object of the proposed new law, for its effect would plainly
be to make a decision of a minority of the Court overrule that of a
majority! The Democrats also argue that the Supreme Court was created by
the Constitution--not by Congress; that its old-time fashion of deciding
by a majority vote is derived from the old common law; that Congress has
no shade of power to make rules for the government of the Supreme Court,
the Constitution having left it nothing whatever to do with the Court's
affairs save to specify the number of its members. They argue further
that if Congress passed the proposed law, the Court would doubtless
declare it unconstitutional and go on and try McCardle's case after its
own fashion.

That Grant will quash the proceedings is not believed; that the Supreme
Court will permit the Congress to dictate rules for its government, is
not believed either, by Democrats or Republicans; that there are votes
enough among the Judges to sustain the Reconstruction Acts, is a thing
that Democrats strongly doubt, and neither Republicans nor anybody else
can really be sure of, of course. Hence all men are in a state of the
liveliest anxiety to have that most important problem solved, and at the
earliest possible moment. If McCardle loses his case, up goes Republican
stock; if he wins it, it necessarily goes down. It is a splendid
sensation, and is most palatable food for newspaper correspondents. I
have stated the bald facts in the case, and my duty in the matter is
done. You can consult authorities, build stately edifices of opinion,
and grind out portentious editorials until you are tired of it--until
you hang McCardle and break up the Supreme Court, if it shall please you
to do it.

If I had your permission to suggest anything concerning this matter, it
would be simply this. It is disgraceful, in Congress, or anybody at all,
to question the honor and virtue of the highest tribunal in our country.
If we cannot believe in the utter and spotless purity of the Judges of
so sacred a tribunal, we ought at least to have the pride to keep such
a belief unexpressed. I cannot conceive it possible that a man could
occupy so royal a position as a Supreme Judge, and be base enough to let
his decisions be tainted by any stain of his political predilections. I
hate to hear people say this Judge will vote so and so, because he is
a Democrat--and this one so and so because he is a Republican. It is
shameful. The Judges have the Constitution for their guidance; they have
no right to any politics save the politics of rigid right and justice
when they are sitting in judgment upon the great matters that come
before them. If the Reconstruction Acts are Constitutional, we ought to
believe they will sustain them; if they are not, we ought to hope they
will annul them. When we become capable of believing our Supreme
Judges can so belittle themselves and their great office as to read
the Constitution of the United States through blurring and distorting
spectacles, it will be time for us to put on sackcloth and ashes.

The Banquet.

The annual banquet of the Washington Correspondents' Club, last night,
was altogether the most brilliant affair of the kind I ever participated
in. Everything connected with it was masterly. Everything moved as by
clock-work. There were forty-six persons present, and yet there was no
hurry, no bother, no getting things mixed up or wrong and foremost, no
jealousies, no mal apropos episodes. It was wonderfully well conducted.
There were fifteen regular toasts, and every single one of them was ably
responded to. Not a man made an excuse or said he was unprepared. Such a
thing never occurred before. The great majority of the speeches were far
above ordinary excellence. There were no invited guests present except
such as had been newspaper correspondents (save only Jump, the artist).
They were nine in number: Speaker Colfax, Senator Anthony, Assistant
Secretary of the Navy Faxon, Congressmen Blain, Robinson, Getz and
Brooks, and Henry D. Cook, banker and the Marquis de Chambrun. Riley, of
the ALTA, responded to the toast to the Press of the Pacific, and I to
the toast to Woman. I did what I could to elevate her in the respect and
esteem of the newspaper people. I think the women of San Francisco ought
to send me a medal, or a doughnut, or something, because I had them
chiefly in my mind in this eulogy.

At 12 midnight, it was announced from the chair that the Sabbath was
come, and that a due regard for the Christian character of our country
demanded that the festivities should now come to an abrupt termination.
The regular toasts were not finished yet. The fun was at its zenith.
Here was a scrape. How would you have gotten out of it? I will tell how
we managed it, and it will be worth your while to lay the information
away for private use hereafter. It was gravely moved and as gravely
seconded and carried, "That we do now discontinue the use of Washington
time, and adopt the time of San Francisco!" and then we bowled along
as serenely as ever. We gained about three hours and a half by the
operation! How is that for ingenuity? It was easy sailing after that.
When we had used up all the San Francisco time, and got to crowding
Sunday again, we took another vote and adopted Hongkong time. I suppose
we would have been going west yet, if the champagne had not given out.

This reminds me of a remark of Johnson ______, of San Francisco, who
was a responsible hand at a spree. Somebody mentioned that away up
in Lapland their nights lasted six months sometimes. Johnson said,
feelingly, "How nice it would be to go up there on a little bender, and
have a night of it with the boys!"

A hit was made by Mr. Adams of the World, last night, at a recent
slashing piece of newspaper enterprise, that was good. He said:
"When the gentleman on my left, the Hon. Mr. Brooks, was Washington
correspondent for a New York paper twenty-five years ago, he gained high
applause for rushing the President's Message through so far ahead of
time as to get it out, in New York, twenty-four hours in advance of the
other papers; but nowadays a correspondent is slow if he don't get the
Message published twenty-four hours before it is delivered to Congress!
This speaks volumes for the progress the profession has made."

Washington Crime.

There is plenty of it, but the two latest cases are peculiar. Night
before last a negro man collided with a white man in the street; the
negro apologized, but the white man would not be appeased, and grew
abusive, and finally stabbed the negro to the heart. Yesterday, in open
Court, while Judge Olin was sentencing a man named McCauley, the latter
sprang at the principal witness, a boy twelve years old, and made a
savage lunge at his breast with a knife. The Judge remanded him at
once, of course, to be cited before the Grand Jury. What is your general
opinion of the morals of the Capital now? When people get to attempting
murder in the Courts of law, it is time to quit abusing Congress.
Congress is bad enough, but it has not arrived at such depravity as
this. This man who attempted the murder is not in any way connected with
Congress. The fact is in every way creditable to that body. I do not
deny that I am fond of abusing Congress, but when I get an opportunity
like this to compliment them, I am only too happy to do it.

More Washington Morals.

On New Year's morning, while Mr. George Worley's front door was standing
open, a cow marched into the house--a cow that was out making her
annual calls, I suppose--and before she was discovered she had eaten
up everything on the New Year's table in the parlor! Mr. Worley was
not acquainted with the cow, never saw her before, and is at a loss to
account for the honor of her visit. What do you think of a town where
cows make New Year's calls? It may be the correct thing, but it has not
been so regarded in the circles in which I have been accustomed to move.
Morals are at a low stage in Washington, beyond question.

Personal.

Colonel Poston, formerly in the Indian Affairs Department for Arizona,
is a practicing lawyer here, now.

His partner is Judge Botts, formerly of California. Judge B. went out
there in 1848, before gold was discovered, and afterwards was very rich,
at one time, and owned a great deal of property in Stockton street, San
Francisco. He has held the office of State Printer in California, and
has also been Judge of the Sacramento District.

MARK TWAIN.

Alta California, March 3, 1868

MARK TWAIN ON HIS TRAVELS.

[SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE ALTA CALIFORNIA]

The New Sensational Play--A Glimpse of Hartford--Sundry Connecticut
Sights--Charter Oak--"Home Again."

WASHINGTON, February 1st.

"The White Fawn."

I have been to New York since I wrote last, and on the 21st of January
I went with some newspapermen to see the new spectacle at Niblo's, the
"White Fawn," the splendid successor of the splendid "Black Crook."
Everybody agrees that it is much more magnificent than the Crook. The
fairy scenes are more wonderfully dazzling and beautiful, and the legs
of the young women reach higher up. Whole armies of actors appear on the
stage at once, and ninety carpenters and twenty gas-men are on duty
all the time. The dresses of the actors and actresses are perfectly
gorgeous, and when the vari-colored lights fall upon them from secret
places behind the scenes, the effect is almost blinding. I think these
hundreds of princely costumes are changed every fifteen minutes during
half the night; splendid pageants are filing about the stage constantly,
yet one seems never to see the same dress twice. The final grand
transformation scene is a vision of magnificence such as no man could
imagine unless he had eaten a barrel of hasheesh. There are such
distances, too, such marvellous counterfeits of perspective. It is a
luxuriant jungle of colossal flowers, stretching ever so far away--a
mass of riches coloring, burning and flashing and blazing as with the
glories of a hundred suns--and out of every flower crops a beautiful
woman (apparently naked, for the most part,) and so ingeniously have
these rascally angels been "sized," to perfect the perspective, that the
smaller ones seem swimming high in air in the midst of a tinted mist in
the distance. It is a vast wilderness, a tropic world of giant flowers
and tangled vines and fairy female forms, sleeping in a flood of
dazzling fires. The women seem a part and parcel of the flowers they
repose among; wherever you look closely you find one, or two, or a
group; the curtain falls before you have hunted out a third of them.
America has not seen anything before that can equal the "White Fawn."

But the "Black Crook" gave birth to a state of things that may well be
regarded as appalling. It debauched many a pure mind itself, and it has
bred a species of infamous pictorial literature that will spread the
same effect over a far wider field. Papers and pictures that would have
been regarded as obscene, and shunned like a pestilence a few years ago,
are displayed on every bookstand, now and sell by tens and hundreds of
thousands. Boys and girls can buy them when they please, and they do
buy them, and so prepare to go as straight to the devil as they possibly
can. I took the role of prophet for one day only, a year ago, and
foreshadowed some of these results in a newspaper article. The best
thing New York can do, now, and the other cities and towns of America
as well, will be to go to building--not warehouses and dwellings, but
houses of ill-fame--let them build thousands and tens of thousands of
them, and the Black Crook, the White Fawn and the infernal literature
they have bred will stock them all.

Hartford.

I am in Hartford, Connecticut, now, (January 25th), but I am confident I
shall get this letter finished yet, if I keep at it. I think this is
the best built and the handsomest town I have ever seen. They call New
England the land of steady habits, and I see the evidence about me
that it was not named amiss. As I came along the principal street,
to-day--smoking, of course--I noticed that of the two hundred men in
sight at one time, only two were smoking beside myself. I had to walk
three blocks to find a cigar store. I saw no drinking saloons at all in
the street--but I was not looking for any. I hear no swearing here, I
see no one chewing tobacco, I have found nobody drunk. What a singular
country it is. At the hospitable mansion where I am a guest, I have to
smoke surreptitiously when all are in bed, to save my reputation, and
then draw suspicion upon the cat when the family detect the unfamiliar
odor. I never was so absurdly proper in the broad light of day on my
life as I have been for the last day or two. So far, I am safe; but I am
sorry to say that the cat has lost caste. She has steadily decreased in
popularity since I made my advent here. She has achieved a reputation
for smoking, and may justly be regarded as degraded, a dishonored, a
ruined cat.

They have the broadest, straightest streets in Hartford that ever led a
sinner to destruction; and the dwelling houses are the amplest in size,
and the shapeliest, and have the most capacious ornamental grounds
about them. But I would speak of other things. This is the centre of
Connecticut wealth. Hartford dollars have a place in half the great
moneyed enterprises in the Union. All those Phoenix and Charter Oak
Insurance Companies, whose gorgeous chromo-lithographic show-cards it
has been my delight to study in far away cities, are located here. The
Sharp's rifle factory is here; the great silk factory of this section is
here; the heaviest subscription publication houses in the land are
here; and the last, and greatest, the Colt's revolver manufactory is
a Hartford institution. Some friends went with me to see the revolver
establishment. It comprises a great range of tall brick buildings,
and on every floor is a dense wilderness of strange iron machines that
stretches away into remote distances and confusing perspectives--a
tangled forest of rods, bars, pulleys, wheels, and all the imaginable
and unimaginable forms of mechanism. There are machines to cut all the
various parts of a pistol, roughly, from the original steel; machines
to trim them down and polish them; machines to brand and number them;
machines to bore the barrels out; machines to rifle them; machines that
shave them down neatly to a proper size, as deftly as one would shave
a candle in a lathe; machines that do everything but shape the wooden
stocks and trace the ornamental work upon the barrels. One can stumble
over a bar of iron as he goes in at one end of the establishment, and
find it transformed into a burnished, symmetrical, deadly "navy" as he
passes out at the other. It did not seem to me that in all that world of
complex machinery there were two machines alike, or designed to perform
the same office. It must have required more brains to invent all those
things than would serve to stock fifty Senates like ours. I took a
living interest in that birth-place of six-shooters, because I had seen
so many graceful specimens of their performances in the deadfalls of
Washoe and California.

They showed us the new battery gun on wheels--the Gatling gun, or
rather, it is a cluster of six to ten savage tubes that carry great
conical pellets of lead, with unerring accuracy, a distance of two and
a half miles. It feeds itself with cartridges, and you work it with a
crank like a hand organ; you can fire it faster than four men can count.
When fired rapidly, the reports blend together like the clattering of a
watchman's rattle. It can be discharged four hundred times in a minute!
I liked it very much, and went on grinding it as long as they could
afford cartridges for the amusement--which was not very long.

The Charter Oak.

You may have heard of the Charter Oak. It used to stand in Hartford. The
Charter of the State of Connecticut was once hidden in it, at a time of
great political tribulation, and this happy accident made it famous. Its
memory is dearly cherished in this ancient town. Anything that is made
of its wood is deeply venerated by the inhabitants, and is regarded as
very precious. I went all about the town with a citizen whose ancestors
came over with the Pilgrims in the Quaker City--in the Mayflower, I
should say--and he showed me all the historic relics of Hartford. He
showed me a beautiful carved chair in the Senate Chamber, where the
bewigged and awfully homely old-time Governors of the Commonwealth frown
from their canvasse overhead. "Made from Charter Oak," he said. I gazed
upon it with inexpressible solicitude. He showed me another carved chair
in the House, "Charter Oak," he said. I gazed again with interest. Then
we looked at the rusty, stained and famous old Charter, and presently
I turned to move away. But he solemnly drew me back and pointed to the
frame. "Charter Oak," said he. I worshipped. We went down to Wadworth's
Atheneum, and I wanted to look at the pictures, but he conveyed me
silently to a corner and pointed to a log, rudely shaped somewhat like
a chair, and whispered, "Charter Oak." I exhibited the accustomed
reverence. He showed me a walking stick, a needlecase, a dog-collar,
a three-legged stool, a boot-jack, a dinner-table, a ten-pen alley, a
tooth-pick, a----

I interrupted him and said, "Never mind--we'll bunch the whole lumber
year, and call it--"

"Charter Oak," he said.

"Well," I said, "now let us go and see some Charter Oak, for a change."

I meant that for a joke. But how was he to know that, being a stranger?
He took me around and showed me Charter Oak enough to build a plank road
from here to Great Salt Lake City. It is a shame to confess it, but I
did begin to get a little weary of Charter Oak, finally, and when he
invited me to go home with him to tea, it filled me with a blessed sense
of relief. He introduced me to his wife, and they left me alone a moment
to amuse myself with their little boy. I said, in a grave, paternal way,
"My son, what is your name?" And he said, "Charter Oak Johnson." This
was sufficient for a sensitive nature like mine. I departed out of that
mansion without another word. I said to myself, "Let whatsoever shall
come of this be laid to other souls than mine. I go hence a vengeful
and a desperate man. My mind is made up. I will return to 'N____ Farm'
again, and damn the reputation of that cat forever."

Hartford has a population of 40,000 souls, and the most of them ride
in sleighs. That is a sign of prosperity, and a knowledge of how to
live--isn't it?

Home Again.

I got back to Washington this morning (January 30th,) after tarrying two
or three days in New York. I find nothing going on here of particular
import, except that J. Ross Browne's nomination to the Chinese Mission
has been sent to the Senate by the President, and there is very little
doubt that it will be confirmed. I cordially hope so, partly because
he is a good man and a talented one; a literary man and consequently
entitled to high honors; and also because he has kindly invited me to
take a lucrative position on his staff in case he goes to China, and I
have accepted, with that promptness which so distinguishes me when I see
a chance to serve my country without damaging my health by working
too hard. Present engagements will keep me in the East for five or six
months yet; but no matter, I shall follow him out there as soon as I am
free, anyhow, if he is sent, and so none of you newspaper men need to go
fighting for my secretaryship. I am the only man that can fill the
bill. I am able to write a hand that will pass for Chinese in Peking or
anywhere else in the world.

MARK TWAIN.

Alta California, September 6, 1868

LETTER FROM "MARK TWAIN."

[SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE ALTA CALIFORNIA]

Shipboard Amusements--At Panama without a Revolution--A Monkey
Sharp--From Aspinwall to New York--Some Personal Notes--A Picture
of Hartford, Conn.--Evading the Blue Laws--Novel Views Concerning
Mountains--A Central American Yarn.

HARTFORD, Conn., August, Recently, 1868

The Proper Time to Sail.

EDITORS ALTA: I think the middle of summer must be the pleasantest
season of the year to come East by sea. Going down to the Isthmus in the
Montana, in the very geographical centre of July, we had smooth water
and cool breezes all the time. We enjoyed life very well. We could not
easily have done otherwise. There were a hundred and eighty-five quiet,
orderly passengers, and ten or fifteen who were willing to be cheerful.
These latter were equally divided into a stag party and a Dorcas
Society. The stag party held its court on the after guard, and the
Dorcas Society, presided over by a gentleman, amused itself in the
little social hall amidships. There was considerable talent on the after
guard, and some of our little private entertainments were exceedingly
creditable. Read one of our programmes--it speaks for itself:

PORT GUARD THEATRE.

New Bill, New Scenery, New Cast.

Powerful Combination.

Dazzling Array of Talent.

The management take pleasure in informing the public that on this
evening, July 10, will be presented, for the first time on any ship, the
thrilling tragedy of the

Country School Exhibition.

Programme:

Dominie, Mr. J. L.

Oration--You'd Scarce expect one of my age ... Mr. G. W.

Recitation--The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck, with his Baggage Checked
for Troy... Mr. M.

Duett--Give me Three Grains of Corn, Mother ... Messrs. L. & H.

Composition--The Cow... "M.T."

Declamation--Patrick Henry on War... Mr. R. R.

Poem--Mary Had a little Lamb... Mr. O. G.

Chorus--Old John Brown had One little Injun ... School

Instrumental Duett--Comb and Jewsharp... Messrs. J. B. & J. T.

Poem--Twinkle, twinkle, little Star... Mr. H. M. T.

Recitation--Not a leaf stirred... Mr. W. W. J.

Any pupil detected in catching flies or throwing spit-balls at the
Dominie during the solemnities will be punished. The making of mud pies
during school hours is strictly prohibited. Pop-guns and potato-quills
are barred. No pupil will be allowed to "go out," unless he shall state
what he wants to go out for.

I have seen many theatrical exhibitions, but none that equalled the
above. If any of your sea-going friends imagine it is barren of fun, let
them get themselves up in boys' costume and try it on the quarter-deck
some dull night when other amusements are worn out--or in the way of
private party performances in town. The hint is worth a good deal of
money. We had a spelling, a reading and a geography class, but their
performances were too execrable for complimentary mention. The spelling
class spelt cow with a K, and the other two classes were not behind it
much in ignorance.

When the Pacific voyage drew to a close, a large delegation of the
passengers were sent, with a spokesman, to thank Captain Caverly, with
all due ceremony but very heartily, for his watchful care of the
comfort and well-being of the people on board, and likewise to thank
his officers, through him, for their unfailing politeness, patience, and
accommodating spirit toward the passengers (when they did not get a cent
more for it than if they had never gone beyond the strict line of their
official duties to do kindnesses and favors to the strangers within
their ship). Was not that a neater and a more graceful thing to do than
it would have been to publish one of those tiresome, stupid newspaper
cards, signed by unknown people, and filled with cheap flattery of
Captain and officers for "efficiency and attention to duty"? We owe no
officers a deluge of compliments for being efficient and minding their
business--they are paid in cash for all that and we expect it of them;
but distinguished urbanity and gentlemanly conduct are rare and
precious things on land and sea, and are not to be had for mere wages
or estimated by any standard of dollars and cents, and these it is a
pleasure to compliment; only these can make a long sea voyage cheerful
and comfortable; and these were the subject of our well-meant and
well-received speech-making on board the P.M.S.S. Montana at the time I
have mentioned.

Captain Ned Wakeman, Mariner.

We found Panama in the same place. It has not changed perceptibly. They
had no revolution while we were there. I do not know why, but it is true
that there had not been a revolution for as much as two weeks. The very
same President was at the head of the Government that was at the head of
it a fortnight before. It was very curious. I suppose they have hanged
him before this, however. While I was standing in the bar of the Grand
Hotel talking with a citizen about Admiral Shubry (who is one of the
most enterprising Americans on the Isthmus), and has had a steamer built
in New York at a cost of $100,000 for the purpose of bringing live stock
down from his ranch for the steamers, I heard a familiar voice holding
forth in this wise:

"Monkeys! don't tell me nothing about monkeys, sir! I know all about
'em! Didn't I take the Mary Ann through the Monkey Islands?--snakes as
big as a ship's mainmast, sir!--and monkeys!--God bless my soul, sir,
just at daylight she fetched up at a dead stand-still, sir!--what do you
suppose it was, sir? It was monkeys! Millions of 'em, sir!--banked up as
high as the cat-heads, sir!--trying to swim across the channel, sir, and
crammed it full! I took my glass to see thirteen mile of monkeys, two
mile wide and sixty fathom deep, sir!--counted, ninety-seven million of
'em, and the mate set 'em down, sir--kept tally till his pencils was
all used up and his arm was paralyzed, sir! Don't tell me nothing about
monkeys, sir--because I've been there--I know all about 'em, sir!"

It is hardly possible, but still there may be people who are so ignorant
as not to know that this voice belonged to Captain Ned Wakeman, of the
steamship America. Cheerful as ever, as big-hearted as ever, as splendid
an old salt as walks the deck of any ship--this is Wakeman. But he is
failing under that Panama sun. They have had him lying up for months in
charge of a spare ship, and it has been pretty severe on him. They ought
to let him go to sea a while, now, and recuperate. He says the sun gets
so hot in Panama, sometimes, it is as much as a man can do to tell the
truth.

Dissipation of Aspinwall.

Aspinwall looked the same as usual--the same combination of negroes,
natives, sows, monkeys, parroquets, dirt, jiggers, and groceries in the
small shops far up town; the same clusters of steamships in the harbor;
the same business stir about the steamship office; the same crowded
sidewalk of the main street, and, alas! the same dissipation prevalent.
Why will these people persist in drinking? There is no enemy so
insidious as intemperance--none that sooner robs us of the esteem of our
friends or the respect of the world--none that leads so surely to
the destruction of health, good name, and happiness. It is a pregnant
subject.

On this side we came up with Captain Gray, and had fine weather all the
voyage except the first two days out. Very singularly, all those people
who did not get sick in the smooth Pacific, and who had ventured to say,
toward the last, that they never did get sea-sick, got a very great deal
in that condition during the first two days on this side. Somehow, the
best of people will lie about seasickness when they get a chance. Even
our three gentlemen from China--Boyd, Dolan and Captain Simmons--after
crossing the entire Pacific, got dreadfully sick on the Atlantic, while
God permitted mean men to escape entirely. However, all of us arrived in
good condition in New York, and found the superb new steamer we ought
to have come up in, the Alaska, just ready to go to sea on her first
voyage. She is the largest ship that sails out of New York, and probably
the finest, also. Captain Gray commands. All the Chauncey's officers are
transferred to the Alaska.

Personal Items.

One of the first things that fell under our notice was one of Lotta's
posters, which bore the information that she would begin a star
engagement at Wallack's within a few days. It is wonderful what a firm
hold that young girl has secured upon the good will of the people and
the press of the metropolis--I might say, of the rest of the country
also, but you know that that follows, of course. Critics speak guardedly
of other actresses, but they praise her without stint. The Tribune and
the other great dailies are her friends. She draws surprisingly. I see
nothing and hear nothing of her enterprising father. Lotta is to
appear in a new play, "The Fire-Fly," written especially for her. After
speaking of her former successes in New York, the Tribune says:

"She is aptly typical of that luminous and erratic insect, glancing and
gleaming in the night air of summer. The fact the new drama in which she
will appear comes from the practiced pen of Mr. Edmund Falconer, is a
guarantee of its theatrical merit. 'The Fire-Fly' is the novelty of
the week, moreover, in theatrical life, and public attention naturally
centres upon it. Mr. Moss, the manager, is understood to have got up
the new play with uncommon care. Should it prove a success, it will
undoubtedly run along till the close of the summer season."

The seats are secured six days in advance.

Mr. Hooper, Utah Delegate to Congress, was in New York, getting ready
to start over the Plains with Senator Stewart. Hooper's contestant, Mr.
McGrorty, made a failure of his attempt to oust him from his seat. I
remember the McGrorty war in Washington last winter, but did not suppose
there was anything serious in that gentleman's pretensions. I thought
he was considered crazy at the time--a lunatic of the harmless kind.
However, it seems that he was in earnest in claiming Hooper's seat.
He failed, and left it in the possession of an able, honest and
hard-working man--the best representative Utah has had yet.

Mr. Stenhouse was in New York. Several other distinguished Salt Lakers
are cruising around here in the East, on business and pleasure combined.

Jake Smith, formerly of Virginia City, latterly of Montana, is
sojourning in New York for the present.

Hartford--The "Blue Laws."

I have been here several days. Of all the beautiful towns it has been
my fortune to see this is the chief. It is a city of 40,000 inhabitants,
and seems to be composed almost entirely of dwelling houses--not
single-shaped affairs, stood on end and packed together like a "deck" of
cards, but massive private hotels, scattered along the broad, straight
streets, from fifty all the way up to two hundred yards apart. Each
house sits in the midst of about an acre of green grass, or flower beds
or ornamental shrubbery, guarded on all sides by the trimmest hedges of
arbor-vitae, and by files of huge forest trees that cast a shadow like
a thunder-cloud. Some of these stately dwellings are almost buried from
sight in parks and forests of these noble trees. Everywhere the eye
turns it is blessed with a vision of refreshing green. You do not know
what beauty is if you have not been here.

I am able to follow Main street, from the State House to Spring Grove
Cemetery, and Asylum street and Farmington avenue, from the railway
depot to their terminations. I have learned that much of the city from
constant and tireless practice in going over the ground. These streets
answer the description of Hartford which I have given above. The
large dwellings all stand far apart, each in the centre of its great
grass-plat and its forest trees. There is not a mean building or
slovenly piece of ground to offend the eye in all the wide area I
have traversed as above. To live in this style one must have his bank
account, of course. Then, where are the poor of Hartford? I confess I
do not know. They are "corralled," doubtless--corralled in some
unsanctified corner of this paradise whither my feet have not yet
wandered, I suppose.

The reason for this uniform grandeur is easily explained. The Blue-Law
spirit is not utterly dead in Connecticut yet. The law prohibiting the
harboring of sinful playing-cards in dwelling houses was annulled only
something over a year ago. Up to that time, conscientious people whose
instincts forbade them to break the law, would no more think of keeping
an entire pack of cards in their dwellings than they would have thought
of driving for pleasure in these beautiful streets on the blessed
Sabbath. Therefore, they never entered into a friendly game of "draw,"
"old sledge," or anything of that kind, without first taking a couple of
cards from the pack and destroying them. There was not a whole pack
of cards in any house in Hartford. Thus was the majesty of the law
upheld--thus was its purity secured against taint. Another blue-law
of the city preserves the beauty and uniformity of the streets and
buildings. By its terms you must obtain permission from the city
government before you build on your lot--before you construct an
addition to your house--before you erect a stable. You cannot build
a house just when you please, and you cannot build just any sort of a
house you please either.

If you propose to put up a plain brick dwelling, 25 by 40, on your
ground, the lord of the palace next you may complain to the Aldermen
that your small enterprise will spoil the appearance of the street and
diminsh the value of his property. That finishes you. If you propose to
build an addition to the rear of your house, your neighbor may complain
that it will obstruct his view of the railway, or the church, or the
river, or something, and thus bring down his gray hairs in sorrow to the
grave. And that closes out that proposition. If you decide to build a
stable on your premises for your horses and your carriage, the party
next door may affirm "with many holiday and lady terms," that the
fragrance of a stable doth offend his nostrils unto death--and then you
will find that you must build your blasphemous stable elsewhere. You
must get permission of the authorities before you attempt to build--and
that you cannot get permission to build an edifice that will detract
from the comeliness of the street, is a thing you may safely set in your
mind beforehand. By this means hath Hartford become a most beautiful
city. People accustomed to large liberties will call this an unjust,
unrighteous law. Very well, they are entitled to their opinion, and I
to mine. I don't care how unrighteous a thing is, so long as it is
pleasant--I like this law. I exult in it every time I walk abroad in
these delightful streets. I hope it will never be repealed.

Morality and Huckleberries.

I never saw any place before where morality and huckleberries flourished
as they do here. I do not know which has the ascendancy. Possibly the
huckleberries, in their season, but the morality holds out the longest.
The huckleberries are in season, now. They are a new beverage to me.
This is my first acquaintance with them, and certainly it is a pleasant
one. They are excellent. I had always thought a huckleberry was
something like a turnip. On the contrary, they are no larger than
buckshot. They are better than buckshot, though, and more digestible.
The farmers' boys and girls in the mountains near here turn out in
their full strength, at this season of the year, and devote their whole
talents to the gathering of huckleberries. They bring them to town and
sell them for fifteen cents a quart. This is not a sudden and violent
means of acquiring wealth. I spoke just now of the mountains near here,
and if I had done it on my own responsibility I would apologize--but I
get the term from the public--they call them mountains, and I think
they do it with a deliberate intent to deceive. I think so because those
mountains are not six hundred feet high. There is an amount of sin in
this world that a man could hardly conceive of who had never been in it.

But the morality of this locality is something marvellous. I have only
heard one man swear and seen only one man drunk in the ten days I have
been here. And the same man that did the swearing was the man that
contained the drunk. It was after midnight. Everybody else was in
bed--otherwise they would have hanged him, no doubt. This sample gives
you the complexion of male morality in Hartford. Young ladies walk these
streets along as late as ten o'clock at night, and are not insulted.
That is a specimen of both male and female morality, and of good order.
I meet young ladies marching cheerfully along in the loneliest places,
in the obscurity of the night and the added darkness of the sombre
shadows of the trees--but I don't dare to speak to them. I should
be scalped, sure. I see the whole female element of the community
apparently--hundreds and hundreds of pretty girls marching
arm-in-arm--turn out about eight o'clock in the evening and swarm back
and forth through Main street with a happy effrontery that is in
the last degree entertaining to a stranger. What would you think of
respectable young girls marching back and forth at night and unattended,
from the head of Montgomery street to the top of the hill, or from the
wharves of the city front half way to the Mission San Dolores? It is
said that ladies of the highest respectability go freely to lectures
and concerts at night in this city of 40,000 souls, without other escort
than members of their own sex. We may expect the lion and the lamb to
lie down together shortly in Connecticut, if it be constitutional for
the Millenium to come in small doses. To me, a sinner, the prospect is
anything but inviting.

Two or three of the churches here have massive steeples--or what were
originally intended to be steeples--run up a few feet above the roof
and then chopped square off. The natives call them "stump-tails."
These churches would be exceedingly attractive edificies if they were
finished, but in their present condition they are the saddest looking
affairs you can imagine. A departed Christian must feel absurd enough,
reporting himself in Paradise from a stump-tail church. But I suppose
the people go on the principle of not standing on small matters so they
get to Paradise--getting there being the main thing. If such be the
case, they are something like the Minister of the Navy of one of those
one-horse Central American Republics--a republic with a hundred thousand
inhabitants, grand officials enough for a hundred millions, an "army" of
five hundred ragamuffins and a "navy" consisting of one solitary 60-ton
schooner. In Panama I heard

A Legend

In this connection. There was war in one of those little republics--the
one I have been describing. The General-in-Chief asked the President for
three hundred men; the President ordered the Minister of War to furnish
them; the forces--just the number wanted--were down on the sea coast
somewhere; the Minister of War requested the Minister of the Navy to
place the navy of the republic at the disposal of the troops, so that
they might have transportation to the seat of war; the Minister of the
Navy (an official who had seen as little of ships and oceans as even Mr.
Secretary Welles,) sent a courier to where the schooner was, with the
necessary order for the Lord High Admiral. The Lord High Admiral wrote
back:

"Your Excellency: It is impossible. You must be aware that this is a
60-ton schooner. There is not room for 300 men in her."

The stern old salt in the Navy office wrote back:

"Impossible--nonsense. Make room. Heave the tons overboard and bring the
sailors."

Any way to get them there so they got them there, was all this brave
sea-horse cared for.

MARK TWAIN.

Alta California, November 15,1868

LETTER FROM "MARK TWAIN."

[FROM THE SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE ALTA]

A Lively Boat Race--The Wicked "Wickedest Man"--On the Wing--Something
About Chicago--Story of a Rail--Personal Gossip

International Boat Race.

HARTFORD, October 22, 1868.

I went up to Springfield, Mass., yesterday afternoon, to see the
"International boat race" between the Ward brothers and the "St. Johns"
crew, of New Brunswick. We left here at noon, and reached Springfield
in about an hour. It was raining. It seems like wasting good dictionary
words to say that, because it is raining here pretty much all the time,
and when it is not absolutely raining, it is letting on to do it.
I assembled on the bank of the river along with a rather moderate
multitude of other people (moderate considering the greatness of the
occasion), and waited. A flat-boat was anchored in midstream, and on it
were collected the judges, the boats' crews, and some twenty of their
friends. A dozen skiffs and shells were hovering in the vicinity. The
conversation of the crowd about me seemed to promise that I had made
this journey to little purpose, since all the talk was to the effect
that the idea of anybody attempting to conquer the Ward brothers on the
water was simply absurd. Everybody appeared to think that the St. John's
gentlemen would be so badly beaten that it could hardly be proper to
speak of the contest as a race at all. My sympathies always go with the
racer that is beaten, anyhow, and so I began to warm toward those New
Brunswick strangers in advance. The cries of "Two to one on the Wards!"
"Ten to one on the Wards!" "Hundred to five on the Wards!" I felt
like resenting as so many personal affronts. Shortly two "shells" were
brought to the front--long, narrow things like telegraph poles shaved
and sharpened down to oar blades at both ends. The contestants took
their places--the four St. John's boys dressed in pink shirts and
red skull-caps, and the four Ward's in white shirts and with white
handkerchiefs bound round their heads. They were all fine looking men.
They rowed away a hundred yards, easily and comfortably. I had never
seen such grace, such poetry of motion, thrown into the handling of
an oar before. They ranged up alongside each other, now, abreast the
judges. A voice shouted

"Are you ready?"

"Ready!" and the two shells almost leaped bodily out of the water. They
darted away as if they had been shot from a bow. The water fairly
foamed in their wake. The Wards had a little lead at the start, and
made frantic exertions to increase the advantage but it was soon evident
that, instead of gaining, they were losing. The race was to be a very
long one--three miles and repeat. When the shells were disappearing
around a point of land, half a mile away, the St. John's were already a
trifle ahead. The people in my vicinity made light of this circumstance,
however. They said "them Ward's" knew what they were about. They were
"playing" this thing. When the boats hove in sight again "them Ward's"
would be in the lead. And so the betting against my martyrs went on,
just as before. Finally, somebody suggested that appearances seemed
to indicate that the race was "sold." It had its effect. The most
enthusiastic shortly began to show a failing confidence, and to drop
anxious remarks about the chances of the race having really been
betrayed and sold out by the Wards. But, notwithstanding all this talk
was so instructive, the next twenty minutes hung heavily on my hands.
There was nothing in the world to look at but five hundred umbrellas and
occasionally a fleeting glimpse of the water--and even umbrellas lose
their interest in the long run, I find there is nothing exciting about
umbrellas--nothing thrilling. One's pulse beats just as calmly in the
presence of umbrellas as if they were not there. And they don't really
amount to anything for scenery, being monotonous when there are so many.
But in the midst of these reflections someone shouted:

"Here they come!"

"Whoop! St. John's ahead!"

"For fifty dollars it's the Wards!"

"Fifty to twenty-five it's the Wards!"

"Take them both!--hundred to a hundred it's ______"

"Three cheers for--Oh, the suffering Moses, the St. John's are ahead!"

It was so. It was easy to distinguish the pink shirts, now, flashing
back and forth. On they came, dividing the water like a knife, and the
white shirts far in the rear. In a few minutes they came flying past the
judge's stand, every man of them as fresh and bright and full of life
as when they started, and handling the oars with the same easy grace as
before. A cheer went up for the gallant triumph, but there was little
heart in it. The people on the shore were defeated, in pride and in
pocket, as well as the opposing contestants. The Wards came in rather
more than a hundred yards behind--and they looked worn and tired. The
race was over, and Great Britain had beaten America. Time, 39:38. there
was but one consolation, and that was, that in a six-mile race on the
same water, last year, the Wards made it in 39, thus beating the
present time by 38 seconds. The Wards went into the contest yesterday in
inferior condition. Their mainstay, Joshua, had been sick and was still
unwell. However, these boys behaved in an entirely becoming manner. They
said that they were badly beaten, and fairly beaten, and they wanted no
excuses made to modify their defeat or diminish the brilliancy of the
St. John's victory.

The "Wickedest Man."

I do not know whether you have taken as much interest in the "Wickedest
Man in New York" as the people in the States have, but of course
you have given him some of your attention. If you remember, he was
a creation, or rather a discovery, of Mr. Oliver Dyer in Packard's
Monthly. He was represented as being descended from excellent stock; the
son of a minister, I think, and the brother of several ministers, and as
being an educated man himself, and one who remembered feelingly the home
teachings and Christian precepts of his youth; a man who made it his
voluntary business to keep order at street-corner preachings, and was
always ready to enforce respect for the Word and its messengers with
his puissant fist. Yet this lost ram--let us be consistent, if we are
nothing else, and surely there was little of the "sheep" in John
Allen, lost or otherwise--this lost ram kept one of the vilest sailor
dance-houses in all Water street; a den where congregated women so low
that it would be complimentary to them to class them with the beasts of
the field and the sty, and where sailors came to caress them and pant
out upon them maudlin endearments from hearts swimming in gin and
reeking with affection and blasphemy, and then get entirely and
unspeakably drunk and be shanghaied. This magazine article showed John
Allen up in all his depravity, and all his native goodness of heart
which was concealed under it. The article was copied, praised, discussed
far and near, and in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, John Allen was
famous. His den was crowded day and night with citizens and strangers
curious to see what manner of man the very wickedest in a city of a
million people could possibly be. Mr. Dyer came out promptly while
the excitement was up, with a new article in which he showed how the
wickedest man's heart was touched, his pride humbled, his depravity
shaken to its very foundations; how he had not only allowed the city
missionaries to pray and sing in his dance-house, but had sung with
them himself, his women had sung, also, and had even shed tears when the
familiar hymns brought home and old friends and a sinless childhood back
to their sorrowing memories. What must naturally follow these things?
John Allen's conversion, of course. It was announced. Also the
closing of his den and his resolve to elevate his rescued life to the
reclamation of Water street. Then there were daily and nightly prayer
meetings, exhortations and sermons at John Allen's, and the daily
papers duly reported them and kept up the excitement. Reformation became
popular. Kit Burn threw open his dog-pit in its interest, and in the
afternoon, day after day, petitions to the throne of grace ascended from
the arena where five hundred rats had met their fate an hour before, and
where the blood of the slain still mottled the sawdust. Another
person, hungry for fame and jealous of Jno. Allen's brilliant fortune,
advertised in ill-tempered language that in the matter of awful and
deliberate wickedness the boasted John Allen was an innocent lamb to
him, and proceeded to prove it by a series of evidences, either one of
which ought to be sufficient to damn him without even a glance at the
others. This man was naturally incensed at the injustice that had been
done him, and outraged by the spectacle of another man wearing laurels
to which he himself was alone entitled, as the guardian of a long
lifetime earnestly and unselfishly devoted to the commission of
peculiarly revolting crimes. To such a mind, the reflection that after
all his life had been a failure, could not be other than agonizing. He
invited attention to his case--insisted on throwing his doors open
to prayer--flaunted his superior sins before the public, and went on
railing at the feeble impostor John Allen.

What was the natural result of all this state of things? Simply that
religion was dragged in the dirt. Where one person was brought seriously
to read his Bible, fifty non-combatants were made mockers and scoffers.
I will venture to say that even Elder Knapp, in all his long and
well-meant war against sin, has hardly done as much harm as this
"revival" in Water street, New York. A religion that comes of thought,
and study, and deliberate conviction, sticks best. The revivalized
convert who is scared in the direction of heaven because he sees hell
yawn suddenly behind him, not only regains confidence when his scare is
over, but is ashamed of himself for being scared, and often becomes more
hopelessly and malignantly wicked than he was before.

I was coming down the street in New York the other day, when I met Mr.
Packard. He was innocently proud of the convert made by his magazine,
and proposed that we go and see the animal. So we went down to John
Allen's. He was not in. An old man sat at one side of a table in the
front room, and a young man at the other side of it. There were only two
rooms, and both were small, and rude enough in appearance for any wicked
man's den. All the walls were covered from floor to ceiling with white
canvas on which were painted hymns in large letters, and precepts from
the Testament which were suited to the place--if there be any precepts
in the Testament suited to such a place. A prayer meeting had closed
about an hour before. The old man had been present and was still mad
about it. He said:

"Do you know this Mr. Dyer, as he calls himself?"

I said I had not met him yet.

"Well, when you do meet him you'll meet a man that's put himself out of
the way in the vilest and most malignant manner to traduce and vilify,
and hold up to public abuse and derision, a better man than he ever
dared to be!--the wickedest man in New York! He never saw the day when
he was worthy to unloose the latches of John Allen's shoes. Out of the
fullness of the heart, the mouth speaketh--and those are my sentiments
about this Dyer. He has made a man a reproach and a by-word who never
had done any crime greater than the modest minding of his own affairs.
He has ruined him in estate, in prospects and in reputation. He has
broken up his business and turned him adrift upon the world. I wish
I could get my eye on this precious Mr. Dyer! And after doing all
this--which he did out of pure speculation, and with the hope of putting
money in his pocket, by lecturing around the country and trotting John
Allen out as his "frightful example"--he put his foot in it. Because,
I wouldn't let John Allen make an ass of himself. I said if there was
money in it, let John Allen play frightful example on his own hook, and
pocket the flimsy. So Mr. Oliver Dyer had to run his little swindle by
himself, and take his chances--and he took Cooper Institute and filled
it full of head-head missionaries and made a whooping failure of it,
and be d--d to him and all that are like him, I say. John Allen went to
Bridgport and Stamford to lecture on his own account, and he'd have done
well enough only he got drunk as a piper and knocked the whole thing
h--l--west, you know. I was afraid of it--I was, really--I was afraid
of it. And the last thing I said to John Allen, with my arms around his
neck and the tears in my eyes, was, 'John, if you love me; John, don't
come the frightful example too strong.' But he did, you know, and
busted--rot them missionaries!"

The young man at the other side of the table remarked that he had acted
as Allen's agent, and that the Tribune had accused him of being drunk
also, and likewise another Water-street convert who had gone along to
introduce Allen to the audiences, but these statements were untrue.

About this time the Wickedest Man himself arrived--a tall, plain, bony
fellow with a good-natured look in his eye, a Water street air all about
him, and a touch of Irish in his face. He stood in the door, and a
crowd of vagabonds on the sidewalk gaped and stared at him in stupid
admiration. He said:

"Don't this sort of thing ever stir up the devil in you--or maybe you
don't mind it, being used to being notorious?"

I thanked him for the compliment, and said I wasn't notorious enough to
have become an object for people to stare at.

[One line of text missing from microfilm]...at me till I want to
knock their heads off. Why, they come here and march right in and ask
me--well, you stand off there and I'll show you how they do. There, now,
that's about right."

Then the speaker stepped into the street and returned with his hat in
his hand, and walked up gingerly and said:

"Are you the wickedest man in New York?"

"Yes."

"John Allen?"

"Yes."

"You?"

"Yes."

"Good God!"

And then they walk around me, this way, and then sidle around t'other
way, and examine the back of my head, and stoop down and feel my legs.
And then they go off mumbling to themselves, as if they can't possibly
understand it, anyhow. Now you know that bothered me like sin, at first,
but it don't now. I've learned a trick. When they ask me questions, I
ask them another. I'm like the Irishman. The priest met him one day, and
says:

"How's this, Paddy, that you've not been to the church of late?"

"Be me sowl, seein' it's yer riverence, I can't answer ye--but if 'twere
the Protestant blaggard over beyent, I could do't.

"Very well, then, Paddy," says the priest, walking away a bit; "now, I'm
coming toward ye a ripresintive of the Protestant minister, and so ye
can answer me. Paddy, how is it ye've not been to the church of late?"

"Moind you own business, and get out of this, ye d----ould Protestant
limb of the divil!"

We are instructed to judge not, but I still question the genuineness of
Jno. Allen's conversion. The ways of the worldly sit easy upon him yet.

And now I pick up a New York paper, and find that he has been up before
the Police court for keeping a disorderly house--and from what I can
gather from the tenor of the article, he seems to have opened his
dance-house again. If so, the belongings of religion have been
innocently prostituted by its own servants to the advertising of one
of the worst sin-factories in all New York--one which has now ten-fold
power to attract idlers and breed depravity. The wisdom of this Water
street "revival" may be gravely questioned.

At Large.

I have spent six weeks moving from city to city lately, doing nothing
whatever but visiting friends. It is very, very pleasant work, and not
hard. If there was a salary attached I would never do anything else.
What a world of valuable information I could furnish about New York,
Brooklyn, Elmira, Cleveland, Chicago and St. Louis if I had only been
on a tour of observation. But I observed nothing, except that Chicago
changes so fast that every time you visit it it seems like going to a
new city. They are erecting many fine buildings in St. Louis, but they
are erecting many more and finer in Chicago. Chicago is a wonderful
place. It probably numbers among its citizens more active, bold,
thoroughly enterprising men than any city in the Union save New York. It
is the centre, as you know, of a vast railway system, which drains the
country in every direction. Other communities have what they consider
their own legitimate country about them to back them up, and they regard
their sovereignty over such regions as unimpeachable. Chicago recognizes
no such sovereignties. She marches right into the enemy's country with
her railroads, with an audacity which is delightful, and in a very short
time she breaks down the "divine right" prejudices of that region
and takes the trade. It is a maxim in less feverish communities that
whenever a railroad to any place makes itself a necessity it will be
built--that is, whenever there shall be trade enough to warrant it.
Chicago has changed all that. Wherever she finds a place to build a
railroad to she builds a railroad to that place. She creates trade
there afterwards easily enough. Three out of every five men you meet in
Chicago have a live, shrewd, cosmopolitan look in their faces. These
are the sort of people who have made the city what it is, and will yet
double its wealth, its population and its importance.

I will remark, in passing, that the Sherman House is a good hotel, but
I have seen better. They gave me a room there, away up, I do not know
exactly how high, but water boils up there at 168 degrees. I went up
in a dumb waiter which was attached to a balloon. It was not a
suitable place for a bedchamber, but it was a promising altitude for
an observatory. The furniture consisted of a table, a camp stool, a
wash-bowl, a German Dictionary and a patent medicine Almanac for 1842. I
do not know whether there was a bed or not--I didn't notice. However, I
was glad I got that room, for I stayed there an hour and took notes
of an instructive conversation which was going on in an adjoining
apartment. I overhead the following

Legend.

No, she wouldn't marry me. You were misinformed. It was broken off, and
in the saddest way. I was not in the least to blame, upon my word and
honor, though neither the girl nor her father the deacon ever believed
me or ever forgave me. It was during the big election canvass when
Lincoln ran the first time. Two-thirds of the deacon's honest soul were
in religion and the other third was in politics--Lincoln man. I never
was a scoffer at religion in my life, but he half believed I was. Well,
there was to be a political pow-wow in the village church where he
lived, on a Thursday night, and he was to preside. I never thought
anything about the matter, but Williams hailed me one afternoon, offered
me a seat in his buggy, and away we started. It was Wednesday--curse
the almanac!--but we never thought of it. Going into town, some devilish
instinct put it into my head that it would help my case along if I
marched into church with a rail on my shoulder, seeing that the deacon
and the girl would both be there. So I got a rail and we came into town
shouting and making a grand to-do generally. As we went by the church
windows I caught a glimpse of her bonnet and plenty other bonnets, and I
was happy. I shouldered my rail and marched in. The houseful of men and
women were all quiet, and the old deacon was standing up in the altar
saying something. Splendid! I went a booming up the aisle with my rail,
swinging my hat and whooping:

"Hoo-ray for Old Abe--hoo-ray for the Illinois rail-splitter!"

But never a yelp out of that audience. I quit, right in my tracks. The
deacon said:

"Sir, we were engaged in addressing the Throne of Grace. This unseemly
exhibition is ill-fitted to the solemnities of a prayer-meeting!"

I never felt so sick in my life, John. I never felt so much like
taking a walk. And don't you know, as I stood up there before that
congregation, I'd have given a million dollars for somebody to take that
rail out for me. But no--I had to sneak out with it myself. I threw it
down and went up to where there was a board fence and practiced climbing
backwards and forwards through a knot hole for as much as an hour. But
my goose was cooked, you know. It was all up between me and that family.

And so endeth the legend. Perhaps I had no right to listen to it, but I
did, anyhow.

I've visited the tomb of Washington, in Chicago, and also the
birth-places of Homer, and Michael Angelo, and then adjourned to
Cleveland, a stirring, enterprising young city of a hundred thousand
inhabitants. Did you know that they claim 300,000 for Chicago? Cleveland
is the center of a great coal, iron and petroleum trade, and this is
necessarily bound to move steadily onward, being impelled by such stable
and long-winded helpers as commerce and manufactures. Cleveland contains
one of the finest streets in America--Euclid avenue. Euclid is buried
at one end of it--the old original Euclid that invented the algebra,
misfortune overtake him! It is devoted to dwelling-houses entirely and
it costs you $100,000 to "come in." Therefore none of your poor white
trash can live in that street. You have to be redolent of that odor of
sanctity which comes with cash. The dwellings are very large, are often
pretty pretentious in the matter of architecture, and the grassy and
flowery "yards" they stand in are something marvellous--being from one
to three hundred feet front and nine hundred feet deep!--a front on the
avenue and another front on Lake Erie.

I had a very good time, visiting. In another city I fell out of a wagon
backwards and broke my neck in two places. Another time I fell in
the river, and when I was coming up the bank I got kicked by a horse.
Altogether I had a splendid time. I have to lecture a great deal in the
West this winter, and I expect to have some more fun.

Personal.

The New York Tribune of this morning has double-leaded sensation
despatches about the earthquakes in California, and from the way they
read I think the matter must have been much more serious than the great
8th of October earthquake of '65. I shall be uncomfortable and anxious
till the morrow's papers arrive, for our latest intelligence is that
more shocks are anticipated. The California earthquakes are all the talk
to-day.

Webb (C. H.) is pegging away at his patent "adding machine." A New York
wholesale merchant of sense, standing and character, tells me that the
machine is so simple, so quick with its work, and so manifestly useful,
that it will be in every counting room in the city in less that five
years. He says there cannot be any question but Webb will make a fortune
out of it. I have not seen Webb to speak to him since I have been back
to the States, but I hear of him occasionally. He still corresponds
with the Springfield Republican. I saw Mr. Sam Bowles in Springfield
yesterday. He is just back from his trip to the Mountains. He says his
interest in the Pacific Coast remains unabated. E. R. Sill, who was a
Californian--don't know what or where he is now--is widely spoken of in
the Eastern press as the rising young poet of the day; and his name is
already so familiarized to the public ear as to enable the papers to
print little news paragraphs concerning Mr. Sill's movements, without
adding an explanation of who Mr. Sill is. Frank Fuller, ex-Acting
Governor of Utah, is located at 19 Park place, New York, and is making
money hand over fist in the manufacture and sale of a patent odorless
India rubber cloth, which is coming greatly into fashion for buggy-tops
and such things. He has a great many friends on the coast, and this news
will not grieve them.

MARK TWAIN.

Alta California, November 22, 1868

LETTER FROM "MARK TWAIN."

[SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE ALTA CALIFORNIA]

Some Personal Explanations--A Connecticut Legend--A Revolutionary
Newspaper Relic--Curious Souvenirs of Old Times--Concerning
McGrorty--Who is McGrorty?

HARTFORD, October 28th, 1868

E. Pluribus Unim.

I have a boil on one side of my nose and a cold on the other, and
whether I sneeze or blow it is all one; I get the lockjaw anyhow.
I never fully comprehended before how inscrutable are the ways of
Providence. For my feeble finite wisdom is utterly stumped with the
simple problem of what great and good end is to be accomplished by the
conferring of this boil and this cold on me both at the same time, but
Providence understands it easy enough. The ways of Providence are too
inscrutable for the subscriber.

I have not been working very hard, but I have got this book of mine
ready for the engravers and electrotypers at last, though it will not
be issued from the publishing house till March. Not knowing what else to
name it, I have called it "THE NEW PILGRIM'S PROGRESS," I am told that
Bancroft is to be the agent for it on the Pacific Coast and in China.

This reminds me that I see by the papers that I am going to China in the
spring. I was not quite certain of it before, but I am now, I suppose.
I start out lecturing the 15th of November, and as my engagements extend
far into March, I shall have ample time to think it all over.

I have seen a New England forest in October, and so I suppose I have
looked upon almost the fairest vision the earth affords. The first trees
to change were the maples, which doffed their robes of green and took to
themselves a brilliant bloody red--and shortly the long walls of shining
emerald that bordered the roads were splendid with these random bursts
of flame. A distant prospect gave to a forest the resemblance of a
garment splotched with blood. The chestnuts changed next, but more
slowly, and day after day their rich green panoply fainted away and
dissolved into a soft sunset blending of dainty tints--of gold and
purple, touched with a crimson blush here and there--and finally, some
frosty morning, came out in the imperial yellow of China, and stood
ready, with the mistaken wisdom of trees the world over, to undress
for winter. A great forest mottled from end to end with these changing
splendors, these opaline minglings of exquisite dyes, subdued and
softened by distance, seems etherealized, stripped of the grossness of
earth and suffused with the tender grace of pictures we see in dreams.

Indigent Nomenclature Legend.

Don't direct any more letters to me at Hartford until I find out which
Hartford I live in. They mix such things here in New England. I think I
am in Hartford proper, but no man may hope to be certain. Because right
here in one nest we have Hartford, and Old Hartford, and New Hartford,
and West Hartford and East Hartford, and Hartford-on-the-Hill, and
Hartford-around-generally. It is the strangest thing--this paucity
of names in Yankee land. You find that it is not a matter confined to
Hartford, but is a distemper that afflicts all New England. They get
a name that suits them and then hitch distinguishing handles to it and
hang them on all the villages round about. It reminds me of the man who
said that Adam went on naming his descendants until he ran out of names
and then said gravely, "Let the rest be called Smith." Down there at New
Haven they have Old Haven, West Haven, South Haven, West-by-sou'-West
Haven and East-by-east--nor'- east-half--east-Haven, and the oldest man
in the world can't tell which one of them Yale College is in. The boys
in New England are smart, but after they have learned everything else
they have to devote a couple of years to the geography of New Haven
before they can enter college, and then half of them can't do it till
they go to sea voyage and learn how to box the compass. That is why
there are so many more New England sailors than any other. Some of them
spend their whole lives in the whaling service trying to fit themselves
for college. This class of people have colonized the City of New
Bedford, Mass. It is well known that nine-tenths of the old salts there
became old salts just in this way. Their lives a failure--they have
lived in vain--they have never been able to get the hang of the New
Haven geography.

In this connection they tell a story of a stranger who was coming up the
Connecticut River, and was trying his best to sleep; but every now and
then the boat would stop and a man would thrust his head into the room.
First he sung out "Haddam!" and then "East Haddam!" and then "Haddam
Neck!" and then "North Haddam!" and then "Great Haddam!" "Little
Haddam!" "Old Haddam!" "New Haddam!" "Irish Haddam!" "Dutch Haddam!"
"Haddam-Haddam!" and then the stranger jumped out of bed all excited and
says:

"I'm a Methodist preacher, full of grace, and forty years in service
without guile! I'm a meek and lowly Christian, but d--n these Haddams, I
wish the devil had 'em, I say!"

A Relic.

The gentlemen of the Courant have given me a facsimile copy of the first
issue of that paper. It is about twice as large as a sheet of foolscap,
and bears date October 29, 1764--something over a hundred years ago.
In its columns, under date of "Boston, October 8th,"--for it will be
remembered that news travelled slowly in those days--I find broad hints
of the dissatisfaction among the colonists which was within the next ten
or eleven years to breed the American Revolution. Read:

"There seems to be a disposition in many of the inhabitants of this
and the neighboring Governments to clothe themselves with their own
manufacture."

British taxation without representation was worrying them. Again:

"It is now out of fashion to put on mourning at the funeral of
the nearest relation, which will make a saving to this town of
twenty-thousand sterling per annum. It is surprising how suddenly, as
well as how generally, an old custom is abolished; it shows, however,
the good sense of the town, for it is certainly prudent to retrench our
extravagant expenses, while we have something left to subsist ourselves,
rather than be driven to it by fatal necessity.

"We hear that the laudable practice of frugality is now introducing
itself in all the neighboring towns, an instance of which we have from
Charlestown, at a funeral there the beginning of last week, which the
relatives and others attended without any other mourning than which is
prescribed in a recent agreement.

"Indeed we are told that all the funerals of last week were conducted on
the new Plan of Frugality.

"Nothing but FRUGALITY can now save distress'd northern colonies from
impending ruin. It ought to be a consolation to the good people of a
certain province that the greatest man in it exhibits the most rigid
example of this political as well as moral virtue."

Who could he have been? Has his greatness totally passed from history
and the memories of men?

War is boldly hinted at in this paragraph:

"It is now confidently affirmed by some that the severity of a new a--t
of p--t is to be imputed to letters, representations, NARRATIVES, etc.,
transmitted to the m--y about two years ago by persons of eminence this
side the water; and that some copies of letters are actually in this
town, and others soon expected. To whatever cause these severities are
owing, it behooves the colonies to represent their grievances in the
strongest point of light, and to unite in such measures as WILL BE
EFFECTUAL to obtain redress."

Cannot you fancy the ancient editor of the Connecticut Courant of a
hundred years ago, in round Ben. Franklin spectacles, wig and cue,
lace cuffs, coat-pocket-flaps like a cellar-door, long waistcoat,
knee-breeches, stockings, low-quarter shoes with buckles on them like a
window-sash--a man gravely culling "news" from Boston three weeks old;
and "per latest advices" about Colonel Bouquet's forces having crossed
the river at Pittsburg full thirty days gone by; and thrilling rumors of
war from Madrid, London, Versailles, Stockholm and the Hague, with the
mildews of four awful months on them; and venerable canards, a 100 days
out from Naples, telling how "between three and four hundred thousand"
citizens had lately died of plague in that little kingdom--a man
exulting over his little old sensation despatches and latest dates, and
never, strangely enough, never having a vision of 1868 flash through his
complacent brain with its revelations of telegraphs and locomotives--I
say, can't you fancy this old muff sitting at his desk and getting off
this bit of sarcasm, and holding it up and cocking his eye at it, and
reading it over, and chuckling to himself, and reading it again, and
calling in the "devil" and inflicting it on him, and then sending it to
the printers perfectly satisfied that it is the best and the boldest
and the awfulest crusher that ever thundered from the press--can't you?
Thus:

"We hear that if any Persons can tell of any valuable Reversions in the
Gift of the Crown undisposed of, they may have a good Premium for such
Intelligence; as there are some few of the Children of the Gentlemen now
in Power still unprovided for!"

Then the rusty old flint-lock gossips pleasantly about the servant of
an Irish merchant having been successfully palming himself off on the
Parisians as the "Prince of Angola"--"lately"--(about a year before,
no doubt); and in stunning sensation italics he puts in the Sheriff's
proclamation commanding the contumacious John Wilkes, Esq., to "appear
before the Lord, the King of Westminister," to answer for certain
"Trespasses, Contempts and Misdemeanors" whereof he has been
convicted--and then in smaller type exults in the fact that that old
time Head Centre is safe in France and will not be likely to honor
the Lord the King's pleasant invitation; in default of a better mining
excitement he tells of a piece of ore, containing "divers particles
of silver" which has been found in Florida and sent to England for
assay--and probably much illuminated wild cat stock changed hands there
on the strength of it; and he asserts that the "late report of the
French having ceded New Orleans to the Spaniards is without foundation."

But he always comes back to his pet hobby, sooner or later--hints of war
with the mother country. Hear him:

"The northern colonists have sense enough, at least the sense of
feeling; and can tell where the shoe pinches--The delicate ladies begin
to find by experience, that the Shoes made at LYNN are much easier than
those of the make of MR. HOSE of London--What is become of the noted
Shoemaker of Essex?"

Yes, what is become of him--and what is become of both of you, since
you are so brash about it? It is an even bet that where you are now
you don't toot your horn any louder than "the noted shoemaker of Essex"
does.

But I will let him give it one more blast before I tumble him back into
his dusty grave to sleep another century:

"It is fear'd by many who wish well to Great Britain, that the new A--t
of P--t, will greatly distress, if not totally ruin, some of HER OWN
manufactures. It is the tho't that by means of this A--t, less of
her woollen cloths, to the amount of some thousands sterling, will be
purchas'd in this cold climate the insuing winter."

He is a good deal worried for fear "Great Britain" will damage her
prosperity if one lets him tell it. I will publish his joke, now, and
then boost him back among the damned, where he belongs. I will print
this joke in simplified justice to him, that people may see who
originated it, and so give him the credit due (unless he stole it
himself from some still more ancient periodical), for to this day it
keeps turning up every now and then in the country newspapers with an
aggravating pretence of being new and original:

"A Surprising Concatenation of Events to One Man in One Week--Published
a Sunday--married a Monday--had a Child a Tuesday--stole a horse a
Wednesday--banished a Thursday--died a Friday--buried a Saturday--all in
one Week."

There you are. In our day, since we know nothing of banishment (which he
did), and since we do know something of divorcement (which he didn't),
we substitute the one for the other naturally enough when we steal the
joke. I will now let this old buffer go. I don't wish to be too hard on
him, lest I meet his musty ghost prowling about his ancient haunts, in
Hartford here, some night. Where be his comrades? Whither went he to
take his ale? Who was he, anyhow?

Where Is McGrorty?

But perhaps you don't know McGrorty? McGrorty was a great man once--but
that was some time ago. It was when he ran for delegate from Utah
against Mr. Hooper. Somebody told him to buy a barrel of whiskey and run
against Hooper--and told him whiskey was as good as talent, as long as
he could get the one and hadn't the other. And McGrorty did it. He ran
against Hooper, treated the Saints and the Gentiles, he made the best
fight he could--and didn't win. He came near it, though. He got 105
votes, and Hooper himself only got 15,608. There was really only a
difference of fourteen thousand and some odd. A negro by the name of
"Sy" got the rest of the votes--six. Hooker was declared elected and
McGrorty was advised to contest the election--which he did; but he
failed to give notice of his reasons within thirty days (as provided by
a Congressional law), and that made his contest null and void, properly.
Still, when a man comes near being great--comes as near it as McGrorty
did--comes within fourteen or fifteen thousand of it--it isn't in human
nature to give it up. And so McG. infested Washington all last winter
trying to get his dispute before the House of Representatives, but it
wasn't any use. Congress was a conniver at all manner of inhumanity,
and was only glad of a chance to keep this light out now that it was put
out. Congress said, send along the negro--let Sy have a show--out with
this Milesian Gentile! This, after he had got his speech all ready for
the floor of the House! It was particularly mean of Congress to do
such a thing at such a time, because the speech had to be inflicted on
somebody, and so that McGrorty went around Washington all last winter
reading it to everybody he could catch in a close place. People were
driven crazy by it--people shot each other on account of it--thousands
and thousands of suicides resulted from it. McGrorty ended by going
crazy himself, I heard, though many said he was crazy enough in the
first place to make a good member of Congress. But they didn't take him
in. That is what I am quarrelling about. They left his light to shine
under a bushel--never saw a bushel in such a shape that a light could
shine under it, but suppose it possible, nevertheless--they left his
light to shine that way, merely because he didn't have 15,000 votes
instead of Hooper. That sort of mean partiality is a thing that I
despise. And so McGrorty was lost to the nation.

What makes me inquire about him now, however, is that a rumor has
reached me from a friend in Washington that Mr. McGrorty is going to run
on the Democratic ticket for Congress in California, and I thought if
I could help him to a vote or two in memory of that speech of his, it
would be as little as one of the few survivors of it could do. I feel
grateful, and so long as he is running for anything anywhere, I am
ready to help him along; and whenever he has got a fresh speech, and is
reading it, I will wade right through the midst of his dead and dying to
hear it. Count on me, McGrorty.

MARK TWAIN.

Alta California, July 25, 1869

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN.

A FIRST VISIT TO BOSTON.

[SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE ALTA CALIFORNIA]

Sunday in Boston--First Impressions--The Straight Streets of Modern
Athens--Nasby--The Antiquities--Boston "Notions"--A Polite People--Some
Examples of the Trait.

NEW YORK, July, 1869

EDITORS ALTA: I reached Boston about seven in the morning on a certain
Sunday. There was no need of an almanac whereby to discover that Sunday
was the day. No--there was Sunday in the still air; there was Sunday in
the absence of hurrying feet and anxious faces; there was Sunday in the
trim, special-occasion look of such apparel as drifted into view here
and there; there was Sunday in the dreamy lonesomeness that brooded over
all things; and presently there came floating up out of the distance the
muffled murmur of a bell. There was no need of an almanac.

I was the last man out of the sleeping-car. There was not a hack in
sight nor an omnibus or any vehicle whatsoever, except a small boy. He
volunteered to carry my valise to the hotel for the sum of thirty cents.
I scrutinized him narrowly, for I was in a strange city, and he might be
one of those plausible outlaws who lie in wait near depots and decoy
the unsuspecting to obscure dens and murder them, for the sake of their
teeth, which they sell to the dentists--and their hair, which they sell
to the wig-makers--and their finger bones, which they sell to the ivory
makers. I have often heard of such people, and I always try to avoid
them, for I do not wish to be retailed when I am dead. This boy said
his name was James--the ominous name of all the bad little boys in the
Sunday School books. With many misgivings I placed myself in his power.
I delivered to him my baggage, and began my reluctant march in his
wake, oppressed by the knowledge that if this boy meant me harm he
could easily accomplish his fell purpose, for of course there were no
policemen abroad at that hour of the morning. But I tried to console
myself with the reflection that I had been in situations of deadly
peril before and had escaped unscathed. I trudged after him, keeping
a vigilant watch upon him all the time. It was not long before my
suspicions were aroused. I waited and watched, and soon I felt convinced
that his actions savored of a hidden villainy of some kind. I said:

"Boy, why do you wind around in this way--why don't you go straight?"

"Sir?"

"Why do you poke in and out and wind around and about in this involved
and sinuous way? Why don't you go straight?"

The boy turned and surveyed me impressively for many minutes, and then
said, as if to himself:

"Go straight in Boston--ain't he innocent, though?"

He then marched on. But I had lost all confidence, and so I took refuge
in the first hotel I came to and discharged James, satisfied that no
virtue could abide in a boy whose ways were so crooked. In going from
the depot to the hotel we passed one spot seven different times and
approached it from a different direction every time.

Modern Cretan Labyrinth

I found the gentleman whose guest I was to be--Rev. Petroleum V.
Nasby--and thenceforward my two days' vacation had only pleasant
experiences in it. Boston is just as delightful a city as there is in
America, and one feels more tranquilly and satisfactorily at home in it
in three hours than he could in New York in as many years. There is a
comfortable air of good-will and good-fellowship in the aspect of the
streets, the houses, the town in general, which it gets from the people,
or imparts to them, I cannot tell which. One must keep a careful rein
upon his "gushing" instincts, else he will shortly find himself loving
Boston instead of merely admiring it--and such conduct as that would be
undignified in a stranger. It only takes a little time to reconcile one
to the awful crookedness of the streets--and only a little time longer
to find in that crookedness a positive charm. The hard, straight,
unrelenting lines one is used to in other cities, gives way, in Boston,
to graceful curves that go sweeping in and out in a pleasant and
undulating way that impels a man to assume a luxurious waltz-step
in place of the driving, forward-march movement he has learned in
unswerving and unbending Broadway. You cannot take in a whole Boston
street with a single glance of the eye and then lose your interest
because you have thus taken the edge off future discovery; on the
contrary, every step reveals some portion of a building which you
could not see before, some change in your vista, and some suggestion of
pleasant variety yet to come, which not only keeps your interest
alive but heightens it and persuades you to go on. And so your street
continues to open before you and close behind you like a sure-enough
panorama, and you are as well pleased with it as if you had paid fifty
cents admission. Many of these bending and circling ranks of buildings
are architecturally handsome, and there is a Venetian picturesqueness of
effect in the unfolding of their pillared and sculptured graces as you
drift around the curves and watch them swing into view.

Boston Antiquities

One of the most engaging peculiarities of Boston is her reverence for
her tradition, her relics, her antiquities. She still purrs complacently
over her "Boston Massacre," and thinks it the most gorgeous thing of
the kind that ever happened, though Nasby says it only consisted in the
crippling of three mulattoes and an Irishman--and they still point out
three or four places where it occurred. I am not trying to detract from
the subliminity of the Boston Massacre--though I do consider that for
all Providence has been so partial, there are other places that are just
as much entitled to a massacre as Boston is. But I find no fault. San
Francisco has earthquakes, anyhow. Therefore let Boson make much of her
massacre if she want to--who cares? I don't think anything of massacres.
I scorn them.

And then there is that old church--the Old South, I believe, they call
it--the one that has a British cannon ball sticking in it. Boston thinks
the world of that. The people tell you about it, and point it out to
you, and show off the moral advantages of it, till, in spite of your
foreign prejudices, you are bound to confess that there is no happiness
like having a church with a British cannon ball stuck in it. Boston
values that relic, and cherishes it; and every time the Old South Church
wears out they build another and stick the cannon ball in again, and go
on overcoming the stranger with it as serenely as ever.

And next they trot out Benjamin Franklin. I am opposed to slang; but
there isn't any other expression that is descriptive enough for this
emergency. And how they do believe in that venerable adventurer! If it
had not been for him, with his incendiary "Early to bed and early to
rise," and all that sort of foolishness, I wouldn't have been so harried
and worried and raked out of bed at such unseemly hours when I was
young. The late Franklin was well enough in his way; but it would have
looked more dignified in him to have gone on making candles and letting
other people get up when they wanted to. I do not see why he ever made
candles, though--as celebrated a man as he was. I would have turned my
celebrity to better account. But Boston thinks a great deal of Franklin.
He was born in two different places in Boston, simultaneously, and he
came the nearest to being twins that he ever did in his life. Boston
shows both of those places reverently to the stranger, and thinks just
as much of one of them as she does of the other. Franklin was always
fond of the sports of his boyhood, and until he was an old man he used
to go out and fly his kite every Sunday. If he had ever read the
Sunday School books he would have found out that it was dangerous to
be tempting Providence in that way. He kept it up until at last, one
beautiful Sabbath morning, he would have been struck by lightning and
scattered all over the State but for a door-key that happened to be
hanging on his kite-string. It was not a creditable adventure for an old
person like him, but the Boston people got around it by saying that he
was trying to attract the lightning on purpose, and therefore he was
flying his kite in the interest of science. That cat won't fight, to use
the language of metaphor. When General Washington chops down the cherry
trees and Benjamin Franklin breaks the Sabbath, it is all right;
but suppose I were to do such a thing? My parents would make it an
interesting occasion for me.

And the Bostonians show you the ancient Capitol and Quincy market, and
the residence of old John W. Hancock, the gentleman whose signature to
the Declaration of Independence it is comfort to come back to and read,
after you have got the blind-staggers trying to spell out the others.
And they also show you old Faneuil Hall, the Cradle of Liberty. You must
learn to pronounce Quincy as if it were Quinzy, and Fanueil as if it
were Funnel. In this way you can palm yourself on the unsuspecting for a
native, and so be respected. Presently they march you mysteriously to
a pier, and standing uncovered, they point down at the water with
impressive solemnity. That is where the Young Men's Christian
Association, dressed as Mohawk Indians, threw the tea overboard in old
Colonial times. It was one of the most spirited things that ever was,
and is justly admired to this day. There was only one narrow-minded
bigot in the whole commonwealth to refuse to swing his hat and say it
was sublime. That was the gentleman who owned the tea. He never has
collected a cent. When the Indians had finished their exploit their
moccasins were full of tea. This was carefully preserved and distributed
around to be kept always in remembrance of the incident. Nothing is now
held in greater reverence in Boston, than these little parcels of tea.
Nearly every family in New England is descended from those savages, and
has some of the tea. It is estimated that there is as much as sixty tons
of it in Boston alone. I shall always respect these Indians, for tea
is a poor insipid beverage, and it is a pity the Indians could not have
lived forever to indulge their fancy for emptying it into the sea.

But to the patriotic stranger, perhaps the most notable and interesting
thing about Boston is the stately Bunker Hill Monument, which has been
erected on the summit of Bunker Hill, to commemorate the battle of
Bunker Hill, which was fought on another hill in a neighboring county.
It is a very graceful and imposing structure, and is thirteen inches out
of the perpendicular. This is the result of building it a little on the
slant of the hill. One cannot stand on this sacred ground and feel no
quickened impulse of the blood, no swelling of the heart, no exaltation.
It was here that Warren fell. It was here that the angry tide of battle
was to ebb and flow, and liberty flesh her maiden sword. It was here
that Washington, careworn and anxious, leaned against the iron railing
and prayed for night or Blucher. Drawn up behind the monument, his
little patriot band stood in stern array awaiting the fateful onslaught
of the British. At this juncture, when muscles and nerves were tense
with expectancy, when every ear was listening, when every breath was
clogged with restraint, and a dismal vague suspense brooded in the air,
it was learned that the battle was to be fought on Breed's Hill, instead
of here, by request of the British commander, whose relations resided
in that neighborhood, and desired to witness it. It was thus that the
battle of Bunker Hill came to be fought in another place. It was thus
that this tranquil spot was spared those scenes of hell-ensanguined
carnage which did not occur here.

The view from the top of the monument is one of the grandest the
continent can afford. Toward the south the eye wanders over silvery
glimpses of the bay, fringed with a long array of masts delicately
pencilled against the sky; beyond, the blue hills of Canada lift their
filmy outlines above the level world of tinted forest, and out of their
midst Mount Washington thrusts it crown of ice and snow. Westward the
bright grain fields of New Hampshire stretch their emerald undulations
toward the rising sun; in the shadowy east the sullen furnaces glow
among the cavernous glens of Pennsylvania and sadden the upper air with
a sable pall of smoke; and in the distant north, beyond the swelling
sea of vegetation flecked with white villages and threaded with sinuous
brooks; beyond the dreamy belt where village and brook and forest
melt together and lose their individuality; away beyond ranges of hazy
mountains that lap their purple waves together under the clouds,
one catches fitful glimpses of that mysterious ocean that heaves its
sailless tides about the pole--and on a clear day one can see the pole
itself. Such, I learn, is the view that one may obtain from Bunker Hill
Monument. I did not go up.

Boston Politeness.

One of the most winning features of Boston is the politeness of the
people. I do not refer to any class particularly. One is civilly treated
by all. You would not enjoy stopping New Yorkers to ask the way to
places--you would not get in a habit of it, certainly, for you would get
more curt answers than compliments. But you shortly learn in Boston to
question whom you please on such matters. The native stops at once and
maps your course out for you with a patience and a gentleness of speech
that are as gratifying as they are unexpected and astonishing. Crooked
streets are invaluable, if this is the effect they have--for I do not
know what else to attribute Boston's patient affability to if it be not
the schooling her citizens get in teaching lost strangers how to find
themselves. We were inquiring the way pretty much all the time, but we
did not get a crusty answer in a single instance. We made one inquiry of
an Irishman, sitting on the ground with his back against a house. He
got up to answer, and then it was plain that he was a distillery in
disguise. He stretched out his hand to point, but it wavered and
slewed around. He tried the other, and it slewed around also. He reeled
magnificently at the same moment, and his cap slid off. In catching at
his cap he tripped and fell in the gutter. He gathered himself up and
apologized for the delay, and said he would tell us how to go, because
he had the mumps and could not point good. Then he said:

"You go around that corner there, and turn to the right and go two
blocks, and then turn to the left and go a block, and turn to the right
and go two blocks to the left, and then go straight till you turn to the
right, and then--"

He was tangled. He began over again, and got tangled again. He tried it
all over, and checked it off on his fingers. But he got tangled in the
same place. Then he reflected awhile in painful perplexity, but suddenly
he said:

"Got it now! Might have thought of it before. I'll go along and show you
myself." And he did.

I could not see much of Boston in a day and a half, of course, as we
were simply idling about visiting people the greater part of the time,
but what I did see of it has been very pleasant to remember. As it was
early March that I was there, I cannot say anything about the great
Peace Jubilee, for that enterprise had hardly been thought of at that
time, in fact, I did not suggest it to Gilmore until about the first of
April.

Nasby is about thirty-five years old. He is compact, solid, heavy. He
weighs a hundred and seventy or eighty, perhaps. There is nothing of a
dainty look about him, but, on the contrary, he is as burly and vigorous
as a theatrical blacksmith. His energy is invincible. After travelling
all day and lecturing every night for months together, he was as fresh
as ever. His attire is unfashionable, but he cares nothing for that. It
does not fit, but that does not concern him. He is not graceful on the
stage, but that does not distress him. He is not as handsome as I am,
but more picturesque.

Nasby has achieved a great success, and did it without other help than
the talents that were born with him. His newspaper has a prodigious
circulation; his letters take well; his books sell well; his
lecture-field is the whole country. His lecture is the best thing he has
written. It is a very unvarnished narrative of the negro's career, from
the flood to the present day, and bristles with satire. For instance,
the interpolating of the word white in State Constitutions existing
under a great general Constitution which declares all men to be equal,
is neatly touched by a recommendation that the Scriptures be so
altered, at the same time, as to make them pleasantly conform to men's
notions--thus: "Suffer little white children to come unto me, and forbid
them not!" The lecture is a fair and logical argument against slavery,
and is the pleasantest to listen to I have ever heard upon that novel
and interesting subject. It is necessarily severe upon the Democracy,
but not more so than one would expect from Nasby. The wonder is that
anybody should expect anything else. But they do. In half the places I
have lectured in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Illinois, and
other States, I heard people talking acrimoniously about Nasby having
given them an offensive political lecture instead of one upon some
inoffensive subject. I wonder what on earth they did expect Nasby
to talk about? Poetry, no doubt. Well, Nasby is a good fellow, and
companionable, and we sat up till daylight reading Bret Harte's
Condensed Novels and talking over Western lecturing experiences. But
lecturing experiences, deliciously toothsome and interesting as they
are, must be recounted only in secret session, with closed doors.
Otherwise, what a telling magazine article one could make out of them. I
lectured all over the States, during the entire winter and far into the
spring, and I am sure that my salary of twenty-six hundred dollars a
month was only about half of my pay--the rest was jolly experiences. I
am not sure but that Nasby will go with me when I start to California
about the first of August.

MARK TWAIN.

Alta California, August 1, 1869

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN.

[SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE ALTA CALIFORNIA]

Much Married--Story of the Crown Prince of Timbuctoo--A California
Magazine Abroad--Blind Tom and His Performances--Where is the Avitor?

HARTFORD, Conn., July, 1869

EDITORS ALTA: There is some little talk about a circumstance which
happened the other day to an exalted Washington official. It seems to be
my duty to record it. I will call the sufferer General George Belding,
for the sake of convenience. He is said to be a right good man, but was
always liberal in his views and a very sociable sort of person. He used
to go about a good deal, and among other places, he used to go up to
Socrates, on the Hudson River Railroad, every now and then, and stay all
night at a hotel kept by a Mr. and Mrs. Wagner. In due time he fell
in love with a refined and cultivated young lady in Brooklyn, and
immediately put himself upon his very best behavior. In the course of
six months she married him, and gave it as her opinion that she was
marrying perfection itself. The young couple were very happy. They
began to frisk around and enjoy the honeymoon. Presently they ran up
to Socrates and camped at Mr. Wagner's hotel. In the evening George
was sitting on a sofa in the parlor, with his arm around his bride's
shoulders, when Mrs. Wagner entered. She struck an attitude. She began
to get angry in a minute. Then she said:

"Look here, my fine fellow, I've had as much of this as I'm going to
stand. There you are, down on that register as 'Gen. George Belding and
lady,' again. You've done that thing sixteen times in eighteen months,
and you've fetched a fresh trollop along every time. Young woman,
march! Vamoose the ranch, you brazen-faced huzzy!" It was a very sad
circumstance. Now wasn't it?

Romance in Real Life.

The other day I saw in a dwelling in Hartford a well-executed portrait,
by Inman, of an aged, bushy-headed, dignified darkey of patriarchal
aspect, and a question concerning it brought out its story. In 1790, a
party of American and English gentlemen, travelling in Africa, fell into
misfortune, got lost, and in their wanderings were exposed for many days
to the perils of starvation, sun-stroke, miasmatic fevers, snake-bite,
mastication by wild beasts or wilder cannibals--as varied and
picturesque a combination of deadly menaces as it often falls to the
luck of one small party of strangers to stumble on in a new country.
But variety is the spice of life. So they struggled on, fighting against
hope, until at last, when hunger and thirst, and pain and fatigue had
well-nigh conquered them, and they were ready to succumb to death,
and even welcome it as a deliverance, a stalwart young native suddenly
appeared upon then and they were saved. He was a Crown Prince by
hereditary right, and likewise by nature and merit. He was the eldest
son of the King of Timbuctoo, who was great and powerful, and lived in
regal state, and wore a stove-pipe hat and a pair of spectacles upon
solemn occasions when it was necessary to put on clothes. He was a good
King and a good man. The Prince brought his starvelings home, and the
entire royal family turned out to welcome them. Comfortable quarters
were provided for them in the palace, and for weeks the Prince and his
people nursed them, nourished them, doctored them, watched by their bed
sides. At last the patients grew strong and well again, and then they
thanked their generous benefactors from full hearts, and bade them
farewell and journeyed away toward their homes beyond the sea.

Thirty years after this, namely, in 1820, one of the Americans of this
party happened to be going along the street in Louisville, when in the
person of a gray and venerable slave, he recognized his preserver, the
Crown Prince of Timbuctoo! The poor fellow had been taken prisoner in
battle with a neighboring tribe and sold to the traders on the coast,
and now for five and twenty years he had been doing service as an
American slave.

The American gentleman referred to made himself known, and he and
his royal benefactor had a long talk over other days and stirring
reminiscences. And then the gentleman naturally went forth in the
world to lay the facts before humane people and achieve the Prince's
liberation. He published the details of his ancient adventure far and
wide, and called upon all charitable souls to contribute their voices
and their money to the good object. Henry Clay took hold of the matter
and talked earnestly and eloquently in the unfortunate Prince's behalf.
So did Daniel Webster. So did other prominent men. And how long do you
suppose it took to set that stricken and gallant old Prince free? It
took two years. I suppose they did not know how to do things in those
days. I have seen a man start around with a subscription paper for
a mere ordinary public benevolent institution of some kind, in San
Francisco, and collect coin enough in a single afternoon to buy up a
whole tribe of Crown Princes. Highest market price, too. But in this
old African's cause the money came in fifteen cents at a time, though in
several shining cases a community came down with as much as two dollars
all in one lump. And so, finally, they managed to scrape the stipulated
amount together and buy the old royalist, though, sooth to say, he was
getting pretty mature before they accomplished it. The fact is,
several obstructions were thrown in the way of the enterprise. The
Louisvillains, and Southerners generally, tried to frown the thing down
and stop its aggravating notoriety, for it attracted too much attention
to the peculiar institution, and made it smell too unsavory to have
crowned heads found among its victims and the grim story of how they
came there detailed in the public prints. And then the owners of this
royalty made stumbling-blocks of themselves. They declined to part with
him at all, at first. He was the only Prince they had on the plantation,
likely, and they didn't know where they could get another one, maybe.
And when they did consent to sell they put up the price on him. They
were very loath to part with him--yet he was over sixty years old and
of no particular account to anybody, unless it might be to the people of
Timbuctoo. They put up the price on him--they said they warn't selling
Kings, now, at the ruling rates for field hands--not as much as there
were. They demanded full price for a King, and only ten per cent off for
damage (though in honest truth he was so old and rusty that he ought not
to have ranked higher than a war-chief, or maybe a First Gentleman of
the Bedchamber, in good repair).

However, the Prince was bought and paid for, at last, and set at
liberty, and he started around the country at once telling his story and
collecting money to buy his wife with, for he had married in slavery.
He was here in Hartford on this mission in 1822, when Inman painted the
portrait of him which I have spoken of. The old scion of royalty raised
money enough at last, and bought his wife and took her with him to
Timbuctoo and remounted the throne the first chance he got--and I,
for one, sincerely hope that after all his trials he is now peacefully
enjoying the evening of his life and eating and relishing unsaleable
niggers from neighboring tribes who fall into his hand, and making
a good thing out of other niggers from neighboring tribes that are
saleable. For virtues like his should be rewarded, and misfortunes
like his should be compensated. The story I have told is a neat little
romance and is true. I have ornamented it, and furbished it up a little,
here and there, but I have not marred or misstated any of the main
facts.

The "Overland Monthly."

The Eastern press are unanimous in their commendation of your new
magazine. Every paper and every periodical has something to say about
it, and they lavish compliments upon it with a heartiness that is proof
that they mean what they say. Even the Nation, that is seldom satisfied
with anything, takes frequent occasion to demonstrate that it is
satisfied with the Overland. And every now and then, it and the other
critical reviews of acknowledged authority, take occasion to say that
Bret Harte's sketch of the "Luck of Roaring Camp" is the best prose
magazine article that has seen the light for many months on either side
of the ocean. They never mention who wrote the sketch, of course (and
I only guess at it), for they do not know. The Overland keeps it
contributors' names in the dark. Harte's name would be very familiar
in the land but for this. However, the magazine itself is well known in
high literary circles. I have heard it handsomely praised by some of
the most ponderous of America's literary chiefs; and they displayed a
complimentary and appreciative familiarity with Harte's articles, and
those of Brooks, Sam. Williams, Bartlett, etc. But are you sure that
California prizes the magazine as much as the Eastern people do? I
stepped into the bookstore the other day to buy an Overland, and I
made some inquiries about it. The bookseller said he always disposed
of twenty-five or thirty copies without trouble, and he thought another
establishment did as well. He said the sale in Hartford could be run
up to a hundred copies right easily. He said he had twelve regular
subscribers--and then I remembered that a good authority had told me
that the magazine lay decaying under slow sale on all the news counters
of San Francisco, and that when the canvassars first sallied out in
its behalf, they got just twelve subscribers in the entire length of
Montgomery street. Is that true? Any canvasser could do better than that
with it in any ten blocks in Hartford. About this time his Excellency
the Lieutenant Governor came along and showed that he knew more about
the Overland and the names and contributions of its writers than I did
myself, and so I assumed a dignified silence.

Blind Tom.

One day last winter I was on my way from Galena to another Illinois town
to fill a lecture engagement. I went into the smoking car and sat down
to meditate; but it was not a good meditating place, for pretty soon a
burly negro man on the opposite side of the car began to sway his
body violently forward and back, and mimic with his mouth the hiss and
clatter of the train, in the most savagely excited way. Every time he
came forward I was sure he was going to brain himself on the seat-back
in front of him, and every time he reversed I was as certain he was
going to throw a back-somersault over his own seat. What a wild state he
was in! Clattering, hissing, whistling, blowing off gauge cocks,
ringing his bell, thundering over bridges with a row and a racket like
everything going to pieces, whooping through tunnels, running over
cows--Heavens! I thought, will this devil never run his viewless express
off the track and give us a rest? No, sir. For three dreadful hours he
kept it up--and you may know by that what muscles and what wind he had.
His wild eyes were sightless. For the most part he kept his head turned
sideways and upward as blind people usually do who get a dim ray
of light from apparently above the eye somewhere. He kept his face
constantly twisted and distorted out of all shape. When he spoke he
talked excitedly to himself, in an idiotic way and incoherently, but
never slowed down on his imaginary express train to do it. He looked
about thirty, was coarsely and slouchily dressed, and was as ungainly
in build and uncomely of countenance as any half-civilized plantation
slave. After I had endured his furious entertainment until I was
becoming as crazy as he was and getting ready to start an opposition
express on my own hook, I inquired who this barbarian was, and where he
was bound for, and why he was not chained or throttled? They said it was
Blind Tom, the celebrated pianist--a harmless idiot to whom all sounds
were music, and the imitation of them an unceasing delight. Even discord
had a charm for his exquisite ear. Even the groaning and clattering and
hissing of a railway train was harmony to him. And this stalwart brute
was to torture his muscles all day with this terrific exercise, and then
instead of lying down at night to die of exhaustion, was to sit behind a
grand piano and bewitch a multitude with the pathos, the tenderness, the
gaiety, the thunder, the brilliant and varied inspiration of his music!

A month or two ago I attended his performances three nights in
succession. If ever there was an inspired idiot this is the individual.
He lorded it over the emotions of his audience like an autocrat. He
swept them like a storm, with his battle-pieces; he lulled them to rest
again with melodies as tender as those we hear in dreams; he gladdened
them with others that rippled through the charmed air as happily and
cheerily as the riot the linnets make in California woods; and now and
then he threw in queer imitations of the tuning of discordant harps and
fiddles, and the groaning and wheezing of bag-pipes, that sent the rapt
silence into tempests of laughter. And every time the audience applauded
when a piece was finished, this happy innocent joined in and clapped
his hands, too, and with vigorous emphasis. It was not from egotism, but
because it is his natural instinct to imitate pretty much every sound
he hears. When anybody else plays, the music so crazes him with delight
that he can only find relief in uplifting a leg, depressing his head
half way to the floor and jumping around on one foot so fast that it
almost amounts to spinning--and he claps his hands all the while, too.
His head misses the piano about an inch or an inch and a half every time
he comes around, but some astonishing instinct keeps him forever from
hitting it. It must be instinct, because he cannot see, and he must
surely grow too dizzy with his spinning to be able to measure distances
and know where he is going to and whither he is drifting. And when the
volunteer is done, Tom stops spinning, sits down and plays the piece
over, exactly as the volunteer had played it, and puts in all the slips,
mistakes, discords, corrections, and everything just where they occurred
in the original performance! He will exactly reproduce the piece, no
matter how fast it was played or how slow, or whether he ever heard it
before or not. The second night that I attended, two musical professors
sat down together and played a duet, which they had composed themselves
beforehand for the occasion. It was wonderfully tangled and complicated,
wonderfully fast in movement, and was bristling with false notes. In
the midst of it "Yankee Doodle" was interpolated, but so mutilated with
intentional discords that one could not help writhing in his seat when
they rattled it off. The bass was a brilliant piece of complication, and
fitted the composition about as well as it would have fitted any other
tune--just about. When the piece was finished, Tom stopped spinning
and took the treble player's place alongside the bass performer, and
clattered it furiously through, with his nose in the air, and never
missed a note of any kind; and when he faithfully put in the ludicrous
discords in "Yankee Doodle," the house came down. Then the treble man
came back, and Tom took the wonderful bass and played it perfectly.

Tom will play two tunes and sing a third at the same time, and let the
audience choose the keys he shall perform in. I heard him play "Fisher's
Hornpipe" with his right hand in two sharps (D), and "Yankee Doodle"
with his left in three flats (E flat), and sing "Tramp, tramp, tramp,
the Boys are Marching," in the key of C--all at the same time. It was a
dreadful and disorganizing mixture of meaningless sounds, but you could
easily discover that there was "no deception," as the magicians say, by
taking up the tunes one at a time and following them a little while,
and then you would perceive that in time, movement and melody, each was
without fault.

But the most surprising thing this High-You Muck-a-Muck of all the negro
minstrels does, is to analyze musical sounds. If you will turn your back
to the piano and let somebody strike a key at random here and there, you
will see that you cannot call the name of two of the notes in succession
except by pure guess work; and when just one note is touched by itself
you cannot tell whether it was a black key or a white one. Blind Tom
is your superior, then, in some respects. For he can stand off at a
distance, and face the audience, with his back to the piano, and you may
strike any key you please, and he will tell its name and its color; and
two persons from the audience may select twenty keys (mixed so as to
form a discord that will give you the lockjaw), and strike them suddenly
and all at once, with their four hands--and while the sound lingers in
the air, the listening idiot will incline his head and make a fine assay
of that sound, separate the web of discord into its individual elements,
and then begin with the first note and rapidly call the name of every
key of the twenty in succession, and never make a mistake! And twenty
more may be struck, and the fingers of the performers instantly sent
scattering at random over the full compass of the piano--but by the
time the flash of sound had died Thomas has analyzed it and can name the
notes that made it. All the schooling of a life-time could not teach a
man to do this wonderful thing, I suppose--but this blind, uninstructed
idiot of nineteen does it without any trouble. Some archangel, cast out
of upper Heaven like another Satan, inhabits this coarse casket; and he
comforts himself and makes his prison beautiful with thoughts and dreams
and memories of another time and another existence that fire this dull
clod with impulses and inspirations it no more comprehends than does
the stupid worm the stirring of the spirit within her of the gorgeous
captive whose wings she fetters and whose flight she stays. It is not
Blind Tom that does these wonderful things and plays this wonderful
music--it is the other party.

How Is Your Avitor?

Send us more news about Mr. Marriott's air-ship--the telegraph is too
reticent. Some of our people take the remarks about the Avitor for mere
"talk," and so pay little attention to it. Others receive in good faith
what the telegraph says, and get up a good deal of enthusiasm about it.
It is a subject that is bound to stir the pulses of any man one talks
seriously to about, for in this age of inventive wonders all men have
come to believe that in some genius' brain sleeps the solution of the
grand problem of aerial navigation--and along with that belief is the
hope that that genius will reveal his miracle before they die, and
likewise a dread that he will poke off somewhere and die himself before
he finds out that he has such a wonder lying dormant in his brain. We
all know the air can be navigated--therefore, hurry up your sails and
bladders--satisfy us--let us have peace. And then, with railroads,
steamers, the ocean telegraph, the air ship--with all these in motion
and secured to us for all time, we shall have only one single wonder
left to work at and pry into and worry about--namely, commerce, or at
least telegraphic communion with the people of Jupiter and the Moon. I
am dying to see some of those fellows! We shall see what we shall see,
before we die. I have faith--a world of it. A telescope is building in
Europe, now, which will distinctly show objects in the moon two hundred
and fifty feet in length, but I feel satisfied that the inhabitants
of the moon have telescopes still stronger, with which they read
our newspapers, look down our chimneys and pry into our private
business--and I wish I might catch them at it once. I am certain that
the moon-calves have been trying for a long time to communicate with us,
else why are they always shying meteoric stones at us? It is to attract
attention. That is the way I attract people's attention. I never hear
of the falling of a meteoric stone but I sigh to think of the
disappointment of the philosopher who threw it when he sees that no
notice is taken of it on earth--and the irritation which will follow the
disappointment and make him say: "Dang it, I wish I had broke a window!"
I love to revel in philosophical matters--especially astronomy. I study
astronomy more than any other foolishness there is. I am a perfect
slave to it. I am at it all the time. I have got more smoked glass than
clothes. I am as familiar with the stars as the comets are. I know all
the facts and figures and have all the knowledge there is concerning
them. I yelp astronomy like a sun-dog, and paw the constellations like
Ursa Major. When Horatio Nelson discovered the principle of attraction
of gravitation by the falling of an apple tree--. However, we will not
go into that. Tell us about the "Avitor." We wish to hear that it is a
success.

MARK TWAIN



THE CHICAGO REPUBLICAN

The Chicago Republican, February 8, 1868

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN

His Ideas on Poetical Congressmen--Hints for the Improvement of their
Style.

The Scandal Against Judge Field.

Adventure with a Native of Kalamazoo--A Michigander at a Reception.

The Capitol Police--

The Colorado Brothers--

Mark Twain's Description of the Fashions at Gen. Grant's Reception.

Special Correspondence of the Chicago Republican.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31.

CONGRESSIONAL POETRY.

Congress is the most interesting body I have found yet. It does more
crazy things, and does them with a graver earnestness, than any State
Legislature that exists, perhaps. But I did hope it would not "drop into
poetry;" I did hope it would continue its dullness to prose. But it was
not to be. Hon. Mungen, of Ohio, has set a disastrous example. He has
allowed the sentiment that is in him to settle, and I herewith offer you
the sediment. It is all properly caked and versified. Let me give also
the three or four lines which precede it in the National Intelligencer,
(and which have rather shaken my respect for that staid old journal),
that regularly comes out in the most sensational and aggressive manner,
every morning, with news it ought to have printed the day before.

The Intelligencer remarks as follows:

[The following lines are from the pen of Hon. William Mungen, member
of Congress from the Fifth District of Ohio, whose exquisite taste for
poetry and art has not been blunted by his political duties:]

TO AN ABSENT ONE.

Time flies, and still its rapid wings Strikes on my thoughts with
constant blows, Touches my heart's most secret springs, And love's fond
stream toward thee flows. Flows like Niagara's rushing tide--True as
the needle to the pole; Clear as the deep blue sea, and wide As were the
thoughts of Milton's soul. Absence from thee, my own dear wife, Makes me
but know how good thou art; Partner of sorrows, joys, and life--Part
of myself--the purer part. When shall that happy time arrive? When shall
those days most wished for come? When side by side we'll love and live
To bless each other in our home.

Now, isn't that bosh? Do you observe that happy Congressional
grammatical inspiration whereby Time flies, and still its rapid wings
strikes on this party's thoughts with constant blows, touches the said
party's heart's most secret springs, and love's fond stream toward the
other party flows? Isn't that criminal grammar? And don't you think
that if you had a love's "fond stream" flowing out of you like Niagara's
rushing tide that you would feel a little alarmed about it, and quit
hatching poetry, and proceed to let a contract for a breakwater, or a
coffer dam, or something of that sort? I think you would. I think
you would feel some solicitude about a freshet like that. And further
concerning the second stanza, Mungen has no business to come here
and try to disseminate the imposture that the deep blue sea is clear,
because people who know things and are consequently wise, know that the
deep blue sea isn't any clearer than Mungenical poetry. That is putting
it rather strong, possibly, but fraud must be frowned down, when it
comes among us in the seductive garb of poetry, even though strong
figures be required to do it. The needle isn't true to the pole, either.
That is another attempted swindle on the public. Mariners are aware that
the cases wherein the needle actually points to the pole are so rare as
to be well worthy of remark. The width of Milton's thoughts has never
been subjected to government survey, and officially established, and so
that metaphor must not be imposed upon a confiding public. If the figure
had been transposed, so as to make the "width" refer to the sea, and
the clearness to Milton's thoughts, nobody could have objected. The
copartnership notice in the third act is business--let it pass--I wish
to speak only of the poetry. If it suits the Congressional mind
to mingle poetry and business together, it is competent for the
Congressional mind so to proceed. The solicitude as to "when that happy
time shall arrive," might have been spared to the Congressional mind
by reference to the records which determine when the Fortieth Congress
shall cease from its labors--say the 4th of March, 1869, Wherefore

Be it resolved, That all after the third stanza, common meter, be
and the same is hereby stricken out, and these words inserted in lieu
thereof, such substitute being considered to be in consonance and in
keeping with the three preceding stanzas aforesaid, and as affording
important information of which the excluded stanza is deficient:

"This is the house that Jack built, Congress adjourns the fourth of
March; Then never more shall we parties part, Pop goes the weasel."

This is not poetical, but it has at least the merit of being
instructive.

The Congressional mind had better quit soaring into poetry and go to
sailing into political economy, perhaps.

MR. JUSTICE FIELD

A resolution was passed in the House, several days ago, to appoint a
Committee to investigate certain charges which had been preferred in
a six line newspaper item, against one of the Justices of the Supreme
Court of the United States to the end that he might be impeached if such
a course seemed justifiable. You will observe that the House not only
so far forgot its dignity as to entertain that thing, coming in
such unauthorized, anonymous, and altogether questionable shape, but
discussed and acted upon it. Such conduct as this is ill advised, and
is calculated to cheapen the respect due to this high tribunal. The
impeachment of a Judge of the Supreme Court is a grave matter, and
should have a more respectable foundation than town gossip. Hon. Stephen
Field was the Judge referred to. It was stated in the newspaper
item that he had said at a dinner where he was a guest, that the
Reconstruction acts were unconstitutional, and that the Court would so
decide them. Any man might have known that so absurd a charge as that,
and one so out of all character, would prove utterly groundless, and
such has been the result. If we had a party of chattering old maids on
the bench, we might expect them to gad about their official business,
but wise, dignified old men do not do such things. I have inquired about
the matter, and find that the circumstances are not worth detailing.
They are not particularly creditable to the gentleman from whom the
newspaper man probably got his information, either.

"KALAMAZOO"

I went to the Capitol, yesterday, to see if there was anything going
on there of especial interest to the Northwest. Senators and all other
sources of information seemed busy. I secured an Illinois Congressman
at last, but he did not know anything of especial import, except that no
move had yet been made this session, and doubtless none would be made
at all during this Congress, in behalf of the ship canal which it is
proposed shall one day give Chicago direct communication with Europe by
way of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. That was sufficient on that
subject, of course. Then I went to the chamber of the Senate Committee
on the Judiciary (I will remark that I am not a clerk of any committee),
because I was told that Senator Trumbull would shortly be there.

I was standing, all by myself, in the Committee room, reading a vast
law book, and wondering what it was about; and whether the plaintiff had
done so and so, or whether it was the defendant; and which of them they
found guilty; and how the mischief they ever knew he was guilty when the
words were tangled up so; and noting, with gratification, the references
to Perkins v. Bangs, Mo. Rep. iii, &c., whereby it was apparent that
if one did not get mixed up enough in that book there were others that
could finish him; and wondering also at the bewildering tautology of
the said aforesaid book aforesaid, when a youth to fortune and to fame
unknown, flourished in the most frisky way, and came to a halt before
me. This young man had a moustache that dimmed the lightness of his
countenance about as your breath dims the brightness of a razor; and
he bored down into it with his fingers, and gave it a twist which was
singularly gratifying to him, considering that no effect was produced
upon the moustache by the operation. Then he tilted his little soup-dish
to the port side of his head with his gloved hand, and said:

"Hello!"

I said "Hello!"

He looked surprised. Then he said: "Do you belong here?"

I was just finishing a sentence about Perkins v. Bangs. I finished it
and observed: "The weather is very fine."

He whisked nervously up and down the room a couple of turns, and
then stopped before me and said: "Are you the clerk of the Judiciary
Committee?"

I said, in the urbanest manner:

"In view of the circumstance that on so short an acquaintance you betray
so much solicitude concerning my business, I will venture to inquire
what you may happen to want with the clerk of the Judiciary Committee?"

"That is not answering my question. Are you the clerk of the Judiciary
Committee?"

"In view of the circumstance that on so short an acquaintance you betray
so much solicitude concerning my business, I will venture to inquire
again what you may happen to want with the clerk of the Judiciary
Committee?"

"That don't concern anybody but me. What I want to know is, are you, or
are you not the clerk of the Judiciary Committee?"

"In view, as I said before, of the circumstance that on so short an
acquaintance you betray so much solicitude concerning my business, I
will venture to inquire once again, what you may happen to want with the
clerk of the Judiciary Committee?"

He scratched his head in apparent perplexity for a matter of five
seconds, and then said with deliberation and impressive earnestness:

"Well, I'll be dammed."

"I presume so. I hope so. Still, being a stranger, you cannot expect me
to take more than a passing interest in your future plans."

He looked puzzled, and a little chafed. He said: "Look here--who are
you?"

"In view of the circumstance--"

"Oh, curse the circumstance!"

"Amen."

He did not reply. He seemed worried and annoyed. Presently he started
out, and said by George he would go after the Michigan Senators and
inquire into this thing. I said they were esteemed acquaintances of
mine, and asked him to say that I was well. But he refused to do this,
notwithstanding all my politeness, and was profane again. I never saw
such a fire brand as he was.

Now what can that young fellow mean by going around asking respectable
people if they are clerks of Senate committees? If my feelings are to
be outraged in this way, I cannot stay in Washington. I don't like to be
called Hello by strangers with imaginary moustaches, either. This young
party turned out to be an importation from Kalamazoo, and he wished to
ship as a sub-clerk to the Judiciary Committee. He is a little fresh. It
might have been better if he had stayed in the Kalamazoological Gardens
until he got his growth, perhaps. Still, if his friends would like to
have the opinion of a stranger concerning him, I think he will make a
success here in one way or another. He has spirit and persistence. The
only trouble is, that he has most too much hello about him. He was
at Mr. Colfax's reception last night, and if anybody was serenely and
entirely at home in that brilliant gathering, and equal in all respects
to the occasion, it was Kalamazoo, I think. He shouldered his way
through the throng to shake hands with me, and I knew by the cheery tone
of his voice that he had forgotten his anger, and regarded me in
the light of a cherished old acquaintance, when he said, "Hello,
old Smarty!--you here!" In about an hour and a half that fellow was
acquainted with everybody in the house.

THE CAPITOL POLICE

The days of the picturesque, blue uniformed, brass-buttoned Capitol
police are numbered. They have cost the Government $80,000 in the last
year, and have not been worth the money. They "came like shadows"--most
of them--but will not so depart. They have grown fat and comfortable,
dozing in chairs and scratching their backs against marble pillars. They
got good wages, and had two sumptuous uniforms allowed them every year.
But retrenchment is the order of the day now, and the appropriation for
all Capitol police expenses is to be cut down to $5,000. That will well
nigh exterminate the force. They are good men, and many of them have won
a right to Governmental consideration by the deeds they have done in the
field, but the times are hard and they must yield their places. If we
had a little European sagacity, we would detail soldiers of the regular
army to take care of the Capitol buildings, and then we need not pay
even that $5,000 I have spoken of.

COLORADO AT THE DOOR

Colorado is memorializing Congress for admission as a State. The
memorial sets forth that all classes and parties in Colorado desire
a State Government, including the negroes, who are satisfied that the
Constitution of the proposed State guarantees to them all the rights and
privileges to which they are entitled; it furthermore sets forth that
the Territory's voting strength has augmented since the President ruled
her out before by veto; also that she pays a large internal revenue;
that her postal receipts are great and are steadily increasing; and
finally, that her population is as numerous as those of the new States
last admitted. It is possible that Colorado may get in this time.

In this connection, it is observable, that in making this request
the people of Colorado show an approximation to perfect unanimity of
sentiment which is surprising. A Chronicle editorial says:

"The people of Colorado seem now, for the first time, to be almost
unanimous for admission. We learn that one man, who was a strong State
man until defeated for United States Senator, and his brother, are now
the only active opponents of the measure."

Only two men against it. Only two resolute men against 30,000. This is a
unanimity that would dishearten any ordinary brace of men. But it is not
so in this case. These brothers are not only determined but "active."
The spectacle of these two active partisans capering about the volcanic
hills in solitary sublimity, while the badgered 30,000 march timidly to
the polls to vote, is one that has an air of novelty about it, to say
the least. The Chronicle is friendly to the admission, but I am afraid
that in so magnifying the agility of these two gymnastic chiefs, it may
be unwittingly damaging Colorado's chances in this second effort. The
President will hardly open the door to her until the "candidate for
United States Senator and his brother" shall be persuaded to quit
performing on the hilltops, and cease to bullyrag the unoffending 30,000
with their pitiless opposition.

FASHIONS

The fashions displayed by the ladies at the receptions of the great
dignitaries of the Government may be regarded as orthodox and reliable,
of course. I do not enjoy receptions, and yet I go to them, and inflict
all manner of crowding, suffocation, and general discomfort upon
myself, solely in order that I may be able to post the lady readers
of newspapers concerning what they ought to wear when they wish to
be utterly and exhaustively fashionable. Not being perfect in the
technicalities of millinery, this duty is always tedious, and very
laborious and fatiguing. I mention these things, because I wish to
be credited with at least the good will to do well, even though I may
chance, through ignorance, to fail of success.

At Gen. Grant's reception, the other night, the most fashionably dressed
lady was Mrs. G. C. She wore a pink satin dress, plain in front, but
with a good deal of rake to it--to the train, I mean; it was said to be
two or three yards long. One could see it creeping along the floor some
little time after the woman was gone. Mrs. C. wore also a white bodice,
cut bias, with Pompadour sleeves, flounced with ruches; low neck, with
the inside handkerchief not visible; white kid gloves. She had on a
pearl necklace, which glinted lonely, high up in the midst of that
barren waste of neck and shoulders. Her hair was grizzled into a
tangled chapparal, forward of her ears; after it was drawn together,
and compactly bound and plaited into a stump like a pony's tail,
and furthermore was canted upward at a sharp angle, and ingeniously
supported by a red velvet crupper, whose forward extremity was made fast
with a half hitch around a hair pin on her poop-deck, which means,
of course, the top of her head, if you do not understand fashion
technicalities. Her whole top hamper was neat and becoming. She had a
beautiful complexion when she first came, but it faded out by degrees in
the most unaccountable way. However, it was not lost for good. I found
the most of it on my shoulder afterwards. (I had been standing by the
door when she had been squeezing in and out with the throng). There were
other fashionably dressed ladies present, of course, but I only took
notes of one, as a specimen. The subject is one of great interest to
ladies, and I would gladly enlarge upon it if I were more competent to
do it justice.

MARK TWAIN.

The Chicago Republican, February 19, 1868

MARK TWAIN'S LETTER.

Final Defeat of the Impeachment Project in the House.

How to Describe a Fashionable Party--Some New Terms.

Mark's Valentines--Discomforts of Too Much Popularity.

How Miss Vinnie Ream Got Into the Capitol, and Won't be Turned Out.

Special Correspondence of the Chicago Republican.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14.

DIED,

In this city, Feb. 13, at his lodgings in the chamber of the House
Reconstruction Committee, our beloved brother, IMPEACHMENT. The malady
of deceased was general debility. A short time ago his health had
improved so much that a bright hope cheered the land that he would soon
walk forth healthful and strong; but alas! we know not what a day may
bring forth. A great fear came upon his physicians in the crisis of his
disease. The weariness of watching overpowered the nurses, so that they
fell asleep and neglected him--and lo! a relapse!

Then came the physicians to his bed side again with a new confidence
that had been born to them of late, and said, Behold, we have other
samples, that be of greater worth; we will give these unto our brother,
and he shall be healed. And even as they had said, so also went they
about to do.

And it came to pass that about the third hour, certain of the nurses
that watched him, even Mrs. Farnsworth, and also Mrs. Boutwell, and also
Mrs. Stevens, the same that is called Thad, spoke unto the other nurses,
saying hearken unto us, ye that watch with us, even Mrs. Bingham, and
also Mrs. Beaman, and also Mrs. Paine, and also Mrs. Hulburd, and also
Mrs. Brooks, and likewise Mrs. Beck: The physicians and the people have
faith that the new medicines wherewith they have provided us, can heal
Him that suffereth before us here; therefore, let us make haste to do
with them as they have bidden us. But straightway Mrs. Bingham, being
sore afraid, cried with a loud voice, saying: Mind not the people, O ye
of little nous! the doctors desire not that he shall live, for they be
troubled in spirit and tormented day and night with a mighty fear. Are
not we servants of the doctors, who have set this work for us to do, and
is it not meet that we should do their will? Stay the hand--set thou the
medicine upon the table and let him die! And so, these six, that were
Mrs. Bingham, being stronger than they that were with Mrs. Stevens,
called Thad, suffered not the medicine to pass the lips of him that lay
sick.

And in the self-same hour he died.

So endeth the second farce. The ancient school-boy phrase best describes
the position of the Congressional bodies in this matter: "One's afraid
and 't'other dar'n't."

Senator Chandler's Party

The event of the week, in the social circle, was the entertainment
at Senator Chandler's residence, to celebrate the "coming out" of his
daughter, Miss Chandler. It was very brilliant. I am not easily overcome
by pure gorgeousness, because I am too much accustomed to it in my own
palace; I feel deeply, it is true, yet I inflexibly crush those emotions
and refrain from gushing even in times when it would be the greatest
relief to me to gush. But when I find another man expressing exactly
what I felt, and exactly what I would have expressed if I had yielded to
the impulse to gush, I always borrow what that man says, and thank him
kindly for saying it, and give to his paper due and proper credit,
with the compliments of the undersigned. This paragraph is from the
Chronicle:

"The Senator's large and elegant parlors, newly furnished, and in
exquisite taste, with rare old paintings on the walls, were highly
decorated with exotics of chaste and highly original designs. The
brilliant scarlet leaves of the Mexican Poinsetta, with its golden
center; the pure white, pink, and variegated camelias; the fragrant
heliotrope and the modest violet; the gentle primrose and the drooping
and graceful fern, were grouped together and arranged in vases and
rustic baskets, while the niches in the walls of the staircase were
tastefully decorated with camelia trees in full bloom--presenting,
with their pure colors and the green and waxen leaves, a most agreeable
contrast with the blazing light from the numerous jets of gas that
illuminated a scene of wonderous splendor."

That is all correctly stated, and with a spirit which the subject was
in every way entitled to. I do not find fault with "exotics, of highly
original design;" because I know that the Deity designed them, and
that to call attention in an influential daily newspaper to the happy
originality of the conception, was a compliment which was as well
deserved as it was well meant and gracefully put.

I add the following paragraph because the ladies of the West must surely
take a particular interest in knowing how their representatives dress at
the capital of the country, and because I know so well that they take
a thrilling general interest in the fashions that obtain in this or any
other city in the land. The technicalities that bloom so bewilderingly
in these lines are altogether too abstruse for me, but I have no doubt
at all that they are accurately set down. Nobody could dash off the
curious phraseology of millinery science in that kind of style, but a
person who was master of his subject even in its nicest details:

"Mrs. Chandler was gracefully arrayed in a dress of the finest taste--a
heavy rep-pearl colored silk, empress waist, short sleeves, and low
corsage, trimmed with a narrow piping of white satin, bordered with deep
fringes composed of crystal beads. Her extensive train was trimmed a
la passe menterie, with folds of the same material of the dress, cut
in points and trimmed with pure white satin, with fold edging, the
voluminous skirt arranged in the same manner. She wore a handsome set of
pearls, her hair dressed with fusettes in front, rolled off her forehead
with French twist and numerous plaited coils, and, surmounting, a
diadem of May roses, with long pendants of buds and green leaves.
Miss Chandler, a fair brunette, with golden locks, which were slightly
powdered with silver, wore a chignon, over which depended a small bunch
of curls, and the only ornament connected therewith was a narrow band
of gold and a small piece of black lace worn on the top of the head. She
wore gold jewelry, with a heavy, short necklace, with charm attached--a
style that is rapidly coming into vogue. Her dress was a tunic of
bright, rose-colored silk. Empress waist, short sleeves, trimmed with
a rich, deep fringe of a similar shade, looped up on either side over a
skirt of white silk of the most elegant description, and, of course, an
elaborate train."

A "fair brunette with golden locks" is a combination which is as rare
as it is necessarily striking and picturesque. I never saw a "fair"
brunette in my life. And I never saw a brunette with golden locks,
either. I think there must be some mistake about this. If so, no doubt
it was owing to the hurry of writing up the entertainment for the
morning paper. One has not time to be very particular under such
circumstances. I know a good deal about that from experience.

St. Valentine's Day.

For the last sixty years I have never seen this day approach without
emotion. It was generally too deep for utterance, too. The day always
brings me an armful of dainty notes from young women whom I have
stricken with my destructive eye. Eyes, would have been more proper.
I generally bring down a couple at a time. Strabismus enables me to
do that. I usually receive notes with pictures in them; pictures of
deformed shoemakers; pictures of distorted blacksmiths, pictures of
cadaverous undertakers; pictures of reporters taking items at a fire and
stealing clothes; and oftenest, pictures of asses, with ears longer
than necessary, writing letters to newspapers. These letters are
usually directed in an execrable masculine hand. The pictures and
the handwriting are both intended to conceal the real passion that is
consuming the young women who send them--but they fail. I have not lived
three-quarters of a century for nothing.

I counted on a renewal of these little attentions to-day, and suffered
no disappointment. Twenty-seven valentines are to hand, thus far, but
none of them have pictures in them. They are all of a new design and
very peculiar. Some of the more cautious young women have appended
masculine names in place of their own. It may be well enough to offer a
specimen or two since their fashion is new:

"SIR: Our metallic burial cases have taken the premium at six State
Fairs in this country, and also at the great Paris Exposition. Parties
who have used them have been in every instance charmed with them. Not
one has yet entered a complaint. Our walnut and mahogany coffins are the
delight of the people. A large stock kept constantly on hand, and orders
promptly filled with pleasure. Families supplied at reduced rates.
Articles in our line may be exchanged if not satisfactory. We would be
glad to secure your custom, and shall be greatly pleased to hear from
you.

BOX & PLANT, Undertakers."

I hope these parties will manage somehow to wait till they do hear from
me. I always did hate to be in a hurry in matters of business. But,
really, some girl's lacerated heart is hidden under that deftly-worded
valentine.

Here is another:

"SIR: Our patent Cancer-Eradicator arouses the admiration of all whose
happy fortune it has been to be in a condition to use it. Nothing can
with stand its enchanting influence. Excrescences of all kinds upon the
body disappear before it as by magic. If you have warts, if you have
cancers, if you have a wen, come and be healed!

"We fervently hope to receive your custom.

BLISTER & CARVE, Patentees"

I fervently hope you won't. So far, I have no artificial attractions
such as wens, cancers, and warts, and am satisfied to remain homely.
But that whole valentine is nothing but the transparent covering to
some girl's breaking heart. Let it break. Mine has been broken often
enough--it don't hurt me. Once more:

"SIR: We beg to recommend to you our patent double-back action,
chronometer-balance, incombustible wooden legs. You will find them
superior to anything in the market. The dismantled soldiers of our
beloved country are extravagant in their praises of them. Give them a
trial. You cannot regret it. Be pleased to forward us your measure at
once, and let us furnish you with an outfit.

PEG & HOOP, Proprietors."

It pains me to decline, but I shall have to do it. I don't want any
"outfit." If it were a patent head, we could trade--but as it is, you
had better go after Weston. But what is it that those mysterious wooden
legs so ingeniously conceal, in reality? Blighted affection. It is
hardly worthwhile for this young woman to try to deceive me with her
poor fraudulent wooden legs. I see through the flimsy ruse--blighted
affection is behind it.

The remainder of the twenty-seven offer tinware, and stationery, and
baker's bread, and grave-stones, and chewing gum, and patent varnish,
and real estate, and railroad literature, dry goods, harness,
Spaulding's glue, ready made clothing, plantation bitters, and a
dozen other commodities--all so many veils wherewith to hide the fatal
admiration that burns in the bosoms of the young women who have sent
them. They must perish. Others have gone before. Let them travel the
same old road. They cannot lose the way. They will find it pretty well
"blazed."

But this last one, which has just come in, I feel is fraught with a
world of happiness for me. It--it says:

"SIR: You better pay for your washing.

BRIDGET."

These washerwomen have no sentiment. I scorn valentines from
washerwomen.

Curious Legislation.

Retrenchment breeds strange legislation. Or rather, the weak things
that are done in its name breed it. They could not impeach the
President--because, as Mr. Stevens says--they were afraid. But what of
it? They have triumphed anyhow. They have won a dazzling victory. For
they have taken away his private Secretaries! It was wonderful strategy.
He cannot write any more long letters to Gen. Grant, now. He cannot spin
out any more interminable messages to Congress. He will not find the
time. He will have to cut everything down to the Scriptural yes, yes,
and nay, nay.

This measure was certainly undignified. It does not become a Congress
that has been battling with the colossal artillery of impeachment to
descend to throwing mud. Such conduct is neither royal, republican, nor
democratic; it is simply boys' play. It isn't worthwhile to say that
the reduction of the President's clerical force was made in the virtuous
interest of retrenchment, for the stupidest of us all know better than
that. Its moving spring was an unworthy and an ungraceful little
spite. They might as well have estimated the capabilities of the Chief
Magistrate's kitchen force, and discharged a cook or two. There is
not any wisdom in this kind of warfare. The people cannot applaud it.
Everybody is willing to see a fair stand-up fight between the President
and his Congressional master, but nobody is willing to see either of
them descend to scratching and hair-pulling. These parties stand for
the United States. They represent the American nation, and it is not a
nation that fights in that way.

VINNIE REAM.

This is the shrewdest politician of them all. With a mild talent for
sculpture, but with hardly as much claim upon the patronage of the
Government as had even the poorest of the artists that have canvassed
and frescoed our beautiful capitol with their curious nightmares at
a liberal so-much an acre (they painted by the acre, likely), she has
procured from Congress an interminable contract to build a bronze statue
of President Lincoln for ten thousand dollars. That is well enough,
for she can build statues as well as those other parties can swab
frescoes--a remark which cannot by any possibility be tortured into the
semblance of a compliment--but that she should succeed in getting hold
of and hanging on to a choice chamber in the crowded Capitol, wherein to
build Mr. Lincoln, when a tract of ground, four or five times as large
as England, together with its tax-paying population of two hundred
thousand souls, is trying to get into that Capitol, are perfectly aware
that they ought to be allowed to enter there and yet cannot succeed, is
a very, very, very, very interesting mystery to the subscriber. Really,
does it not look a little singular that nine accredited delegates of
nine great Territories should be obliged to stand out in the cold, month
after month, in order that pretty, and talkative, and winning little
Miss Vinnie Ream may have a sumptuously furnished chamber in the Capitol
to build her Mr. Lincoln in? I ask this in no spirit of vindictiveness,
for I surely bear Miss Vinnie Ream no malice. I just simply ask it as a
man and a brother.

I said she was the shrewdest politician of them all--and verily she
is. The Government never gave her permission to bring her mud, and her
naked, scandalous plaster models, and set up her little shop in the
Temple of Liberty, and go to building Mr. Lincoln there. No, she just
talked pretty, girlish talk to some of those impotent iron-clad old
politicians--Congressmen, of course--and got out her mud and made
busts of some of the others; and she kept on in this fashion until she
over-mastered them all with her charming little ways, and they told her
to go, take a room in the Capitol, build Mr. Lincoln, and be happy.

She took a room. It had defects that interfered with the proper building
of Mr. Lincoln, and she laid siege to those Congressmen again. In the
goodness of their hearts, and the general feebleness of their firmness,
they compassed a certain House Committee round about and delivered them
into the hands of Vinnie Ream. She took their fine committee room, and
they went elsewhere.

But here lately those nine delegates from the Territories have talked so
plainly of the discourtesy that is being shown them in having allowed
no resting-place in the Capitol, that at last the Congressmen have felt
obliged to look around and see what could be done in their behalf. What
could they do? Manifestly, since every solitary room in the building was
already occupied in a legitimate manner, except the one occupied by Miss
Ream, there was nothing left to do but go after that. They little knew
their antagonist. They went--and found on the door this notice, just
pasted up: "Miss Ream is absent from the city--for two weeks!" by which
time the storm will have blown over, the Congressmen will have forgotten
it, and the nine delegates become reconciled to the open air, and
hopeless of ever getting that storm awakened again. It would take but
little to turn my sympathies in favor of the Artful Dodger.

That studio is hers yet, and I think, maybe, it will so remain. And her
little, one-legged broken armed, battered-nose mud gods and crippled
plaster angels will remain there also; and likewise the awful apparition
of Mr. Lincoln, naked as mud could make him, which she has built up
in the corner behind a screen, will remain there, too, to gaze
reproachfully upon its swollen and mutilated hand and frighten away
discontented Territorial delegates for ever more.

MARK TWAIN

The Chicago Republican, March 1,1868

MARK TWAIN'S LETTER.

He Attends the Illinois Association Reception.

An Agreeable Gathering--The Skeleton of the Feast.

Mark's View of the Impeachment Proceedings.

A Lion Aroused--Gideon on the War Path--Make way for Welles and the
Marines.

"Flame, Fire and Flame"--Fury by Telegraph.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 21.

A State Reception.

THE ILLINOIS STATE ASSOCIATION.

I refer to the reception given by the "Illinois State Association,"
yesterday evening. Or, rather, it was more a "reunion," with
considerable "at home" in it than the funereal high comedy they call a
"reception in Washington." Col. Chester and his fair daughters--former
citizens of Chicago--conducted the honors, and performed the onerous
task with a skill and address that placed even diffident strangers
at their ease; insomuch that I shortly became a contented Illinoisan
without knowing just how or where the change took place. The invitation
I had received was couched in such mysterious terms that I gathered
from it a vague notion that I was going there to report a sort of State
Agricultural Society; and it was a very agreeable surprise to find a
large party of gentlemen present who were not talking about steam plows
and corn-shellers, and a brilliant company of ladies who were taking
no thought of prize turnips and miraculous cabbages. I like agriculture
well enough, but not agricultural mass meetings. There is nothing about
them that fires the blood.

At some of the receptions here, the people move in solemn procession up
and down the drawing-rooms, bearing an imaginary Ark of the Covenant,
and looking as if they knew they had to wander forty years in the
wilderness, yet; but there was nothing of this kind last night--no
processions, no solemnity, no frozen ceremony. The throng shifted
constantly and talked incessantly. Nothing could be less stately or more
agreeable. It was a very sociable company for a stranger to fall among.
Finally, I found a petite young lady (I don't know what petite means,
but it is a good word) right from my own side of the river, and then I
felt more at home than ever, if possible. She was from Dubuque, which is
on the California side of the Mississippi river, and so, of course, we
were, in a manner, neighbors. A constructive old-acquaintanceship like
this, is wonderfully fortifying and reassuring, when one is in the
midst of a foreign element, even though that element is disposed to be a
generous and a friendly one.

A CHEERFUL GUEST.

I only met one icicle in the whole party. He shook hands without
cordiality, and bowed with altogether too much condescension. I said,
with a vivacity that considerably oversized the importance of the
remark:

"It has been a very fine day, sir."

Then this monument, this undertaker, this galvanized graveyard said:

"Sir, what the weather may be, or what the weather may not be, concerns
not me, when my country is in danger."

"Well--I am sorry I made such a thoughtless remark. I meant no harm--I
did not notice what I was saying. People cannot be too careful what they
say, when the country is in danger. But the weather you know--"

"Sir, what signify the vagaries of the weather, when revolution stares
us in the face! when the muttered thunders of coming disaster startle
the ear! when dark forebodings visit our thoughts by day, and wrathful
carnage crimsons our visions of the night!"

"True--I had not looked at it in that light. I slipped up on the
carnage, so to speak. Under circumstances like these, I know, as well
as any man knows, that it is little less than treason to speak of the
weather--"

"Treason! Ha-ha! Treason is feeding at the very vitals of the land! It
stalks unrebuked through the corridors of the nation's capitol! It
sits in the high places of the Commonwealth; it flings its gaunt shadow
athwart the very threshold of the fane of liberty! Sir, prophetic voices
sound in my ears, and lo, they chant the requiem of the great Republic!
Its doom is sealed!"

"Well, I know you will pardon me, sir. I didn't know it was as bad as
that, or I swear I never would have mentioned the weather."

MORALIZING.

I think this old sepulchre was a member of Congress, but I did not catch
his name distinctly. But why do such people go to social gatherings, and
practice their execrable speeches on unoffending strangers? Why do they
go around saving the country all the time, and snubbing the weather? Why
do not they do like Garret Davis, and persecute Congress, which is paid
to be persecuted? These harmless lunatics only distress the guests at
an evening party, without absolutely scaring them. I would be ashamed to
act so poor a part as that. If I had to be a lunatic, I do think I
would have self-respect enough to be a dangerous one. I hate that
solemn-visaged body-snatcher now, and if he is a Congressman I shall
always try to find out all the mean things I can that other people do,
and put them in print and attribute them to him. I think that will make
him wince. The idea of a Congressman bowing condescendingly to one of
the people! We cannot put up with that. I long to report one of that
man's speeches, and garble it so that his constituents will think he has
forsaken his political principles and gone over to the enemy.

I have digressed somewhat, and now return to the subject only to
say that this Illinoisan reunion was lively, void of restraint, and
eminently pleasant. This is the most agreeable way in which Senators
and Representatives can meet their fitting constituents, and the idea
is well worthy of adoption by the representatives of other States here.
Americans are not by nature, inclination, or home teaching, courtly
enough to enjoy the formal humbuggery of an orthodox "reception."

I have made the above notes the present time, because it was most
convenient to do it now--the remainder of this letter will be written
a week hence. I had a list of all the Illinoisans present at the party,
but I cannot furnish it now. The degraded, black-hearted chambermaid
has kindled the fire with it, of course. If there is on earth a race of
miscreants I hate with an undying hatred, it is chambermaids. If there
is any dissipation I enjoy with all my heart, it is to attend their
funerals.

IMPEACHMENT

LAZARUS IMPEACHMENT, COME FORTH!

Monday, Feb. 24. The past few days have been filled with startling
interest. On Friday the nation was electrified by the President's last
and boldest effort to dislodge Mr. Stanton. The wild excitement that
pervaded the capital that night, has not had its parallel here since the
murder of Mr Lincoln. The air was thick with rumors of dreadful import.
Every tranquil brain, thrown from its balance by the colossal surprise,
magnified the creations of its crazed fancy into the phantoms of
anarchy, rebellion, bloody revolution! Assassinations were prophesied;
murders, robberies, and conflagrations; cannon were to thunder, drums
to beat, and the pavements to echo to the tread of armed men! The Senate
sat at night, and the unusual spectacle of the illuminated Capitol
attracted every eye, and impressed every mind with something like an
assurance that its bodings and prophecies were well founded. And out of
the midst of the political gloom, impeachment, that dead corpse, rose up
and walked forth again!

THE TWENTY-SECOND OF FEBRUARY

The next morning that one word, Impeachment, was upon every tongue.
There was no simpleton but knew that this memorable twenty-second of
February was likely to be one of those tremendous days that stand up out
of the level of a nation's history like a mountain in a desert--a mark
toward which all roads converge on the one side, and from which they
all radiate on the other--a mark which catches the eye first, from all
directions and all distances, and holds it longest. Instead of resting
from its labors, in reverent regard for the memory of Washington, as has
been the honored custom for three-score years upon this natal day, the
Congress had resolved to sit--and for business! Before 9 o'clock in the
morning a multitude was assembled in the Capitol grounds, and from all
points of the compass the clans were still gathering. Fifteen minutes
after the doors were opened, the broad lobbies were crowded with men and
women, and every seat in the ample galleries was occupied.

SCENE IN THE CAPITOL

A strong interest was depicted in every countenance--even in the
countenances of the members of the floor--inasmuch that these latter
earnestly conversed in groups and couples, instead of looking listless
and writing private letters, as is their custom. The multitude
of strangers were waiting for impeachment. They did not know what
impeachment was, exactly, but they had a general idea that it would come
in the form of an avalanche, or a thunder clap, or that maybe the roof
would fall in. Bye and bye a member rose up solemnly, and every soul
prepared to stand from under. But it was a vain delusion--he only had
a speech to make about a degraded cooking stove patent. The people were
justly incensed. An hour of irksome suspense rolled away, and then the
one man the audience found out they must look for, entered--Thaddeus
Stevens. All the faces were full of interest again in a moment. The
emaciated old man stood up and addressed the Speaker. The Speaker
commanded the audience to beware of manifesting either satisfaction
or dissent, on pain of instant expulsion, but to maintain strict and
respectful silence--and when he finished, the profoundest stillness
reigned in the House. Then the one man upon whom all interest centered,
read the resolutions the multitude so longed to hear; and when he came
to where it was resolved that "The President of the United States be
impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors," the prodigious words had
something so solemn and so awe-inspiring about them that the people
seemed inclined to think that the expected thunder-clap was about
to crash above the pictured ceiling! The strong lights and shadows,
augmenting distances and creating deceitful prospectives, the ghostly
figure of the reader, the eager interest that marked the sea of faces,
the impressive silence that pervaded the place, and the historic
grandeur of the occasion, conspired to render the scene one of the most
striking and dramatic that has ever been witnessed in the Capitol.

THE CLOSING DEBATE

Then the speech making began, and the resurrected Lazarus of impeachment
soon gave token of a strength ard a vigor it had never possessed in its
former life. The crowds remained in the Capitol till nearly midnight.

Tuesday, Feb. 25.

All day yesterday, the place was densely thronged; the people wished to
hear the all-important vote taken. It was not to transpire till nearly
night fall, and they knew it; but they came betimes in the morning, and
brought their luncheon with them, resolved to sit it out--and they did.
They heard strong speeches from the Republicans, and angry protests
from the Democrats--but these latter were not confident in tone.
The Democrats had said, themselves, that the President had made an
ill-advised move and they felt that they were fighting for a lost cause.
The "aye" votes, in nearly all cases, came in a clear voice, but many of
the "nays" were inaudible in the reporters' gallery. The spirit appeared
to be chiefly on one side. The resolution passed, and that was a
momentous event; but Saturday was still the great day, after all. It was
the day most to be remembered; its pictures were the most striking to
the eye, and its events the most sensational, because of their novelty.

THE HUNTED CHIEF IN HIS CASTLE

That the President would be arraigned before the bar of the Senate,
there seemed to be no possible question. Yesterday was reception night
at the White House and several of us went there at 10 o'clock. I
confess that I went out of a thoughtless curiosity to see how the Chief
Magistrate bore himself under these untoward circumstances, but I
did not enjoy the visit. I stood at a little distance and watched him
receive and dismiss his visitors. He looked so like a plain, simple,
good-natured old farmer, that it was hard to conceive that this was the
imperious "tyrant" whose deeds had been stirring the sluggish blood of
thirty millions of people. He was uneasy and restless; the smile that
came and went upon his face had distress in it; when he shook hands with
a guest he looked wistfully into the person's face, as if he sought
a friendly interest there, and yet hardly hoped to find it; he seemed
humbled--the expression of his countenance could be made to signify
nothing else; when he ceased to smile for a moment, the shadow of a
secret anxiety fell upon his features, and then, if ever a man looked
weary and worn, and needful of rest and forgetfulness, it was this
envied President of the United States. I never saw a man who seemed as
friendless and forsaken, and I never felt for any man so much.

They said that earlier in the evening he bore himself as serenely as if
his fortunes were at their fairest; everybody admired the brave spirit
that so mastered its corroding cares that they gave no sign--so mastered
them that in the countenance that should have told of a world of trouble
within, only a sunny cheerfulness was visible. But he had stood in that
one place for hours now, undergoing that toil-some monotony of hand
shaking, and fatigue had conquered him at last. Not any man that lives
could occupy the President's place to-day, and be tranquil and content.

A Sleeping Lion Aroused--Gideon Rampant

Feb. 26. The ball is in motion. The Philadelphians send encouraging
dispatches to the President. Chicago mass meetings tell Illinois
Representatives to impeach. New York city threatens blood and slaughter
in behalf of the President. Gov. Geary promises another uprising
for Congress. And last, Mr. Gideon Welles is "standing by" with his
redoubtable four hundred marines to rush to the Chief Magistrate's
protection. It is time to tremble when Gideon's Band is hitching up
its towsers, shifting its quids to starboard, and preparing to repel
boarders! But Congress is in earnest, and maybe the old salts will see
service shortly. Gen. Logan says that if Congress quails this time, he
wants an appropriation made to iron plate the members so that the nation
can kick them from the Capitol to the White House without its wearing
them out! Sound the tocsin! don't know what a tocsin is, but I want it
sounded, all the same.

TELEGRAPHIC THUNDER AND LIGHTNING.

Gideon is not to be alone. Telegrams offering support and encouragement
to the President are still arriving constantly. My position as
Private Secretary ad interim to the Chief Magistrate gives me peculiar
facilities for easily learning their contents:

Maysville, Feb. 25--Will one regiment of Irish be of any service to you?
Answer.

There is a thousand anyhow. The case looks healthier.

Philadelphia, Feb. 25--I can raise one thousand men to sustain you from
my Second District of New Jersey, if necessary.

Not signed. From the Camden and Amboy Railroad Company, doubtless. They
own the Second District of New Jersey, and the other Districts, also, I
believe. However, it is a thousand more, in any event. This is cheering.

New York City, Feb. 25. Go on! All the decent men in the metropolis will
back you.

Well! that makes another thousand. We are all right now.

Wheatland, Pa., Feb. 25. Proceed with caution--but proceed. Garrison
Fort Sumter. But do not provision it yet. Be cautious. Do not act with
too much decision about things. Wait.

Pub. Func.

I thought the old lady was dead. But she only sleepeth. Someone must
wake her up, and tell her Sumter is battered down.

Chicago, Feb. 23. Keep steadily on. Oglesby has made himself ridiculous.
He knew when he sent that dispatch that it was impossible to fill
the bill. When you want either men or money, more than half of the
able-bodied men in the State will promptly respond to your call. Good!

Ning Yong, Cal., Feb. 24. Mellican man welly good. You sabby Chinaman?
No hab got, how can catch? Chinaman welly good man, John. Send you nine
hundred Chinaman, heap smach 'um Congress.

Hong Wo See Yup.

I know Chinamen too well. They are a nation of Pub Funcs. They are not
partisan enough in character. They would come here with their tubs and
take in washing from both sides.

St. Louis, Feb. 25.

The people here are with you, and ready almost to a man to sustain
you in whatever way may be necessary in upholding the Constitution and
resisting Congressional usurpation.

Good again!

Cincinnati, Feb. 24.

Dis foreign boppulations fon Cincinnati is mit you in dis clofious
grisus. Speal your hant for all vot it is vort. Make vot you shall--do
vot you is--holt up your het, and shust go right along de same as never
vos. You shall haf limburg, und lager, und pretzels--every dings vot you
vants, at de lowest brice--greenbecks. Grisuses is de brinciples vot
I goes in for! Grisuses is de dings vot makes droubles for de dam
ratticals!

Hans Von Kraut.

Wee gates, Hans. I don't know what "wee gates" is, but I suppose it is
the neat thing to fire the German heart with, in times of "grisus."

Richmond, Feb. 25. We are with you, heart and soul! There are plenty of
railroads leading from the South to Washington, and in your far-sighted
sagacity you long ago put them all into my hands, and under my supreme
control. Blessings on the singular policy which has given the North
only one railway route to Washington! Count on us. Men, money, and
transporation are at your service.

Beauregard.

This is victory itself.

Alaska, Feb. 25. Thermometer at 78 degrees below zero, but Democratic
patriotism at a hundred and sixty above. We are with you! Glorious mass
meeting yesterday. Forwarded full proceedings. Bear ate the messenger.
Ate the proceedings also. Since died, but proceedings and messenger so
mixed up in stomach shall have to send all in a box.

C. Green Iceberg.

Bear steak, masticated messenger, and Democratic resolutions ought to
make a fair enough feast in these hungry times. Proceedings generally
contain "provisions," but this time the provisions contain the
proceedings. The case is peculiar.

St. Thomas, Feb. 25. Hurrah! hur--

[Excuse interruption. Great storm just swept away this portion of the
town.]

Hurrah! hur--

[Excuse interruption again. Earthquake.]

Hurrah! hur--

[Perdition! Volcano let go under the house.]

rah!

In haste.

John Smi--.

John Smith, I suppose. Some new disaster must have interferred with him,
and he could not finish his name. His part of the world has come to an
end maybe. However, with the help of Providence, he got his hurrah
out, anyhow. It is about all that the others have accomplished, so far,
although they took more words to say it in.

Dublin, Ireland, Feb. 25.

God and Liberty! Star Spangled Banner! Erin go Bragh! Greenwhillikins!

America for white men Tempus fugit! Bow-wow-wow!

Down with the revolutionists! Death to demagogues! No slinking! Let
every true patriot show his ear-marks and be known by his voice!

Waw-he! waw-he! waw-he!

George Francis Train.

Now we are safe, since the great Fenian Female Suffrage Ass is going to
bray in our favor.

What with running to Congress to see the impeachment fight, and to the
hotels to hear public opinion about it, and to an occasional reception
to endeavor to forget it all and start fresh again, and meanwhile,
trying to carry on two colds in the head at the same time (which it
cannot be done), I have taken about a week to write this letter. I wish
you would put in dates just wherever you please. Dates are cheap, and
I wish to be liberal. There is nothing mean about me when it comes to
dates.

But was not that old cemetery almost prophetic, in my first paragraph?
Nobody suspected on the 20th what the President was going to do next
day.

MARK TWAIN.

The Chicago Republican, May 19, 1868

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN.

Mark's Sea Voyage to San Francisco--Pleasant Traveling Companions.

Their "Beguilement in the Boat"--

Some of the Worst Jokes Ever Heard.

An Original Charade.

Mark's Lecturing Tour--

May Day Among the Mountains.

VIRGINIA, Nevada, May 1.

AT SEA.

Special Correspondence of the Chicago Republican.

I chartered one of the superb vessels of the Pacific Mail Steamship
Company for a hundred and eighty thousand dollars, and invited several
parties to go along with me, twelve hundred in all. I shall not take so
many next time. The fewer people you take with you, the fewer there are
to grumble. I did not suppose that anyone could find anything to grumble
at in so faultless a ship as ours, but I was mistaken. Very few of our
twelve hundred had ever been so pleasantly circumstanced before, or had
sailed with an abler Captain or a more obliging baggage master, but yet
they grumbled. Such is human-nature. The man who drinks beer at home
always criticizes the champagne, and finds fault with the Burgundy when
he is invited out to dinner.

However, we had fifteen people on board who never growled. From New
York to Hatteras they complimented the bitter cold weather and the heavy
seas, and said they were excellent for the health. When we sighted Cuba
and St. Domingo, and passed into a temperature that grew hourly hotter
from there to the isthmus, till the pitch began to stew out of the spars
and the ice to spoil and smell offensive, they got out their fans, and
fancy summer suits and said they had been perishing to have a taste of
Christian heat again. When we took the railway train and went steaming
and sweating and scorching across the isthmus, through a gloomy
wilderness of tropical vegetation, they ate their luncheon boisterously
and lied and smoked and kept a sharp lookout for monkeys and savages,
and said it was splendid. When we went shopping for the ladies in the
ancient city of Panama, and wandered through the narrow streets for
weary hours without finding any one thing we precisely wanted, they said
it was fun. That is the kind of people to travel with. Both the ladies
and gentlemen of that party persistently refused to be distressed about
anything whatsoever. They looked on the bright side of things, and made
the best of their opportunities. Going out from Panama they stayed
on deck half the night, singing, swapping anecdotes, and going into
ecstacies over the beauty of the vessel's glittering wake, and the long
sinuous serpents of flashing fire that trailed after the sharks and
porpoises frolicking about us. They went ashore, at eventide, at that
curious old Mexican town of Acapulco, and made themselves at home. They
swung in the native hammocks; they supped at the native restaurant; they
joined in a native fandango, and danced to the drumming of a guitar and
the soft warbling of an uncommonly greasy "Greaser" and his sweetheart;
they reverently entered the Cathedral and by reason of the dimness of
the altar candles, mistook a ghastly, bleeding and wounded image of
the Saviour, in a great glass case, for a genuine human being, newly
murdered--and then they were hurrying out again with very irreverent
haste, when the deception was discovered. They bought long ten-cent
strings of fancy sea-shells, and tricked themselves out like Indian
chiefs hanging the shells about their necks rather for the sake of
convenience in carrying them than for show, however. They warily avoided
the bananas, pineapples, oranges, and such things, out of deference to
the deadly Isthmian fevers, but they took kindly to a certain snow white
flower, gifted with an entrancing fragrance and an unpronounceable name.
They bore the clamorings of the dusky Mexican peddler girls, in the
small market place, placidly; and when the ship's guns thundered a
warning at night, they paddled out, well tired and got aboard just about
the same moment the anchor did. For a matter of fourteen to sixteen days
of blistering weather, during this voyage (part of the time without ice)
these people smoked and read by day, and sang and romped by night, and
never wasted a moment in useless complainings. While we had ice they
said: "Who cares how hot the weather gets?" and when the ice gave
out, they said it was a lucky thing, because ice wasn't healthy in the
tropics.

We had one ball on the upper deck, under the awnings, by lantern light.
We did not have what you might call a multitude of dancers, but we had
six hundred admiring spectators. When we reached cool weather again,
within about eight hundred miles of San Francisco four hundred whist
players assembled in the main saloon every night. We had music by the
minstrel troupe occasionally, and religious services every Sunday.

Bad Jokes.

We established a Jokers' Society and fined every member who furnished
an unbearably bad joke.--We tried one man for his life (the Rajah of
Borneo) for building a conundrum of unwarranted atrocity. Mr. Cohen
disliked his trunk, and often spoke angrily of its small size. The
conundrum touched upon this matter:

"Why is one of the passengers, or his trunk, like a certain
geographical, algebraical, geometrical, technical term? Answer--Because
he is a truncated cone (trunk-hated Cohen)."

We hung him. At dinner, one day, in the steamship "Sacramento" on this
side, I said something to my roommate while he was carving a piece of
veal. A member of the Society said,

"Beware--remember the sign in the pilot-house: "No conversation with the
man at the wheel" (weal-veal.) We hung him, also.

One night the first officer brought the tears to many eyes with a
touching story of a shipmate of his, whose leg was bitten off by a
shark. A young lady said, "Oh, how shocking!" A member of the society
said, "Indeed, it was--it was very sharking." He was publicly executed.

A merchant from China told us a story of a tiger that ate up a Chinaman,
and then ate up his bamboo cart. A member observed that it was the first
time that he had ever heard of a tiger dining a la carte. He is no more.

This nonsense reminds me of a circumstance. Once in Washington, during
the winter, Riley a fellow-correspondent, who stayed in the same house
with me, rushed into my room--it was past midnight--and said, "Great
God, what can the matter be! What makes that awful smell?"

I said, "Calm yourself, Mr. Riley. There is no occasion for alarm. You
smell about as usual."

But he said there was no joke about this matter--the house was full of
smoke--he had heard dreadful screams--he recognized the odor of burning
human flesh. We soon found out that he was right. A poor old negro
woman, a servant in the next house, had fallen on the stove and burned
herself so badly that she soon died. It was a sad case, and at breakfast
all spoke gloomily of the disaster, and felt low-spirited. The landlady
even cried, and that depressed us still more. She said:

"Oh, to think of such a fate! She was so good, and so kind and
so faithful. She had worked hard and honestly in that family for
twenty-eight long years, and now she is roasted to death--yes, roasted
to crisp, like so much beef."

In a grave voice and without even the shadow of a smile, Riley said:

"Well done, good and faithful servant!"

It sounded like a benediction, and the landlady never perceived the
joke, but I never came so near choking in my life.

LITERARY DEBAUCH.

The night before the good ship "Sacramento" reached San Francisco,
the Society had a grand reunion and a supper at eleven o'clock, and
according to previous orders, every member came forward and read a short
poem, written especially for the occasion. Between every two readings a
song was sung. Those poems were good, and I copied them for publication,
but I have left them in San Francisco. However, I find my own
contribution in my note book, and I will publish that--partly because I
never wrote a poem before, and partly because I have a sort of an idea
that this is about the best poem that ever was written:

Charade.

My First my darling gave to me When last we met--and parted; Her only
gift it was, and yet It left me broken-hearted. My second shot from out
her eye, When she my first conferred; Lord, how it flamed with irony,
As flames the Phoenix-bird! My third receive at sundry times, Donations
like to mine, From fair and false sweet maidenhood--But duplicates
decline! And each time swear with many an oath. And many an execration
That when they next, With love perplexed Earn similar vexation: They
hope some friend with hob-nailed boot Inclosing an almighty foot (Like
that of grim McPherson) My fourth will launch with dire intent, And
muscles firm, and limb unbent Straight at his august person! In the
grand cathedral's aisle, Where the sun's dimmed glories smile, Down
through pictured windows old, Flashed with crimson, blue and gold, Where
the clustering columns loom Vague and massy, through the gloom--Where,
steeped in slumbers long and deep The mail-clad old Crusaders sleep, My
Whole the sorrowing sinner sees, And humbly seeks on bended knees! The
boon is his! hath passed his lips! Behold! By God's own grace, the
heart so cold--A sad, and torn, and blighted thing--Is swept as by an
angel's wing! Is healed! is cleansed from every stain! Is filled with
life and hope again.

Answer--Sac(k)-ra(y) men-to(e,)--

(Spanish--The Sacrament.)

Where is your Martin Farquhar Tupper now?

HONOR TO WHOM, &C.

My royal room-mate, Captain Cox of the San Francisco department of the
Pacific Mail, was the life and soul of this voyage, and the state dinner
the passengers gave him in San Francisco the night after our arrival,
was a deserved compliment. I do not like to mention names or pay
compliments in print, and I seldom do it; but whenever I think of
that splendid old chief, slaving night and day to make everybody
else comfortable and happy and never once thinking of himself; when I
remember him, in the goodness of his true sailor's heart, nursing the
babies of sea-sick mothers, and doing all he honestly could to keep
those babies right end up when he didn't know how to do it; whenever
I remember him turning out of his bunk at unreasonable hours, of the
swallowing my smoke and coughing and barking, and yet swearing all the
time that tobacco smoke never inconvenienced him; when I remember the
night I fell through on him, and he climbed out to inquire, with earnest
solicitude was I hurt; when I recall his honest attempts to help the
choir out on Sunday mornings with his stormy "Bay of Biscay," which he
sang with strict impartiality to all the church tunes which were
ever started; when I remembered him in all the varied phases and
circumstances of a long sea voyage, and yet can call to mind no moment
when he was not a generous and a willing helper of all in time of
need, and a gentleman in the best sense of the term, I feel half an
inclination to cast my selfish newspaper policy to the winds and pay him
a good hearty compliment in print!

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.

It was good to get back to San Francisco again, with its generous
climate, and its clouded skies--and better than all, its cordial people,
who always shake you by the hand as if they were in solid earnest.

When I had finished the business that brought me home, I lectured
for the mutual benefit of the public and myself. It affords me great
satisfaction to be able to say that there were eighteen hundred people
present, and that sixteen hundred and five of them paid a gold dollar
each to get there. Such is the thirst for reliable information in
California. It is pleasant to have greenbacks in the State, but somehow
it seems pleasanter to handle only gold and silver.

Since then, I have been making a flying trip across the State, and
find myself here, in one of my former homes, ready to go back over the
mountains again tomorrow. They treated me exceedingly well in Carson
(as they always do) and made no attempt whatever to rob me. The people
themselves treated me well, here, but the owners of the theater
charged me four hundred dollars for the privilege of lecturing in their
miserable barn. It was an act of Christian charity to pay it, however,
for they hadn't made enough to pay their gas bills for the previous six
weeks. I love to go around doing good.

MAY DAY--A CONTRAST.

I know exactly how this May-Day looks in the Mississippi Valley. There
are limpid brooks babbling through forests that are splendid with fresh
green foliage; there are grassy nooks here and there, and mysterious
avenues, carpeted with wild flowers, mottled with sunshine and shifting
shadows, garlanded with vines that swing down from the trees and cross
and recross, with many a graceful sweep; avenues that wind in and out
among mossy rocks and hazel thickets, till they are lost in the solemn
depths of the forest; there are scampering squirrels, and the music
of birds; there is a blooming fragrance everywhere, and the softest,
dreamiest summer laziness in the atmosphere! And behold, the May parties
are abroad in a glory of ribbons and fleecy costumes, and the beautiful
Queen of the May, mother, perspires and blushes, and smiles upon her
noisy subjects, and is unspeakably proud and happy.

Here 8,000 feet above the sea is May Day, too, and the wintry wind is
howling, and it is snowing like all possessed. The feathery flakes fall
so thickly that a hundred yards away I see what I know to be men, moving
vaguely through the storm like shapeless blurs upon a fog. The houses
are mere outlines, filled between with slanting rays of falling snow. I
see no grass, no flowers, no trees, no vines. I hear no song of birds, I
breathe no fragrant odors. There is no balmy softness in the air. There
are only rocks, and sand, and sagebrush--a gray barrenness all about,
compassed round with bleak mountains, capped with snow and turbaned with
eternal clouds. It is not Paradise, and yet, to me, this was always a
pleasant place to live in.

You must not think we have no May parties here. I saw one this morning.
A tribe of school-children, dressed in their best, and bearing a
national flag, had gone up the mountain side and perched upon a barren
rock to crown their queen of May and to inaugurate a summer that will
not arrive, alas! according to the almanac. But the biting winds drove
them behind protecting rocky projections, and sported stormily with the
girls' dresses and well-nigh whipped their little flag to ribbons. The
children shivered and blew their fingers to keep them warm, and had
no breath to spare for music in honor of the day. They had chosen high
ground, with innocent vanity, in order that the people might behold
their festivities from the town--but in this the unschooled wisdom of
youth was sadly at fault. For the world of rolling clouds that brooded
upon the summit swung their vast-hinged curtains down, and hid the poor
little picnic utterly from sight.

MARK TWAIN.

The Chicago Republican, May 31, 1868

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN.

The Silver Mines of Nevada--Curious Changes Since 1863.

A More Healthy State of Affairs--Labor vs. Speculation.

How a Superintendent made a Fortune.

A Nevada Execution--Horrible Nonchalance of the Victim.

The Summit of the Sierras--From Flowers to Snow Drifts.

Eight Days from California to Chicago.

CURIOUS CHANGES.

Special Correspondence of the Chicago Republican

VIRGINIA, Nevada, May 2.

I find some changes since I was here last. The little wildcat mines are
abandoned and forgotten, and the happy millionaires I fancy (I used
to be one of them) have wandered penniless to other climes, or have
returned to honest labor for degrading wages. But the majority of the
great silver mines on the Comstock lode are flourishing. True, the
Ophir, that once ranked first, and sold at nearly four thousand dollars
a foot, is not worth two hundred now. The Gould & Curry, that next
became chief, and sold at six thousand three hundred dollars a foot,
is worth fifty less than six hundred now. The Daney, that reached five
hundred, is worth seven dollars and fifty cents now. The Savage, once
worth about three thousand dollars a foot, is worth a hundred and
fifty-three to-day. The Overman, which was worth five hundred once,
sells at a hundred and thirty now. Alpha, once worth fourteen hundred,
is worth eighty-eight now. You will perceive that somebody has been
losing money.

But now we have the other side of the picture. Imperial, which I had
the honor of selling at thirty dollars a share in the days when I was
a wild-cat millionaire, is worth two hundred and forty-five now. Hale
& Norcross, whereof I sold six feet at three hundred dollars a foot, is
worth two thousand, now, and was up to seven thousand during the
winter. Yellow Jacket which I have seen sell at thirty dollars, is worth
fourteen hundred, to-day. Crown Point, which I had no option of, as a
silver mine, in the old times, sells at twenty-two hundred and fifty,
now.

But where are the old familiar "adverse" claims, that used to range all
the way from ten dollars to a thousand a foot in the glorious "flush
times of '63?" Where is the Union? The Rovers? The White and Murphy? The
Shamrock? The Bajazet and Golden Era? The East India? The Moscow? The
Uncle Sam? The Branch Mint? The Ophir Grade? The Zanzibar? The Masonic?
The Mary Ann? The Black Hawk? The Dick Sides? The Irving, which the
spirits superintended for poor old Winn, and spent twenty or thirty
thousand dollars of his hard-earned restaurant money for him, and then
left him out in the cold with a dollar? Where is the Cedar Hill, which
desperadoes were employed to defend night and day with minie rifles from
behind rudely constructed forts and fortifications? Where is the
famous Genessee, which United States Senator Steward and "uncle" Johnny
Atchison bought for so fabulous a sum? Where is the Mexican mine, which
ten thousand dollars a foot in gold coin could not buy in '63, and whose
actual yield of silver was so enormous that common people looked upon
the man who owned two thirds of it as a sort of prince of the House
of Midas? What has become of that wonderful mine, whose name I cannot
recollect, but which was so deftly "salted" with imperfectly melted
half dollars for the especial attraction and capture of McKean Buchanan,
tragedian--and with such brilliant success? Where is the Madison, whose
day and night shift of cut throats used to stand in the dark drifts and
tunnels with bated breath and ears pressed to the damp walls, listening
to the dull thump of pick and crowbar in the subterranean corridors of
the Ophir, ready to receive the miners with murderous assault of knife
and pistol whenever they should cleave through the narrow bulwark of
quartz that separated them? Where are the Golden Gate and the Golden
Age?--those mysterious branches of the great Comstock, so ingeniously
traced to impossible localities by a wealthy gentleman now resident not
very far from Chicago, and who will smile, maybe, and maybe wince, when
his eye falls upon this paragraph. And finally, Oh were is the wonderful
Echo? [Echo, according to ancient usage, simply answers, Where?]

Ah me, not one of these mighty treasuries of virgin silver is ever heard
of now-a days, and many and many a moon has waxed and waned since they
were quoted in the stock board. Except the Mexican mine, they were
essentially and outrageously wild-cat, every one of them! They were not
worth the paper their pictured and beautiful stock was printed on. The
"Union" is dissolved; the "White and Murphy" is dead; the "Rogers" is
departed; the "Shamrock" is forgotten' the "Bajazet" is absorbed' the
"East India"--that astonishing mine which was found right in the middle
of C. street, and which sold at great figures, while at the same time
there was a tunnel running directly under that spot which had never a
sign of a quartz ledge in it! Humbug, thy name is legion, I don't
know what legion is, but it seems to be about the right word for a
conjunction like this. The "Moscow," which used to yield masses of
pure silver as black as a coal, and nests of silver wire that was as
beautiful as the cunningest jeweler could have wrought it, is swallowed
up in the capacious maw of the "Ophir." The "Branch Mint," the "Ophir
Grade," and more than a thousand others I could mention, were never
anything but barren, barren rocks and dirt, and like that curious
production that some lunatic brought here from the East, (the "People's
Gold and Silver Mining Company") are long ago abandoned and forgotten.

In those old days, when we reporters went dangling down a dark shaft at
the end of a crazy rope, with a candle in our teeth, to the depth of
two or three hundred feet, we felt as if we were getting into the very
bowels of the earth. We prowled uncomfortably through muddy, crumbling
drifts, and tunnels, and were happy no more until the man up at the
bullet-hole that showed us a far-off glimpse of blue-sky, wound us up
with his windlass and set us in the cheerful light of the sun again.
But now they send me whizzing down a compactly boarded well, thirteen
hundred feet below the surface of the earth, and deliver me into the
midst of a mighty cavern, timbered up and supported by a dim wilderness
of logs and beams and braces that cross and recross and tower upward
till they fade and vanish in the thick darkness far above my head. I
know that I am buried alive, down, down, down in the remote centre of
the earth and feel the hot crust of hell beneath my feet! A short stay
there is sufficient. I see from whence those great frosted masses of
silver bullion come that I look upon in the mills and assay offices
every day, and then I am satisfied to be sent whizzing upward toward the
earth again by ponderous steam machinery.

I see many, many changes. But most notable is the change from the
bootless, feverish, ruinous speculation in undeveloped mines, to sober,
remunerating labor on veins of great and lasting value. It is the change
from mere speculation to regular, systematic business--and in it lies
a firm future prosperity for Nevada. I hear the stamp-mills thundering,
and I see the carts laden with massive silver bricks--each a load for a
man--and I feel that the Silver Land is safe at last beyond the reach of
those disastrous panics that once threatened utterly to destroy her.

BRIEF MENTION OF A FRIEND.

An acquaintance shook hands with me in such a patronizing manner
yesterday that I am moved to make him the text of a paragraph that will
serve to illustrate what one may term a "state of things." When I first
knew this man he hadn't a cent. He did not put on airs then. Now he is
the superintendent of one of the great silver mines, and has grown rich.
You may not believe that a superintendent can grow absolutely rich in
four years on a salary of from ten to twenty thousand dollars a year,
but such is really the case. Ordinary superintendents are content to
covertly receive a present of a dollar or so from each ton of ore they
sell to a mill man; but my man's ambition soared higher than that. He
took lumber belonging to the great corporation that employed him, and
built a little mill of his own with it. He built that mill below the
company's mill, too, which was wise. Then he took other of the company's
lumber, and built a string of sluice boxes that reached clear from the
company's mill to his own. After that he worked the company's rock in
the company's mill and got sixteen dollars a ton out of it--and turned
the money over to the company--which didn't declare a dividend. Then
he took the "tailings" from that same rock, carried them through his
sluices to his little private mill, worked them over again, and out of
every ton he got thirty dollars! Which money was his own, of course, and
he never gave any of it to the company. Now you can understand how a man
can get rich in four years, on twelve thousand dollars a year, when the
company furnishes him a dwelling house and horses and carriages free.
And this is the moral beggar that shakes hands patronizingly with a
spotless and virtuous newspaper correspondent.

The people used to say it was a shame that the company did not put an
injunction on that little private mill and stop its confiscations.
But the company did not. The company was too much accustomed to queer
taxation by superintendents, perhaps. But at last an offended providence
put an injunction on that mill--sent it in the form of a flood that
washed the mill away. Happily there is no appeal from an injunction when
Providence puts it on. Nevadians will know who I am speaking of.

NOVEL ENTERTAINMENT

But I am tired talking about mines. I saw a man hanged the other day.
John Melanie, of France. He was the first man ever hanged in this city
(or country either), where the first twenty six graves in the cemetery
were those of men who died by shots and stabs.

I never had witnessed an execution before, and did not believe I could
be present at this one without turning away my head at the last moment.
But I did not know what fascination there was about the thing, then.
I only went because I thought I ought to have a lesson, and because
I believed that if ever it would be possible to see a man hanged, and
derive satisfaction from the spectacle, this was the time. For John
Melanie was no common murderer--else he would have gone free. He was a
heartless assassin. A year ago, he secreted himself under the house of a
woman of the town who lived alone, and in the dead watches of the night,
he entered her room, knocked her senseless with a billet of wood as she
slept, and then strangled her with his fingers. He carried off all her
money, her watches, and every article of her wearing apparel, and the
next day, with quiet effrontery, put some crepe on his arm and walked in
her funeral procession.

Afterward he secreted himself under the bed of another woman of the
town, and in the middle of the night was crawling out with a slung-shot
in one hand and a butcher knife in the other, when the woman discovered
him, alarmed the neighborhood with her screams, and he retreated from
the house. Melanie sold dresses and jewelry here and there until some of
the articles were identified as belonging to the murdered courtezan. He
was arrested and then his later intended victim recognized him.

After he was tried and condemned to death, he used to curse and swear at
all who approached him; and he once grossly insulted some young Sisters
of Charity who came to minister kindly to his wants. The morning of
the execution, he joked with the barber, and told him not to cut his
throat--he wanted the distinction of being hanged.

This is the man I wanted to see hung. I joined the appointed physicians,
so that I might be admitted within the charmed circle and be close to
Melanie. Now I never more shall be surprised at anything. That assassin
got out of the closed carriage, and the first thing his eye fell upon
was that awful gallows towering above a great sea of human heads, out
yonder on the hill side and his cheek never blanched, and never a muscle
quivered! He strode firmly away, and skipped gaily up the steps of the
gallows like a happy girl. He looked around upon the people, calmly; he
examined the gallows with a critical eye, and with the pleased curiosity
of a man who sees for the first time a wonder he has often heard of.
He swallowed frequently, but there was no evidence of trepidation about
him--and not the slightest air of braggadocio whatever. He prayed with
the priest, and then drew out an abusive manuscript and read from it
in a clear, strong voice, without a quaver in it. It was a broad, thin
sheet of paper, and he held it apart in front of him as he stood. If
ever his hand trembled in even the slightest degree, it never quivered
that paper. I watched him at that sickening moment when the sheriff was
fitting the noose about his neck, and pushing the knot this way and that
to get it nicely adjusted to the hollow under his ear--and if they
had been measuring Melanie for a shirt, he could not have been more
perfectly serene. I never saw anything like that before. My own suspense
was almost unbearable--my blood was leaping through my veins, and my
thoughts were crowding and trampling upon each other. Twenty moments to
live--fifteen to live--ten to live--five--three--heaven and earth, how
the time galloped!--and yet that man stood there unmoved though he knew
that the sheriff was reaching deliberately for the drop while the black
cap descended over his quiet face!--then down through the hole in the
scaffold the strap-bound figure shot like a dart!--a dreadful shiver
started at the shoulders, violently convulsed the whole body all the way
down, and died away with a tense drawing of the toes downward, like a
doubled fist--and all was over!

I saw it all. I took exact note of every detail, even to Melanie's
considerately helping to fix the leather strap that bound his legs
together and his quiet removal of his slippers--and I never wish to see
it again. I can see that stiff, straight corpse hanging there yet, with
its black pillow-cased head turned rigidly to one side, and the purple
streaks creeping through the hands and driving the fleshy hue of life
before them. Ugh!

UP AMONG THE CLOUDS

I rather dread the trip over the Sierra Nevada tomorrow. Now that you
can come nearly all the way from Sacramento to this city by rail, one
would suppose that the journey is pleasant enough, but it is not. It is
more irksome than it was before--more tiresome on account of your being
obliged to shift from cars to stages and back again every now and then
in the mountains. We used to rattle across all the way by stage, and
never mind it at all, save that we had to ride thirty hours without
stopping.

The other day we left the summer valleys of California in the
morning--left grassy slopes and orchards of cherry, peach and apple in
full bloom--left strawberries and cream and vegetable gardens, and a
mild atmosphere that was heavy with the perfume of flowers; and at noon
we stood seven thousand feet above the sea, with snow banks more than a
hundred feet deep almost within rifle-shot of us. We were at Cisco, the
summit of the Sierras, where for miles the railway trains rush along
under tall wooden sheds, built to protect them from snows and the milder
sort of avalanches. We had been running alongside of perpendicular
snow-banks, whose upper edges were much above the cars. At Cisco the
snow was twenty or thirty feet deep. I said to an old friend who lives
there:

"Good deal of snow here."

"No--there ain't now--but we had considerable during the winter."

"Without meaning any offense, what might you call 'considerable'?"

"Sixty-eight feet on a dead level, and more a falling!"

"Good morning."

"Good morning--stay awhile?"

"Excuse me. My time is limited."

He spoke the truth. And yet he had the hardihood to spend two years
there. Leaving Cisco, they sent us twenty four miles in four-horse
sleighs, around and among the tremendous mountain peaks, grand with
their regalia of storm-clouds. We swept by the company's stables on a
level with their roofs, so deep was the snow.

Taking the advice of people I deemed wiser than myself, I had wrapped
up myself in overcoats, and put on overshoes. But here in the midst of
these snowy wastes the sun flamed out as hot as August, and I had to
take off everything I could. It was a perfect tropical day. I got badly
sunburned, and partly snow-blind, and I sweated more and growled more
than I had in a year before. All this in a four-horse sleigh, in the
midst of snow full twenty feet deep!

All I wish to say is, that I do not despise to go sleighriding in the
summer time. And the next time I have to do such a thing I mean to have
a fan, and some ice cream, and a suit of summer linen along.

The railroad is progressing rapidly. It is promised that those who take
the Overland well along toward July, shall go hence to Chicago in eight
days.

AMEN

I came very near starting overland to Chicago to-day, with the Nevada
delegates to the convention. But I will wait till June. I beg to commend
the California and Nevada delegates to your kind courtesies, however
especially the Nevada one, whose heart is so large that it distends his
body and deceives strangers into the notion that he is corpulent--and
the noisy California one with the cordial manner and the enormous
moustache. They be friends of mine.

MARK TWAIN.

The Chicago Republican, August 23, 1868

LETTER FROM MARK TWAIN.

Immense Emigration to California--The Labor Exchange, and What It Has
Done.

Changes in the Manner of Life in California.

The Panama Railroad--How Americans get up a Revolution on the Isthmus.

Hartford, Conn.--The Paradise of Insurance Mon.

ONE OR TWO CALIFORNIA ITEMS

Special Correspondence of the Chicago Republican.

New York, Aug. 17, 1868

We had a pleasant voyage from California. The travel to and fro has
diminished considerably, for it has its regular seasons, and the season
is over for the present. It will open again in a few months. The exodus
of people from the Atlantic States to California within the past nine
months, has been something surprising. The ships of the Pacific Mail
Company carried 40,000 persons to San Francisco during that time. The
ships of the Opposition Line must have carried about half as many. The
former company dispatches four steamers a month, and the latter company
two. The officers of the ship I came in from the Isthmus said the last
was the lightest passenger trip out ward from New York they had had
for eight months, and yet they had up ward of eight hundred persons on
board. During more months than one, their passenger list reached about
5,000. When I went out in this vessel five months ago, she had 1,200
souls on board, less fifteen. This grand "rush" to California of 60,000
people in nine months provokes little or no remark, now--but was the
"rush" of '49 greater?

Several things contributed toward inaugurating this new flight of the
people westward. California and Oregon suddenly sprang to a considerable
importance as wheat producing States--the brand of the former taking to
itself the chief rank in the Eastern markets and still holding it. Farms
could be purchased at reasonable figures in both States. Both climates
possessed inviting features. The opening of the great China mail line of
steamers, and the rapid advancement being made toward the completion
of the Pacific rail road suggested that broad, new fields of labor,
capital, and enterprise would be thrown open shortly on the Western
seaboard and continue to widen and augment in importance with every
voyage of the steamers and every section added to the railway. There
were contributors; but the chief contributors to the exodus were the
untoward condition of things in the Atlantic States last year, and the
reduction of fares on the California steamers. Just in the midst of the
sorest distress of the winter, when mills and factories were suspending
work and thousands of men were being thrown out of employment just too
late to enjoy the eight hour system and the augmented wages they had
fought so manfully for, the Opposition line and the regular mail line
of California steamers began a system of mutual throat-cutting, in the
matter of freights and fares, which has continued to the present time.
First cabin fares suddenly came down from $400 or $500 to $150--steerage
fares even below $50, often. It was cheaper to spend three weeks at sea
between here and California, than to stay at home. Swarms of men who
were idle, and who saw no prospect of employment in the States, found
California forced upon their attention all at once. There was a
great demand there for workingmen of all descriptions; the wages were
excellent; transportation thither was cheap. Sixty thousand men seized
up on this inviting opportunity to better their fortunes.

The Pacific steamers still carry 3,000 emigrants out of New York every
month, and the prospect is good that the "rush" will begin again with
the opening of the new season--say about February. Has the Pacific coast
found employment for these people? Yes. For every one that asked it. It
can find work for as many more, I think. It need not be supposed that
all these emigrants have remained in California. On the contrary,
probably half the number, or more, have spread themselves abroad over
Oregon, Washington Territory, the British possessions, Alaska, Arizona,
Nevada, Idaho, and Montana, and a few have straggled to Japan and China.
San Francisco was bewildered for awhile. She found herself besieged by
a vast army of unexpected visitors, many of them without a cent, and she
did not know what to do with them. As St. Paul justly remarks, in his
epistle to the Fenians, "Necessity is the mother of invention." The
business men of San Francisco invented the California Labor Exchange. It
proved equal to the emergency. For the past six or seven months it has
found labor and the customary wages for from fifteen hundred to two
thousand immigrants a month--her full share of the immigration. The
others scattered abroad, as I have said. The Labor Exchange not only
found employment for fifty, sixty, or seventy men a day, when I left
San Francisco, the demand upon it for various classes of laborers and
mechanics was greater than the supply. Every "steamer day" (incoming)
its offices were crowded with immigrants. They were sent to work in
mines, mills, factories, on railroads, and in shops. Yet, still there
were orders on the books that could not be filled, as I have just
said. With the present light trips of the steamers (500 passengers) the
Exchange finds its labors exceedingly light, no doubt.

California is a very good State to go to. It is not so speculative a
country as it was, in matters of pure business. It has sobered down
considerably and taken upon itself the steady-going habits of
legitimate trade and commerce. Formerly, to be a Californian was to be a
speculator. A man could not help it. One man tried to be otherwise, but
he was only kicking against fate. While everybody was wild with a spirit
of speculation, and full of plans for making sudden fortunes, he said he
would just farm along quietly, and slowly gain a modest competency, and
so be happy. But his first crop of onions happened to be about the only
onions produced that year. He sold it for a hundred thousand dollars
and retired. People who buy San Francisco lots now cannot help being
speculators, any more than if they bought Chicago lots; but I mean that
wild speculations in candles, rice, mining stocks, and such things, are
not nearly so much in order now as they were formerly. The same remark
will apply to the sister State of Nevada. The bullion yield of the two
States combined, for the present year, will reach $50,000,000, possibly
more. At present prices the California wheat crop for the present year
would sell for about $60,000,000, greenbacks. California wheat is worth
from forty to fifty cents more here, than any other brand, if I read the
market reports aright.

I have been led to write this chapter, from seeing several flings, in
the Eastern papers, at the absurdity of emigrating to the Pacific coast.
In view of the fact that the emigrants were about as badly off here,
as they could well be, and yet were being furnished with work and good
wages as fast as they landed in San Francisco, it seemed to me that the
point of order of the Eastern press was not well taken.

As far as California politics are concerned, I can only say that
everything was promising that the State would go Republican at the
Presidential election.

Mr. Colfax made himself very popular when he was out there a few years
ago, and the fact that he has been so useful an Odd Fellow is something
in his favor in a State where that order flourishes so luxuriantly as
it does in California. Besides, the election of Gov. Haight was not
strictly a Democratic victory. The Republican candidate was very
unpopular, even with his own party, while Mr. Haight stood well with
all.

I wish to talk of this far-off land of California while yet I may. This
is the last opportunity I shall have of speaking of it in that sense,
for by next May, or at least by next July, it will have been hauled over
all the mountains by the locomotives of the Pacific railroad, till it
will be so near Chicago that you can see it with a good spy-glass on a
clear day. And you can visit it in five days then.

A Railroad Mint--What the Legend Says

This item about railroads suggests that wonderful enterprise, the Panama
railroad. We took the train at Panama, clattered for two or three hours
through a tangled wilderness of tropical vegetation, and discharged
ourselves in Aspinwall. It is only forty-five miles. Going and coming,
that little road has carried about 100,000 passengers for the California
steamers during the past twelve months--and charged every soul of them
twenty-five dollars fare. About 70,000 of them paid twenty-five dollars
apiece in gold; the thirty thousand paid twenty-five apiece, also, but
whether it was in gold or greenbacks, I cannot say. One could travel
by rail from New York to Chicago--about 1,100 miles, I think it is--for
less money, when I went over the route last. The road charged them for
extra baggage, too. It charges like smoke for freight, likewise. Ten
cents a pound for ordinary freights, I am told. It does a heavy freight
and passenger business for the French and English lines of steamers in
addition. Its stock stands at a premium of 240 in the New York board. It
is probably the best railroad stock in the world.

It was a hard road to build. The tropical fevers slaughtered the
laborers by wholesale. It is a popular saying, that every railroad
tie from Panama to Aspinwall rests upon a corpse. It ought to be a
substantial road, being so well provided with sleepers--eternal ones and
otherwise. It is claimed that this small railroad enterprise cost the
lives of 10,000 men. It is possible.

I have been told some things which I will jot down here, not vouching
for their truth. The Panama railroad was an American project, in the
first place. Then the English got a commanding interest in it, and it
became an English enterprise. They grew somewhat sick of it, and
it began to swap back until it became American again. The Americans
finished it. It proved a good investment. But the right of way granted
by the Colombian States was limited to only a few years. The Americans
tried to get the term extended. But they were not particularly popular
with the Governments of the Isthmus, and could not succeed. Delegations
of heavy guns were sent down, but they could not prevail. They offered
a few millions of dollars and Government transportation free. President
Mosquiera declined. The English saw an opportunity, now. They made an
effort to secure to themselves the right of way whose term was so soon
to expire. They were popular with the Isthmian chiefs. They made the
Central Governments some valuable presents--gunboats and such things.
They were progressing handsomely. Things looked gloomy for Americans.

Possibly you know that they have a "revolution" in Central America every
time the moon changes. All you have to do is to get out in the street,
in Panama or Aspinwall and give a whoop, and the thing is done. Shout,
down with the Administration! and up with somebody else, and revolution
follows. Nine-tenths of the people break for home, slam the doors
behind them, and get under the bed. The other tenth go and overturn
the Government and banish the officials, from President down to notary
public. Then for the next thirty days they inquire anxiously of all
comers what sort of a stir their little shivaree made in Europe and
America! By that time the next revolution is ready to be touched off,
and out they go.

Very well; two American gentlemen, who were well acquainted with the
Isthmus people and their ways, were commissioned by the Panama Railroad
Company, about the time of the opposition English effort, to go down to
the Isthmus and make a final trial for an extension of the right of way
franchise. Did they take treasure boxes along? Did they take gun boats?
Did they take other royal persuaders of like description? Quite the
contrary. They took down twelve hundred baskets of champagne and a
ship-load of whisky. In three days they had the entire population as
drunk as lords, the President in jail, the National Congress crazy with
delirium tremens, and a gorgeous revolution in full blast! In three more
they were at sea again with the document of an extension of the railroad
franchise to ninety-nine years in their pockets, procured for and
in consideration of the sum of three millions of dollars in coin and
transportation of Isthmian stores and soldiers over the road free of
charge. How's that?

That is the legend. That is as one hears it in idle gossip with steamer
employees, about the ship's decks on lazy moonlight nights at sea. I
don't know whether it is true or not. I don't care, either. I only know
that the American company have got the franchise extended to ninety-nine
years, and that all parties concerned are satisfied and agreeable.

A GENUINE OLD SALT

Anchored in the harbor of Panama we found the Opposition Steamer,
America, in command of Capt. Ned Wakeman, "mariner for forty years." I
made a voyage with him once. It was very late at night, but we borrowed
the Captain's gig and boat's crew and went out and paid the old
gentleman a visit. He was as tempestuous of exterior, as hearty of
manner and as stormy of voice as ever,--and just as good a man as
exists anywhere. His legs, and arms, and back, and breast, were just as
splendid as ever with grand red and blue anchors, and ships and flags,
and goddesses of liberty, done in the perfection of the tattooing art. A
stranger would have thought his ship's crew must be at least a mile away
when he shouted:

"Bear a hand there, men! Stand by to take that painter! Assist the
gentleman up! Glad to see you--glad to see you all, gentlemen! You are
as welcome as the flowers of May!"

We sat down in his private cabin.

"You have been lying up here at anchor a good while, Capt. Wakeman. You
must be getting tired of it."

"Tired of it! It's no name for it, sir--no name for it. Been here six
months sir. Never was so tired of a ship before since I made my first
voyage, sir. Since I made my first voyage. I didn't know what ships was
then. I went down to New York City; never been out of the interior of
the State before. But I wanted to go to sea, you know. I been a reading
all sorts of cussed bosh about sailors, and voyages, and adventures, and
I thought it was be-autiful, don't you see? beautiful! Found some more
boys there from different places, and they wanted to go to sea.
We cruised around the streets awhile, and one day we see an old
gentleman--a venerable, noble looking old Daniel-come-to-judgment he
was,--and when he backed his sails and ranged up alongside and give us
a friendly hail, I knowed that a man with that figure and that voice
couldn't own less than seven churches--I knowed it, sir. He smiled a
smile, he did, that was as lovely as Barnegat light in a storm, and he
put his hand down gently on my head, so, and says as sweet as syrien:

"'Wouldn't you like to go on a beautiful voyage to sea, my son?'

"'Yes, sir,' says I--'we all would.'

"'Ah--noble boys--noble youths. What is your name, my little man?'

"'Edward, sir--Edward Wakeman.'

"'Ah--Edward. Beautiful name. Had a dear brother once by the name of
Edward. Dead now. Oh, God. Where do you come from, Edward?'

"'Come from the interior, sir.'

"'Ah--from the interior, is it? Lovely country--lovely. Had a cherished
nephew born in the interior once. And what is your name, my little man?'

"'Johnny, sir--Johnny Barker.'

"'Ah--Johnny. Touching name. One of the blessed apostles named Johnny.
And where do you come from, Johnny?'

"'Connecticut, sir.'

"'Connecticut, did you say? Ah, happy clime--glorious clime how I have
longed to visit that celestial spot. And what is your name, my little
man?'

"'Augustus William Mayberry, sir!'

"'Augustus William. Stately name--beautiful name. Had a beloved relative
by the name of Augustus William. Tore up in a carding machine. Oh,
God!--And where do you come from, Augustus?'

"'New Hampshire, sir.'

"'Let me embrace you, noble State--banner State of the world. Had a
worshipped uncle hung there once unjustly--unjustly. Well now, Edward
and Johnny--beautiful name--name of blessed disciple and Augustus
William--get your little things ready, and take 'em aboard the 'Polly,'
down at the slip. And get you some nice warm mittens, and some nice warm
socks, to keep your little hands and feet warm when we're going round
the Horn. That's all you'll want. Because when we get up in the Pacific
it'll be all warm and delightful and beautiful, like a Garding of Eden,
clear up to rellums of eternal summer, where the whales are that we're
agoing after.'

"I never felt so happy in my life, sir--never since I was born, sir.
Loved that hoary, venerable old angel as if he was my father, sir. On
board the ship, agoing out of that harbor, he was a feeding us boys on
raisins, and a beaming on us, and a-Johnnying and Augustus-Williaming
us, to that degree that we was intoxicated with happiness, as you might
say. Clear up to the minute the pilot's painter was let go, sir. But
the minute that pilot was gone, and that pilot boat p'inted towards New
York, and the 'Polly' a-scudding for the Equator, he was a different
man! He catched the nigger steward by the top of the head and bounced
him on the deck a couple of times, and says: "You miserable charcoal
hound! Wanted to quit the ship at the last minute, because your family's
sick, did you! I'll learn you, you mangy, lying, thieving, off-spring of
a tar-barrel! Take that, and see how you like it!"

"And he bounced him again. Next he tackled a sailor, and says:

"'You sneaking worthless brute! You want to go shore and buy coffee to
drink because the ship don't furnish it, do you! I'll learn you, you
hog! Smell of that!--and that!--and that! you lubber!

And he caved his head in on three sides with a belaying pin, till it was
the shape of a plug hat that's been through the wars. Then he made just
three jumps aft as high as the yard-arm, and came down a belching fire
and smoke, and a-shaking himself up, and a-sawing his arms around like
he had a thunderstorm tearing him up inside and says:

"'You Connecticut son of a thief! Up to that main truck in a jiffy! You
New Hampshire ashcat! shin up that mizzenm'st! Goin' to stand around
here and suck your thumbs all day? What'd I hire you for, you scum, you
dirt, you vermin! You in-terior son of a skunk! Aloft with you! I'll tar
your legs off and brain you with 'em! Hell and furies, 'pears like a man
can't be master in his own ship!'

"'And from that day out the howling old nor'wester never called us by
no other name but You Connecticut son of a thief! You New Hampshire
ash-cat! You in-terior son of a skunk! Never been so tired of a ship
since, till they pull this America out of commission for six months,
sir!--never, sir,--never in the world, sir. Take my bloody oath of it,
sir. You hear Ned Wakeman, sir."

The old gentleman told his remarkable dream, and about hanging the negro
in the Chincha Islands and about his perilous cruise in a buggy, and
about his voyage to the Monkey Islands, and the entertaining legend of
the rats of Liverpool, and many other pleasant bits of history and then
we bade him goodbye, at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, and rowed away
again.

HARTFORD

I have been about ten days in Hartford, and shall return there before
very long. I think it must be the handsomest city in the Union, in
summer. It is the moneyed center of the State; and one of its capitals,
also, for Connecticut is so law-abiding, and so addicted to law, that
there is not room enough in one city to manufacture all of the articles
they need. Hartford is the place where the insurance companies all live.
They use some of the houses for dwellings. The others are for
insurance offices. So it is easy to see that there is quite a spirit of
speculative enterprise there. Many of the inhabitants have retired
from business, but the others labor along in the old customary way, as
presidents of insurance companies. It is said that a citizen went west
from there once, to be gone a week. He was gone three. A friend said:

"What kept you so long? You must have enjoyed yourself."

"Yes, I did enjoy myself, and that delayed me some but that was not the
worst of it. The people heard there was a Hartford man aboard the train,
and so they stopped me at every station trying to get me to be president
of an insurance company!"

But I suppose it was a lie.

PERSONAL.

I shall be here only a week, yet, before I start out to Cleveland,
Chicago, and St. Louis, to collect my rents, but New York will be my
headquarters all the time anyhow, and therefore I beg permission to say
that all letters addressed to me at the Everett House, Union Square,
will reach me.

MARK TWAIN.



THE GALAXY

THE GALAXY, May 1870

The aged Professor Silliman took the homely-looking specimen of New
Jersey coal, and said he would make a test and determine its quality.
The next day the owners of the grand discovery waited on him again,
eager to hear the verdict which was to make or mar their fortunes. The
Professor said, with that impressive solemnity which always marked his
manner:

"Gentlemen, I understand you to say that this property is situated
upon a hill-top--consequently the situation is prominent. It is
valuable--immensely valuable--though as a coal mine I am obliged to
observe that it is a failure. Fence it in, gentlemen--fence it in, and
hold to it through good and evil fortune till the Last Day; for I am
convinced that it will be the best point from which to view the sublime
spectacle of the final conflagration. I feel satisfied that if any part
of the earth shall remain uninjured after that awful fire, it will be
this coal mine of yours!"

"Just about the close of that long, hard winter," said the Sunday-school
superintendent, "as I was wending toward my duties one brilliant Sabbath
morning, I glanced down toward the levee, and there lay the City of
Hartford!--no mistake about it, there she was, puffing and panting,
after her long pilgrimage through the ice. A glad sight? Well, I should
say so! And then came a pang, right away, because I should have to
instruct empty benches, sure; the youngsters would all be off welcoming
the first steamboat of the season. You can imagine how surprised I was
when I opened the door and saw half the benches full! My gratitude
was free, large, and sincere. I resolved that they should not find me
unappreciative. I said:

"'Boys, you cannot think how proud it makes me to see you here, nor what
renewed assurance it gives me of your affection. I confess that I said
to myself, as I came along and saw that the City of Hartford was in--'

"'No! but is she, though!'

"And, as quick as any flash of lightning, I stood in the presence of
empty benches! I had brought them the news myself."

* * *

A journal has at last been found which excuses the inhumanity of Captain
Eyre. It is the Toronto "Globe." It even says the Oneida ran into the
Bombay--which she doubtless did, if she was on her way to America stern
foremost. There are some natures which never grow large enough to speak
out and say a bad act is a bad act, until they have inquired into the
politics or the nationality of the man who did it. And they are
not really scarce, either. Cain is branded a murder so heartily and
unanimously in America, only because he was neither a Democrat nor a
Republican. The Feejee Islander's abuse of Cain ceased very suddenly
when the white man mentioned casually that Cain was a Feejee Islander.
The next remark of the savage, after an awkward pause, was:

"Well, what did Abel come fooling around there for?"

* * *

It is stated with a show of authority, that diamond engagement rings
are rapidly going out of fashions, and emeralds, opals, or pearls taking
their place. It is an excellent move, and one which should meet with
hearty sympathy. If the idea be followed up faithfully to its extremest
capabilities, matrimony will be brought within the reach of all.

THE GALAXY, JUNE 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

[Higgins]


"Yes, I remember that anecdote," the Sunday school superintendent said,
with the old pathos in his voice and the old say look in his eyes. "It
was about a simple creature named Higgins, that used to haul rock for
old Maltby. When the lamented Judge Bagley tripped and fell down the
court-house stairs and broke his neck, it was a great question how to
break the news to poor Mrs. Bagley. But finally the body was put into
Higgin's wagon and he was instructed to take it to Mrs. B., but to be
very guarded and discreet in his language, and not break the news to her
at once, but do it gradually and gently. When Higgins got there with his
sad freight, he shouted till Mrs. Bagley came to the door. Then he said:

"Does the widder Bagley live here?"

"The widow Bagley? No, Sir!"

"I'll bet she does. But have it your own way. Well, does Judge Bagley
live here?"

"Yes, Judge Bagley lives here."

"I'll bet he don't. But never mind--it ain't for me to contradict. Is
the Judge in?"

"No, not at present."

"I jest expected as much. Because, you know--take hold o' suthin, mum,
for I'm a-a-going to make a little communication, and I reckon maybe
it'll jar you some. There's been an accident, mum. I've got the old
Judge curled up out here n the wagon--and when you see him you'll
acknowledge, yourself, that an inquest is about the only thing that
could be a comfort to him!"

THE GALAXY, JUNE 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

"HOGWASH"

For five years I have preserved the following miracle of pointless
imbecility and bathos, waiting to see if I could find anything in
literature that was worse. But in vain. I have read it forty or fifty
times, altogether, and with a steadily-increasing pleasurable disgust.
I now offer it for competition as the sickliest specimen of sham
sentimentality that exists. I almost always get it out and read it when
I am low-spirited, and it has cheered many and many a sad hour for me--I
will remark in the way of general information, that in California, that
land of felicitous nomenclature, the literary name of this sort of stuff
is "hogwash":

[From the "California Farmer."]

A TOUCHING INCIDENT.

MR. EDITOR--I hand you the following for insertion, if you think it
worthy of publication; it is a picture, though brief, of a living
reality which the writer witnessed, within a little time since, in a
luxurious city:

A beautiful lady sat beneath a verandah overshadowed by clustering
vines; in her lap was a young infant, apparently asleep; the mother sat,
as she supposed, unobserved, and lost in deep meditation. Richly-robed
and surrounded with all the outward appearances of wealth and station,
wife and mistress of a splendid mansion and garden around it, it would
have seemed as if the heart that could claim to be queen here should be
a happy one. Alas! appearances are not always the true guide, for--

That mother sat there like a statue awhile,

When over her face beamed a sad, sad smile;

Then she started and shudder'd as if terrible fears

Were crushing her spirit--then came the hot tears

And the wife and mother, with all that was seemingly joyous around her,
gave herself up to the full sweep of agonizing sorrow. I gazed upon
this picture for a little while only, for my own tears fell freely
and without any control; the lady was so truthful and innocent, to all
outward appearances, that my own deepest sympathies went out instantly
to her and her sorrows.

This is no fancy sketch, but a sad, sad reality. It occurred in the very
heart of our city, and witnessing it with deep sorrow, I asked myself,
how can these things be? But I remember that this small incident may
only be a foreshadowing of some great sorrow deeply hidden in that
mother's aching heart. The Bard of Avon says:

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies,

But in battalions."

I had turned away for a moment to look at some object that attracted my
attention, when looking again, this child of sorrow was drying her eyes
carefully and preparing to leave and go within--

"And there will canker sorrow eat her bud,

And chase the native beauty from her cheek."

THE GALAXY, JUNE 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

A LITERARY "OLD OFFENDER" IN COURT WITH SUSPICIOUS PROPERTY IN HIS
POSSESSION

In last month's MEMORANDA I published a sketch entitled "The Story of
the Good Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper," and closed it with a dreadful
nitro-glycerine explosion which destroyed the boy. He had unwittingly
been sitting on a can of this compound and got his pantaloons greased
with it; and when he got a reproving spank upon that portion of his
system, the catastrophe instantly followed. There was something so
stupendously grotesque about the "situation," that I was filled with
admiration of it, and therefore borrowed it. I say "borrowed" it, for it
was not my invention. I found it drifting about the sea of journalism,
in the shape of a simple statement of the catastrophe in a single
sentence, and attributed to a California paper. I thought, at the time,
that in saying it in the Californian unnecessary pains had been taken,
for such a happy inspiration of extravagance as that could not well
have originated elsewhere. I used it, and stated in a foot-note that
I "borrowed it, without the unknown but most ingenious owner's
permission." I naturally expected that so neat a compliment as that
would resurrect the "ingenious unknown," and bring him to the light of
day. Truly, it did produce a spectre, but not the one I was looking for.
The party thus raised hails from Philadelphia, and in testimony that he
is the "ingenious unknown," he encloses to me a half-column newspaper
article, dated December 22, signed with his name, and being what he says
is the original draft of the nitro-glycerine catastrophe.

The impulse to make pleasant mention of this person's name and give him
the credit he claims, is crippled by the fact that I, or any one else
acquainted with his literary history, would feel obliged to decline to
accept any evidence coming from him, upon any matter, and especially
upon a question of authorship. His simple word is worthless; and
to embellish it with his oath would merely make it picturesque, not
valuable. This person several of us know of our own personal knowledge
to be a poor little purloiner of other men's ideas and handicraft. It
would not be just to call him a literary pirate, for there is a sort
of manliness about flaunting the black flag in the face of a world, and
taking desperate chances against death and dishonor, that gives a sombre
dignity to the pirate's calling but little suggestive of the creeping
and stealthy ways of the smaller kind of literary rogues. But there is
a sort of adventurer whom the police detect by a certain humble look
in their faces, and who, when searched, yield abundance of spools,
handkerchiefs, napkins, spoons, and such things, acquired by them
when the trusting owners left the property openly in their company not
thinking any harm. The police call this kind of adventurer a _____.
However, upon second thought, I will not print the name, for it has
almost too harsh a sound for polite ears; but the Philadelphia person
I have spoken of will probably recognize a long-lost brother in
the description. Anybody capturing the subject of these remarks and
overhauling the catalogue of what he calls his "writings," will find in
it two very good articles of mine, and if the rest were advertised as
"strayed or stolen," they would doubtless be called for by journalists
residing in all the different States of the Union. The effrontery of
this person in appearing before me, through the U.S. mail, and claiming
to have originated an idea, surpasses anything that has come under
my notice lately. I cannot conceive of his being so reckless as to
deliberately try to originate an idea--considering how he is built. He
knows himself that it would rip, and tear, and rend him worse than the
glycerine did the boy.

This sad person purloins all his literary materials, I fancy. And he
spreads his damaged remnants before his customers with as happy an
admiration as if they were bright and fresh from the intellectual loom.
With due modesty I venture the prophecy that some day he will even
ravish a dying speech from some poor fellow, and say with a flourish as
he goes out of the world: "Fellow-citizens, I die innocent."

I do not print this party's name, because, knowing as I do upon what an
exceedingly slender capital of merit, fame, or public invitation, two
or three of the most widely popular lecturers of the day, of both sexes,
got a foothold upon the rostrum, I might thus help to pave the way for
him to transfer the report of somebody's speech from the papers to his
portfolio, and step into the lecture arena upon a sudden and comfortable
income of ten or fifteen thousand dollars a season.

I cannot take this person's evidence. Will the party from whom he
pilfered the nitro-glycerine idea please send me a copy of the paper in
which it first appeared, and with the date of the paper intact? I shall
now soon find out who really invented the exploded boy.

THE GALAXY, JUNE 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

[WIDOW'S LAMENT]

One of the saddest things that ever came under my notice (said the
banker's clerk) was there in Corning, during the war. Dan Murphy
enlisted as a private, and fought very bravely. The boys all liked him,
and when a wound by and by weakened him down till carrying a musket
was too heavy work for him, they clubbed together and fixed him up as a
sutler. He made money then, and sent it always to his wife to bank for
him. She was a washer and ironer, and knew enough by hard experience to
keep money when she got it. She didn't waste a penny. On the contrary,
she began to get miserly as her bank account grew. She grieved to part
with a cent, poor creature, for twice in her hard-working life she had
known what it was to be hungry, cold, friendless, sick, and without a
dollar in the world, and she had a haunting dread of suffering so again.
Well, at last Dan died; and the boys, in testimony of their esteem and
respect for him, telegraphed to Mrs. Murphy to know if she would like to
have him embalmed and sent home, when you know the usual custom was
to dump a poor devil like him into a shallow hole, and then inform his
friends what had become of him. Mrs. Murphy jumped to the conclusion
that it would only cost two or three dollars to embalm her dead husband,
and so she telegraphed "Yes." It was at the "wake" that the bill for
embalming arrived and was presented to the widow. She uttered a wild,
sad wail, that pierced every heart, and said: "Sivinty-foive dollars for
stooffin' Dan, blister their sowls! Did thim diivils suppose I was goin'
to stairt a Museim, that I'd be dalin' in such expinsive curiassities!"

The banker's clerk said there was not a dry eye in the house.

* * *

A curious incident, and one which is perfectly well authenticated, comes
to us in a private letter from the West. A patriarch of eighty-four was
nearing death, and his descendants came from all distances to honor
him with the last homage of affection. He had been blind for several
years--so completely blind that night and noonday were alike to him. But
about half an hour before his death his sight came suddenly back to him.
He was as blithe and happy over it as any child could have been, and
appeared to be only anxious to make the most of every second of time
that was left him wherein to live and enjoy it. He did not waste any
precious moments in speculating upon the wonderful nature of the thing
that had happened to him, but diligently and hungrily looked at this,
that, and the other thing, and luxuriously feasted his famishing vision.
Children and grandchildren were marched in review by the bedside; the
features of favorites were conned eagerly and searchingly; the freckles
on a young girl's face were counted with painstaking interest, and with
an unimpeachable accuracy that filled the veteran with gratified vanity;
and then, while he read some verses in his Testament his sight grew dim
and passed away again, and a few minutes afterward he died. It seems
to be a common thing for long-absent reason and memory to revisit the
brains of the dying, but the return of vision is a rare circumstance
indeed.

* * *

There is something very touching in this news of Lady Franklin's setting
sail, at the age of eighty years, to go half-way round the globe to get
a scrap of Sir John's writing which she has heard is in the possession
of a man who will not deliver it to any hands but hers. Here is a love
which has lasted through forty years of a common lot, then bridged a
grave and lived on through twenty years of grief which only such an
affection is capable of feeling--and still, at this day, widowed and
venerable, is able to mock at the zeal of half the honeymoon-loves in
the world.

THE GALAXY, July 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

THE "TOURNAMENT" IN A.D. 1870

Lately there appeared an item to this effect, and the same went the
customary universal round of the press:

A telegraph station has just been established upon the traditional site
of the Garden of Eden.

As a companion to that, nothing fits so aptly and so perfectly as this:

Brooklyn has revived the knightly tournament of the Middle Ages.

It is hard to tell which is the most startling, the idea of that highest
achievement of human genius and intelligence, the telegraph, prating
away about the practical concerns of the world's daily life in the heart
and home of ancient indolence, ignorance, and savagery, or the idea of
that happiest expression of the brag, vanity, and mock-heroics of our
ancestors, the "tournament," coming out of its grave to flaunt its
tinsel trumpery and perform its "chivalrous"absurdities in the high
noon of the nineteenth century, and under the patronage of a great,
broad-awake city and an advanced civilization.

A "tournament" in Lynchburg is a thing easily within the comprehension
of the average mind; but no commonly gifted person can conceive of such
a spectacle in Brooklyn without straining his powers. Brooklyn is part
and parcel of the city of New York, and there is hardly romance
enough in the entire metropolis to re-supply a Virginia "knight" with
"chivalry," in case he happened to run out of it. Let the reader, calmly
and dispassionately, picture to himself "lists"--in Brooklyn; heralds,
pursuivants, pages, garter king-at-arms--in Brooklyn; the marshalling
of the fantastic hosts of "chivalry" in slashed doublets, velvet trunks,
ruffles, and plumes--in Brooklyn; mounted on omnibus and livery-stable
patriarchs, promoted, and referred to in cold blood as "steeds,"
"destriers," and "chargers," and divested of their friendly, humble
names--these meek old "Jims" and "Bobs" and "Charleys," and renamed
"Mohammed," "Bucephalus," and "Saladin"--in Brooklyn; mounted thus, and
armed with swords and shields and wooden lances, and cased in pasteboard
hauberks, morions, greaves, and gauntlets, and addressed as "Sir" Smith,
and "Sir" Jones, and bearing such titled grandeurs as "The Disinherited
Knight," the "Knight of Shenandoah," the "Knight of the Blue Ridge,"
the "Knight of Maryland," and the "Knight of the Secret Sorrow"--in
Brooklyn; and at the toot of the horn charging fiercely upon a helpless
ring hung on a post, and prodding at it intrepidly with their wooden
sticks, and by and by skewering it and cavorting back to the judges'
stand covered with glory--this in Brooklyn; and each noble success like
this duly and promptly announced by an applauding toot from the herald's
horn, and "the band playing three bars of an old circus tune"--all in
Brooklyn, in broad daylight. And let the reader remember, and also add
to his picture, as follows, to wit: when the show was all over, the
party who had shed the most blood and overturned and hacked to pieces
the most knights, or at least had prodded the most muffin-rings, was
accorded the ancient privilege of naming and crowning the Queen of
Love and Beauty--which naming had in reality been done for him by the
"cut-and dried" process, and long in advance, by a committee of ladies,
but the crowning he did in person, though suffering from loss of blood,
and then was taken to the county hospital on a shutter to have his
wounds dressed--these curious things all occurring in Brooklyn, and no
longer ago than one or two yesterdays. It seems impossible, and yet it
is true.

This was doubtless the first appearance of the "tournament" up here
among the rolling-mills and factories, and will probably be the last.
It will be well to let it retire permanently to the rural districts of
Virginia, where, it is said, the fine mailed and plumed, noble-natured,
maiden-rescuing, wrong redressing, adventure-seeking knight of romance
is accepted and believed in by the peasantry with pleasing simplicity,
while they reject with scorn the plain, unpolished verdict whereby
history exposes him as a braggart, a ruffian, a fantastic vagabond, and
an ignoramus.

All romance aside, what shape would our admiration of the heroes of
Ashby de la Zouch be likely to take, in this practical age, if those
worthies were to rise up and come here and perform again the chivalrous
deeds of that famous passage of arms? Nothing but a New York jury and
the insanity plea could save them from hanging, from the amiable Bois
Guilbert and the pleasant Front-de-Boeuf clear down to the nameless
ruffians that entered the riot with unpictured shields and did their
first murder and acquired their first claim to respect that day. The
doings of the so-called "chivalry" of the Middle Ages were absurd
enough, even when they were brutally and bloodily in earnest, and
when their surroundings of castles and donjons, savage landscapes
and half-savage peoples, were in keeping; but those doings gravely
reproduced with tinsel decorations and mock pageantry, by bucolic
gentlemen with broomstick lances, and with muffin-rings to represent
the foe, and all in the midst of the refinement and dignity of a
carefully-developed modern civilization, is absurdity gone crazy.

Now, for next exhibition, let us have a fine representation of one of
those chivalrous wholesale butcheries and burnings of Jewish women and
children, which the crusading heroes of romance used to indulge in in
their European homes, just before starting to the Holy Land, to
seize and take to their protection the Sepulchre and defend it from
"pollution."

THE GALAXY, July 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

UNBURLESQUABLE THINGS.

There are some things which cannot be burlesqued, for the simple reason
that in themselves they are so extravagant and grotesque that nothing
is left for burlesque to take hold of. For instance, all attempts to
burlesque the "Byron Scandal" were failures because the central feature
of it, incest, was a "situation" so tremendous and so imposing that the
happiest available resources of burlesque seemed tame and cheap in its
presence. Burlesque could invent nothing to transcend incest, except by
enlisting two crimes, neither of which is ever mentioned among women and
children, and one of which is only mentioned in rare books of the law,
and then as "the crime without a name"--a term with a shudder in it!
So the reader never saw the "Byron Scandal" successfully travestied in
print, and he may rest satisfied that he never will.

All attempts to burlesque the monster musical "Peace Jubilee" in Boston
were mournful failures. The ten thousand singers, the prodigious
organ, the hundred anvils, and the artillery accompaniment made up an
unintentional, but complete, symmetrical and enormous burlesque, which
shamed the poor inventions of the sketchers and scribblers who tried
to be funny over it in magazines and newspapers. Even Cruikshank failed
when he tried to pictorially burlesque the English musical extravaganza
which probably furnished Mr. Gilmore with his idea.

There was no burlesquing the "situation" when the French Train, Henri
Rochefort, brayed forth the proclamation that whenever he was arrested
forty thousand ouviers would be there to know the reason why--when,
alas! right on top of it one single humble policeman took him and
marched him off to prison through an atmosphere with never a taint of
garlic in it.

There is no burlesquing the McFarland trial, either as a whole or
piecemeal by selection. Because it was sublimated burlesque itself, in
any way one may look at it. The court gravely tried the prisoner, not
for murder, apparently, but as to his sanity or insanity. His counsel
attempted the intellectual miracle of proving the prisoner's deed to
have been a justifiable homicide by an insane person. The Recorder
charged the jury to--well, there are different opinions as to what the
Recorder wanted them to do, among those who have translated the charge
from the original Greek, though his general idea seemed to be to
scramble first to the support of the prisoner and then to the support of
the law, and then to the prisoner again, and back again to the law,
with a vaguely perceptible desire to help the prisoner a little the most
without making that desire unofficially and ungracefully prominent. To
wind up and put a final polish to the many-sided burlesque, the jury
went out and devoted nearly two hours to trying for his life a man whose
deed would not be accepted as a capital crime by the mass of mankind
even though all the lawyers did their best to prove it such. It is
hardly worth while to mention that the emotional scene in the court
room, following the delivery of the verdict, when women hugged
the prisoner, the jury, the reporters, and even the remorselessly
sentimental Graham, is eminently unburlesquable.


But first and last, the splendid feature of the McFarland comedy was the
insanity part of it. Where the occasion was for dragging in that poor
old threadbare lawyer-trick, is not perceptible, except it was to make
a show of difficulty in winning a verdict that would have won itself
without ever a lawyer to meddle with the case. Heaven knows insanity
was disreputable enough, long ago; but now that the lawyers have got to
cutting every gallows rope and picking every prison lock with it, it is
become a sneaking villainy that ought to hang and keep on hanging its
sudden possessors until evil doers should conclude that the safest plan
was to never claim to have it until they came by it legitimately. The
very calibre of the people the lawyers most frequently try to save by
the insanity subterfuge, ought to laugh the plea out of the courts,
one would think. Anyone who watched the proceedings closely in the
McFarland-Richardson mockery will believe that the insanity plea was a
rather far-fetched compliment to pay the prisoner, inasmuch as one must
first have brains before he can go crazy, and there was surely nothing
in the evidence to show that McFarland had enough of the raw material to
justify him in attempting anything more imposing than a lively form of
idiocy.

Governor Alcorn, of Mississippi, recommends his Legislature to so alter
the laws that as soon as the insanity plea is offered in the case of a
person accused of crime, the case shall be sent up to a high State
court and the insanity part of the matter inquired into and settled
permanently, by itself, before the trial for the crime charged is
touched at all. Anybody but one of this latter-day breed of "lunatics"
on trial for murder will recognize the wisdom of the proposition at a
glance.

There is one other thing which transcends the powers of burlesque, and
that is a Fenian "invasion." First we have the portentous mystery
that precedes it for six months, when all the air is filled with stage
whisperings; when "Councils" meet every night with awful secrecy, and
the membership try to see who can get up first in the morning and
tell the proceedings. Next, the expatriated Nation struggles through
a travail of national squabbles and political splits, and is finally
delivered of a litter of "Governments," and Presidents McThis, and
Generals O'That, of several different complexions, politically speaking;
and straightway the newspapers teem with the new names, and men who were
insignificant and obscure one day find themselves great and famous the
next. Then the several "governments," and presidents, and generals, and
senates get by the ears, and remain so until the customary necessity of
carrying the American city elections with a minority vote comes
around and unites them; then they begin to "sound the tocsin of war"
again--that is to say, in solemn whisperings at dead of night they
secretly plan a Canadian raid, and publish it in the "World" next
morning; they begin to refer significantly to "Ridgway," and we reflect
bodingly that there is no telling how soon that slaughter may be
repeated. Presently the "invasion" begins to take tangible shape; and
as no news travels so freely or so fast as the "secret" doings of the
Fenian Brotherhood, the land is shortly in a tumult of apprehension. The
telegraph announces that "last night, 400 men went north from Utica, but
refused to disclose their destination--were extremely reticent--answered
no questions--were not armed, or in uniform, but it was noticed that
they marched to the depot in military fashion"--and so on. Fifty such
despatches follow each other within two days, evidencing that squads of
locomotive mystery have gone north from a hundred different points and
rendezvoused on the Canadian border--and that, consequently, a horde of
25,000 invaders, at least, is gathered together; and then, hurrah! they
cross the line; hurrah! they meet the enemy; hip, hip, hurrah! a battle
ensues; hip--no, not hip nor hurrah--for the U. S. Marshal and one man
seize the Fenian General-in-Chief on the battle field, in the midst of
his "army," and bowl him off in a carriage and lodge him in a common
jail--and, presto! the illustrious "invasion" is at an end!

The Fenians have not done many things that seemed to call for pictorial
illustration; but their first care has usually been to make a picture of
any performance of theirs that would stand it as soon as possible
after its achievement, and paint everything in it a violent green, and
embellish it with harps and pickaxes, and other emblems of national
grandeur, and print thousands of them in the severe simplicity of
primitive lithography, and hang them above the National Palladium, among
the decanters. Shall we have a nice picture of the battle of Pigeon Hill
and the little accident to the Commander-in Chief?

No, a Fenian "invasion" cannot be burlesqued, because it uses up all the
material itself. It is harmless fun, this annual masquerading toward the
border; but America should not encourage it, for the reason that it may
some time or other succeed in embroiling the country in a war with a
friendly power--and such an event as that would be ill compensated by
the liberation of even so excellent a people as the Down trodden Nation.

THE GALAXY, July 1870

MEMORANDA

BY MARK TWAIN

A DARING ATTEMPT AT A SOLUTION OF IT.

The Fenian invasion failed because George Francis Train was absent.
There was no lack of men, arms, or ammunition, but there was sad need
of Mr. Train's organizing power, his coolness and caution, his
tranquillity, his strong good sense, his modesty and reserve, his
secrecy, his taciturnity and above all his frantic and bloodthirsty
courage. Mr. Train and his retiring and diffident private secretary were
obliged to be absent, though the former must certainly have been lying
at the point of death, else nothing could have kept him from hurrying
to the front, and offering his heart's best blood for the Downtrodden
People he so loves, so worships, so delights to champion. He must have
been in a disabled condition, else nothing could have kept him from
invading Canada at the head of his "children."

And indeed, this modern Samson, solitary and alone, with his formidable
jaw would have been a more troublesome enemy than five times the Fenians
that did invade Canada, because they could be made to retire, but G.F.
would never leave the field while there was an audience before him,
either armed or helpless. The invading Fenians were wisely cautious,
knowing that such of them as were caught would be likely to hang;
but the Champion would have stood in no such danger. There is no law,
military or civil, for hanging persons afflicted in his peculiar way.

He was not present, alas!--save in spirit. He could not and would not
waste so fine an opportunity, though, to send some ecstatic lunacy over
the wires, and so he wound up a ferocious telegram with this:

WITH VENGEANCE STEEPED IN WORMWOOD'S GALL! D--D OLD ENGLAND, SAY WE ALL!

And keep your powder dry.

GEO. FRANCIS TRAIN.

SHERMAN HOUSE,

CHICAGO, NOON, Thursday, May 26.

P.S.--Just arrived and addressed grand Fenian meeting in Fenian Armory,
donating $50.

This person could be made really useful by roosting him on some Hatteras
lighthouse or other prominence where storms prevail, because it takes
so much wind to keep him going that he probably moves in the midst of a
dead calm wherever he travels.

THE GALAXY, July 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

To those parties who have offered to send me curious obituaries, I would
say that I shall be very glad to receive such. A number have already
been sent me. The quaint epitaph business has had a fair share of
attention in all generations, but the village obituaries--those
marvellous combinations of ostentatious sorrow and ghastly "fine
writing"--have been unkindly neglected. Inquirers are informed that the
"Post-mortem Poetry" of last month really came, without alteration,
from the Philadelphia "Ledger." The "Deaths" have long been a prominent
feature in the "Ledger."

Those six or eight persons who have written me from various localities,
inquiring with a deal of anxiety if I am permanently engaged to write
for THE GALAXY, have been surprised, maybe, at the serene way in which
I let the days go by without making any sort of reply. Do they suppose
that I am one of that kind of birds that can be walked up to and
captured by the process of putting salt on its tail? Hardly. These
people want to get me to say Yes, and then stop their magazine. The
subscriber was not fledged yesterday.

THE GALAXY, August 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

A MEMORY.

When I say that I never knew my austere father to be enamored of but one
poem in all the long half century that he lived, persons who knew him
will easily believe me; when I say that I have never composed but one
poem in all the long third of a century that I have lived, persons who
know me will be sincerely grateful; and finally, when I say that the
poem which I composed was not the one which my father was enamored of,
persons who may have known us both will not need to have this truth shot
into them with a mountain howitzer before they can receive it. My father
and I were always on the most distant terms when I was a boy--a sort of
armed neutrality, so to speak. At irregular intervals this neutrality
was broken, and suffering ensued; but I will be candid enough to say
that the breaking and the suffering were always divided up with strict
impartiality between us--which is to say, my father did the breaking,
and I did the suffering. As a general thing I was a backward, cautious,
unadventurous boy; but once I jumped off a two-story stable; another
time I gave an elephant a "plug" of tobacco and retired without waiting
for an answer; and still another time I pretended to be talking in my
sleep, and got off a portion of a very wretched original conundrum
in hearing of my father. Let us not pry into the result; it was of no
consequence to anyone but me.

But the poem I have referred to as attracting my father's attention and
achieving his favor was "Hiawatha." Some man who courted a sudden and
awful death presented him an early copy, and I never lost faith in
my own senses until I saw him sit down and go to reading it in cold
blood--saw him open the book, and heard him read these following lines,
with the same inflectionless judicial frigidity with which he always
read his charge to the jury, or administered an oath to a witness:

Take your bow, O Hiawatha,

Take your arrows, jasper-headed,

Take your war-club, Puggawaugun,

And your mittens, Minjekahwan,

And your birch canoe for sailing,

And the oil of Mishe-Nama.

Presently my father took out of his breast pocket an imposing "Warranty
Deed," and fixed his eyes upon it and dropped into meditation. I knew
what it was. A Texan lady and gentleman had given my half-brother, Orrin
Johnson, a handsome property in a town in the North, in gratitude to him
for having saved their lives by an act of brilliant heroism.

By and by my father looked toward me and sighed. Then he said:

"If I had such a son as this poet, here were a subject worthier than the
traditions of these Indians."

"If you please, sir, where?"

"In this deed."

"In the--deed?"

"Yes--in this very deed," said my father, throwing it on the table.
"There is more poetry, more romance, more sublimity, more splendid
imagery hidden away in that homely document than could be found in all
the traditions of all the savages that live."

"Indeed, sir? Could I--could I get it out, sir? Could I compose the
poem, sir, do you think?"

"You!"

I wilted.

Presently my father's face softened somewhat, and he said:

"Go and try. But mind, curb folly. No poetry at the expense of truth.
Keep strictly to the facts."

I said I would, and bowed myself out, and went upstairs.

"Hiawatha" kept droning in my head--and so did my father's remarks about
the sublimity and romance hidden in my subject, and also his injunction
to beware of wasteful and exuberant fancy. I noticed, just here, that I
had heedlessly brought the deed away with me. Now, at this moment came
to me one of those rare moods of daring recklessness, such as I referred
to a while ago. Without another thought, and in plain defiance of the
fact that I knew my father meant me to write the romantic story of my
half-brother's adventure and subsequent good fortune, I ventured to heed
merely the letter of his remarks and ignore their spirit. I took the
stupid "Warranty Deed" itself and chopped it up into Hiawathian
blank verse, without altering or leaving out three words, and without
transposing six. It required loads of courage to go downstairs and face
my father with my performance. I started three or four times before I
finally got my pluck to where it would stick. But at last I said I would
go down and read it to him if he threw me over the church for it. I
stood up to begin, and he told me to come closer. I edged up a little,
but still left as much neutral ground between us as I thought he would
stand. Then I began. It would be useless for me to try to tell what
conflicting emotions expressed themselves upon his face, nor how they
grew more and more intense as I proceeded; nor how a fell darkness
descended upon his countenance, and he began to gag and swallow, and his
hands began to work and twitch, as I reeled off line after line, with
the strength ebbing out of me, and my legs trembling under me:

THE STORY OF A GALLANT DEED.

THIS INDENTURE, made the tenth Day of November, in the year Of our Lord
one thousand eight Hundred six-and-fifty, Between JOANNA S. E. GRAY And
PHILIP GRAY, her husband, Of Salem City in the State Of Texas, of the
first part, And O. B. Johnson, of the town Of Austin, ditto, WITNESSETH:
That said party of the first part, For and in consideration Of the sum
of Twenty Thousand Dollars, lawful money of The U. S. of Americay, To
them in hand now paid by said Party of the second part, The due receipt
whereof is here By confessed and acknowledged, Have Granted, Bargained,
Sold, Remised, Released and Aliened and Conveyed, Confirmed, and by
these presents do Grant and Bargain, Sell, Remise, Alien, Release,
Convey, and Con--Firm unto the said aforesaid Party of the second part,
And to his heirs and assigns Forever and ever, ALL That certain piece
or parcel of LAND situate in city of Dunkirk, county of Chautauqua, And
likewise furthermore in York State, Bounded and described, to-wit,
As follows, herein, namely: BEGINNING at the distance of A
hundred two-and-forty feet, North-half-east, north-east-by-north,
East-north-east and northerly Of the northerly line of Mulligan street,
On the westerly line of Brannigan street, And running thence due
northerly On Brannigan street 200 feet, Thence at right angles
westerly, North-west-by-west-and-west-half-west, West-and-by-north,
north-west-by-west, About--

I kind of dodged, and the boot-jack broke the looking glass. I could
have waited to see what became of the other missiles if I had wanted to,
but I took no interest in such things.

THE GALAXY, September 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

A ROYAL COMPLIMENT.

The latest report about the Spanish crown is, that it will now be
offered to Prince Alfonso, the second son of the King of Portugal, who
is but five years of age. The Spaniards have hunted through all the
nations of Europe for a King. They tried to get a Portuguese in the
person of Dom Luis, who is an old ex-monarch, they tried to get an
Italian, in the person of Victor Emanuel's young son, the Duke of Genoa;
they tried to get a Spaniard, in the person of Espartero, who is an
octogenarian. Some of them desired a French Bourbon, Montpensier; some
of them a Spanish Bourbon, the Prince of Asturias; some of them an
English prince, one of the sons of Queen Victoria. They have just tried
to get the German Prince Leopold; but they have thought it better to
give him up than take a war along with him. It is a long time since we
first suggested to them to try an American ruler. We can offer them
a large number of able and experienced sovereigns to pick from--men
skilled in statesmanship, versed in the science of government, and
adepts in all the arts of administration--men who could wear the crown
with dignity and rule the kingdom at a reasonable expense. There is not
the least danger of Napoleon threatening them if they take an American
sovereign; in fact, we have no doubt he would be pleased to support such
a candidature. We are unwilling to mention names--though we have a man
in our eye whom we wish they had in theirs.--New York Tribune.

It would be but an ostentation of modesty to permit such a pointed
reference to myself to pass unnoticed. This is the second time that "The
Tribune" (no doubt sincerely looking to the best interests of Spain and
the world at large) has done me the great and unusual honor to propose
me as a fit person to fill the Spanish throne. Why "The Tribune" should
single me out in this way from the midst of a dozen Americans of higher
political prominence, is a problem which I cannot solve. Beyond a
somewhat intimate knowledge of Spanish history and a profound veneration
for its great names and illustrious deeds, I feel that I possess no
merit that should peculiarly recommend me to this royal distinction. I
cannot deny that Spanish history has always been mother's milk to me. I
am proud of every Spanish achievement, from Hernando Cortes's victory
at Thermopylae down to Vasco Nunez de Balboa's discovery of the Atlantic
ocean; and of every splendid Spanish name, from Don Quixote and the Duke
of Wellington down to Don Caesar de Bazan. However, these little
graces of erudition are of small consequence, being more showy than
serviceable.

In case the Spanish sceptre is pressed upon me--and the indications
unquestionably are that it will be--I shall feel it necessary to have
certain things set down and distinctly understood beforehand. For
instance: My salary must be paid quarterly in advance. In these
unsettled times it will not do to trust. If Isabella had adopted this
plan, she would be roosting on her ancestral throne to-day, for the
simple reason that her subjects never could have raised three months of
a royal salary in advance, and of course they could not have discharged
her until they had squared up with her. My salary must be paid in gold;
when greenbacks are fresh in a country, they are too fluctuating. My
salary has got to be put at the ruling market rate; I am not going to
cut under on the trade, and they are not going to trail me a long way
from home and then practise on my ignorance and play me for a royal
North Adams Chinaman, by any means. As I understand it, imported kings
generally get five millions a year and house-rent free. Young George
of Greece gets that. As the revenues only yield two millions, he has to
take the national note for considerable; but even with things in that
sort of shape he is better fixed than he was in Denmark, where he had to
eternally stand up because he had no throne to sit on, and had to give
bail for his board, because a royal apprentice gets no salary there
while he is learning his trade. England is the place for that. Fifty
thousand dollars a year Great Britain pays on each royal child that is
born, and this is increased from year to year as the child becomes more
and more indispensable to his country. Look at Prince Arthur. At first
he only got the usual birth-bounty; but now that he has got so that he
can dance, there is simply no telling what wages he gets.

I should have to stipulate that the Spanish people wash more and
endeavor to get along with less quarantine. Do you know, Spain keeps her
ports fast locked against foreign traffic three-fourths of each year,
because one day she is scared about the cholera, and the next about the
plague, and next the measles, next the hooping cough, the hives, and the
rash? but she does not mind leonine leprosy and elephantiasis any more
than a great and enlightened civilization minds freckles. Soap would
soon remove her anxious distress about foreign distempers. The reason
arable land is so scarce in Spain is because the people squander so
much of it on their persons, and then when they die it is improvidently
buried with them.

I should feel obliged to stipulate that Marshal Serrano be reduced to
the rank of constable, or even roundsman. He is no longer fit to be City
Marshal. A man who refused to be king because he was too old and feeble,
is ill qualified to help sick people to the station-house when they
are armed and their form of delirium tremens is of the exuberant and
demonstrative kind.

I should also require that a force be sent to chase the late Queen
Isabella out of France. Her presence there can work no advantage to
Spain, and she ought to be made to move at once; though, poor thing, she
has been chaste enough heretofore--for a Spanish woman.

I should also require that I am at this moment authoritatively informed
that "The Tribune" did not mean me, after all. Very well, I do not care
two cents.

THE GALAXY, September 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

THE APPROACHING EPIDEMIC.

One calamity to which the death of Mr. Dickens dooms this country has
not awakened the concern to which its gravity entitles it. We refer to
the fact that the nation is to be lectured to death and read to death
all next winter, by Tom, Dick, and Harry, with poor lamented Dickens for
a pretext. All the vagabonds who can spell will afflict the people with
"readings" from Pickwick and Copperfield, and all the insignificants who
have been ennobled by the notice of the great novelist or transfigured
by his smile will make a marketable commodity of it now, and turn the
sacred reminiscence to the practical use of procuring bread and butter.
The lecture rostrums will fairly swarm with these fortunates. Already
the signs of it are perceptible. Behold how the unclean creatures are
wending toward the dead lion and gathering to the feast:

"Reminiscences of Dickens." A lecture. By John Smith, who heard him read
eight times.

"Remembrances of Charles Dickens." A lecture. By John Jones, who saw him
once in a street car and twice in a barber shop.

"Recollections of Mr. Dickens." A lecture. By John Brown, who gained a
wide fame by writing deliriously appreciative critiques and rhapsodies
upon the great author's public readings, and who shook hands with the
great author upon various occasions, and held converse with him several
times.

"Readings from Dickens." By John White, who has the great delineator's
style and manner perfectly, having attended all his readings in this
country and made these things a study, always practising each reading
before retiring, and while it was hot from the great delineator's lips.
Upon this occasion Mr. W. will exhibit the remains of a cigar which he
saw Mr. Dickens smoke. This Relic is kept in a solid silver box made
purposely for it.

"Sights and Sounds of the Great Novelist." A popular lecture. By John
Gray, who waited on his table all the time he was at the Grand Hotel,
New York, and still has in his possession and will exhibit to the
audience a fragment of the Last Piece of Bread which the lamented author
tasted in this country."

"Heart Treasures of Precious Moments with Literature's Departed
Monarch." A lecture. By Miss Serena Amelia Tryphenia McSpadden, who
still wears, and will always wear, a glove upon the hand made sacred by
the clasp of Dickens. Only Death shall remove it.

"Readings from Dickens." By Mrs. J. O'Hooligan Murphy, who washed for
him.

"Familiar Talks with the Great Author." A narrative lecture By John
Thomas, for two weeks his valet in America.

And so forth, and so on. This isn't half the list. The man who has a
"Toothpick once used by Charles Dickens" will have to have a hearing;
and the man who "once rode in an omnibus with Charles Dickens;" and the
lady to whom Charles Dickens "granted the hospitalities of his umbrella
during a storm;" and the person who "possesses a hole which once
belonged in a handkerchief owned by Charles Dickens." Be patient and
long-suffering, good people, for even this does not fill up the measure
of what you must endure next winter. There is no creature in all this
land who has had any personal relations with the late Mr. Dickens,
however slight or trivial, but will shoulder his way to the rostrum and
inflict his testimony upon his helpless countrymen. To some people it is
fatal to be noticed by greatness.

THE GALAXY, September 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

FAVORS FROM CORRESPONDENTS.

An unknown friend in Cleveland sends me a printed paragraph, signed
"Lucretia," and says: "I venture to forward to you the enclosed article
taken from a news correspondence in a New Haven paper, feeling confident
that for gushing tenderness it has never been equalled. Even that
touching Western production which you printed in the June GALAXY by way
of illustrating what Californian journalists term 'hogwash,' is thin
when compared with the unctuous ooze of 'Lucretia.'" The Clevelander has
a correct judgment, as "Lucretia's" paragraph, hereunto appended, will
show:

One lovely morning last week, the pearly gates of heaven were left ajar,
and white-robed angels earthward came, bearing on their snowy pinions a
lovely babe. Silently, to a quiet home nest, where love and peace abide,
the angels came and placed the infant softly on a young mother's arm,
saying in sweet musical strains, "Lady, the Saviour bids you take this
child and nurse it for him." The low-toned music died away as the angels
passed upward to their bright home; but the baby girl sleeps quietly in
her new found home. We wish thee joy, young parents, in thy happiness.

This, if I have been rightly informed, is not the customary method of
acquiring offspring, and for all its seeming plausibility it does not
look to me to be above suspicion. I have lived many years in this world,
and I never knew of an infant being brought to a party by angels,
or other unauthorized agents, but it made more or less talk in the
neighborhood. It may be, Miss Lucretia, that the angels consider New
Haven a more eligible place to raise children in than the realms of
eternal day, and are capable of deliberately transferring infants from
the one locality to the other; but I shall have to get you to excuse me.
I look at it differently. It would be hard to get me to believe such a
thing. And I will tell you why. However, never mind. You know, yourself,
that the thing does not stand to reason. Still, if you were present when
the babe was brought so silently to that quiet home nest, and placed in
that soft manner on the young mother's arm, and if you heard the sweet
musical strains which the messengers made, and could not recognize
the tune, and feel justified in believing that it and likewise the
messengers themselves were of super-sublunary origin, I pass. And so
I leave the question open. But I will say, and do say, that I have not
read anything sweeter than that paragraph for seventy or eighty years.

THE GALAXY, September 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

* * *

Another correspondent writes as follows from New York:

Having read your "Beef Contract" in the May GALAXY with a great deal
of gratification, I showed it to a friend of mine, who after reading
it said he did not believe a word of it, and that he was sure it was
nothing but a pack of lies; that it was a libel on the Government, and
the man who wrote it ought to be prosecuted. I thought this was as good
as the "Contract" itself, and knew it would afford you some amusement.

Yours truly, S.S.G.

That does amuse me, but does not surprise me. It is not possible to
write a burlesque so broad that some innocent will not receive it in
good faith as being a solemn statement of fact. Two of the lamest that
ever were cobbled up by literary shoemakers went the rounds two or three
months ago, and excited the wonder and led captive the faith of many
unprejudiced people. One was a sickly invention about a remote valley
in Arizona where all the lost hair-pins and such odds and ends as had
disappeared from the toilet tables of the world for a generation,
had somehow been mysteriously gathered together; and this poor little
production wound up with a "prophecy" by an Apache squaw to the effect
that "By'm'by heap muchee shake--big town muchee shake all down"; a
"prophecy" which pointed inexorably at San Francisco and was awfully
suggestive of its coming fate. The other shallow invention was one about
some mud- turtle of a Mississippi diving-bell artist finding an ancient
copper canoe, roofed and hermetically sealed, and believed to contain
the remains of De Soto. Now, it could not have marred, but only
symmetrically finished, so feeble an imposture as that, to have added
that De Soto's name was deciphered upon a tombstone which was found
tagging after the sunken canoe by a string. Plenty of people even
believed that story of a South American doctor who had discovered a
method of chopping off people's heads and putting them on again without
discommoding the party of the second part, and who finally got a couple
of heads mixed up and transposed, yet did the fitting of them on so
neatly that even the experimentees themselves thought everything was
right, until each found that his restored head was recalling, believing
in, and searching after moles, scars, and other marks which had never
existed upon his body, and at the same time refusing to remember or
recognize similar marks which had always existed upon the said body.
A "Bogus Proclamation" is a legitimate inspiration of genius, but any
infant can contrive such things as those I have been speaking of. They
really require no more brains than it does to be a "practical joker."
Perhaps it is not risking too much to say that even the innocuous
small reptile they call the "village wag" is able to build such
inventions...Before I end this paragraph and subject, I wish to remark
that maybe the gentleman who said my "Beef Contract" article was a libel
upon the Government was right--though I had certainly always thought
differently about it. I wrote that article in Washington, in November,
1867, during Andrew Johnson's reign. It was suggested by Senator
Stewart's account of a tedious, tiresome, and exasperating search which
he had made through the Land Office and the Treasury Department, among
no end of lofty and supercilious clerks, to find out something which he
ought to have been able to find out at ten minutes' notice. I mislaid
the MS. at the time, and never found it again until last April. It
was not a libel on the Government in 1867. Mr. Stewart still lives to
testify to that.

* * *

From Boston a correspondent writes as follows: "Please make a memorandum
of this drop of comfort which I once heard a child-hating bachelor
offer to his nieces at their FATHER's funeral: 'Remember, children, this
happens only once in your lifetime, and don't cry--it can't possibly
occur again!'"

* * *

From Alabama "A Friend" responds to our call for touching obituaries,
with the following "from an old number of the 'Tuscaloosa Observer.'"
The disease of this sufferer (as per third stanza) will probably never
attack the author of his obituary--and for good and sufficient reasons:

Farewell, thou earthy friend of mine, The messenger was sent, why do we
repine, Why should we grieve and weep In Jesus he fell asleep. Around
his bed his friends did stand, Nursing with a willing hand; Anxiety
great with medical skill, The fever raged he still was ill. His recovery
we prayed but in vain, The disease located on his brain, Death succeeded
human skill, Pulse ceased to beat, death chilled every limb. Death did
not distorture his pale face, How short on earth was his Christian race
With tears flowing from the youth and furrowed face He was consigned
to his last resting, resting place. The lofty oaks spreading branches
Shades the grave of his dear sister Addie and sweet little Frances,
Three children now in Heaven rest, Should parents grieve? Jesus called
and blest.

* * *

A number of answers to the enigma published in the July GALAXY have been
received and filed for future reference. I think one or two have guessed
it, but am not certain. I got up the enigma without any difficulty, but
the effort to find out the true answer to it has proved to be beyond my
strength, thus far.

THE GALAXY, October 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

THE RECEPTION AT THE PRESIDENT'S.

After I had drifted into the White House with the flood tide of humanity
that had been washing steadily up the street for an hour, I obeyed the
orders of the soldier at the door and the policeman within, and banked
my hat and umbrella with a colored man, who gave me a piece of brass
with a number on it and said that that thing would reproduce the
property at any time of the night. I doubted it, but I was on unknown
ground now, and must be content to take a good many chances.

Another person told me to drop in with the crowd and I would come to
the President presently. I joined, and we drifted along till we passed a
certain point, and then we thinned out to double and single file. It was
a right gay scene, and a right stirring and lively one; for the whole
place was brightly lighted, and all down the great hall, as far as one
could see, was a restless and writhing multitude of people, the women
powdered, painted, jewelled, and splendidly upholstered, and many of the
men gilded with the insignia of great naval, military, and ambassadorial
rank. It was bewildering.

Our long line kept drifting along, and by and by we came in sight of
the President and Mrs. Grant. They were standing up shaking hands and
trading civilities with our procession. I grew somewhat at home little
by little, and then I began to feel satisfied and contented. I was
getting to be perfectly alive with interest by the time it came my turn
to talk with the President. I took him by the hand and looked him in the
eye, and said:

"Well, I reckon I see you at last, General. I have said as much as a
thousand times, out in Nevada, that if ever I went home to the States I
would just have the private satisfaction of going and saying to you by
word of mouth that I thought you was considerable of a soldier, anyway.
Now, you know, out there we--"

I turned round and said to the fellow behind me:

"Now, look here, my good friend, how the nation do you suppose I can
talk with any sort of satisfaction, with you crowding me this way? I am
surprised at your manners." He was a modest-looking creature. He said:

"But you see the whole procession's stopped, and they're crowding up on
me."

I said:--

"Some people have got more cheek. Just suggest to the parties behind you
to have some respect for the place they are in and not try to shove in
on a private conversation. What the General and me are talking about
ain't of the least interest to them."

Then I resumed with the President:

"Well, well, well. Now this is fine. This is what I call something like.
Gay? Well, I should say so. And so this is what you call a Presidential
reception. I'm free to say that it just lays over anything that ever
I saw out in the sage-brush. I have been to Governor Nye's Injun
receptions at Honey Lake and Carson City, many and many a time--he
that's Senator Nye now--you know him, of course. I never saw a man in
all my life that Jim Nye didn't know--and not only that, but he could
tell him where he knew him, and all about him, family included, even if
it was forty years ago. Most remarkable man, Jim Nye--remarkable. He can
tell a lie with that purity of accent, and that grace of utterance, and
that convincing emotion--"

I turned again, and said:

"My friend, your conduct surprises me. I have come three thousand miles
to have a word with the President of the United States upon subjects
with which you are not even remotely connected, and by the living
geewhillikins I can't proceed with any sort of satisfaction on account
of your cussed crowding. Will you just please to go a little slow, now,
and not attract so much attention by your strange conduct? If you had
any eyes you could see how the bystanders are staring."

He said:

"But I tell you, sir, it's the people behind. They are just growling and
surging and shoving, and I wish I was in Jericho I do."

I said:

"I wish you was, myself. You might learn some delicacy of feeling in
that ancient seat of civilization, maybe. Drat if you don't need it."

And then I resumed with the President:

"Yes, sir, I've been at receptions before, plenty of them--old Nye's
Injun receptions. But they warn't as starchy as this by considerable. No
great long strings of high-fliers like these galoots here, you know, but
old high-flavored Washoes and Pi-Utes, each one of them as powerful as
a rag-factory on fire. Phew! Those were halcyon days. Yes, indeed,
General; and madam, many and many's the time, out in the wilds of
Nevada, I've been--"

"Perhaps you had better discontinue your remarks till another time, sir,
as the crowd behind you are growing somewhat impatient," the President
said.

"Do you hear that?" I said to the fellow behind me. "I suppose you will
take that hint, anyhow. I tell you he is milder than I would be. If I
was President, I would waltz you people out at the back door if you came
crowding a gentleman this way, that I was holding a private conversation
with."

And then I resumed with the President:

"I think that hint of yours will start them. I never saw people act so.
It is really about all I can do to hold my ground with that mob shoving
up behind. But don't you worry on my account, General--don't give
yourself any uneasiness about me--I can stand it as long as they can.
I've been through this kind of a mill before. Why, as I was just saying
to you, many and many a time, out in the wilds of Nevada, I have been at
Governor Nye's Injun receptions--and between you and me that old man
was a good deal of a Governor, take him all round. I don't know what for
Senator he makes, though I think you'll admit that him and Bill Steward
and Tom Fitch take a bigger average of brains into that Capitol up
yonder, by a hundred and fifty fold, than any other State in America,
according to population. Now that is so. Those three men represent only
twenty or twenty-five thousand people--bless you, the least little bit
of a trifling ward in the city of New York casts two votes to Nevada's
one--and yet those three men haven't their superiors in Congress for
straight-out, simon pure brains and ability. And if you could just have
been at one of old Nye's Injun receptions and seen those savages--not
high-fliers like these, you know, but frowsy old bummers with nothing
in the world on, in the summer time, but an old battered plug hat and
a pair of spectacles--I tell you it was a swell affair, was one of
Governor Nye's early-day receptions. Many and many's the time I have
been to them, and seen him stand up and beam and smile on his children,
as he called them in his motherly way--beam on them by the hour out
of his splendid eyes, and fascinate them with his handsome face, and
comfort them with his persuasive tongue--seen him stand up there and
tell them anecdotes and lies, and quote Watts's hymns to them, until he
just took the war spirit all out of them--and grim chiefs that came two
hundred miles to tax the whites for whole wagon-loads of blankets and
things or make eternal war if they didn't get them he has sent away
bewildered with his inspired mendacity and perfectly satisfied and
enriched with an old hoop skirt or two, a lot of Patent Office reports,
and a few sides of condemned army bacon that they would have to chain up
to a tree when they camped, or the skippers would walk off with them. I
tell you he is a rattling talker. Talk! It's no name for it. He--well,
he is bound to launch straight into close quarters and a heap of trouble
hereafter, of course--we all know that--but you can rest satisfied that
he will take off his hat and put out his hand and introduce himself to
the King of Darkness perfectly easy and comfortable, and let on that
he has seen him some where before; and he will remind him of parties
he used to know, and things that's slipped out of his memory--and he'll
tell him a thousand things that he can't help taking an interest in,
and every now and then he will just gently mix in an anecdote that will
fetch him if there's any laugh in him--he will, indeed--and Jim Nye will
chip in and help cross-question the candidates, and he will just hang
around and hang around and hang around, getting more and more sociable
all the time, and doing this, that, and the other thing in the handiest
sort of way, till he has made himself perfectly indispensable--and then,
the very first thing you know--" I wheeled and said:

"My friend, your conduct grieves me to the heart. A dozen times at least
your unseemly crowding has seriously interfered with the conversation
I am holding with the President, and if the thing occurs again I shall
take my hat and leave the premises."

"I wish to the mischief you would! Where did you come from anyway,
that you've got the unutterable cheek to spread yourself here and keep
fifteen hundred people standing waiting half an hour to shake hands with
the President?"

An officer touched me on the shoulder and said:

"Move along, please; you're annoying the President beyond all patience.
You have blocked the procession, and the people behind you are getting
furious. Come, move along, please."

Rather than have trouble, I moved along. So I had no time to do more
than look back over my shoulder and say: "Yes, sir, and the first thing
they would know, Jim Nye would have that place, and the salary doubled!
I do reckon he is the handiest creature about making the most of his
chances that ever found an all-sufficient substitute for mother's milk
in politics and sin. Now that is the kind of man old Nye is--and in less
than two months he would talk every--But I can't make you hear the rest,
General, without hollering too loud."

THE GALAXY, October 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

GOLDSMITH'S FRIEND ABROAD AGAIN.

NOTE.--No experience is set down in the following letters which had to
be invented. Fancy is not needed to give variety to the history of a
Chinaman's sojourn in America. Plain fact is amply sufficient.

LETTER I.

SHANGHAI, 18--.

DEAR CHING-FOO: It is all settled, and I am to leave my oppressed and
overburdened native land and cross the sea to that noble realm where all
are free and all equal, and none reviled or abused--America! America,
whose precious privilege it is to call herself the Land of the Free and
the Home of the Brave. We and all that are about us here look over the
waves longingly, contrasting the privations of this our birthplace
with the opulent comfort of that happy refuge. We know how America has
welcomed the Germans and the Frenchmen and the stricken and sorrowing
Irish, and we know how she has given them bread and work and liberty,
and how grateful they are. And we know that America stands ready to
welcome all other oppressed peoples and offer her abundance to all that
come, without asking what their nationality is, or their creed or color.
And, without being told it, we know that the foreign sufferers she
has rescued from oppression and starvation are the most eager of her
children to welcome us, because, having suffered themselves, they know
what suffering is, and having been generously succored, they long to
be generous to other unfortunates and thus show that magnanimity is not
wasted upon them.

AH SONG HI.

* * *

LETTER II.

AT SEA, 18--.

DEAR CHING-FOO: We are far away at sea now, on our way to the beautiful
Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. We shall soon be where all men
are alike, and where sorrow is not known. The good American who hired me
to go to his country is to pay me $12 a month, which is immense wages,
you know--twenty times as much as one gets in China. My passage in the
ship is a very large sum--indeed, it is a fortune and this I must pay
myself eventually, but I am allowed ample time to make it good to my
employer in, he advancing it now. For a mere form, I have turned over my
wife, my boy, and my two daughters to my employer's partner for security
for the payment of the ship fare. But my employer says they are in no
danger of being sold, for he knows I will be faithful to him, and that
is the main security.

I thought I would have twelve dollars to begin life with in America, but
the American Consul took two of them for making a certificate that I was
shipped on the steamer. He has no right to do more than charge the ship
two dollars for one certificate for the ship, with the number of her
Chinese passengers set down in it; but he chooses to force a certificate
upon each and every Chinaman and put the two dollars in his pocket. As
1,300 of my countrymen are in this vessel, the Consul received $2,600
for certificates. My employer tells me that the Government at Washington
know of this fraud, and are so bitterly opposed to the existence of
such a wrong that they tried hard to have the extor--the fee, I mean,
legalized by the last Congress;* but as the bill did not pass, the
Consul will have to take the fee dishonestly until next Congress makes
it legitimate. It is a great and good and noble country, and hates all
forms of vice and chicanery.

We are in that part of the vessel always reserved for my countrymen. It
is called the steerage. It is kept for us, my employer says, because it
is not subject to changes of temperature and dangerous drafts of air.
It is only another instance of the loving unselfishness of the Americans
for all unfortunate foreigners. The steerage is a little crowded, and
rather warm and close, but no doubt it is best for us that it should be
so.

Yesterday our people got to quarrelling among themselves, and the
captain turned a volume of hot steam upon a mass of them and scalded
eighty or ninety of them more or less severely. Flakes and ribbons of
skin came off some of them. There was wild shrieking and struggling
while the vapor enveloped the great throngs and so some who were not
scalded got trampled upon and hurt. We do not complain, for my employer
says this is the usual way of quieting disturbances on board the ship,
and that it is done in the cabins among the Americans every day or two.

Congratulate me, Ching-Foo! In ten days more I shall step upon the shore
of America, and be received by her great hearted people; and I shall
straighten myself up and feel that I am a free man among freemen.

AH SONG HI.

*Pacific and Mediterranean steamship bills.--[ED. MEM.]

* * *

LETTER III.

SAN FRANCISCO, 18--

DEAR CHING-FOO: I stepped ashore jubilant! I wanted to dance, shout,
sing, worship the generous Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
But as I walked from the gang-plank a man in a gray uniform* kicked me
violently behind and told me to look out--so my employer translated it.
As I turned, another officer of the same kind struck me with a short
club and also instructed me to look out. I was about to take hold of my
end of the pole which had mine and Hong-Wo's basket and things suspended
from it, when a third officer hit me with his club to signify that I was
to drop it, and then kicked me to signify that he was satisfied with my
promptness. Another person came now, and searched all through our basket
and bundles, emptying everything out on the dirty wharf. Then this
person and another searched us all over. They found a little package of
opium sewed into the artificial part of Hong-Wo's queue, and they took
that, and also they made him prisoner and handed him over to an officer,
who marched him away. They took his luggage, too, because of his crime,
and as our luggage was so mixed together that they could not tell mine
from his, they took it all. When I offered to help divide it, they
kicked me and desired me to look out.

Having now no baggage and no companion, I told my employer that if he
was willing, I would walk about a little and see the city and the
people until he needed me. I did not like to seem disappointed with my
reception in the good land of refuge for the oppressed, and so I looked
and spoke as cheerily as I could. But he said, wait a minute--I must be
vaccinated to prevent my taking the small-pox. I smiled and said I had
already had the small-pox, as he could see by the marks, and so I need
not wait to be "vaccinated," as he called it. But he said it was the
law, and I must be vaccinated anyhow. The doctor would never let me
pass, for the law obliged him to vaccinate all Chinamen and charge them
ten dollars apiece for it, and I might be sure that no doctor who would
be the servant of that law would let a fee slip through his fingers to
accommodate any absurd fool who had seen fit to have the disease in some
other country. And presently the doctor came and did his work and took
my last penny--my ten dollars which were the hard savings of nearly a
year and a half of labor and privation. Ah, if the law-makers had only
known there were plenty of doctors in the city glad of a chance to
vaccinate people for a dollar or two, they would never have put the
price up so high against a poor friendless Irish, or Italian, or Chinese
pauper fleeing to the good land to escape hunger and hard times.

AH SONG HI.

*Policeman.

* * *

LETTER IV.

SAN FRANCISCO, 18--.

DEAR CHING FOO: I have been here about a month now, and am learning a
little of the language every day. My employer was disappointed in the
matter of hiring us out to service on the plantations in the far eastern
portion of this continent. His enterprise was a failure, and so he set
us all free, merely taking measures to secure to himself the repayment
of the passage money which he paid for us. We are to make this good to
him out of the first moneys we earn here. He says it is sixty dollars
apiece.

We were thus set free about two weeks after we reached here. We had been
massed together in some small houses up to that time, waiting. I walked
forth to seek my fortune. I was to begin life a stranger in a strange
land, without a friend, or a penny, or any clothes but those I had on my
back. I had not any advantage on my side in the world--not one, except
good health and the lack of any necessity to waste any time or anxiety
on the watching of my baggage. No, I forget. I reflected that I had one
prodigious advantage over paupers in other lands--I was in America! I
was in the heaven-provided refuge of the oppressed and the forsaken!

Just as that comforting thought passed through my mind, some young men
set a fierce dog on me. I tried to defend myself, but could do nothing.
I retreated to the recess of a closed doorway, and there the dog had me
at his mercy, flying at my throat and face or any part of my body that
presented itself. I shrieked for help, but the young men only jeered and
laughed. Two men in gray uniforms (policemen is their official title)
looked on for a minute and then walked leisurely away. But a man stopped
them and brought them back and told them it was a shame to leave me in
such distress. Then the two policemen beat off the dog with small clubs,
and a comfort it was to be rid of him, though I was just rags and blood
from head to foot. The man who brought the policemen asked the young men
why they abused me in that way, and they said they didn't want any of
his meddling. And they said to him:

"This Ching divil comes till Ameriky to take the bread out o' dacent
intilligent white men's mouths, and whin they try to defind their rights
there's a dale o' fuss made about it."

They began to threaten my benefactor, and as he saw no friendliness in
the faces that had gathered meanwhile, he went on his way. He got many a
curse when he was gone. The policemen now told me I was under arrest and
must go with them. I asked one of them what wrong I had done to anyone
that I should be arrested, and he only struck me with his club and
ordered me to "hold my yop." With a jeering crowd of street boys and
loafers at my heels, I was taken up an alley and into a stone-paved
dungeon which had large cells all down one side of it, with iron gates
to them. I stood up by a desk while a man behind it wrote down certain
things about me on a slate. One of my captors said:

"Enter a charge against this Chinaman of being disorderly and disturbing
the peace."

I attempted to say a word, but he said:

"Silence! Now ye had better go slow, my good fellow. This is two or
three times you've tried to get off some of your d___d insolence. Lip
won't do here. You've got to simmer down, and if you don't take to it
paceable we'll see if we can't make you. Fat's your name?"

"Ah Song Hi."

"Alias what?"

I said I did not understand, and he said what he wanted was my true
name, for he guessed I picked up this one since I stole my last
chickens. They all laughed loudly at that.

Then they searched me. They found nothing, of course. They seemed very
angry and asked who I supposed would "go my bail or pay my fine." When
they explained these things to me, I said I had done nobody any harm,
and why should I need to have bail or pay a fine? Both of them kicked
me and warned me that I would find it to my advantage to try and be
as civil as convenient. I protested that I had not meant anything
disrespectful. Then one of them took me to one side and said:

"Now look here, Johnny, it's no use you playing softy wid us. We mane
business, ye know; and the sooner ye put us on the scent of a V the
asier ye'll save yerself from a dale of trouble. Ye can't get out o'
this for anny less. Who's your frinds?"

I told him I had not a single friend in all the land of America, and
that I was far from home and help, and very poor. And I begged him to
let me go.

He gathered the slack of my blouse collar in his grip and jerked and
shoved and hauled at me across the dungeon, and then unlocking an iron
cell-gate thrust me in with a kick and said:

"Rot there, ye furrin spawn, till ye lairn that there's no room in
America for the likes of ye or your nation."

AH SONG HI.

THE GALAXY, October 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

CURIOUS RELIC FOR SALE.

"For sale, for the benefit of the Fund for the Relief of the Widows and
Orphans of Deceased Firemen, a Curious Ancient Bedouin pipe procured at
the city of Endor in Palestine, and believed to have once belonged to
the justly-renowned Witch of Endor. Parties desiring to examine this
singular relic with a view to purchasing, can do so by calling upon
Daniel S., 119 and 121 William street, New York."

As per advertisement in the "Herald." A curious old relic indeed, as I
had a good personal right to know. In a single instant of time, a long
drawn panorama of sights and scenes in the Holy Land flashed through my
memory--town and grove, desert, camp, and caravan clattering after each
other and disappearing, leaving me with a little of the surprised and
dizzy feeling which I have experienced at sundry times when a long
express train has overtaken me at some quiet curve and gone whizzing,
car by car, around the corner and out of sight. In that prolific instant
I saw again all the country from the Sea of Galilee and Nazareth clear
to Jerusalem, and thence over the hills of Judea and through the Vale of
Sharon to Joppa, down by the ocean. Leaving out unimportant stretches
of country and details of incident, I saw and experienced the following
described matters and things. Immediately three years fell away from my
age, and a vanished time was restored to me--September, 1867. It was
a flaming Oriental day--this one that had come up out of the past and
brought along its actors, its stage-properties, and scenic effects--and
our party had just ridden through the squalid hive of human vermin which
still holds the ancient Biblical name of Endor; I was bringing up the
rear on my grave four-dollar steed, who was about beginning to compose
himself for his usual noon nap. My! only fifteen minutes before how the
black, mangy, nine-tenths naked, ten-tenths filthy, ignorant, bigoted,
besotted, hungry, lazy, malignant, screeching, crowding, struggling,
wailing, begging, cursing, hateful spawn of the original Witch had
swarmed out of the caves in the rocks and the holes and crevices in the
earth, and blocked our horses' way, besieged us, threw themselves in the
animals' path, clung to their manes saddle-furniture, and tails, asking,
beseeching, demanding "bucksheesh! bucksheesh! BUCKSHEESH!" We had
rained small copper Turkish coins among them, as fugitives fling coats
and hats to pursuing wolves, and then had spurred our way through as
they stopped to scramble for the largess. I was fervently thankful when
we had gotten well up on the desolate hillside and outstripped them
and left them jawing and gesticulating in the rear. What a tempest had
seemingly gone roaring and crashing by me and left its dull thunders
pulsing in my ears!

I was in the rear, as I was saying. Our pack-mules and Arabs were far
ahead, and Dan, Jack, Moult, Davis, Denny, Church, and Birch (these
names will do as well as any to represent the boys) were following close
after them. As my horse nodded to rest, I heard a sort of panting behind
me, and turned and saw that a tawny youth from the village had overtaken
me--a true remnant and representative of his ancestress the Witch--a
galvanized scurvy, wrought into the human shape and garnished with
ophthalmia and leprous scars--an airy creature with an invisible
shirt-front that reached below the pit of his stomach, and no other
clothing to speak of except a tobacco pouch, an ammunition-pocket, and
a venerable gun, which was long enough to club any game with that came
within shooting distance but far from efficient as an article of dress.

I thought to myself, "Now this disease with a human heart in it is going
to shoot me." I smiled in derision at the idea of a Bedouin daring to
touch off his great-grandfather's rusty gun and getting his head blown
off for his pains. But then it occurred to me, in simple school-boy
language, "Suppose he should take deliberate aim and 'haul off' and
fetch me with the butt-end of it?" There was wisdom in that view of
it, and I stopped to parley. I found he was only a friendly villain who
wanted a trifle of bucksheesh, and after begging what he could get in
that way, was perfectly willing to trade off everything he had for more.
I believe he would have parted with his last shirt for bucksheesh if he
had had one. He was smoking the "humbliest" pipe I ever saw--a dingy,
funnel-shaped, red-clay thing, streaked and grimed with oil and years of
tobacco, and with all the different kinds of dirt there are, and thirty
per cent of them peculiar and indigenous to Endor and perdition. And
rank? I never smelt anything like it. It withered a cactus that stood
lifting its prickly hands aloft beside the trail. It even woke up my
horse. I said I would take that. It cost me a franc, a Russian kopek, a
brass button, and a slate pencil; and my spendthrift lavishness so
won upon the son of the desert that he passed over his pouch of most
unspeakably villainous tobacco to me as a free gift. What a pipe it was,
to be sure! It had a rude brass-wire cover to it, and a little coarse
iron chain suspended from the bowl, with an iron splinter attached to
loosen up the tobacco and pick your teeth with. The stem looked like the
half of a slender walking-stick with the bark on.

I felt that this pipe had belonged to the original Witch of Endor as
soon as I saw it; and as soon as I smelt it, I knew it. Moreover, I
asked the Arab cub in good English if it was not so, and he answered in
good Arabic that it was. I woke up my horse and went my way, smoking.
And presently I said to myself reflectively, "If there is anything that
could make a man deliberately assault a dying cripple, I reckon maybe
an unexpected whiff from this pipe would do it." I smoked along till
I found I was beginning to lie, and project murder, and steal my own
things out of one pocket and hide them in another; and then I put up
my treasure, took off my spurs and put them under my horse's tail, and
shortly came tearing through our caravan like a hurricane. From that
time forward, going to Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan, Bethany,
Bethlehem, and everywhere, I loafed contentedly in the rear and enjoyed
my infamous pipe and revelled in imaginary villainy. But at the end
of two weeks we turned our faces toward the sea and journeyed over
the Judean hills, and through rocky defiles, and among the scenes that
Samson knew in his youth, and by and by we touched level ground just
at night, and trotted off cheerily over the plain of Sharon. It was
perfectly jolly for three hours, and we whites crowded along together,
close after the chief Arab muleteer (all the pack animals and the other
Arabs were miles in the rear), and we laughed, and chatted, and argued
hotly about Samson, and whether suicide was a sin or not, since Paul
speaks of Samson distinctly as being saved and in heaven. But by and by
the night air, and the duskiness, and the weariness of eight hours in
the saddle, began to tell, and conversation flagged and finally died
out utterly. The squeak-squeaking of the saddles grew very distinct;
occasionally somebody sighed, or started to hum a tune and gave it up;
now and then a horse sneezed. These things only emphasized the solemnity
and the stillness. Everybody got so listless that for once I and my
dreamer found ourselves in the lead. It was a glad, new sensation, and
I longed to keep the place forevermore. Every little stir in the dingy
cavalcade behind made me nervous. Davis and I were riding side by side,
right after the Arab. About 11 o'clock it had become really chilly, and
the dozing boys roused up and began to inquire how far it was to Ramlah
yet, and to demand that the Arab hurry along faster. I gave it up then,
and my heart sank within me, because of course they would come up to
scold the Arab. I knew I had to take the rear again. In my sorrow I
unconsciously took to my pipe, my only comfort. As I touched the match
to it the whole company came lumbering up and crowding my horse's rump
and flanks. A whiff of smoke drifted back over my shoulder, and--

"The suffering Moses!"

"Whew!"

"By George, who opened that graveyard?"

"Boys, that Arab's been swallowing something dead!"

Right away there was a gap behind us. Whiff after whiff sailed airily
back, and each one widened the breach. Within fifteen seconds the
barking, and gasping, and sneezing, and coughing of the boys, and their
angry abuse of the Arab guide, had dwindled to a murmur, and Davis and I
were alone with the leader. Davis did not know what the matter was, and
don't to this day. Occasionally he caught a faint film of the smoke and
fell to scolding at the Arab and wondering how long he had been decaying
in that way. Our boys kept on dropping back further and further, till
at last they were only in hearing, not in sight. And every time they
started gingerly forward to reconnoitre--or shoot the Arab, as they
proposed to do--I let them get within good fair range of my relic (she
would carry seventy yards with wonderful precision), and then wafted
a whiff among them that sent them gasping and strangling to the rear
again. I kept my gun well charged and ready, and twice within the hour
I decoyed the boys right up to my horse's tail, and then with one
malarious blast emptied the saddles, almost. I never heard an Arab
abused so in my life. He really owed his preservation to me, because for
one entire hour I stood between him and certain death. The boys would
have killed him if they could have got by me.

By and by, when the company were far in the rear, I put away my pipe--I
was getting fearfully dry and crisp about the gills and rather blown
with good diligent work--and spurred my animated trance up alongside
the Arab and stopped him and asked for water. He unslung his little
gourd-shaped earthenware jug, and I put it under my moustache and took
a long, glorious, satisfying draught. I was going to scour the mouth of
the jug a little, but I saw that I had brought the whole train together
once more by my delay, and that they were all anxious to drink too--and
would have been long ago if the Arab had not pretended that he was out
of water. So I hastened to pass the vessel to Davis. He took a mouthful,
and never said a word, but climbed off his horse and lay down calmly in
the road. I felt sorry for Davis. It was too late now, though, and Dan
was drinking. Dan got down too, and hunted for a soft place. I thought I
heard Dan say, "That Arab's friends ought to keep him in alcohol or
else take him out and bury him somewhere." All the boys took a drink and
climbed down. It is not well to go into further particulars. Let us draw
the curtain upon this act.

*****

Well, now, to think that after three changing years I should hear from
that curious old relic again, and see Dan advertising it for sale for
the benefit of a benevolent object. Dan is not treating that present
right. I gave that pipe to him for a keepsake. However, he probably
finds that it keeps away custom and interferes with business. It is the
most convincing inanimate object in all this part of the world, perhaps.
Dan and I were room-mates in all that long "Quaker City" voyage, and
whenever I desired to have a little season of privacy I used to fire up
on that pipe and persuade Dan to go out; and he seldom waited to change
his clothes, either. In about a quarter, or from that to three-quarters
of a minute, he would be propping up the smoke-stack on the upper deck
and cursing. I wonder how the faithful old relic is going to sell?

THE GALAXY, October 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

* * *

Aware of the interest we take in obituaries and obituary poetry, unknown
friends send specimens from many States of the Union. But they are
nearly all marred by one glaring defect--they are not bad enough to be
good. No, they drivel along on one dull level of mediocrity, and, like
Mr. Brick Pomeroy's "Saturday Night" sentiment, are simply dreary and
humiliating, instead of wholesomely execrable and exasperating.

* * *

A Boston correspondent writes: "The author of "Johnny Skae's Item"
will doubtless find merit in the enclosed atrocity. I cut it from
a Provincial paper, where it appeared in perfect seriousness, as a
touching tribute to departed worth." The "atrocity" referred to (half a
column of doggerel) comes under the customary verdict--not superhumanly
bad enough to be good; but nothing in literature can surpass the
eloquent paragraph which introduces it, viz.:

LINES

Written on the death--sudden and untimely death of--Cornelius Kickham,
son of John Kickham, Souris West, and nephew of E. Kickham, Esq., of
the same place, on the 25th ult., at the age of nineteen years, in the
humane attempt of rescuing three small children in a cart and a runaway
horse, came in contact with the shaft, which after extreme suffering
for two days, caused his death, during which time, he bore with heroic
resignation to the divine will. May he rest in peace.

Comment here would be sacrilege. "Johnny Skae's Item," referred to
above, was written in San Francisco, by the editor of this MEMORANDA,
six or seven years ago, to burlesque a painfully incoherent style of
local itemizing which prevailed in the papers there at that day. The
above "Lines" were absolutely written and printed in a Provincial paper,
in all seriousness, just as copied above; but we will append "Johnny
Skae's Item," and leave it to the reader to say if he can shut his eyes
and tell which is the burlesque and which isn't:

DISTRESSING ACCIDENT.

--Last evening about six o'clock, as Mr. William Schuyler, an old and
respectable citizen of South Park, was leaving his residence to go down
town, as has been his usual custom for many years, with the exception
only of a short interval in the spring of 1850, during which he was
confined to his bed by injuries received in attempting to stop a runaway
horse by thoughtlessly placing himself directly in its wake and throwing
up his hands and shouting, which, if he had done so even a single moment
sooner, must inevitably have frightened the animal still more instead of
checking its speed, although disastrous enough to himself as it was, and
rendered more melancholy and distressing by some reason of the presence
of his wife's mother, who was there and saw the sad occurrence,
notwithstanding it is at least likely, though not necessarily so, that
she should be reconnoitering in another direction when incidents occur,
not being vivacious and on the lookout, as a general thing, but even the
reverse, as her own mother is said to have stated, who is no more, but
died in the full hope of a glorious resurrection, upwards of three years
ago, aged eighty-six, being a Christian woman and without guile, as it
were, or property, in consequence of the fire of 1849, which destroyed
every solitary thing she had in the world. But such is life. Let us
all take warning by this solemn occurrence, and let us endeavor so to
conduct ourselves that when we come to die we can do it. Let us place
our hands upon our hearts, and say with earnestness and sincerity that
from this day forth we will beware of the intoxicating bowl.

* * *

From Cambridge, N.Y., comes the following: "In your August 'Favors from
Correspondents' occurs an account of the rather unique advent of a baby
into New Haven. After reading 'Lucretia's Paragraph,' I remembered I had
seen nearly the same thing before, only in poetry. As you may not have
seen it, I forward it, together with a rhyming reply."

THE GATES AJAR.

On the occasion of the birth of his first child the poet writes:

One night, as old Saint Peter slept, He left the door of Heaven ajar,
When through a little angel crept And came down with a falling star.
One summer, as the blessed beams Of morn approached, my blushing bride
Awakened from some pleasing dreams And found that angel by her side. God
grant but this, I ask no more, That when he leaves this world of sin,
He'll wing his way to that bright shore And find the door of Heaven
again.

Whereupon Saint Peter, not liking this imputation of carelessness, thus
(by a friend) replies:

ON THE PART OF THE DEFENCE

For eighteen hundred years and more I've kept my door securely tyled;
There has no little angel strayed, No one been missing all the while.
I did not sleep as you supposed, Nor leave the door of Heaven ajar, Nor
has a little angel strayed Nor gone down with a falling star. Go ask
that blushing bride and see If she don't frankly own and say, That when
she found that angel babe, She found it in the good old way. God grant
but this, I ask no more, That should your numbers still enlarge, You
will not do as heretofore, And lay it to old Peter's charge.

* * *

From Missouri a friend furnished the following information upon a matter
which has probably suggested an inquiry in more than one man's mind: "A
venerable and greatly esteemed and respected old patriarch, late of
this vicinity, divulged to me, on his death-bed, the origin of a certain
popular phrase or figure of speech. He said it came about in this wise:
A gentleman was blown up on a Mississippi steamboat, and he went up
in the air about four or four and a half miles, and then, just before
parting into a great variety of fragments, he remarked to a neighbor who
was sailing past on a lower level, 'Say, friend, how is this for high?'"

* * *

From Albany, at the last moment, comes a screed from an old Pennsylvania
paper, which is the gem of all obituary poetry unearthed thus far. It is
reserved for the present--it will not spoil.

____

Some other favors have been received from corespondents in various
States, and are reserved for a future number of the magazine.

THE GALAXY, NOVEMBER 1870

MARK TWAIN'S MAP OF PARIS.

I published my "Map of the Fortifications of Paris" in my own paper a
fortnight ago, but am obliged to reproduce it in THE GALAXY, to satisfy
the extraordinary demand for it which has arisen in military circles
throughout the country. General Grant's outspoken commendation
originated this demand, and General Sherman's fervent endorsement added
fuel to it. The result is that tons of these maps have been fed to the
suffering soldiers of our land, but without avail. They hunger still. We
will cast THE GALAXY into the breach and stand by and await the effect.

The next Atlantic mail will doubtless bring news of a European frenzy
for the map. It is reasonable to expect that the siege of Paris will be
suspended till a German translation of it can be forwarded (it is now in
preparation), and that the defence of Paris will likewise be suspended
to await the reception of the French translation (now progressing under
my own hands, and likely to be unique). King William's high praise of
the map and Napoleon's frank enthusiasm concerning its execution will
ensure its prompt adoption in Europe as the only authoritative and
legitimate exposition of the present military situation. It is plain
that if the Prussians cannot get into Paris with the facilities afforded
by this production of mine they ought to deliver the enterprise into
abler hands.

Strangers to me keep insisting that this map does not "explain itself."
One person came to me with bloodshot eyes and an harassed look about
him, and shook the map in my face and said he believed I was some new
kind of idiot. I have been bused a good deal by other quick-tempered
people like him, who came with similar complaints. Now, therefore, I
yield willingly, and for the information of the ignorant will briefly
explain the present military situation as illustrated by the map. Part
of the Prussian forces, under Prince Frederick William, are now boarding
at the "farm-house" in the margin of the map. There is nothing between
them and Vincennes but a rail fence in bad repair. Any corporal can see
at a glance that they have only to burn it, pull it down, crawl under,
climb over, or walk around it, just as the commander-in-chief shall
elect. Another portion of the Prussian forces are at Podunk, under Von
Moltke. They have nothing to do but float down the river Seine on a
raft and scale the walls of Paris. Let the worshippers of that overrated
soldier believe in him still, and abide the result--for me, I do not
believe he will ever think of a raft. At Omaha and the High Bridge are
vast masses of Prussian infantry, and it is only fair to say that they
are likely to stay there, as that figure of a window-sash between them
stands for a brewery. Away up out of sight over the top of the map is
the fleet of the Prussian navy, ready at any moment to come cavorting
down the Erie Canal (unless some new iniquity of an unprincipled
Legislature shall put up the tolls and so render it cheaper to walk).
To me it looks as if Paris is in a singularly close place. She never was
situated before as she is in this map.

MARK TWAIN.

* * *

TO THE READER.

The accompanying map explains itself.

The idea of this map is not original with me, but is borrowed from the
"Tribune" and the other great metropolitan journals.

I claim no other merit for this production (if I may so call it) than
that it is accurate. The main blemish of the city-paper maps of which it
is an imitation, is, that in them more attention seems paid to artistic
picturesqueness than geographical reliability.

Inasmuch as this is the first time I ever tried to draft and engrave a
map, or attempt anything in the line of art at all, the commendations
the work has received and the admiration it has excited among the
people, have been very grateful to my feelings. And it is touching to
reflect that by far the most enthusiastic of these praises have come
from people who know nothing at all about art.

By an unimportant oversight I have engraved the map so that it reads
wrong end first, except to left-handed people. I forgot that in order
to make it right in print it should be drawn and engraved upside down.
However, let the student who desires to contemplate the map stand on his
head or hold it before her looking-glass. That will bring it right.

The reader will comprehend at a glance that that piece of river with the
"High Bridge" over it got left out to one side by reason of a slip of
the engraving-tool, which rendered it necessary to change the entire
course of the river Rhine or else spoil the map. After having spent two
days in digging and gouging at the map, I would have changed the course
of the Atlantic ocean before I would have lost so much work.

I never had so much trouble with anything in my life as I did with this
map. I had heaps of little fortifications scattered all around Paris, at
first, but every now and then my instruments would slip and fetch away
whole miles of batteries and leave the vicinity as clean as if the
Prussians had been there.

The reader will find it well to frame this map for future reference,
so that it may aid in extending popular intelligence and dispelling the
wide-spread ignorance of the day.

MARK TWAIN.

OFFICIAL COMMENDATIONS.

It is the only map of the kind I ever saw.

U. S. GRANT.

____

It places the situation in an entirely new light.

BISMARCK.

* * *

I cannot look upon it without shedding tears.

BRIGHAM YOUNG.

* * *

It is very nice, large print.

NAPOLEON.

* * *

My wife was for years afflicted with freckles, and though everything was
done for her relief that could be done, all was in vain. But, sir,
since her first glance at your map, they have entirely left her. She has
nothing but convulsions now.

J. SMITH.

* * *

If I had had this map I could have got out of Metz without any trouble.

BAZAINE.

* * *

I have seen a great many maps in my time, but none that this one reminds
me of.

TROCHU.

* * *

It is but fair to say that in some respects it is a truly remarkable
map.

W. T. SHERMAN.

* * *

I said to my son Frederick William, "If you could only make a map like
that, I would be perfectly willing to see you die--even anxious."

WILLIAM III

THE GALAXY, November 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

GOLDSMITH'S FRIEND ABROAD AGAIN.

[Continued.]

[Note.--No experience is set down in the following letters which had to
be invented. Fancy is not needed to give variety to a Chinaman's sojourn
in America. Plain fact is amply sufficient.]

LETTER V.

SAN FRANCISCO, 18--,

DEAR CHING-FOO: You will remember that I had just been thrust violently
into a cell in the city prison when I wrote last. I stumbled and fell on
someone. I got a blow and a curse; and on top of these a kick or two
and a shove. In a second or two it was plain that I was in a nest of
prisoners and was being "passed around"--for the instant I was knocked
out of the way of one I fell on the head or heels of another and
was promptly ejected, only to land on a third prisoner and get a new
contribution of kicks and curses and a new destination. I brought up at
last in an unoccupied corner, very much battered and bruised and
sore, but glad enough to be let alone for a little while. I was on the
flag-stones, for there was no furniture in the den except a long, broad
board, or combination of boards, like a barn door, and this bed was
accommodating five or six persons, and that was its full capacity. They
lay stretched side by side, snoring--when not fighting. One end of the
board was four inches higher than the other, and so the slant answered
for a pillow. There were no blankets, and the night was a little chilly;
the nights are always a little chilly in San Francisco, though never
severely cold. The board was a deal more comfortable than the stones,
and occasionally some flag-stone plebeian like me would try to creep to
a place on it; and then the aristocrats would hammer him good and make
him think a flag pavement was a nice enough place after all.

I lay quiet in my corner, stroking my bruises and listening to the
revelations the prisoners made to each other--and to me--for some that
were near me talked to me a good deal. I had long had an idea that
Americans, being free, had no need of prisons, which are a contrivance
of despots for keeping restless patriots out of mischief. So I was
considerably surprised to find out my mistake.

Ours was a big general cell, it seemed, for the temporary accommodation
of all comers whose crimes were trifling. Among us there were two
Americans, two "Greasers" (Mexicans), a Frenchman, a German, four
Irishmen, a Chilenean (and, in the next cell, only separated from us
by a grating, two women), all drunk, and all more or less noisy; and
as night fell and advanced, they grew more and more discontented and
disorderly, occasionally shaking the prison bars and glaring through
them at the slowly pacing officer, and cursing him with all their
hearts. The two women were nearly middle-aged, and they had only had
enough liquor to stimulate instead of stupefy them. Consequently they
would fondle and kiss each other for some minutes, and then fall to
fighting and keep it up till they were just two grotesque tangles of
rags and blood and tumbled hair. Then they would rest awhile, and pant
and swear. While they were affectionate they always spoke of each other
as "ladies," but while they were fighting "strumpet" was the mildest
name they could think of--and they could only make that do by tacking
some sounding profanity to it. In their last fight, which was toward
midnight, one of them bit off the other's finger, and then the officer
interfered and put the "Greaser" into the "dark cell" to answer for
it--because the woman that did it laid it on him, and the other woman
did not deny it because, as she said afterward, she "wanted another
crack at the huzzy when her finger quit hurting," and so she did not
want her removed. By this time those two women had mutilated each
other's clothes to that extent that there was not sufficient left to
cover their nakedness. I found that one of these creatures had spent
nine years in the county jail, and that the other one had spent about
four or five years in the same place. They had done it from choice. As
soon as they were discharged from captivity they would go straight
and get drunk, and then steal some trifling thing while an officer was
observing them. That would entitle them to another two months in jail,
and there they would occupy clean, airy apartments, and have good food
in plenty, and being at no expense at all, they could make shirts
for the clothiers at half a dollar apiece and thus keep themselves in
smoking tobacco and such other luxuries as they wanted. When the two
months were up, they would go just as straight as they could walk to
Mother Leonard's and get drunk; and from there to Kearney street and
steal something; and thence to this city prison, and next day back to
the old quarters in the county jail again. One of them had really kept
this up for nine years and the other four or five, and both said they
meant to end their days in that prison.* Finally, both these creatures
fell upon me while I was dozing with my head against their grating, and
battered me considerably, because they discovered that I was a Chinaman,
and they said I was "a bloody interlopin' loafer come from the divil's
own country to take the bread out of dacent people's mouths and put down
the wages for work whin it was all a Christian could do to kape body and
sowl together as it was." "Loafer" means one who will not work.

AH SONG HI.

* The former of the two did.--[ED. MEM.

* * *

LETTER VI.

SAN FRANCISCO, 18--.

DEAR CHING-FOO: To continue--the two women became reconciled to each
other again through the common bond of interest and sympathy created
between them by pounding me in partnership, and when they had finished
me they fell to embracing each other again and swearing more eternal
affection like that which had subsisted between them all the evening,
barring occasional interruptions. They agreed to swear the finger-biting
on the Greaser in open court, and get him sent to the penitentiary for
the crime of mayhem.

Another of our company was a boy of fourteen who had been watched for
some time by officers and teachers, and repeatedly detected in enticing
young girls from the public schools to the lodgings of gentlemen down
town. He had been furnished with lures in the form of pictures and books
of a peculiar kind, and these he had distributed among his clients.
There were likenesses of fifteen of these young girls on exhibition
(only to prominent citizens and persons in authority, it was said,
though most people came to get a sight) at the police headquarters, but
no punishment at all was to be inflicted on the poor little misses. The
boy was afterward sent into captivity at the House of Correction for
some months, and there was a strong disposition to punish the gentlemen
who had employed the boy to entice the girls, but as that could not
be done without making public the names of those gentlemen and thus
injuring them socially, the idea was finally given up.

There was also in our cell that night a photographer (a kind of artist
who makes likenesses of people with a machine), who had been for some
time patching the pictured heads of well known and respectable young
ladies to the nude, pictured bodies of another class of women; then from
this patched creation he would make photographs and sell them privately
at high prices to rowdies and blackguards, averring that these, the best
young ladies of the city, had hired him to take their likenesses in that
unclad condition. What a lecture the police judge read that photographer
when he was convicted! He told him his crime was little less than
an outrage. He abused that photographer till he almost made him sink
through the floor, and then he fined him a hundred dollars. And he told
him he might consider himself lucky that he didn't fine him a hundred
and twenty-five dollars. They are awfully severe on crime here.

About two or two and a half hours after midnight, of that first
experience of mine in the city prison, such of us as were dozing were
awakened by a noise of beating and dragging and groaning, and in a
little while a man was pushed into our den with a "There, d__n you, soak
there a spell!"--and then the gate was closed and the officers went away
again. The man who was thrust among us fell limp and helpless by the
grating, but as nobody could reach him with a kick without the trouble
of hitching along toward him or getting fairly up to deliver it, our
people only grumbled at him, and cursed him, and called him insulting
names--for misery and hardship do not make their victims gentle
or charitable toward each other. But as he neither tried humbly to
conciliate our people nor swore back at them, his unnatural conduct
created surprise, and several of the party crawled to him where he lay
in the dim light that came through the grating, and examined into his
case. His head was very bloody and his wits were gone. After about an
hour, he sat up and stared around; then his eyes grew more natural and
he began to tell how that he was going along with a bag on his shoulder
and a brace of policemen ordered him to stop, which he did not do--was
chased and caught, beaten ferociously about the head on the way to the
prison and after arrival there, and finally thrown into our den like a
dog. And in a few seconds he sank down again and grew flighty of speech.
One of our people was at last penetrated with something vaguely akin
to compassion, maybe, for he looked out through the gratings at the
guardian officer pacing to and fro, and said: "Say, Mickey, this
shrimp's goin' to die."

"Stop your noise!" was all the answer he got. But presently our man
tried it again. He drew himself to the gratings, grasping them with his
hands, and looking out through them, sat waiting till the officer was
passing once more, and then said:

"Sweetness, you'd better mind your eye, now, because you beats have
killed this cuss. You've busted his head and he'll pass in his checks
before sun-up. You better go for a doctor, now, you bet you had."

The officer delivered a sudden rap on our man's knuckles with his club,
that sent him scampering and howling among the sleeping forms on the
flag-stones, and an answering burst of laughter came from the half dozen
policemen idling about the railed desk in the middle of the dungeon.

But there was a putting of heads together out there presently, and a
conversing in low voices, which seemed to show that our man's talk had
made an impression; and presently an officer went away in a hurry,
and shortly came back with a person who entered our cell and felt the
bruised man's pulse and threw the glare of a lantern on his drawn face,
striped with blood, and his glassy eyes, fixed and vacant. The doctor
examined the man's broken head also, and presently said:

"If you'd called me an hour ago I might have saved this man, maybe--too
late now."

Then he walked out into the dungeon and the officers surrounded him,
and they kept up a low and earnest buzzing of conversation for fifteen
minutes, I should think, and then the doctor took his departure from the
prison. Several of the officers now came in and worked a little with the
wounded man, but toward daylight he died.

It was the longest, longest night! And when the daylight came filtering
reluctantly into the dungeon at last, it was the grayest, dreariest,
saddest daylight! And yet, when an officer by and by turned off the
sickly yellow gas flame, and immediately the gray of dawn became fresh
and white, there was a lifting of my spirits that acknowledged and
believed that the night was gone, and straightway I fell to stretching
my sore limbs, and looking about me with a grateful sense of relief and
a returning interest in life. About me lay evidences that what seemed
now a feverish dream and a nightmare was the memory of a reality
instead. For on the boards lay four frowsy, ragged, bearded vagabonds,
snoring--one turned end-for-end and resting an unclean foot, in a ruined
stocking, on the hairy breast of a neighbor; the young boy was uneasy,
and lay moaning in his sleep; other forms lay half revealed and half
concealed about the floor; in the furthest corner the gray light fell
upon a sheet, whose elevations and depressions indicated the places of
the dead man's face and feet and folded hands; and through the dividing
bars one could discern the almost nude forms of the two exiles from the
county jail twined together in a drunken embrace, and sodden with sleep.

By and by all the animals in all the cages awoke, and stretched
themselves, and exchanged a few cuffs and curses, and then began to
clamor for breakfast. Breakfast was brought in at last--bread and
beefsteak on tin plates, and black coffee in tin cups, and no grabbing
allowed. And after several dreary hours of waiting, after this, we
were all marched out into the dungeon and joined there by all manner of
vagrants and vagabonds, of all shades and colors and nationalities,
from the other cells and cages of the place; and pretty soon our whole
menagerie was marched up stairs and locked fast behind a high railing
in a dirty room with a dirty audience in it. And this audience stared at
us, and at a man seated on high behind what they call a pulpit in this
country and at some clerks and other officials seated below him--and
waited. This was the police court.

The court opened. Pretty soon I was compelled to notice that a culprit's
nationality made for or against him in this court. Overwhelming proofs
were necessary to convict an Irishman of crime, and even then his
punishment amounted to little; Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Italians had
strict and unprejudiced justice meted out to them, in exact accordance
with the evidence; negroes were promptly punished, when there was the
slightest preponderance of testimony against them; but Chinamen were
punished always, apparently. Now this gave me some uneasiness,
I confess. I knew that this state of things must of necessity be
accidental, because in this country all men were free and equal, and one
person could not take to himself an advantage not accorded to all other
individuals. I knew that, and yet in spite of it I was uneasy.

And I grew still more uneasy, when I found that any succored and
befriended refugee from Ireland or elsewhere could stand up before that
judge and swear away the life or liberty or character of a refugee from
China; but that by the law of the land the Chinaman could not testify
against the Irishman. I was really and truly uneasy, but still my faith
in the universal liberty that America accords and defends, and my deep
veneration for the land that offered all distressed outcasts a home and
protection, was strong within me, and I said to myself that it would all
come out right yet.

AH SONG HI.

THE GALAXY, November 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

A REMINISCENCE OF THE BACK SETTLEMENTS.

"Now that corpse [said the undertaker, patting the folded hands of
deceased approvingly] was a brick--every way you took him he was a
brick. He was so real accommodating, and so modest-like and simple in
his last moments. Friends wanted metallic burial case--nothing else
would do. I couldn't get it. There warn't going to be time--anybody
could see that. Corpse said never mind, shake him up some kind of a
box he could stretch out in comfortable, he warn't particular 'bout the
general style of it. Said he went more on room than style, anyway, in a
last final container. Friends wanted a silver door-plate on the coffin,
signifying who he was and where he was from. Now you know a fellow
couldn't roust out such a gaily thing as that in a little country town
like this. What did corpse say? Corpse said, whitewash his old canoe and
dob his address and general destination onto it with a blacking brush
and a stencil plate, long with a verse from some likely hymn or other,
and p'int him for the tomb, and mark him C. O. D., and just let him skip
along. He warn't distressed any more than you be--on the contrary just
as carm and collected as a hearse-horse; said he judged that wher'
he was going to, a body would find it considerable better to attract
attention by a picturesque moral character than a natty burial case with
a swell door-plate on it. Splendid man, he was. I'd druther do for
a corpse like that 'n any I've tackled in seven year. There's some
satisfaction in buryin' a man like that. You feel that what you're doing
is appreciated. Lord bless you, so's he got planted before he sp'iled,
he was perfectly satisfied; said his relations meant well, perfectly
well, but all them preparations was bound to delay the thing more or
less, and he didn't wish to be kept layin' around. You never see such
a clear head as what he had--and so carm and so cool. Just a hunk of
brains--that is what he was. Perfectly awful. It was a ripping distance
from one end of that man's head to t'other. Often and over again he's
had brain fever a-raging in one place, and the rest of the pile
didn't know anything about it--didn't affect it any more than an Injun
insurrection in Arizona affects the Atlantic States. Well, the
relations they wanted a big funeral, but corpse said he was down on
flummery--didn't want any procession--fill the hearse full of mourners,
and get out a stern line and tow him behind. He was the most down
on style of any remains I ever struck. A beautiful, simple-minded
creature--it was what he was, you can depend on that. He was just set
on having things the way he wanted them, and he took a solid comfort in
laying his little plans. He had me measure him and take a whole raft of
directions; then he had the minister stand up behind a long box with
a table-cloth over it and read his funeral sermon, saying 'Angcore,
angcore!' at the good places, and making him scratch out every bit of
brag about him, and all the hifalutin; and then he made them trot out
the choir so's he could help them pick out the tunes for the occasion,
and he got them to sing 'Pop Goes the Weasel,' because he'd always liked
that tune when he was down-hearted, and solemn music made him sad; and
when they sung that with tears in their eyes (because they all loved
him), and his relations grieving around, he just laid there as happy as
a bug, and trying to beat time and showing all over how much he enjoyed
it; and presently he got worked up and excited, and tried to join in,
for mind you he was pretty proud of his abilities in the singing line;
but the first time he opened his mouth and was just going to spread
himself, his breath took a walk. I never see a man snuffed out so
sudden. Ah, it was a great loss--it was a powerful loss to this poor
little one-horse town. Well, well, well, I hain't got time to be
palavering along here--got to nail on the lid and mosey along with him;
and if you'll just give me a lift we'll skeet him into the hearse and
meander along. Relations bound to have it so--don't pay no attention
to dying injunctions, minute a corpse's gone; but if I had my way, if
I didn't respect his last wishes and tow him behind the hearse, I'll be
cuss'd. I consider that whatever a corpse wants done for his comfort is
a little enough matter, and a man hain't got no right to deceive him or
take advantage of him--and whatever a corpse trusts me to do I'm a-going
to do, you know, even if it's to stuff him and paint him yaller and keep
him for a keepsake--you hear me!"

He cracked his whip and went lumbering away with his ancient ruin of a
hearse, and I continued my walk with a valuable lesson learned--that a
healthy and wholesome cheerfulness is not necessarily impossible to any
occupation. The lesson is likely to be lasting, for it will take many
months to obliterate the memory of the remarks and circumstances that
impressed it.

THE GALAXY, November 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

A GENERAL REPLY.

When I was sixteen or seventeen years old, a splendid idea burst upon
me--a bran-new one, which had never occurred to anybody before: I
would write some "pieces" and take them down to the editor of the
"Republican," and ask him to give me his plain, unvarnished opinion of
their value! NOW, as old and threadbare as the idea was, it was fresh
and beautiful to me, and it went flaming and crashing through my system
like the genuine lightning and thunder of originality. I wrote the
pieces. I wrote them with that placid confidence and that happy facility
which only want of practice and absence of literary experience can give.
There was not one sentence in them that cost half an hour's weighing and
shaping and trimming and fixing. Indeed, it is possible that there was
no one sentence whose mere wording cost even one-sixth of that time. If
I remember rightly, there was not one single erasure or interlineation
in all that chaste manuscript. [I have since lost that large belief
in my powers, and likewise that marvellous perfection of execution.]
I started down to the "Republican" office with my pocket full of
manuscripts, my brain full of dreams, and a grand future opening out
before me. I knew perfectly well that the editor would be ravished with
my pieces. But presently--

However, the particulars are of no consequence. I was only about to
say that a shadowy sort of doubt just then intruded upon my exaltation.
Another came, and another. Pretty soon a whole procession of them. And
at last, when I stood before the "Republican" office and looked up
at its tall, unsympathetic front, it seemed hardly me that could have
"chinned" its towers ten minutes before, and was now so shrunk up and
pitiful that if I dared to step on the gratings I should probably go
through.

At about that crisis the editor, the very man I had come to consult,
came down stairs, and halted a moment to pull at his wristbands and
settle his coat to its place, and he happened to notice that I was
eyeing him wistfully. He asked me what I wanted. I answered, "NOTHING!"
with a boy's own meekness and shame; and, dropping my eyes, crept humbly
round till I was fairly in the alley, and then drew a big grateful
breath of relief, and picked up my heels and ran!

I was satisfied. I wanted no more. It was my first attempt to get
a "plain unvarnished opinion" out of a literary man concerning my
compositions, and it has lasted me until now. And in these latter days,
whenever I receive a bundle of MS. through the mail, with a request that
I will pass judgment upon its merits, I feel like saying to the author,
"If you had only taken your piece to some grim and stately newspaper
office, where you did not know anybody, you would not have so fine an
opinion of your production as it is easy to see you have now."

Every man who becomes editor of a newspaper or magazine straightway
begins to receive MSS. from literary aspirants, together with requests
that he will deliver judgment upon the same. And after complying in
eight or ten instances, he finally takes refuge in a general sermon upon
the subject, which he inserts in his publication, and always afterward
refers such correspondents to that sermon for answer. I have at last
reached this station in my literary career. I now cease to reply
privately to my applicants for advice, and proceed to construct my
public sermon.

As all letters of the sort I am speaking of contain the very same
matter, differently worded, I offer as a fair average specimen the last
one I have received:

MARK TWAIN, Esq.


DEAR SIR: I am a youth, just out of school and ready to start in life.
I have looked around, but don't see anything that suits exactly. Is
a literary life easy and profitable, or is it the hard times it is
generally put up for? It must be easier than a good many if not most of
the occupations, and I feel drawn to launch out on it, make or break,
sink or swim, survive or perish. Now, what are the conditions of success
in literature? You need not be afraid to paint the thing just as it is.
I can't do any worse than fail. Everything else offers the same. When I
thought of the law--yes, and five or six other professions--I found
the same thing was the case every time, viz: all full--overrun--every
profession so crammed that success is rendered impossible--too many
hands and not enough work. But I must try something, and so I turn at
last to literature. Something tells me that that is the true bent of my
genius, if I have any. I enclose some of my pieces. Will you read them
over and give me your candid, unbiased opinion of them? And now I hate
to trouble you, but you have been a young man yourself, and what I want
is for you to get me a newspaper job of writing to do. You know many
newspaper people, and I am entirely unknown. And will you make the best
terms you can for me? though I do not expect what might be called high
wages at first, of course. Will you candidly say what such articles as
these I enclose are worth? I have plenty of them. If you should sell
these and let me know, I can send you more, as good and maybe better
than these. An early reply, etc. Yours truly, etc.

I will answer you in good faith. Whether my remarks shall have great
value or not, or my suggestions be worth following, are problems which
I take great pleasure in leaving entirely to you for solution. To begin:
There are several questions in your letter which only a man's life
experience can eventually answer for him--not another man's words. I
will simply skip those.

1. Literature, like the ministry, medicine, the law, and all other
occupations, is cramped and hindered for want of men to do the work, not
want of work to do. When people tell you the reverse, they speak that
which is not true. If you desire to test this, you need only hunt up
a first-class editor, reporter, business manager, foreman of a shop,
mechanic, or artist in any branch of industry, and try to hire him. You
will find that he is already hired. He is sober, industrious, capable,
and reliable, and is always in demand. He cannot get a day's holiday
except by courtesy of his employer, or his city, or the great general
public. But if you need idlers, shirkers, half instructed, unambitious,
and comfort-seeking editors, reporters, lawyers, doctors, and mechanics,
apply anywhere. There are millions of them to be had at the dropping of
a handkerchief.

2. No; I must not and will not venture any opinion whatever as to the
literary merit of your productions. The public is the only critic whose
judgment is worth anything at all. Do not take my poor word for this,
but reflect a moment and take your own. For instance, if Sylvanus Cobb
or T. S. Arthur had submitted their maiden MSS. to you, you would have
said, with tears in your eyes, "Now please don't write any more!" But
you see yourself how popular they are. And if it had been left to
you, you would have said the "Marble Faun" was tiresome, and that even
"Paradise Lost" lacked cheerfulness; but you know they sell. Many wiser
and better men than you pooh-poohed Shakespeare, even as late as two
centuries ago; but still that old party has outlived those people. No,
I will not sit in judgment upon your literature. If I honestly and
conscientiously praised it, I might thus help to inflict a lingering
and pitiless bore upon the public; if I honestly and conscientiously
condemned it, I might thus rob the world of an undeveloped and
unsuspected Dickens or Shakespeare.

3. I shrink from hunting up literary labor for you to do and receive pay
for. Whenever your literary productions have proved for themselves that
they have a real value, you will never have to go around hunting for
remunerative literary work to do. You will require more hands than you
have now, and more brains than you probably ever will have, to do even
half the work that will be offered you. Now, in order to arrive at the
proof of value hereinbefore spoken of, one needs only to adopt a very
simple and certainly very sure process; and that is, to write without
pay until somebody offers pay. If nobody offers pay within three years,
the candidate may look upon this circumstance with the most implicit
confidence as the sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for. If
he has any wisdom at all, then, he will retire with dignity and assume
his heaven-appointed vocation.

In the above remarks I have only offered a course of action which Mr.
Dickens and most other successful literary men had to follow; but it is
a course which will find no sympathy with my client, perhaps. The young
literary aspirant is a very, very curious creature. He knows that if he
wished to become a tinner, the master smith would require him to prove
the possession of a good character, and would require him to promise to
stay in the shop three years--possibly four--and would make him sweep
out and bring water and build fires all the first year, and let him
learn to black stoves in the intervals; and for these good honest
services would pay him two suits of cheap clothes and his board; and
next year he would begin to receive instructions in the trade, and a
dollar a week would be added to his emoluments; and two dollars would be
added the third year, and three the fourth; and then, if he had become
a first-rate tinner, he would get about fifteen or twenty, or may be
thirty dollars a week, with never a possibility of getting seventy-five
while he lived. If he wanted to become a mechanic of any other kind, he
would have to undergo this same tedious, ill-paid apprenticeship. If he
wanted to become a lawyer or a doctor, he would have fifty times worse;
for he would get nothing at all during his long apprenticeship, and
in addition would have to pay a large sum for tuition, and have the
privilege of boarding and clothing himself. The literary aspirant knows
all this, and yet he has the hardihood to present himself for reception
into the literary guild and ask to share its high honors and emoluments,
without a single twelvemonth's apprenticeship to show in excuse for his
presumption! He would smile pleasantly if he were asked to make even so
simple a thing as a ten-cent tin dipper without previous instruction
in the art; but, all green and ignorant, wordy, pompously-assertive,
ungrammatical, and with a vague, distorted knowledge of men and the
world acquired in a back country village, he will serenely take up so
dangerous a weapon as a pen, and attack the most formidable subject that
finance, commerce, war, or politics can furnish him withal. It would be
laughable if it were not so sad and so pitiable. The poor fellow would
not intrude upon the tin shop without an apprenticeship, but is willing
to seize and wield with unpractised hand an instrument which is able
to overthrow dynasties, change religions, and decree the weal or woe of
nations.

If my correspondent will write free of charge for the newspapers of his
neighborhood, it will be one of the strangest things that ever happened
if he does not get all the employment he can attend to on those terms.
And as soon as ever his writings are worth money, plenty of people will
hasten to offer it.

And by way of serious and well-meant encouragement, I wish to urge upon
him once more the truth that acceptable writers for the press are so
scarce that book and periodical publishers are seeking them constantly,
and with a vigilance that never grows heedless for a moment.

THE GALAXY, November 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

FAVORS FROM CORRESPONDENTS.

Out of a rusty and dusty old scrap-book a friend in Nevada resurrects
the following verses for us. Thirty years ago they were very popular.
It was on a wager as to whether this poem originated in the "Noctes
Ambrosianae" or not that Leicester won two thousand pounds:

THE LAWYER'S POEM.

Whereas, on sundry boughs and sprays Now divers birds are heard to sing,
And sundry flowers their heads upraise To hail the coming on of Spring;
The songs of the said birds arouse The mem'ry of our youthful hours--
As young and green as the said boughs, As fresh and fair as the said
flowers. The birds aforesaid, happy pairs, Love 'midst the aforesaid
boughs enshrines In household nests--themselves, their heirs,
Administrators, and assigns. O busiest time of Cupid's court, When
tender plaintiffs actions bring! Season of frolic and of sport, Hail, as
aforesaid, coming Spring!

* * *

Occasionally from suffering soul there comes to this department a
frantic appeal for help, which just boils an entire essay down into
one exhaustive sentence, and leaves nothing more to be said upon that
subject. Now, can the reader find any difficulty in picturing to himself
what this "Subscriber" has been going through out there at Hazel Green,
Wisconsin?

MR. TWAIN.

MY DEAR SIR: Do not, in your MEMORANDA, forget the travelling book
agents. They are about as tolerable as lightning-rod men, especially the
"red-nosed chaps" who sell "juveniles," temperance tracts, and such like
delectable fodder.

Yours, etc.,

A SUBSCRIBER

Such subscription canvassers, probably, are all this correspondent's
fancy paints them. None but those canvassers who sell compact
concentrations of solid wisdom, like the work entitled "The Innocents
Abroad," can really be said to be indispensable to the nation.

* * *

In a graceful feminine hand comes the following, from a city of
Illinois:

Reading your remarks upon "innocents" in a recent GALAXY, I must tell
you how that touching little obituary was received here.

I attended a lecture, and sat beside and was introduced to a young
minister from Pennsylvania, a few evenings since. Having my GALAXY in my
hand and knowing the proverbial ministerial love of a joke, I handed him
the little poem, simply whispering "Mark Twain."

He read it through gravely, and in the most serious manner turned to me
and whispered, "Did Mark Twain write that?"

"Breathes there a man with soul so dead!"

If this is a specimen of your Eastern young ministers, we Western girls
will take no more at present, I thank you.

Speaking of ministers reminds me of a joke that I always thought worth
publishing; it is a fact, too, which all the jokes published are not.

The Rev. Dr. B. was minister in our stylish little city some years
since. He was a pompous, important, flowery sort of preacher--very
popular with the masses. He exchanged pulpits with old Solomon N., the
plain, meek old minister of the little C. Church, one Sabbath; and the
expectant little congregation were surprised when the grand Dr. arose
and gave out as his text:

"For behold a greater than Solomon is here!"

* * *

It is said that once a man of small consequence died, and the Rev. T.
K. Beecher was asked to preach the funeral sermon--a man who abhors the
lauding of people, either dead or alive, except in dignified and simple
language, and then only for merits which they actually possessed or
possess, not merits which they merely ought to have possessed. The
friends of the deceased got up a stately funeral. They must have had
misgivings that the corpse might not be praised strongly enough, for
they prepared some manuscript headings and notes in which nothing was
left unsaid on that subject that a fervid imagination and an unabridged
dictionary could compile, and these they handed to the minister as he
entered the pulpit. They were merely intended as suggestions, and so the
friends were filled with consternation when the minister stood up in the
pulpit and proceeded to read off the curious odds and ends in ghastly
detail and in a loud voice! And their consternation solidified to
petrifaction when he paused at the end, contemplated the multitude
reflectively, and then said impressively:

"The man would be a fool who tried to add anything to that. Let us
pray!"

* * *

And with the same strict adhesion to truth it can be said that the man
would be a fool who tried to add anything to the following transcendent
obituary poem. There is something so innocent, so guileless, so
complacent, so unearthly serene and self-satisfied about this peerless
"hogwash," that the man must be made of stone who can read it without a
dulcet ecstasy creeping along his backbone and quivering in his marrow.
There is no need to say that this poem is genuine and in earnest, for
its proofs are written all over its face. An ingenious scribbler
might imitate it after a fashion, but Shakespeare himself could not
counterfeit it. It is noticeable that the country editor who published
it did not know that it was a treasure and the most perfect thing of its
kind that the storehouses and museums of literature could show. He did
not dare to say no to the dread poet--for such a poet must have been
something of an apparition--but he just shovelled it into his paper
anywhere that came handy, and felt ashamed, and put that disgusted
"Published by Request" over it, and hoped that his subscribers would
overlook or not feel an impulse to read it:

[Published by Request.]

LINES

Composed on the death of Samuel and Catharine Belknap's children.

BY M. A. GLAZE.

Friends and neighbors all draw near, And listen to what I have to say;
And never leave your children dear When they are small, and go away
But always think of that sad fate, That happened in year of '63; Four
children with a house did burn, Think of their awful agony. Their mother
she had gone away, And left them there alone to stay; The house took
fire and down did burn, Before their mother did return. Their piteous
cry the neighbors heard, And then the cry of fire was given; But, ah!
before they could reach, Their little spirits had flown to heaven. Their
father he to war had gone, And on the battle-field was slain; But little
did he think when he went away, But what on earth they would meet again.
The neighbors often told his wife Not to leave his children there,
Unless she got some one to stay, And of the little ones take care. The
oldest he was years not six, And the youngest only eleven months old,
But often she had left them there alone, As, by the neighbors, I have
been told. How can she bear to see the place, Where she so oft has left
them there, Without a single one to look to them, Or of the little ones
to take good care. Oh, can she look upon the spot, Where under their
little burnt bones lay, But what she thinks she hears them say, "Twas
God had pity, and took us on high." And there may she kneel down and
pray, And ask God her to forgive; And she may lead a different life
While she on earth remains to live. Her husband and her children, too,
God has took from pain and woe. May she reform and mend her ways, That
she may also to them go. And when it is God's holy will, O, may she be
prepared To meet her God and friends in peace, And leave this world of
care.

Nicholson, Pa., Feb. 8, 1863.

THE GALAXY, December 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

AN ENTERTAINING ARTICLE.

I take the following paragraph from an article in the Boston
"Advertiser":

AN ENGLISH CRITIC ON MARK TWAIN.

--Perhaps the most successful flights of the humor of Mark Twain have
been descriptions of the persons who did not appreciate his humor at
all. We have become familiar with the Californians who were thrilled
with terror by his burlesque of a newspaper reporter's way of telling
a story, and we have heard of the Pennsylvania clergyman who sadly
returned his "Innocents Abroad" to the book-agent with the remark that
"the man who could shed tears over the tomb of Adam must be an idiot."
But Mark Twain may now add a much more glorious instance to his string
of trophies. The Saturday Review, in its number of October 8th, reviews
his book of travels, which has been republished in England, and reviews
it seriously. We can imagine the delight of the humorist in reading this
tribute to his power; and indeed it is so amusing in itself that he can
hardly do better than reproduce the article in full in his next monthly
Memoranda.

[Publishing the above paragraph thus, gives me a sort of authority for
reproducing the "Saturday Review's" article in full in these pages. I
dearly wanted to do it, for I cannot write anything half so delicious
myself. If I had a cast-iron dog that could read this English criticism
and preserve his austerity, I would drive him off the door-step.--EDITOR
MEMORANDA.]

[From the London Saturday Review]

REVIEWS OF NEW BOOKS.

THE INNOCENTS ABROAD. A Book of Travels By Mark Twain. London: Hotten,
publisher. 1870.

Lord Macaulay died too soon. We never felt this so deeply as when we
finished the last chapter of the above-named extravagant work. Macaulay
died too soon--for none but he could mete out complete and comprehensive
justice to the insolence, the impertinence, the presumption, the
mendacity, and, above all, the majestic ignorance of this author.

To say that the "Innocents Abroad" is a curious book, would be to use
the faintest language--would be to speak of the Matterhorn as a neat
elevation or of Niagara as being "nice" or "pretty." "Curious" is too
tame a word wherewith to describe the imposing insanity of this work.
There is no word that is large enough or long enough. Let us, therefore,
photograph a passing glimpse of book and author, and trust the rest to
the reader. Let the cultivated English student of human nature
picture to himself this Mark Twain as a person capable of doing the
following-described things--and not only doing them, but with incredible
innocence printing them calmly and tranquilly in a book. For instance:

He states that he entered a hair-dresser's in Paris to get shaved, and
the first '"rake" the barber gave with his razor it loosened his "hide"
and lifted him out of the chair.

This is unquestionably exaggerated. In Florence he was so annoyed by
beggars that he pretends to have seized and eaten one in a frantic
spirit of revenge. There is of course no truth in this. He gives at full
length a theatrical programme seventeen or eighteen hundred years old,
which he professes to have found in the ruins of the Coliseum, among
the dirt and mould and rubbish. It is a sufficient comment upon this
statement to remark that even a cast-iron programme would not have
lasted so long under such circumstances. In Greece he plainly betrays
both fright and flight upon one occasion, but with frozen effrontery
puts the latter in this falsely tame form: "We sidled towards the
Piraeus." "Sidled," indeed! He does not hesitate to intimate that at
Ephesus, when his mule strayed from the proper course, he got down, took
him under his arm, carried him to the road again, pointed him right,
remounted, and went to sleep contentedly till it was time to restore the
beast to the path once more. He states that a growing youth among his
ship's passengers was in the constant habit of appeasing his hunger with
soap and oakum between meals. In Palestine he tells of ants that
came eleven miles to spend the summer in the desert and brought their
provisions with them; yet he shows by his description of the country
that the feat was an impossibility. He mentions, as if it were the most
commonplace of matters, that he cut a Moslem in two in broad daylight
in Jerusalem, with Godfrey de Bouillon's sword, and would have shed
more blood if he had had a graveyard of his own. These statements are
unworthy a moment's attention. Mr. Twain or any other foreigner who did
such a thing in Jerusalem would be mobbed, and would infallibly lose his
life. But why go on? Why repeat more of his audacious and exasperating
falsehoods? Let us close fittingly with this one: he affirms that "in
the mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople I got my feet so stuck up
with a complication of gums, slime, and general impurity, that I wore
out more than two thousand pair of bootjacks getting my boots off that
night, and even then some Christian hide peeled off with them." It is
monstrous. Such statements are simply lies--there is no other name
for them. Will the reader longer marvel at the brutal ignorance that
pervades the American nation when we tell him that we are informed
upon perfectly good authority that this extravagant compilation of
falsehoods, this exhaustless mine of stupendous lies, this "Innocents
Abroad", has actually been adopted by the schools and colleges of
several of the States as a text-book!

But if his falsehoods are distressing, his innocence and his ignorance
are enough to make one burn the book and despise the author. In one
place he was so appalled at the sudden spectacle of a murdered man,
unveiled by the moonlight, that he jumped out of the window, going
through sash and all, and then remarks with the most childlike
simplicity that he "was not scared, but was considerably agitated."
It puts us out of patience to note that the simpleton is densely
unconscious that Lucrezia Borgia ever existed off the stage. He is
vulgarly ignorant of all foreign languages, but is frank enough to
criticise the Italians' use of their own tongue. He says they spell the
name of their great painter "Vinci, but pronounce it Vinchy"--and then
adds with a naivete possible only to helpless ignorance, "foreigners all
spell better than they pronounce.'" In another place he commits the bald
absurdity of putting the phrase "tare an ouns" into an Italian's mouth.
In Rome he unhesitatingly believes the legend that St. Philip Neri's
heart was so inflamed with divine love that it burst his ribs--believes
it wholly because an author with a learned list of university degrees
strung after his name endorses it--"otherwise," says this gentle idiot,
"I should have felt curiosity to know what Philip had for dinner." Our
author makes a long, fatiguing journey to the Grotto del Cane on purpose
to test its poisoning powers on a dog--got elaborately ready for the
experiment, and then discovered that he had no dog. A wiser person would
have kept such a thing discreetly to himself, but with this harmless
creature everything comes out. He hurts his foot in a rut two thousand
years old in exhumed Pompeii, and presently when staring at one of the
cinder-like corpses unearthed in the next square, conceives the idea
that maybe it is the remains of the ancient Street Commissioner, and
straightway his horror softens down to a sort of chirpy contentment
with the condition of things. In Damascus he visits the well of Ananias,
three thousand years old, and is as surprised and delighted as a child
to find that the water is "as pure and fresh as if the well had been dug
yesterday." In the Holy Land he gags desperately at the hard Arabic and
Hebrew Biblical names, and finally concludes to call them Baldwinsville,
Williamsburgh, and so on, "for convenience of spelling."

We have thus spoken freely of this man's stupefying simplicity and
innocence, but we cannot deal similarly with his colossal ignorance. We
do not know where to begin. And if we knew where to begin, we certainly
would not know where to leave off. We will give one specimen, and one
only. He did not know, until he got to Rome, that Michael Angelo
was dead! And then, instead of crawling away and hiding his shameful
ignorance somewhere, he proceeds to express a pious, grateful sort of
satisfaction that he is gone and out of his troubles!

No, the reader may seek out the author's exhibition of his uncultivation
for himself. The book is absolutely dangerous, considering the magnitude
and variety of its misstatements and the convincing confidence with
which they are made. And yet it is a text-book in the schools of
America.

The poor blunderer mouses among the sublime creations of the Old
Masters, trying to acquire the elegant proficiency in art-knowledge,
which he has a groping sort of comprehension is a proper thing for the
traveled man to be able to display. But what is the manner of his study?
And what is the progress he achieves? To what extent does he
familiarize himself with the great pictures of Italy, and what degree of
appreciation does he arrive at? Read:

When we see a monk going about with a lion and looking up into heaven,
we know that that is St. Mark. When we see a monk with a book and a pen,
looking tranquilly up to heaven, trying to think of a word, we know
that that is St. Matthew. When we see a monk sitting on a rock, looking
tranquilly up to heaven, with a human skull beside him, and without
other baggage, we know that that is St. Jerome. Because we know that
he always went flying light in the matter of baggage. When we see other
monks looking tranquilly up to heaven, but having no trade-mark, we
always ask who those parties are. We do this because we humbly wish to
learn.

He then enumerates the thousands and thousands of copies of these
several pictures which he has seen, and adds with accustomed simplicity
that he feels encouraged to believe that when he has seen "SOME MORE" of
each and had a larger experience, he will eventually "begin to take an
absorbing interest in them"--the vulgar boor.

That we have shown this to be a remarkable book, we think no one
will deny. That it is a pernicious book to place in the hands of the
confiding and uninformed we think we have also shown. That the book is
a deliberate and wicked creation of a diseased mind, is apparent upon
every page. Having placed our judgment thus upon record, let us close
with what charity we can, by marking that even in this volume there is
some good to be found; for whenever the author talks of his own country
and lets Europe alone, he never fails to make himself interesting, and
not only interesting, but instructive. No one can read without benefit
his occasional chapters and paragraphs, about life in the gold and
silver mines of California and Nevada; about the Indians of the plains
and deserts of the West, and their cannibalism; about the raising of
vegetables in kegs of gunpowder by the aid of two or three teaspoonfuls
of guano, about the moving of small farms from place to place at night
in wheelbarrows to avoid taxes; and about a sort of cows and mules in
the Humboldt mines, that climb down chimneys and disturb the people at
night. These matters are not only new, but are well worth knowing.* It
is a pity the author did not put in more of the same kind. His book
is well written and is exceedingly entertaining, and so it just barely
escaped being quite valuable also.

*Yes, I calculated they were pretty new. I invented them myself.--MARK
TWAIN.

THE GALAXY, December 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

"HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF."


The following I find in a Sandwich Island paper which some friend has
sent me from that tranquil far-off retreat. The coincidence between
my own experience and that here set down by the late Mr. Benton is so
remarkable that I cannot forbear publishing and commenting upon the
paragraph. The Sandwich Island paper says:

How touching is this tribute of the late Hon. T. H. Benton to his
mother's influence: "My mother asked me never to use tobacco; I have
never touched it from that time to the present day. She asked me not to
gamble, and I have never gambled. I cannot tell who is losing in games
that are being played. She admonished me, too, against liquor-drinking,
and whatever capacity for endurance I have at present, and whatever
usefulness I may have attained through life, I attribute to having
complied with her pious and correct wishes. When I was seven years of
age she asked me not to drink, and then I made a resolution of total
abstinence and that I have adhered to it through all time I owe to my
mother."

I never saw anything so curious. It is almost an exact epitome of my own
moral career--after simply substituting a grandmother for a mother. How
well I remember my grandmother's asking me not to use tobacco, good old
soul! She said, "You're at it again, are you, you whelp? Now, don't ever
let me catch you chewing tobacco before breakfast again, or I lay I'll
black snake you within an inch of your life!" I have never touched it at
that hour of the morning from that time to the present day.

She asked me not to gamble. She whispered and said, "Put up those wicked
cards this minute!--two pair and a jack, you numskull, and the other
fellow's got a flush!"

I never have gambled from that day to this--never once--without a "cold
deck" in my pocket. I cannot even tell who is going to lose in games
that are being played unless I dealt myself.

When I was two years of age she asked me not to drink, and then I made
a resolution of total abstinence. That I have adhered to it and enjoyed
the beneficent effects of it through all time, I owe to my grandmother.
I have never drunk a drop from that day to this of any kind of water.

THE GALAXY, December 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR.


A few months ago I was nominated for Governor of the great State of
New York, to run against Stewart L. Woodford and John T. Hoffman, on an
independent ticket. I somehow felt that I had one prominent advantage
over these gentlemen, and that was, good character. It was easy to see
by the newspapers, that if ever they had known what it was to bear a
good name, that time had gone by. It was plain that in these latter
years they had become familiar with all manner of shameful crimes. But
at the very moment that I was exalting my advantage and joying in it in
secret, there was a muddy undercurrent of discomfort "riling" the deeps
of my happiness--and that was, the having to hear my name bandied about
in familiar connection with those of such people. I grew more and more
disturbed. Finally I wrote my grandmother about it. Her answer came
quick and sharp. She said:

You have never done one single thing in all your life to be ashamed
of--not one. Look at the newspapers--look at them and comprehend what
sort of characters Woodford and Hoffman are, and then see if you are
willing to lower yourself to their level and enter a public canvass with
them.

It was my very thought! I did not sleep a single moment that night. But
after all, I could not recede. I was fully committed and must go on with
the fight. As I was looking listlessly over the papers at breakfast,
I came across this paragraph, and I may truly say I never was so
confounded before:

PERJURY.--Perhaps, now that Mr. Mark Twain is before the people as a
candidate for Governor, he will condescend to explain how he came to be
convicted of perjury by thirty-four witnesses, in Wakawak, Cochin China,
in 1863, the intent of which perjury was to rob a poor native widow
and her helpless family of a meagre plantain patch, their only stay and
support in their bereavement and their desolation. Mr. Twain owes it
to himself, as well as to the great people whose suffrages he asks, to
clear this matter up. Will he do it?

I thought I should burst with amazement! Such a cruel, heartless
charge--I never had seen Cochin China! I never had heard of Wakawak! I
didn't know a plantain patch from a kangaroo! I did not know what to
do. I was crazed and helpless. I let the day slip away without doing
anything at all. The next morning the same paper had this--nothing more:

SIGNIFICANT.--Mr. Twain, it will be observed, is suggestively silent
about the Cochin China perjury.

[Mem.--During the rest of the campaign this paper never referred to me
in any other way than as "the infamous perjurer Twain."]

Next came the "Gazette," with this:

WANTED TO KNOW.--Will the new candidate for Governor deign to explain to
certain of his fellow-citizens (who are suffering to vote for him!) the
little circumstance of his cabin-mates in Montana losing small valuables
from time to time, until at last, these things having been invariably
found on Mr. Twain's person or in his "trunk" (newspaper he rolled his
traps in), they felt compelled to give him a friendly admonition for his
own good, and so tarred and feathered him and rode him on a rail, and
then advised him to leave a permanent vacuum in the place he usually
occupied in the camp. Will he do this?

Could anything be more deliberately malicious than that? For I never was
in Montana in my life.

[After this, this journal customarily spoke of me as "Twain, the Montana
Thief."]

I got to picking up papers apprehensively--much as one would lift a
desired blanket which he had some idea might have a rattlesnake under
it. One day this met my eye:

THE LIE NAILED!--By the sworn affidavits of Michael O'Flanagan, Esq., of
the Five Points, and Mr. Kit Burns and Mr. John Allen, of Water street,
it is established that Mr. Mark Twain's vile statement that the lamented
grandfather of our noble standard-bearer, John T. Hoffman, was hanged
for highway robbery, is a brutal and gratuitous LIE, without a single
shadow of foundation in fact. It is disheartening to virtuous men to
see such shameful means resorted to to achieve political success as the
attacking of the dead in their graves and defiling their honored names
with slander. When we think of the anguish this miserable falsehood must
cause the innocent relatives and friends of the deceased, we are almost
driven to incite an outraged and insulted public to summary and unlawful
vengeance upon the traducer. But no--let us leave him to the agony of a
lacerating conscience--(though if passion should get the better of the
public and in its blind fury they should do the traducer bodily injury,
it is but too obvious that no jury could convict and no court punish the
perpetrators of the deed).

The ingenious closing sentence had the effect of moving me out of bed
with despatch that night, and out at the back door, also, while the
"outraged and insulted public" surged in the front way, breaking
furniture and windows in their righteous indignation as they came, and
taking off such property as they could carry when they went. And yet I
can lay my hand upon the Book and say that I never slandered Governor
Hoffman's grandfather. More--I had never even heard of him or mentioned
him, up to that day and date.

[I will state, in passing, that the journal above quoted from always
referred to me afterward as "Twain, the Body-Snatcher."]

The next newspaper article that attracted my attention was the
following:

A SWEET CANDIDATE.--Mark Twain, who was to make such a blighting speech
at the mass meeting of the Independents last night, didn't come to time!
A telegram from his physician stated that he had been knocked down by a
runaway team and his leg broken in two places--sufferer lying in great
agony, and so forth, and so forth, and a lot more bosh of the same sort.
And the Independents tried hard to swallow the wretched subterfuge and
pretend that they did not know what was the real reason of the absence
of the abandoned creature whom they denominate their standard-bearer. A
certain man was seen to reel into Mr. Twain's hotel last night in state
of beastly intoxication. It is the imperative duty of the Independents
to prove that this besotted brute was not Mark Twain himself: We have
them at last! This is a case that admits of no shirking. The voice of
the people demands in thunder-tones: "WHO WAS THAT MAN?

It was incredible, absolutely incredible, for a moment, that it was
really my name that was coupled with this disgraceful suspicion. Three
long years had passed over my head since I had tasted ale, beer, wine,
or liquor of any kind.

[It shows what effect the times were having on me when I say that I saw
myself confidently dubbed "Mr. Delirium Tremens Twain" in the next
issue of that journal without a pang--notwithstanding I knew that with
monotonous fidelity the paper would go on calling me so to the very
end.]

By this time anonymous letters were getting to be an important part of
my mail matter. This form was common:

How about that old woman you kiked of your premisers which was beging.

POL PRY.

And this:

There is things which you have done which is unbeknowens to anybody but
me. You better trot out a few dols. to yours truly or you'll hear thro'
the papers from

HANDY ANDY.

That is about the idea. I could continue them till the reader was
surfeited, if desirable.

Shortly the principal Republican journal "convicted" me of wholesale
bribery, and the leading Democratic paper "nailed" an aggravated case of
blackmailing to me.

[In this way I acquired two additional names: "Twain, the Filthy
Corruptionist," and "Twain, the Loathsome Embracer."]

By this time there had grown to be such a clamor for an "answer" to all
the dreadful charges that were laid to me, that the editors and leaders
of my party said it would be political ruin for me to remain silent any
longer. As if to make their appeal the more imperative, the following
appeared in one of the papers the very next day:

BEHOLD THE MAN!--The Independent candidate still maintains Silence.
Because he dare not speak. Every accusation against him has been amply
proved, and they have been endorsed and re-endorsed by his own eloquent
silence till at this day he stands forever convicted. Look upon your
candidate, Independents! Look upon the Infamous Perjurer! the Montana
Thief! the Body-Snatcher! Contemplate your incarnate Delirium
Tremens! your Filthy Corruptionist! your Loathsome Embracer! Gaze upon
him--ponder him well--and then say if you can give your honest votes
to a creature who has earned this dismal array of titles by his hideous
crimes, and dares not open his mouth in denial of any one of them!

There was no possible way of getting out of it, and so, in deep
humiliation, I set about preparing to "answer" a mass of baseless
charges and mean and wicked falsehoods. But I never finished the task,
for the very next morning a paper came out with a new horror, a fresh
malignity, and seriously charged me with burning a lunatic asylum with
all its inmates because it obstructed the view from my house. This threw
me into a sort of panic. Then came the charge of poisoning my uncle to
get his property, with an imperative demand that the grave should be
opened. This drove me to the verge of distraction. On top of this I was
accused of employing toothless and incompetent old relatives to
prepare the food for the foundling hospital when I was warden. I was
wavering--wavering. And at last, as a due and fitting climax to the
shameless persecution that party rancor had inflicted upon me,
nine little toddling children of all shades of color and degrees of
raggedness were taught to rush on to the platform at a public meeting
and clasp me around the legs and call me PA!

I gave up. I hauled down my colors and surrendered. I was not equal to
the requirements of a Gubernatorial campaign in the State of New York,
and so I sent in my withdrawal from the candidacy, and in bitterness of
spirit signed it,

"Truly yours,

"Once a decent man, but now

"MARK TWAIN, I. P., M. T., B. S., D. T., F. C., and L. E."

THE GALAXY, December 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

THE "PRESENT" NUISANCE.

To be the editor of any kind of a newspaper, either country or
metropolitan (but very especially the former), is a position which
must be trying to a good-natured man. Because it makes him an object
of charity whether or no. It makes him the object of a peculiar and
humiliating, because an interested, charity--a charity thrust upon him
with offensive assurance and a perfectly unconcealed taken-for granted
that it will be received with gratitude, and the donor accounted a
benefactor; and at the very same time the donor's chief motive, his
vulgar self-interest, is left as frankly unconcealed. The country editor
offers his advertising space to the public at the trifle of one dollar
and a half or two dollars a square, first insertion, and one would
suppose his "patrons" would be satisfied with that. But they are not.
They puzzle their thin brains to find out some still cheaper way of
getting their wares celebrated--some way whereby they can advertise
virtually for nothing. They soon hit upon that meanest and shabbiest
of all contrivances for robbing a gentle-spirited scribbler, viz., the
conferring upon him of a present and begging a "notice" of it--thus
pitifully endeavoring to not only invade his sacred editorial columns,
but get ten dollars' worth of advertising for fifty cents' worth of
merchandise, and on top of that leave the poor creature burdened with
a crushing debt of gratitude! And so the corrupted editor, having
once debauched his independence and received one of these contemptible
presents, wavers a little while the remnant of his self-respect is
consuming, and at last abandons himself to a career of shame, and
prostitutes his columns to "notices" of every sort of present that a
stingy neighbor chooses to inflict upon him. The confectioner insults
him with forty cents' worth of ice-cream--and he lavishes four "squares"
of editorial compliments on him; the grocer insults him with a bunch
of overgrown radishes and a dozen prize turnips--and gets an editorial
paragraph perfectly putrid with gratitude; the farmer insults him
with three dollars' worth of peaches, or a beet like a man's leg, or a
watermelon like a channel-buoy, or a cabbage in many respects like his
own head, and expects a third of a column of exuberant imbecility--and
gets it. And these trivial charities are not respectfully and gracefully
tendered, but are thrust in silently upon the victim, and with an
air that plainly shows that the victim will be held to a strict
accountability in the next issue of his paper.

I am not an editor of a newspaper, and shall always try to do right and
be good, so that God will not make me one; but there are some persons
who have got the impression, somehow, that I am that kind of character,
and they treat me accordingly. They send me a new fangled wheel-barrow,
and ask me to "notice" it; or a peculiar boot jack, and ask me to
"notice" it; or a sample of coffee, and ask me to "notice" it; or an
article of furniture worth eight or ten dollars, or a pair of crutches,
or a truss, or an artificial-nose, or a few shillings' worth of rubbish
of the vegetable species; and here lately, all in one day, I receive a
barrel of apples, a thing to milk cows with, a basket of peaches, a
box of grapes, a new sort of wooden leg, and a patent "composition"
grave-stone. "Notices" requested. A barrel of apples, a cow-milker, a
basket of peaches, and a box of grapes, all put together, are not
worth the bore of writing a "notice," nor a tenth part of the room the
"notice" would take up in the paper, and so they remained unnoticed. I
had no immediate use for the wooden leg, and would not have accepted
a charity grave-stone if I had been dead and actually suffering for it
when it came--so I sent those articles back.

I do not want any of these underhanded, obligation-inflicting presents.
I prefer to cramp myself down to the use of such things as I can afford,
and then pay for them; and then when a citizen needs the labor of my
hands he can have it, and I will infallibly come on him for damages.

The ungraceful custom, so popular in the back settlements, of
facetiously wailing about the barren pockets of editors, is the parent
of this uncanny present-inflicting, and it is time that the guild
that originated the custom and now suffer in pride and purse from it,
reflected that decent and dignified poverty is thoroughly respectable;
while the flaunting of either a real or pretended neediness in the
public face, and the bartering of nauseating "puffs" for its legitimate
fruit of charitable presents, are as thoroughly indelicate, unbecoming,
and disreputable.

THE GALAXY, December 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

DOGBERRY IN WASHINGTON.

Some of the decisions of the Post Office Department are eminently
luminous. It has in times gone by been enacted that "author's
manuscript" should go through the mails for a trifling
postage--newspaper postage, in fact. A calm and dispassionate mind would
gather from this, that the object had in view was to facilitate and
foster newspaper correspondence, magazine writing, and literature
generally, by discontinuing a tax in the way of postage which had become
very burdensome to gentlemen of the quill. Now by what effort of good
old well-meaning, grandmotherly dullness does the reader suppose the
postal authorities have rendered that wise and kindly decree utterly
null and void, and solemnly funny? By deciding that "author's
manuscript" does not mean anything but "manuscript intended to be made
into a BOUND BOOK"--all pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers ruled out!

Thus we are expected to believe that the original regulation was
laboriously got up to save two dollars' worth of postage to two authors
in a year--for probably not more than that number of MS. books are sent
by mail to publishers each year. Such property is too precious to trust
to any conveyance but the author's own carpet-sack, as a general thing.

But granting that one thousand MS. books went to the publishers in a
year, and thus saved to one thousand authors a dollar apiece in postage
in the twelve months, would not a law whose whole aim was to accomplish
such a trifle as that be simply an irreverent pleasantry, and not proper
company to thrust among grave and weighty statutes in the law-books?

The matter which suggested these remarks can be stated in a sentence.
Once or twice I have sent magazine MSS. from certain cities, on
newspaper rates, as "author's MS." But in Buffalo the postmaster
requires full letter postage. He claims no authority for this save
decisions of the Post Office Department. He showed me the law itself,
but even the highest order of intellectual obscurity, backed by the
largest cultivation (outside of a Post Office Department), could not
find in it authority for the "decisions" aforementioned. And I ought
to know, because I tried it myself [I say that, not to be trivially
facetious when talking in earnest, but merely to take the word out of
the mouths of certain cheap witlings, who always stand ready in any
company to interrupt anyone whose remarks offer a chance for the
exhibition of their poor wit and worse manners.]

I will not say one word about this curious decision, or utter one
sarcasm or one discourteous speech about it, or the well intending but
misguided officer who rendered it; but if he were in California, he
would fare far differently--very far differently--for there the wicked
are not restrained by the gentle charities that prevail in Buffalo,
and so they would deride him, and point the finger of scorn at him, and
address him as "Old Smarty from Mud Springs." Indeed they would.

THE GALAXY, December 1870

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

* * *

In a Sandwich Island paper just received by mail, I learn that some
gentlemen of taste and enterprise, and also of Keokuk, Iowa, have named
a fast young colt for me. Verily, one does have to go away from home to
learn news. The cannibal paper adds that the colt has already trotted
his mile, of his own accord, in 2:17 1-2. He was probably going to
dinner at the time. The idea of naming anything that is fast after
me--except an anchor or something of that kind--is a perfect inspiration
of humor. If this poor colt could see me trot around the course once,
he would laugh some of his teeth out--he would indeed, if he had time to
wait till I finished the trip. I have seen slower people than I am--and
more deliberate people than I am--and even quieter, and more listless,
and lazier people than I am. But they were dead.

* * *

And by that Sandwich Island paper ("Commercial Advertiser") I also
learned that H. M. Whitney, its able editor and proprietor for sixteen
years, was just retiring from business, having sold out to younger
men. I take this opportunity of thanking the disappearing veteran for
courtesies done and information afforded me in bygone days. Mr. Whitney
is one of the fairest-minded and best-hearted cannibals I ever knew, if
I do say it myself. There is not a stain upon his name, and never has
been. And he is the best judge of a human being I ever saw go through a
market. Many a time I have seen natives try to palm off part of an old
person on him for the fragment of a youth, but I never saw it succeed.
Ah, no, there was no deceiving H. M. Whitney. He could tell the very
family a roast came from, if he had ever tried the family before. I
remember his arresting my hand once and saying, "Let that alone--it's
from one of those Hulahulas--a very low family--and tough." I cannot
think of Whitney without my mouth watering. We used to eat a great many
people in those halcyon days, which shall come again, alas! nevermore.
We lived on the fat of the land. And I will say this for Henry
Whitney--he never thought less of his friend after examining into him,
and he was always sorry when his enemy was gone.

Most of the above may fairly and justly rank as nonsense, but my respect
and regard for Mr. Whitney are genuine.

* * *

My old friend is married again--as I learn from the following notice cut
by a correspondent from a Cincinnati paper last May--rather old news,
but it is a good scattering shot, and cannot fail to "fetch" some
ignorant interested body somewhere, considering the number of brides:

MARRIED

YOUNG--MARTIN--PENDERGAST--JENICKSON--CLEVELAND--MARTIN.--In Salt Lake
City, Utah, on the 16th ult., in the presence of the Saints, Elder
Brigham Young to Mrs. J. R. Martin, Miss L. M. Pendergast, Mrs. R. M.
Jenickson, Miss Susie P. Cleveland, and Miss Emily P. Martin, all of
county of Berks, England.

* * *

The following is genuine, and was cut from the regular advertising
columns of a great daily newspaper in a certain city. How many of my
little Sunday-school friends can guess the city? Do not all speak
at once--or if you do, do not put the emphasis strong on the second
syllable, because it would not be nice for little boys and girls to
disturb the continent. Though people who want divorces are not always
the continent. Read:

WANTED--Divorces legally obtained without publicity, and at small
expense. No fee unless decree is obtained. Address P. O. Box 1,037. This
is the P. O. Box advertised for the past six years, and the owner has
obtained 466 divorces during that time.

* * *

"M." (Springfield, O.) encloses for the Memoranda an inscription copied
verbatim from a tombstone in Mount Wood Cemetery, Wheeling, erected to
the memory of four little children who died within a few weeks of each
other. (S. J., of Wheeling, also sends a copy of the same.) The verses
seem to represent a conversation between the parents and the departed:

Children dear, what made you go

Far away, &c.

And leave us in our grief below,

Far way, &c.

You could not find a better home,

Nor better friends where e'er you roam,

Since you have left your earthly dome,

Far way, &c.

A heavenly message came for we,

All is well, &c.

To go and join that glorious glee,

All is well, &c.

We are members of that band,

On a holy pavement we do stand,

With a golden trumpet in our hands,

All is well, &c.

Ye are strangers in that sphere,

Children dear, &c.

You have no friends that you know there

Children dear, &c.

We wish, we wish we could but see

That heavenly palace where you be,

And bring you back to live with we,

Children dear, &c.

Dear parents weep for us no more,

All is well, &c.

We landed safe on Canaan's shore,

All is well, &c.

Ah! friends we have, we are well known

With saints and angels round the throne,

And Jesus claims us as his own.

All is well, &c.

* * *

"Quizquiz" hurls me this, under New York postmark: "I met last night
on the Podunk Railroad an individual whose characteristics are best
indicated by what follows:

"I handed him THE GALAXY, directing his attention to your map of Paris.
He read your explanations through deliberately, and when he came to that
part where you advised standing on the ear or the use of a looking glass
in order to see it properly, he turned to a careful consideration of the
map. In a few moments a bright idea struck him. Holding the sheet up
to a light, he looked through the reverse side and exclaimed: 'Why, all
that ain't necessary, after all! All you've got to do is to look at it
the wrong way, and it makes it all right!' He read the remainder of your
explanation, including certificates, and then returned to the profound
study of the map. After a while he burst out:

"'Why, here's a thing that's wrong, anyhow! You can't get Omaha on the
west and Jersey City on the east. They're both west. I don't care who
says it's right, I say it ain't!'

"I mildly suggested that Jersey City and Omaha were a long way apart,
and probably the longitude had something to do with it; for it was
impossible to suppose such military critics as General Grant and General
Sherman would not have detected the blunder if it were one.

"He pondered some time. 'Ah!' he said finally, 'it must be the
longitude, for you see if you go around the world one way you might get
Omaha on the west; while if you went round for Jersey City the other
way, you'd get that on the east. I see it; it's the longitude does it.'
"

* * *

The above mention of my map of Paris calls to mind that that work of
art is appreciated among the learned. It is duly advertised that
whoever sends a club of one hundred subscribers to the Yale College
"Courant"--together with the necessary four hundred dollars--will
receive as a prize a copy of my map! I am almost tempted to go
canvassing myself.

* * *

All my soul is in Art lately, since I have been taking lessons in
drawing and painting. I have drawn, and am now engraving, an elegant
portrait of King William of Prussia, as a companion to the customary
GALAXY portraits, and to complete the set. This work of Art, with
accompanying remarks, will appear in the January number of this
magazine.

THE GALAXY, January 1871

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

GOLDSMITH'S FRIEND ABROAD AGAIN.

NOTE.--No experience is set down in the following letters which had to
be invented. Fancy is not needed to give variety to the history of a
Chinaman's sojourn in America. Plain fact is amply sufficient.

LETTER VII.

SAN FRANCISCO, 18--.

DEAR CHING FOO: I was glad enough when my case came up. An hour's
experience had made me as tired of the police court as of the dungeon.
I was not uneasy about the result of the trial, but on the contrary felt
that as soon as the large auditory of Americans present should hear
how that the rowdies had set the dogs on me when I was going peacefully
along the street, and how, when I was all torn and bleeding, the
officers arrested me and put me in jail and let the rowdies go free, the
gallant hatred of oppression which is part of the very flesh and blood
of every American would be stirred to its utrnost, and I should be
instantly set at liberty. In truth I began to fear for the other side.
There in full view stood the ruffians who had misused me, and I began
to fear that in the first burst of generous anger occasioned by the
revealment of what they had done, they might be harshly handled, and
possibly even banished the country as having dishonored her and being no
longer worthy to remain upon her sacred soil.

The official interpreter of the court asked my name, and then spoke
it aloud so that all could hear. Supposing that all was now ready,
I cleared my throat and began--in Chinese, because of my imperfect
English:

"Hear, O high and mighty mandarin, and believe! As I went about my
peaceful business in the street, behold certain men set a dog on me,
and--"

"Silence!"

It was the judge that spoke. The interpreter whispered to me that I must
keep perfectly still. He said that no statement would be received from
me--I must only talk through my lawyer.

I had no lawyer. In the early morning a police court lawyer (termed, in
the higher circles of society, a "shyster") had come into our den in
the prison and offered his services to me, but I had been obliged to go
without them because I could not pay in advance or give security. I told
the interpreter how the matter stood. He said I must take my chances on
the witnesses then. I glanced around, and my failing confidence revived.

"Call those four Chinamen yonder," I said. "They saw it all. I remember
their faces perfectly. They will prove that the white men set the dog on
me when I was not harming them."

"That won't work," said he. "In this country white men can testify
against Chinamen all they want to, but Chinamen ain't allowed to testify
against white men!'

What a chill went through me! And then I felt the indignant blood rise
to my cheek at this libel upon the Home of the Oppressed, where all men
are free and equal--perfectly equal--perfectly free and perfectly equal.
I despised this Chinese-speaking Spaniard for his mean slander of the
land that was sheltering and feeding him. I sorely wanted to sear his
eyes with that sentence from the great and good American Declaration of
Independence which we have copied in letters of gold in China and keep
hung up over our family altars and in our temples--I mean the one about
all men being created free and equal.

But woe is me, Ching Foo, the man was right. He was right, after all.
There were my witnesses, but I could not use them. But now came a new
hope. I saw my white friend come in, and I felt that he had come there
purposely to help me. I may almost say I knew it. So I grew easier. He
passed near enough to me to say under his breath, "Don't be afraid," and
then I had no more fear. But presently the rowdies recognized him and
began to scowl at him in no friendly way, and to make threatening signs
at him. The two officers that arrested me fixed their eyes steadily on
his; he bore it well, but gave in presently, and dropped his eyes.
They still gazed at his eyebrows, and every time he raised his eyes he
encountered their winkless stare--until after a minute or two he ceased
to lift his head at all. The judge had been giving some instructions
privately to someone for a little while, but now he was ready to resume
business. Then the trial so unspeakably important to me, and freighted
with such prodigious consequence to my wife and children, began,
progressed, ended, was recorded in the books, noted down by the
newspaper reporters, and forgotten by everybody but me--all in the
little space of two minutes!

"Ah Song Hi, Chinaman. Officers O'Flannigan and O'Flaherty, witnesses.
Come forward, Officer O'Flannigan."

OFFICER--"He was making a disturbance in Kearny street."

JUDGE--"Any witnesses on the other side?"

No response. The white friend raised his eyes--encountered Officer
O'Flaherty's--blushed a little--got up and left the court-room, avoiding
all glances and not taking his own from the floor.

JUDGE--"Give him five dollars or ten days."

In my desolation there was a glad surprise in the words; but it passed
away when I found that he only meant that I was to be fined five dollars
or imprisoned ten days longer in default of it.

There were twelve or fifteen Chinamen in our crowd of prisoners, charged
with all manner of little thefts and misdemeanors, and their cases were
quickly disposed of, as a general thing. When the charge came from a
policeman or other white man, he made his statement and that was the
end of it, unless the Chinaman's lawyer could find some white person to
testify in his client's behalf; for, neither the accused Chinaman
nor his countrymen being allowed to say anything, the statement of the
officers or other white person was amply sufficient to convict. So, as
I said, the Chinamen's cases were quickly disposed of, and fines and
imprisonment promptly distributed among them. In one or two of the cases
the charges against Chinamen were brought by Chinamen themselves, and
in those cases Chinamen testified against Chinamen, through
the interpreter; but the fixed rule of the court being that the
preponderance of testimony in such cases should determine the prisoner's
guilt or innocence, and there being nothing very binding about an oath
administered to the lower orders of our people without the ancient
solemnity of cutting off a chicken's head and burning some yellow paper
at the same time, the interested parties naturally drum up a cloud
of witnesses who are cheerfully willing to give evidence without ever
knowing anything about the matter in hand. The judge has a custom of
rattling through with as much of this testimony as his patience will
stand, and then shutting off the rest and striking an average.

By noon all the business of the court was finished, and then several of
us who had not fared well were remanded to prison; the judge went home;
the lawyers, and officers, and spectators departed their several ways,
and left the uncomely court-room to silence, solitude, and Stiggers, the
newspaper reporter, which latter would now write up his items (said an
ancient Chinaman to me), in the which he would praise all the policemen
indiscriminately and abuse the Chinamen and dead people.

AH SONG HI.

THE GALAXY, January 1871

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

MEAN PEOPLE.

My ancient comrade, "Doesticks," in a letter from New York, quotes a
printed paragraph concerning a story I used to tell to lecture audiences
about a wonderfully mean man whom I used to know, and then Mr. D. throws
himself into a passion and relates the following circumstance (writing
on both sides of his paper, which is at least singular in a journalist,
if not profane and indecent):

Now I don't think much of that. I know a better thing about old Captain
Asa T. Mann of this town. You see, old Mann used to own and command
a pickaninny, bull-headed, mud-turtle-shaped craft of a schooner that
hailed from Perth Amboy. Old Mann used to prance out of his little cove
where he kept his three-cent craft, and steal along the coast of the
dangerous Kill von Kull, on the larboard side of Staten Island, to
smouch oysters from unguarded beds, or pick clams off sloops where
the watch had gone to bed drunk. Well, once old Mann went on a long
voyage--for him. He went down to Virginia, taking his wife and little
boy with him. The old rapscallion put on all sorts of airs, and
pretended to keep up as strict discipline as if his craft was a
man-of-war. One day his darling baby tumbled overboard. A sailor named
Jones jumped over after him and after cavorting around about an hour or
so, succeeded in getting the miserable little scion of a worthless sire
on board again. Then old Mann got right up on his dignity--he put on
all the dig. he had handy--and in two minutes he had Jones into double
irons, and there he kept him three weeks, in the forehold, for leaving
the ship without orders.

I will not resurrect my own mean man, for possibly he might not show to
good advantage in the presence of this gifted sailor; but I will enter
a Toledo bridegroom against the son of the salt wave, and let the winner
take the money. I give the Toledo story just as it comes to me. (It,
too, is written on both sides of the paper; but as this correspondent is
not a journalist, the act is only wicked, not obscene.)

In this village there lived, and continue to live, two chaps who in
their bachelor days were chums. S., one of the chaps, tiring of single
blessedness, took unto himself a wife and a wedding, with numerous
pieces of silverware and things from congratulating friends. C., the
other chap, sent in a handsome silver ladle, costing several dollars
or more. Their friendship continued. A year later C., also entered
into partnership for life with one of the fair Eyes; and he also had a
wedding. S., being worth something less than $20,000, thought he ought
to return the compliment of a wedding present, and a happy thought
struck him. He took that ladle down to the jeweller from whom is was
purchased by C. the year before, and traded it off for silver salt
dishes to present to C. and his bride.

THE GALAXY, January 1871

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

A SAD, SAD BUSINESS.

Latterly I have received several letters, and see a number of newspaper
paragraphs, all upon a certain subject, and all of about the same tenor.
I here give honest specimens. One is from a New York paper, one is from
a letter from an old friend, and one is from a letter from a New York
publisher who is a stranger to me. I humbly endeavor to make these bits
toothsome with the remark that the article they are praising (which
appeared in the December Galaxy, and pretended to be a criticism from
the London "Saturday Review" on my "Innocents Abroad") was written by
myself--every line of it:

The "Herald" says the richest thing out is the "serious critique" in the
London "Saturday Review", on Mark Twain's "Innocents Abroad." We thought
before we read it that it must be "serious," as everybody said so, and
were even ready to shed a few tears; but since perusing it, we are bound
to confess that next to Mark's "Jumping Frog" it's the finest bit of
humor and sarcasm that we've come across in many a day.

[I do not get a compliment like that every day.]

I used to think that your writings were pretty good but after reading
the criticism in THE GALAXY from the "London Review," have discovered
what an ass I must have been. If suggestions are in order, mine is,
that you put that article in your next edition of the "Innocents," as
an extra chapter, if you are not afraid to put your own humor in
competition with it. It is as rich a thing as I ever read."

[Which is strong commendation from a book publisher.]

The London Reviewer, my friend, is not the stupid "serious" creature he
pretends to be, I think; but, on the contrary, has a keen appreciation
and enjoyment of your book. As I read his article in THE GALAXY, I could
imagine him giving vent to many a hearty laugh. But he is writing for
Catholics and Established Church people, and high-toned, antiquated,
conservative gentility, whom it is a delight to him to help you shock,
while he pretends to shake his head with owlish density. He is a
magnificent humorist himself.

[Now that is graceful and handsome. I take off my hat to my life-long
friend and comrade, and with my feet together and my fingers spread over
my heart, I say, in the language of Alabama, "You do me proud."]

I stand guilty of the authorship of the article, but I did not mean any
harm. I saw by an item in the Boston Advertiser that a solemn, serious
critique on the English edition of my book had appeared in the London
"Saturday Review," and the idea of such a literary breakfast by a
stolid, ponderous British ogre of the quill was too much for a naturally
weak virtue, and I went home and burlesqued it--revelled in it, I may
say. I never saw a copy of the real "Saturday Review" criticism until
after my burlesque was written and mailed to the printer. But when I
did get hold of a copy, I found it to be vulgar, awkwardly written,
ill-natured, and entirely serious and in earnest. The gentleman who
wrote the newspaper paragraph above quoted had not been misled as to its
character.

If any man doubts my word now, I will kill him. No, I will not kill him;
I will win his money. I will bet him twenty to one, and let any New York
publisher hold the stakes, that the statements I have above made as to
the authorship of the article in question are entirely true. Perhaps
I may get wealthy at this, for I am willing to take all the bets that
offer; and if a man wants larger odds, I will give him all he requires.
But he ought to find out whether I am betting on what is termed "a sure
thing" or not before he ventures his money, and he can do that by going
to a public library and examining the London "Saturday Revue" of October
8th, which contains the real critique.

Bless me, some people thought that I was the "sold" person!

P. S.--I cannot resist the temptation to toss in this most savory thing
of all--this easy, graceful, philosophical disquisition, with its happy,
chirping confidence. It is from the Cincinnati Enquirer:

Nothing is more uncertain than the value of a fine cigar. Nine smokers
out of ten would prefer an ordinary domestic article, three for a
quarter, to a fifty-cent Partaga, if kept in ignorance of the cost of
the latter. The flavor of the Partaga is too delicate for palates that
have been accustomed to Connecticut seed leaf. So it is with humor. The
finer it is in quality, the more danger of its not being recognized
at all. Even Mark Twain has been taken in by an English review of his
"Innocents Abroad." Mark Twain is by no means a coarse humorist, but the
Englishman's humor is so much finer than his, that he mistakes it for
solid earnest, and "larfs most consumedly."

A man who cannot learn stands in his own light. Hereafter, when I write
an article which I know to be good, but which I may have reason to fear
will not, in some quarters, be considered to amount to much, coming
from an American, I will aver that an Englishman wrote it and that it
is copied from a London journal. And then I will occupy a back seat and
enjoy the cordial applause.

THE GALAXY, January 1871

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

ANSWER TO AN INQUIRY FROM THE COMING MAN.

"YOUNG AUTHOR."--Yes, Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish,
because the phosphorous in it makes brains. So far you are correct. But
I cannot help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat--at
least, not with certainty. If the specimen composition you send is about
your fair usual average, I should judge that perhaps a couple of whales
would be all you would want for the present. Not the largest kind, but
simply good middling-sized whales.

THE GALAXY, February 1871

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

THE COMING MAN.

GENERAL DEWLAP G. LOVEL, minister to Hong-Wo, has resigned and returned
to this country. His successor will not be appointed at present. Some
of General Lovel's friends are nominating him for the vacant English
mission. [Item in all the papers.]

What a jar it gave me! For as I am a true man, I thought it meant my old
fellow-soldier in the Nevada militia, General Dunlap G. Lovel. And so I
read it again, and again, and once more, and repeatedly--and with
ever augmenting astonishment. But at last I grew calmer and began to
scrutinize the "internal evidences" of this item. They were equal--part
for, and part against my Lovel. For instance, my Lovel, who always
thought gunpowder tea was made from ordinary gunpowder boiled instead
of burned (and will still think so until he sees this paragraph), is
guileless enough to go on wearing a military title gained as Brigadier
in a militia which never saw service even in a Fourth of July
procession, and consider it a distinction far from ridiculous.
Consequently this general is as likely to be as general as another's.
But then the remaining point of evidence is against us--namely, that
this Minister Lovel has resigned. So it is not my Lovel after all. For
my Lovel would not have resigned.

No; my Lovel is a man who can always be relied upon--a man who would be
faithful to the death. If intrusted with an office, he would cling to
that office until it was abolished. I am acquainted with my Lovel.

The distinct evidence is against my Lovel, and yet that lifting of a
serene, unblinking gaze aloft to the awful sublimity of St. James's,
from the remote insignificance of the U.S. embassage to Hong-Wo, with
its candle-box for an official desk, and boiled beans three times a day
for subsistence, and peanuts on Sunday for grandeur, is so precisely
like my Lovel!

But with sorrow I own that this General Lovel is Dewlap G., while mine
is only Dunlap G. Consequently they are not the same--far from it.
Yet it is possible that a kind word from me may attract attention and
sympathy to my poor Lovel, and thus help a deserving man to fortune. So
let me go on.

General P. Edward O'Connor has done the highest and faithfullest and
best military service in Mormondom, that ever has been rendered there
for our country. For about seven years or such a matter he has made both
Brigham and the Indians reasonably civil and polite. Well--. However, I
see by the papers that General O'Connor has not been appointed Governor
of Utah, as the Pacific coast desired. I cannot think how I came to
wander off to General O'Connor, for he has nothing whatever to do with
my General Lovel. Therefore I will drop him and not digress again. I now
resume.

When the nation rose, years ago, Dunlap G. Lovel of Virginia, Nevada
(Territory), flew to arms and was created a Brigadier-General of the
territorial militia; and with his hand on his heart he swore an oath
that he never would budge from his post till the enemy came. Colonel
O'Connor flew to arms and put down the Indians and the Mormons, and kept
them down for years--and fought his gallant way up through bullets
and blood to his brigadier-generalship. But this is not a biography of
General O'Connor. Hang General O'Connor! It is General Lovel I desire to
speak of.

General Lovel--how imposing he looked in his uniform! He was a very
exceedingly microscopic operator in wild-cat silver-mining stocks, and
so he could not wear it every day; but then he was always ready when
a fireman was to be buried or a relative hung. And he did look really
beautiful, any of the old citizens will say that. It was a fine sight
when all the militia turned out at once. The territorial population
was some 20,000 then, and the Territorial militia numbered 139
persons, including regimental officers, three major and eleven
brigadier-generals. General Lovel was the eleventh.

I cannot now call to mind distinctly the several engagements General
Lovel was in, but I remember the following, on account of their peculiar
prominence:

When Thompson Billings the desperado was captured, Lovel's brigade
guarded the front door of the jail that night. It was well for Billings
that he left by the back door; for it was always thought that if he had
come out the front way he would have been shot.

At the great Sanitary Ball in Carson City, General Lovel was present in
his uniform.

When the Legislature met in 1863, General Lovel and brigade were
promptly on duty, either to do honor to them or protect the public, I
have forgotten which.

He was present in his uniform with his men, to guard the exit of the
Legislature of 1862, and let the members retire in peace with the
surplus steel pens and stationery. This was the Legislature that
confirmed his appointment as Brigadier General. It also elected as
enrolling clerk of its House of Representatives a militia chieftain
by the name of Captain G. Murphy, who could not write. This was a
misunderstanding, however, rather than a blunder, for the Legislature of
1862 did not know it was necessary he should know how to write.

When the Governor delivered his farewell address, General Lovel and
brigade were there, and never gave way an inch till it was done.

General Lovel was in several other engagements, but I cannot call them
to mind now.

By-and-by the people began to feel that General Lovel's military
services ought to be rewarded. So some one suggested that he run as
an independent candidate for U. S. Senator (for Nevada was become
a new-fledged State by this time). Modest as this old soldier was,
backward as he was, naturally diffident as he was, he said he would do
it, and he did. It was commonly reported and steadfastly believed by
everybody that he spent the bulk of his fortune, which was fifteen or
twenty thousand dollars, in "putting up" a legislative delegation from
Virginia City which should fight under his Senatorial banner. AND YET
THAT MAN WAS NOT ELECTED. I not only state it, but I swear to it. Why,
unless my memory has gone entirely crazy, that polluted Legislature
never even mentioned his name!

What was an old public servant to do after such treatment? Shake the
dust from his sandals and leave the State to its self-invited decay and
ruin. That was the course to pursue, and that was the one he did pursue.
He knew a land where worth is always recognized, a city where
the nation's faithful vassal cannot know the cold hand of
neglect--WASHINGTON. He went there in Andrew Johnson's time. He probably
got Captain John Nye to use his "influence" for him--ha! ha!

What do we behold a grateful nation instantly do? We see it send General
O'Connor--no, I mean General Lovel--to represent us as resident minister
at oriental Hong-Wo!

No, no, no--I have got it all wrong again. It is not my Dun-lap, but
somebody's Dew-lap that was sent.

But might it not--no, it cannot be and is not my Lovel whose "friends"
are pointing him towards august St. James's. The first syllable of the
name is so different. But my Lovel would do very well indeed for that
place. I am aware that he knows no French, and is not certain of his
English. But then our foreign representatives seldom know the "language
of diplomacy" anyhow. I do not know that he has any education to speak
of--am confident he has not--but cannot a man learn? I am not even
certain that he knows enough to come in when it rains, but I say it
again, and repeat and reiterate it, cannot a man learn? We need a person
at such a lordly court as the British who is well-bred and gentlemanly
in his appearance and address, a man accustomed to the dignities and
proprieties of the highest and best society. There is not a barkeeper, a
desperado, an editor, or an Indian in Nevada but will speak in terms
of respect of Dun-lap G. Lovel, and say that he always worthily bore
himself among the very cream of society in that critical and exacting
community. We want no mere unconsidered "Mr." at the Court of St.
James's; we want a person with a title to his name--a General, nothing
less. My General would answer. He could tell those old field-marshals
from India and Abyssinia something about soldier-life which would be
new to them, perhaps. But above all, we want a great-brained, profound
diplomatic genius at the Court of St. James's--a man surcharged with
experience likewise. Now if this deep, this bottomless Hong-Wooian
diplomat were only Dun-lap G. Lovel--but no, it is Dew-lap. But my
General would be a great card for us in England, and I wish we could
have him. Contemplate him in Motley's place. Think of my dainty
Lilliputian standing in Brobdingnag Motley's shoes, and peeping out
smartly over the instep at the Great Powers. It would be a thing to
bless and honor a heedful Providence for--this consummation.

Who are the "friends" who desire the appointment of that other Lovel, I
wonder! If that Lovel were my Lovel, I should think the term "friends"
referred to "Captain" John Nye, of the lobby, Washington, a man whom I
love to call "the Wheels of Government," because if you could see him
backing members up into corners by the button-hole, and "influencing"
them in favor of this, that, and the other Lovel whom the back
settlements have cast up undigested, you would believe as I do, that our
Government could not proceed without him.

But sorrow to me, this Lovel is Dew-lap, and mine is totally another
man--Dun-lap. Let it go. I care not. And yet my heart knows I would
worship that President who should show my fading eyes and failing life
the spectacle of "General" Dun-lap G. Lovel Envoy Extraordinary and
Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James's, and "Captain" John
Nye, of the lobby, Washington, Secretary of Legation. I would be content
to die then--entirely content. And so with loving zeal I add my name to
the list of "General Lovel's friends" who are "nominating him for the
vacant English mission."

THE GALAXY, February 1871

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

A BOOK REVIEW.

BY R.B.W.

In his preface to this volume ["An Inquiry into the Origin, Development,
and Transmission of the Games of Childhood, in all Ages and of every
Nation, Critical, Analytical, and Historical." By Thomas Henry Huxley,
L.L.D., F.R.S. Author's edition. New York: Shelton & Brothers. 1 vol.
12mo., pp. 498] Professor Huxley says:

To the historiographer the most interesting period of research is
that where history proper loses itself in the vague mist of mythologic
shadow. The childhood of nations has always been a favorite subject of
investigation. To separate the type from the fact; the symbol from the
thing symbolized; the ideal from the real; to regroup the disintegrated
fragments, and from the materials thus gathered to construct a firm
and trustworthy superstructure on which the mind may rest in tranquil
confidence; this has ever been and ever will be one of the most
fascinating pursuits to which the cultured intellect can be devoted. If
then we seek the childhood of nations as a favored field for philosophic
speculation, may we not with equal propriety turn to the semper-existent
nation of children, seek out the origin of their traditions, trace the
development of their customs, and interpret by the light of history
and reason their orally transmitted lore? Herein is a new field for
speculative research. Hence may be derived results the most far-reaching
prescience could not forecast; and even childhood's games may thus
attain an eminence in the realms of thought undreamt of by purblind
metaphysicans of the dormant ages!

This extract shows sufficiently the spirit in which the author of
"Vestiges of the Creation" has undertaken a work which, to many, might
seem scarcely worthy the time and labor evidently bestowed upon it, and
the high position in the scientific world its author enjoys. [It is to
be regretted that unfortunate domestic relations should ever affect the
social status of a great and learned writer; but this affords no just
ground for disputing the logical results of the inductive system.]
Following out the idea of similarity between the childhood of nations
and the nationality of childhood, Professor Huxley says, p. 76:

Disraeli, in his "Amenities of Literature," has shown conclusively
that the religion of Druidism was one only possible to a people not yet
emerged from a state of mental childhood. The British Druids constituted
a sacred and secret society, religious, political, literary, and
military. In the rude mechanism of society in a state of pupillage, the
first elements of government, however puerile, were the levers to
lift and sustain the barbaric mind. Invested with all privileges and
immunities, amid that transcient omnipotence which man, in his first
feeble condition, can confer, the wild children of society crouched
together before those illusions which superstition so easily forges.
Whatever was taught was forbidden to be written, and not only their
doctrines and their sciences were veiled in sacred obscurity, but the
laws which they made and the traditions of their mythology were oral.
The Druids were the common fathers of the British youth, for they were
their sole educators, and, for the most part, progenitors. Could the
parallel be more exact?

Descending from the general to the particular consideration of this
subject, Professor Huxley traces objectively the origin of many of
the childish games known in this country, such as marbles, ring-taw,
leap-frog, etc., and others which have been practised from time
immemorial by the youth of every clime and age. Speaking of the game of
oats, peas, beans, and barley, oh, which is found to have originated
in a mystic symbolism similar in some respects to the dances of the
so-called Shakers of to-day, he says:

The allegory constantly presented in the religious chants of the Aryans
reveals a freshness which renders their interpretation easy. It is
sufficient to read the Rig-veda to be convinced that naturalism--that is
to say, the study of physical nature--constituted the foundation of the
worship of those pastoral peoples who then occupied the Punjaub, and
later emigrated to the northerly plains of Hindoostan. It is the direct
product of that poetical and anthropomorphic spirit which personifies
all objects, all phenomena, and is the unvarying form imagination takes
at its awakening.

The lengthy extracts already made render it impossible even to allude to
many of the most entertaining topics of this exhaustive work; but one
of the most curious of the traditions exhumed from the buried records of
the past is that which relates to the game of hop Scotch. The Professor
traces clearly the practice of this pastime as far back as the invention
of the morris and broadsword dances of the Scottish clansmen in the
early part of the eleventh century, and suggests, rather than positively
ascribes, its origin to the boyish imitation of their parents' warlike
sports, by the youthful Bruces and Douglasses of the period. He gives,
however, for what it is worth, a quaint tradition which carries the
origin of this game back almost to the garden of Eden--back, in fact,
to Cain and Abel in person. ***** [To economize space, I leave out the
tradition, and also the arguments which the reviewer offers in support
of its claims to probability.--EDITOR MEMORANDA.]

There is a superficial objection which may be made to the reception of
this theory of the origin of hop Scotch, and it is obvious. To have used
these words, Cain and Abel must have spoken English. Granted. But the
explanation is really very simple. Adam was an Aryan, [ The Hebrews, it
will be remembered, do not appear among the brotherhood of nations
until the Abrahamic era. In this respect the Mosaic cosmogony is fully
sustained by Sanscrit writers as well as by the Chinese philosopher
Confucius, who flourished 346 years B.C.] and necessarily, Cain and Abel
were Aryans also. Now the roots of all languages are found in the Aryan
and Semitic tongues. Professor Huxley gives numerous instances (most of
which are well known to philologists) of radical identity between words
in use in several of the modern languages at the present day and those
of the most primitive nations of the globe. The reader familiar with the
Semitic languages will have no difficulty in following the author in his
philological demonstration of the innate possibility that Cain and Abel
may have given this name to this game--that is, that the sound and
the idea intended were the same, although it is unnecessary to say
the spelling may have differed. But this is a minor point. The most
interesting demonstration, however, is to be found in the algebraic
formula by which Professor Huxley proves a similar conclusion. It shall
be our final extract, but we cannot refrain from giving it entire, in
the Professor's own words:

Representing the two known qualities Cain and Abel by the letters C and
A, we proceed as follows: Let x=the language used by Cain, and x, the
language used by Abel. Also, let y=the language not used by Cain, and y,
the language not used by Abel. Then

]=x + y, or all the language used by Cain, and

]=x + y, or all the language used by Abel.

The time is assumed to be that at which the games was at its height.

Then, p + p, being the respective probabilities that any particular
words were used, we have:

Cpx + cpy=cl; and

Ap,x + ap,y=al.

Adding the two equations:

Cpx + ap,x, + cpy + ap,y=cl + al.

Cpx + ap,x=cl + al=cpy=ap,y

But since y=o, we may omit the quantities containing that symbol, and

Cpx + ap,x,=cl, or

Cpx=cl and

cx=cl./p

Ap,x,=al,

Ax=al,/p But,

p=1 when x words are considered, and

p,=1 when x, words are considered. Therefore, adding the two equations
again, we have

Cx =ax,=cl + al.

Thus proving that Cain used x words and Abel used x, words. Q.E.D.

Enough has been given, we think, to arouse the interest of our readers
in this, all things considered, remarkable book. It is enough to say in
conclusion that the patient research and philosophical deductions of
the student and the thinker have here unearthed for the instruction and
amusement of the present age, a wealth of quaint and curious information
which has long lain buried in oblivion, or existed only among the ana of
that pigmy nation which exists among us and around us, but which, until
Professor Huxley became its historian and interpreter, was not of us.

[I wish to state that this review came to me from some Philadelphia
person entirely unknown to me; but as I could make neither head nor tail
of the thing, I thought it must be good, and therefore have published
it. I have heard of Professor Huxley before, and knew that he was
the author of Watts's hymns, but I did not know before that he wrote
"Vestiges of Creation." However, let it pass--I suppose he did, since
it is so stated. I have not yet seen his new work about children, and
moreover, I do not want to, for all this reviewer thinks so much of
it. Mr. Huxley is too handy with his slate-pencil to suit me.--EDITOR
MEMORANDA.]

THE GALAXY, February 1871

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

THE TONE-IMPARTING COMMITTEE.

When I get old and ponderously respectable, only one thing will be able
to make me truly happy, and that will be to be put on the Venerable
Tone-Imparting Committee of the City of New York, and have nothing to do
but sit on the platform, solemn and imposing, along with Peter Cooper,
Horace Greeley, etc., etc., and shed momentary fame at second hand
on obscure lecturers, draw public attention to lectures which would
otherwise clack eloquently to sounding emptiness, and subdue audiences
into respectful hearing of all sorts of unpopular and outlandish dogmas
and isms. That is what I desire for the cheer and gratification of my
gray hairs. Let me but sit up there with those fine relics of the Old
Red Sandstone period and give Tone to an intellectual entertainment
twice a week, and be so reported, and my happiness will be complete.
Those men have been my envy for a long, long time. And no memories of
my life are so pleasant as my reminiscence, of their long and honorable
career in the Tone-imparting service. I can recollect the first time I
ever saw them on the platforms just as well as I can remember the events
of yesterday. Horace Greeley sat on the right, Peter Cooper on the left,
and Thomas Jefferson, Red Jacket, Benjamin Franklin, and John Hancock
sat between them. This was on the 22d of December, 1799, on the occasion
of the state funeral of George Washington in New York. It was a great
day, that--a great day, and a very, very sad one. I remember that
Broadway was one mass of black crape from Castle Garden nearly up to
where the City Hall now stands. The next time I saw these gentlemen
officiate was at a ball given for the purpose of procuring money and
medicines for the sick and wounded soldiers and sailors. Horace Greeley
occupied one side of the platform on which the musicians were exalted,
and Peter Cooper the other. There were other Tone-imparters attendant
upon the two chiefs, but I have forgotten their names now. Horace
Greeley, gray-haired and beaming, was in sailor costume--white duck
pants, blue shirt, open at the breast, large neckerchief, loose as an
ox-bow, and tied with a jaunty sailor knot, broad turnover collar with
star in the corner, shiny black little tarpaulin hat roosting daintily
far back on head and flying two gallant long ribbons. Slippers on
ample feet, round spectacles on benignant nose, and pitchfork in hand
completed Mr. Greeley, and made him, in my boyish admiration, every inch
a sailor, and worthy to be the honored great-grandfather of the Neptune
he was so ingeniously representing. I shall never forget him. Mr. Cooper
was dressed as a general of militia, and was dismally and oppressively
warlike. I neglected to remark, in the proper place, that the soldiers
and sailors in whose aid the ball was given had just been sent in from
Boston--this was during the war of 1812. At the grand national reception
of Lafayette, in 1824, Horace Greeley sat on the right and Peter Cooper
on the left. The other Tone-imparters of that day are sleeping the
sleep of the just now. I was in the audience when Horace Greeley, Peter
Cooper, and other chief citizens imparted tone to the great meetings in
favor of French liberty, in 1848. Then I never saw them any more until
here lately; but now that I am living tolerably near the city, I run
down every time I see it announced that "Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper,
and several other distinguished citizens will occupy seats on the
platform;" and next morning, when I read in the first paragraph of the
phonographic report that "Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, and several
other distinguished citizens occupied seats on the platform," I say
to myself, "Thank God, I was present." Thus I have been enabled to see
these substantial old friends of mine sit on the platform and give tone
to lectures on anatomy, and lectures on agriculture, and lectures
on stirpiculture, and lectures on astronomy, on chemistry, on
miscegenation, on "Is Man Descended from the Kangaroo?" on veterinary
matters, on all kinds of religion, and several kinds of politics; and
have seen them give tone and grandeur to the Four-legged Girl, the
Siamese Twins, the Great Egyptian Sword Swallower, and the Old Original
Jacobs. Whenever somebody is to lecture on a subject not of general
interest, I know that my venerated Remains of the Old Red Sandstone
Period will be on the platform, whenever a lecturer is to appear whom
nobody has heard of before, nor will be likely to seek to see, I know
that the real benevolence of my old friends will be taken advantage
of, and that they will be on the platform (and in the bills) as
an advertisement; and whenever any new and obnoxious deviltry in
philosophy, morals, or politics is to be sprung upon the people, I know
perfectly well that these intrepid old heroes will be on that platform
too, in the interest of full and free discussion, and to crush down all
narrower and less generous souls with the solid dead weight of
their awful respectability. And let us all remember that while these
inveterate and imperishable presiders (if you please) appear on the
platform every night in the year as regularly as the volunteered piano
from Steinway's or Chickering's, and have bolstered up and given tone to
a deal of questionable merit and obscure emptiness in their time,
they have also diversified this inconsequential service by occasional
powerful uplifting and upholding of great progressive ideas which
smaller men feared to meddle with or countenance.

THE GALAXY, February 1871

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

THE DANGER OF LYING IN BED.

The man in the ticket office said: "Have an accident insurance ticket,
also?"

"No," I said, after studying the matter over a little. "No, I believe
not; I am going to be travelling by rail all day to-day. However,
to-morrow I don't travel. Give me one for to-morrow."

The man looked puzzled. He said:

"But it is for accident insurance, and if you are going to travel by
rail--"

"If I am going to travel by rail, I shan't need it. Lying at home in bed
is the thing I am afraid of."

I had been looking into this matter. Last year I travelled twenty
thousand miles, almost entirely by rail; the year before, I travelled
over twenty-five thousand miles, half by sea and half by rail; and the
year before that I travelled in the neighborhood of ten thousand miles,
exclusively by rail. I suppose if I put in all the little odd journeys
here and there, I may say I have travelled sixty thousand miles during
the three years I have mentioned. And never an accident.

For a good while I said to myself every morning: "Now I have escaped
thus far, and so the chances are just that much increased that I shall
catch it this time. I will be shrewd, and buy an accident ticket." And
to a dead moral certainty I drew a blank, and went to bed that night
without a joint started or a bone splintered. I got tired of that sort
of daily bother, and fell to buying accident tickets that were good
for a month. I said to myself, "A man can't buy thirty blanks in one
bundle."

But I was mistaken. There was never a prize in the lot. I could read
of railway accidents every day--the newspaper atmosphere was foggy with
them; but somehow they never came my way. I found I had spent a good
deal of money in the accident business, and had nothing to show for it.
My suspicions were aroused, and I began to hunt around for somebody that
had won in this lottery. I found plenty of people who had invested,
but not an individual that had ever had an accident or made a cent. I
stopped buying accident tickets and went to ciphering. The result was
astounding. 'THE PERIL LAY NOT IN TRAVELLING, BUT IN STAYING AT HOME.

I hunted up statistics, and was amazed to find that after all the
glaring newspaper headings concerning railroad disasters, less than
three hundred people had really lost their lives by those disasters
in the preceding twelve months. The Erie road was set down as the most
murderous in the list. It had killed forty-six--or twenty-six, I do not
exactly remember which, but I know the number was double that of any
other road. But the fact straightway suggested itself that the Erie was
an immensely long road, and did more business than any other line in
the country; so the double number of killed ceased to be matter for
surprise.

By further figuring, it appeared that between New York and Rochester the
Erie ran eight passenger trains each way every day--sixteen altogether;
and carried a daily average of 6,000 persons. That is about a million in
six months--the population of New York city. Well, the Erie kills from
thirteen to twenty-three persons out of its million in six months; and
in the same time 13,000 of New York's million die in their beds! My
flesh crept, my hair stood on end. "This is appalling!" I said. "The
danger isn't in travelling by rail, but in trusting to those deadly
beds. I will never sleep in a bed again."

I had figured on considerably less than one-half the length of the Erie
road. It was plain that the entire road must transport at least eleven
or twelve thousand people every day. There are many short roads running
out of Boston that do fully half as much; a great many such roads. There
are many roads scattered about the Union that do a prodigious passenger
business. Therefore it was fair to presume that an average of 2,500
passengers a day for each road in the country would be about correct.
There are 846 railway lines in our country, and 846 times 2,500 are
2,115,000. So the railways of America move more than two millions of
people every day; six hundred and fifty millions of people a year,
without counting the Sundays. They do that, too--there is no question
about it; though where they get the raw material is clear beyond the
jurisdiction of my arithmetic; for I have hunted the census through and
through, and I find that there are not that many people in the United
States, by a matter of six hundred and ten millions at the very least.
They must use some of the same people over again, likely.

San Francisco is one-eighth as populous as New York; there are 60 deaths
a week in the former and 500 a week in the latter--if they have luck.
That is 3,120 deaths a year in San Francisco, and eight times as many
in New York--say about 25,000 or 26,000. The health of the two places is
the same. So we will let it stand as a fair presumption that this will
hold good all over the country, and that consequently 25,000 out of
every million of people we have must die every year. That amounts to
one-fortieth of our total population. One million of us, then, die
annually. Out of this million ten or twelve thousand are stabbed, shot,
drowned, hanged, poisoned, or meet a similarly violent death in some
other popular way, such as perishing by kerosene lamp and hoop-skirt
conflagrations, getting buried in coal mines, falling off housetops
breaking through church or lecture-room floors, taking patent medicines,
or committing suicide in other forms. The Erie railroad kills from 23 to
46; the other 845 railroads kill a average of one-third of a man
each; and the rest of that million, amounting in the aggregate to the
appalling figure of nine hundred and eighty-seven thousand six hundred
and thirty-one corpses, die naturally in their beds!

You will excuse me from taking any more chances on those beds. The
railroads are good enough for me.

And my advice to all people is, Don't stay at home any more than you can
help; but when you have got to stay at home a while, buy a package of
those insurance tickets and sit up nights. You cannot be too cautious.

[One can see now why I answered that ticket agent in the manner recorded
at the top of this sketch.]

The moral of this composition is, that thoughtless people grumble more
than is fair about railroad management in the United States. When we
consider that every day and night of the year full fourteen thousand
railway trains of various kinds, freighted with life and armed with
death, go thundering over the land, the marvel is, not that they kill
three hundred human beings in a twelvemonth, but that they do not kill
three hundred times three hundred!

THE GALAXY, February 1871

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

ONE OF MANKIND'S BORES.

I suppose that if there is one thing in the world more hateful than
another to all of us, it is to have to write a letter. A private letter
especially. And business letters, to my thinking, are very little
pleasanter. Nearly all the enjoyment is taken out of every letter I
get by the reflection that it must be answered. And I do so dread the
affliction of writing those answers, that often my first and gladdest
impulse is to burn my mail before it is opened. For ten years I never
felt that sort of dread at all because I was moving about constantly,
from city to city, from State to State, and from country to country, and
so I could leave all letters unanswered if I chose, and the writers
of them would naturally suppose that I had changed my post office and
missed receiving my correspondence. But I am "cornered" now. I cannot
use that form of deception any more. I am anchored, and letters of all
kinds come straight to me with deadly precision.

They are letters of all sorts and descriptions, and they treat of
everything. I generally read them at breakfast, and right often they
kill a day's work by diverting my thoughts and fancies into some new
channel, thus breaking up and making confusion of the programme of
scribbling I had arranged for my working hours. After breakfast I clear
for action, and for an hour try hard to write; but there is no getting
back into the old train of thought after such an interruption, and so
at last I give it up and put off further effort till next day. One would
suppose that I would now answer those letters and get them out of the
way; and I suppose one of those model young men we read about, who enter
New York barefoot and live to become insolent millionaires, would be
sure to do that; but I don't. I never shall be a millionaire, and so I
disdain to copy the ways of those men. I did not start right. I made
a fatal mistake to begin with, and entered New York with boots on and
above forty cents in my pocket. With such an unpropitious beginning,
any efforts of mine to acquire great wealth would be frowned upon as
illegitimate, and I should be ruthlessly put down as an impostor. And
so, as I said before, I decline to follow the lead of those chrysalis
Croesuses and answer my correspondents with commercial promptness. I
stop work for the day, and leave the new letters stacked up along with
those that came the day before, and the day before that, and the day
before that, and so on. And by-and-by the pile grows so large that
it begins to distress me, and then I attack it and give full five and
sometimes six hours to the assault. And how many of the letters do I
answer in that time? Never more than nine; usually only five or six. The
correspondence clerk in a great mercantile house would answer a hundred
in that many hours. But a man who has spent years in writing for the
press cannot reasonably be expected to have such facility with a pen.
From old habit he gets to thinking and thinking, patiently puzzling for
minutes together over the proper turning of a sentence in an answer to
some unimportant private letter, and so the precious time slips away.

It comes natural to me in these latter years to do all manner of
composition laboriously and ploddingly, private letters included.
Consequently, I do fervently hate letter-writing, and so do all the
newspaper and magazine men I am acquainted with.

The above remarks are by way of explanation and apology to parties
who have written me about various matters, and whose letters I have
neglected to answer. I tried in good faith to answer them--tried every
now and then, and always succeeded in clearing off several, but always
as surely left the majority of those received each week to lie over till
the next. The result was always the same, to wit: the unanswered letters
would shortly begin to have a reproachful look about them, next an
upbraiding look, and by-and-by an aggressive and insolent aspect; and
when it came to that, I always opened the stove door and made an example
of them. The return of cheerfulness and the flight of every feeling of
distress on account of neglected duty, was immediate and thorough.

I did not answer the letter of the Wisconsin gentleman, who inquired
whether imported brads were better than domestic ones, because I did not
know what brads were, and did not choose to "let on" to a stranger. I
thought it would have looked much better in him, anyhow, to have asked
somebody who he knew was in the habit of eating brads, or wearing them,
whichever is the proper way of utilizing them.

I did manage to answer the little Kentucky boy who wished to send me his
wildcat. I thanked him very kindly and cordially for his donation, and
said I was very fond of cats of all descriptions, and told him to do
like the little Indiana boy and forward it to Rev. Mr. Beecher, and
I would call and get it some time. I could not bear to check the warm
young tide of his generosity, and yet I had no (immediate) use for the
insect myself.

I did not answer the young man who wrote me from Tennessee, inquiring
"how to become a good reporter and acceptable journalist," chiefly
because if one marks out the nice easy method which he knows these kind
of inquirers have in their mind's eye, they straightway begin to afflict
him with semi-weekly specimens of what they can do, under the thin
disguise of a friendly correspondence; and if he marks out the
unromantic and unattractive method which he believes in his heart to
be the absolutely necessary one, they always write back and call him a
"nigger" or a "thief." These people are so illogical.

THE GALAXY, February 1871

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

THE INDIGNITY PUT UPON THE REMAINS OF GEORGE HOLLAND BY THE REV. MR.
SABINE.

What a ludicrous satire it was upon Christian charity!--even upon the
vague, theoretical idea of it which doubtless this small saint mouths
from his own pulpit every Sunday. Contemplate this freak of Nature, and
think what a Cardiff giant of self-righteousness is crowded into his
pigmy skin. If we probe, and dissect, and lay open this diseased, this
cancerous piety of his, we are forced to the conviction that it is the
production of an impression on his part that his guild do about all
the good that is done in the earth, and hence are better than common
clay--hence are competent to say to such as George Holland, "You are
unworthy; you are a play actor, and consequently a sinner; I cannot take
the responsibility of recommending you to the mercy of Heaven." It must
have had its origin in that impression, else he would have thought, "We
are all instruments for the carrying out of God's purposes; it is not
for me to pass judgment upon your appointed share of the work, or to
praise or to revile it; I have divine authority for it that we are all
sinners, and therefore it is not for me to discriminate and say we will
supplicate for this sinner, for he was a merchant prince or a banker,
but we will beseech no forgiveness for this other one, for he was
a play-actor." It surely requires the furthest possible reach of
self-righteousness to enable a man to lift his scornful nose in the air
and turn his back upon so poor and pitiable a thing as a dead stranger
come to beg the last kindness that humanity can do in its behalf.
This creature has violated the letter of the gospel and judged George
Holland--not George Holland either--but his profession through him. Then
it is in a measure fair that we judge this creature's guild through him.
In effect he has said, "We are the salt of the earth; we do all the good
work that is done; to learn how to be good and do good, men must come to
us; actors and such are obstacles to moral progress." *

[* Reporter--What answer did you make, Mr. Sabine?

Mr. Sabine--I said that I had a distaste for officiating at such a
funeral, and that I did not care to be mixed up in it. I said to the
gentleman that I was willing to bury the deceased from his house, but
that I objected to having the funeral solemnized at a church.

Reporter--Is it one of the laws of the Protestant Episcopal Church that
a deceased theatrical performer shall not be buried from the church?

Mr. Sabine--It is not; but I have always warned the professing members
of my congregation to keep away from theatres and not to have anything
to do with them. I don't think that they teach moral lessons.--New York
Times.]

Pray look at the thing reasonably for a moment, laying aside all biasses
of education and custom. If a common public impression is fair evidence
of a thing, then this minister's legitimate, recognized, and acceptable
business is to tell people calmly, coldly, and in stiff, written
sentences, from the pulpit, to go and do right, be just, be merciful, be
charitable. And his congregation forget it all between church and home.
But for fifty years it was George Holland's business, on the stage,
to make his audience go and do right, and be just, merciful, and
charitable--because by his living, breathing, feeling pictures, he
showed them what it was to do these things, and how to do them, and how
instant and ample was the reward! Is it not a singular teacher of men,
this reverend gentleman who is so poorly informed himself as to put
the whole stage under ban, and say, "I do not think it teaches moral
lessons"?

Where was ever a sermon preached that could make filial ingratitude so
hateful to men as the sinful play of "King Lear"? Or where was there
ever a sermon that could so convince men of the wrong and the cruelty
of harboring a pampered and unanalyzed jealousy as the sinful play of
"Othello"? And where are there ten preachers who can stand in the pulpit
teaching heroism, unselfish devotion, and lofty patriotism, and hold
their own against any one of five hundred William Tells that can be
raised up upon five hundred stages in the land at a day's notice? It is
almost fair and just to aver (although it is profanity) that nine-tenths
of all the kindness and forbearance and Christian charity and generosity
in the hearts of the American people to-day, got there by being filtered
down from their fountain-head, the gospel of Christ, through dramas and
tragedies and comedies on the stage, and through the despised novel
and the Christmas story, and through the thousand and one lessons,
suggestions, and narratives of generous deeds that stir the pulses, and
exalt and augment the nobility of the nation day by day from the teeming
columns of ten thousand newspapers, and NOT from the drowsy pulpit!

All that is great and good in our particular civilization came straight
from the hand of Jesus Christ, and many creatures, and of divers sorts,
were doubtless appointed to disseminate it; and let us believe that this
seed and the result are the main thing, and not the cut of the
sower's garment; and that whosoever, in his way and according to his
opportunity, sows the one and produces the other, has done high service
and worthy. And further, let us try with all our strength to believe
that whenever old simple-hearted George Holland sowed this seed, and
reared his crop of broader charities and better impulses in men's
hearts, it was just as acceptable before the Throne as if the seed had
been scattered in vapid platitudes from the pulpit of the ineffable
Sabine himself.

Am I saying that the pulpit does not do its share toward disseminating
the marrow, the meat of the gospel of Christ? (For we are not talking of
ceremonies and wire-drawn creeds now, but the living heart and soul of
what is pretty often only a spectre.)

No, I am not saying that the pulpit teaches assemblages of people twice
a week--nearly two hours, altogether--and does what it can in that time.
The theatre teaches large audiences seven times a week--28 or 30
hours altogether; and the novels and newspapers plead, and argue, and
illustrate, stir, move, thrill, thunder, urge, persuade, and supplicate,
at the feet of millions and millions of people every single day, and
all day long, and far into the night; and so these vast agencies till
nine-tenths of the vineyard, and the pulpit tills the other tenth.
Yet now and then some complacent blind idiot says, "You unanointed are
coarse clay and useless; you are not as we, the regenerators of
the world; go, bury yourselves else where, for we cannot take the
responsibility of recommending idlers and sinners to the yearning mercy
of Heaven." How does a soul like that stay in a carcass without getting
mixed with the secretions and sweated out through the pores? Think of
this insect condemning the whole theatrical service as a disseminator
of bad morals because it has Black Crooks in it; forgetting that if that
were sufficient ground, people would condemn the pulpit because it had
Cooks, and Kallochs, and Sabines in it.

No, I am not trying to rob the pulpit of any atom of its full share and
credit in the work of disseminating the meat and marrow of the gospel of
Christ; but I am trying to get a moment's hearing for worthy agencies
in the same work, that with overwrought modesty seldom or never claim a
recognition of their great services. I am aware that the pulpit does
its excellent one-tenth (and credits itself with it now and then, though
most of the time a press of business causes it to forget it); I am
aware that in its honest and well-meaning way it bores the people
with uninflammable truisms about doing good; bores them with correct
compositions on charity; bores them, chloroforms them, stupefies them
with argumentative mercy without a flaw in the grammar, or an emotion
which the minister could put in in the right place if he turned his back
and took his finger off the manuscript. And in doing these things the
pulpit is doing its duty, and let us believe that it is likewise doing
its best, and doing it in the most harmless and respectable way. And so
I have said, and shall keep on saying, let us give the pulpit its full
share of credit in elevating and ennobling the people; but when a pulpit
takes to itself authority to pass judgment upon the work and the worth
of just as legitimate an instrument of God as itself, who spent a
long life preaching from the stage the self-same gospel with out the
alteration of a single sentiment or a single axiom of right, it is fair
and just that somebody who believes that actors were made for a high and
good purpose, and that they accomplish the object of their creation and
accomplish it well, to protest. And having protested, it is also fair
and just--being driven to it, as it were--to whisper to the Sabine
pattern of clergyman, under the breath, a simple, instructive truth,
and say, "Ministers are not the only servants of God upon earth. nor
His most efficient ones either, by a very, very long distance!" Sensible
ministers already know this, and it may do the other kind good to find
it out.

But to cease teaching and go back to the beginning again, was it not
pitiable, that spectacle? Honored and honorable old George Holland,
whose theatrical ministry had for fifty years softened hard hearts, bred
generosity in cold ones, kindled emotion in dead ones, uplifted base
ones, broadened bigoted ones, and made many and many a stricken one
glad and filled it brim full of gratitude, figuratively spit upon in
his unoffending coffin by this crawling, slimy, sanctimonious,
self-righteous reptile!

THE GALAXY, April 1871

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

MY FIRST LITERARY VENTURE.

[VALEDICTORY--I have written for THE GALAXY a year. For the last eight
months, with hardly an interval, I have had for my fellows and comrades,
night and day, doctors and watchers of the sick! During these eight
months death has taken two members of my home circle and malignantly
threatened two others. All this I have experienced, yet all the time
been under contract to furnish "humorous" matter once a month for this
magazine. I am speaking the exact truth in the above details. Please to
put yourself in my place and contemplate the grisly grotesqueness of the
situation. I think that some of the "humor" I have written during this
period could have been injected into a funeral sermon without disturbing
the solemnity of the occasion.]

[The MEMORANDA will cease permanently with this issue of the magazine.
To be a pirate, on a low salary, and with no share in the profits of the
business, used to be my idea of an uncomfortable occupation, but I
have other views now. To be a monthly humorist in a cheerless time is
drearier.]

[So much by way of explanation and apology to the reader of any
obtrusive lack of humorousness that may have been noticed in my
humorousness department during the year. At last I am free of the
doctors and watchers, and am so exalted in spirits that I will cut this
final MEMORANDA very short and go off and enjoy the new state of things.
I will put it to pleasant and diligent use in writing a book. I would
not print any MEMORANDA at all this month, but the following short
sketch has dropped from my pen of its own accord and without any
compulsion from me, and so it may as well go in. As I shall write but
little for periodicals hereafter, it seems to fit in with a sort of
inoffensive appropriateness here, since it is a record of the first
scribbling for any sort of periodical I ever had the temerity to
attempt.]

I was a very smart child at the age of thirteen--an unusually smart
child, I thought at the time. It was then that I did my first newspaper
scribbling, and most unexpectedly to me it stirred up a fine sensation
in the community. It did, indeed, and I was very proud of it, too. I was
a printer's "devil," and a progressive and aspiring one. My uncle had
me on his paper (the Weekly Hannibal Journal, two dollars a year in
advance--five hundred subscribers, and they paid in cordwood, cabbages,
and unmarketable turnips), and on a lucky summer's day he left town to
be gone a week, and asked me if I thought I could edit one issue of the
paper judiciously. Ah! didn't I want to try! Higgins was the editor in
the rival paper. He had lately been jilted, and one night a friend found
an open note on the poor fellow's bed, in which he stated that he could
no longer endure life and had drowned himself in Bear Creek. The friend
ran down there and discovered Higgins wading back to shore! He had
concluded he wouldn't. The village was full of it for several days, but
Higgins did not suspect it. I thought this was a fine opportunity. I
wrote an elaborately wretched account of the whole matter, and then
illustrated it with villainous cuts engraved on the bottoms of wooden
type with a jack-knife--one of them a picture of Higgins wading out into
the creek in his shirt, with a lantern, sounding the depth of the
water with a walking-stick. I thought it was desperately funny, and
was densely unconscious that there was any moral obliquity about such a
publication. Being satisfied with this effort I looked around for other
worlds to conquer, and it struck me that it would make good, interesting
matter to charge the editor of a neighboring country paper with a piece
of gratuitous rascality and "see him squirm." I did it, putting the
article into the form of a parody on the Burial of "Sir John Moore"--and
a pretty crude parody it was, too. Then I lampooned two prominent
citizens outrageously--not because they had done anything to deserve it,
but merely because I thought it was my duty to make the paper lively.
Next I gently touched up the newest stranger--the lion of the day, the
gorgeous journeyman tailor from Quincy. He was a simpering coxcomb of
the first water, and the "loudest" dressed man in the State. He was
an inveterate woman-killer. Every week he wrote lushy "poetry" for
the "Journal," about his newest conquest. His rhymes for my week were
headed, "To MARY IN H--L," meaning to Mary in Hannibal, of course. But
while setting up the piece I was suddenly riven from head to heel by
what I regarded as a perfect thunderbolt of humor, and I compressed it
into a snappy foot-note at the bottom--thus--"We will let this thing
pass, just this once; but we wish Mr. J. Gordon Runnels to understand
distinctly that we have a character to sustain, and from this time forth
when he wants to commune with his friends in h--l, he must select some
other medium than the columns of this journal!"

The paper came out, and I never knew any little thing attract so much
attention as those playful trifles of mine. For once the Hannibal
Journal was in demand--a novelty it had not experienced before. The
whole town was stirred. Higgins dropped in with a double-barrelled
shot-gun early in the forenoon. When he found that it was an infant (as
he called me) that had done him the damage, he simply pulled my ears and
went away; but he threw up his situation that night and left town
for good. The tailor came with his goose and a pair of shears; but
he despised me too, and departed for the South that night. The two
lampooned citizens came with threats of libel, and went away incensed
at my insignificance. The country editor pranced in with a warwhoop
next day, suffering for blood to drink; but he ended by forgiving
me cordially and inviting me down to the drug store to wash away all
animosity in a friendly bumper of "Fahnestock's Vermifuge." It was his
little joke.

My uncle was very angry when he got back--unreasonably so, I thought,
considering what an impetus I had given the paper, and considering also
that gratitude for his preservation ought to have been uppermost in his
mind, inasmuch as by his delay he had so wonderfully escaped dissection,
tomahawking, libel, and getting his head shot off. But he softened
when he looked at the accounts and saw that I had actually booked
the unparalleled number of thirty- three new subscribers, and had the
vegetables to show for it, cordwood, cabbage, beans, and unsalable
turnips enough to run the family for two years!

THE GALAXY, April 1871

MEMORANDA.

BY MARK TWAIN.

ABOUT A REMARKABLE STRANGER.



Being a Sandwich Island Reminiscence.

[On second thoughts I will extend my MEMORANDA a little, and insert the
following chapter from the book I am writing. It will serve to show that
the volume is not going to be merely entertaining, but will be glaringly
instructive as well. I have related one or two of these incidents before
lecture audiences but have never printed any of them before.--M.T.]

I had barely finished when this person spoke out with rapid utterance
and feverish anxiety:

"Oh, that was certainly remarkable, after a fashion, but you ought to
have seen my chimney--you ought to have seen my chimney, sir! Smoke!
Humph! I wish I may hang if--Mr. Jones, you remember that chimney--you
must remember that chimney! No, no--I recollect, now, you warn't living
on this side of the island then. But I am telling you nothing but the
truth, and I wish I may never draw another breath if that chimney didn't
smoke so that the smoke actually got caked in it and I had to dig it out
with a pickaxe! You may smile, gentlemen, but the High Sheriff's got a
hunk of it which I dug out before his eyes, and so it's perfectly easy
for you to go and examine for yourselves."

The interruption broke up the conversation, which had already begun to
lag, and we presently hired some natives and an out-rigger canoe or two,
and went out to overlook a grand surf-bathing contest.

Two weeks after this, while talking in a company, I looked up and
detected this same man boring through and through me with his intense
eye, and noted again his twitching muscles and his feverish anxiety to
speak. The moment I paused, he said:

"Beg your pardon, sir, beg your pardon, but it can only be considered
remarkable when brought into strong outline by isolation. Sir,
contrasted with a circumstance which occurred in my own experience, it
instantly becomes commonplace. No, not that--for I will not speak so
discourteously of any experience in the career of a stranger and a
gentleman--but I am obliged to say that you could not, and you would not
ever again refer to this tree as a large one, if you could behold, as
I have, the great Yakmatack tree, in the island of Ounaska, sea of
Kamtchatka--a tree, sir, not one inch less than four hundred and fifteen
feet in solid diameter!--and I wish I may die in a minute if it isn't
so! Oh, you needn't look so questioning, gentlemen; here's old Cap
Saltmarsh can say whether I know what I'm talking about or not. I showed
him the tree."

Captain Saltmarsh.--"Come, now, cat your anchor, lad--you're heaving
too taut. You promised to show me that stunner, and I walked more than
eleven mile with you through the cussedest aggravatingest jungle I ever
see, a hunting for it; but the tree you showed me finally warn't as big
around as a beer cask, and you know that your own self, Markiss."

"Hear the man talk! Of course the tree was reduced that way, but didn't
I explain it? Answer me, didn't I? Didn't I say I wished you could have
seen it when I first saw it? When you got up on your ear and called me
names, and said I had brought you eleven miles to look at a sapling,
didn't I explain to you that all the whale-ships in the North Seas had
been wooding off of it for more than twenty-seven years? And did you
s'pose the tree could last forever, confound it? I don't see why you
want to keep back things that way, and try to injure a person that's
never done you any harm."

Somehow this man's presence made me uncomfortable, and I was glad when
a native arrived at that moment to say that Muckawow, the most
companionable and luxurious among the rude war-chiefs of the Islands,
desired us to come over and help him enjoy a missionary whom he had
found trespassing on his grounds.

I think it was about ten days afterward that, as I finished a
statement I was making for the instruction of a group of friends and
acquaintances, and which made no pretence of being extraordinary, a
familiar voice chimed instantly in on the heels of my last word, and
said:

"But, my dear sir, there was nothing remarkable about that horse, or
the circumstance either--nothing in the world! I mean no sort of offence
when I say it, sir, but you really do not know anything whatever about
speed. Bless your heart, if you could only have seen my mare Margaretta;
there was a beast!--there was lightning for you! Trot! Trot is no name
for it--she flew! How she could whirl a buggy along! I started her
out once, sir--Colonel Bilgewater, you recollect that animal perfectly
well--I started her out about thirty or thirty-five yards ahead of
the awfullest storm I ever saw in my life, and it chased us upwards of
eighteen miles! It did, by the everlasting hills! And I'm telling you
nothing but the unvarnished truth when I say that not one single drop of
rain, fell on me--not a single drop, sir! And I swear to it! But my dog
was a-swimming behind the wagon all the way!"

For a week or two I stayed mostly within doors, for I seemed to meet
this person everywhere, and he had become utterly hateful to me. But one
evening I dropped in on Captain Perkins and his friends, and we had
a sociable time. About ten o'clock I chanced to be talking about a
merchant friend of mine, and without really intending it, the remark
slipped out that he was a little mean and parsimonious about paying
workmen. Instantly, through the steam of a hot whiskey punch on the
opposite side of the room, a remembered voice shot--and for a moment I
trembled on the imminent verge of profanity:

"Oh, my dear sir, really you expose yourself when you parade that as a
surprising circumstance. Bless your heart and hide, you are ignorant
of the very A B C of meanness! ignorant as the unborn babe! ignorant as
unborn twins! You don't know anything about it! It is pitiable to see
you, sir, a well-spoken and prepossessing stranger, making such an
enormous pow-wow here about a subject concerning which your ignorance
is perfectly ghastly! Look me in the eye, if you please; look me in the
eye. John James Godfrey was the son of poor but honest parents in the
State of Mississippi--boyhood friend of mine--bosom comrade in later
years. Heaven rest his noble spirit, he is gone from us now. John James
Godfrey was hired by the Hayblossom Mining Company in California to do
some blasting for them--the "Incorporated Company of Mean Men," the boys
used to call it. Well, one day he drilled a hole about four feet deep
and put in an awful blast of powder, and was standing over it ramming
it down with an iron crowbar about nine foot long, when the cussed thing
struck a spark and fired the powder, and scat! away John Godfrey whizzed
like a sky rocket, him and his crow bar! Well, sir, he kept on going
up in the air higher and higher, till he didn't look any bigger than a
boy--and he kept going on up higher and higher, till he didn't look any
bigger than a doll--and he kept on going up higher and higher, till he
didn't look any bigger than a little small bee--and then he went out
of sight! Presently he came in sight again, looking like a little small
bee--and he came along down further and further, till he looked as big
as a doll again--and down further and further, till he was as big as a
boy again--and further and further, till he was a full-sized man once
more; and then him and his crowbar came a wh-izzing down and lit right
exactly in the same old tracks and went to r-ramming down, and r-ramming
down, and r-ramming down again, just the same as if nothing had
happened! Now do you know, that poor cuss warn't gone only sixteen
minutes, and yet that Incorporated Company of Mean Men DOCKED HIM FOR
THE LOST TIME!"

I said I had the headache, and so excused myself and went home. And on
my diary I entered "another night spoiled" by this offensive loafer. And
a fervent curse was set down with it to keep the item company. And the
very next day I packed up, out of all patience, and left the Islands.

Almost from the very beginning, I regarded that man as a liar.

*****

The line of points represents an interval of years. At the end of which
time the opinion hazarded in that last sentence came to be gratifyingly
and remarkably endorsed, and by wholly disinterested persons. The man
Markiss was found one morning hanging to a beam of his own bedroom (the
doors and windows securely fastened on the inside), dead; and on his
breast was pinned a paper in his own handwriting begging his friends to
suspect no innocent person of having anything to do with his death, for
that it was the work of his own hands entirely. Yet the jury brought in
the astounding verdict that deceased came to his death "by the hands
of some person or persons unknown!" They explained that the perfectly
undeviating consistency of Markiss's character for thirty years towered
aloft as colossal and indestructible testimony, that whatever statement
he chose to make was entitled to instant and unquestioning acceptance
as a lie. And they further stated their belief that he was not dead,
and instanced strong circumstantial evidence of his own word that he
was dead--and beseeched the coroner to delay the funeral as long as
possible, which was done. And so in the tropical climate of Lahaina the
coffin stood open for seven days, and then even the loyal jury gave him
up. But they sat on him again, and changed their verdict to "suicide
induced by mental aberration"--because, said they, with penetration, "he
said he was dead, and he was dead; and would he have told the truth if
he had been in his right mind? No, sir."

THE GALAXY CLUB-ROOM, August 1871

ABOUT BARBERS.

All things change except barbers, the ways of barbers, and the
surroundings of barbers. These never change. What one experiences in a
barber shop the first time he enters one, is what he always experiences
in barber shops afterward till the end of his days. I got shaved this
morning as usual. A man approached the door from Jones street as I
approached it from Main--a thing that always happens. I hurried up, but
it was of no use; he entered the door one little step ahead of me, and I
followed in on his heels and saw him take the only vacant chair, the
one presided over by the best barber. It always happens so. I sat down,
hoping that I might fall heir to the chair belonging to the better of
the remaining two barbers, for he had already begun combing his man's
hair, while his comrade was not yet quite done rubbing up and oiling his
customer's locks. I watched the probabilities with strong interest. When
I saw that No. 2 was gaining on No. 1, my interest grew to solicitude.
When No. 1 stopped a moment to make change on a bath ticket for a
new-comer, and lost ground in the race, my solicitude rose to anxiety.
When No. 1 caught up again, and both he and his comrade were pulling the
towels away and brushing the powder from their customers' cheeks, and
it was about an even thing which one would say "Next!" first, my very
breath stood still with the suspense. But when, at the final culminating
moment, No. 1 stopped to pass a comb a couple of times through his
customer's eye brows, I saw that he had lost the race by a single
instant, and I rose indignant and quitted the shop, to keep from falling
into the hands of No. 2; for I have none of that enviable firmness that
enables a man to look calmly into the eyes of a waiting barber and tell
him he will wait for his fellow barber's chair. I stayed out fifteen
minutes, and then went back, hoping for better luck. Of course all the
chairs were occupied now, and four men sat waiting, silent, unsociable,
distraught, and looking bored, as men always do who are awaiting
their turn in a barber's shop. I sat down in one of the iron-armed
compartments of an old sofa, and put in the time for a while, reading
the framed advertisements of all sorts of quack nostrums for dyeing and
coloring the hair. Then I read the greasy names on the private bay rum
bottles; read the names and noted the numbers on the private shaving
cups in the pigeon-holes; studied the stained and damaged cheap prints
on the walls, of battles, early Presidents, and voluptuous, recumbent
sultanas, and the tiresome and ever lasting young girl putting her
grandfather's spectacles on; execrated in my heart the cheerful canary
and the distracting parrot that few barber shops are without. Finally, I
searched out the least dilapidated of the last year's illustrated papers
that littered the foul centre-table, and conned their unjustifiable
misrepresentations of old forgotten events. At last my turn came. A
voice said "Next!" and I surrendered to--No. 2 of course. It always
happens so. I said meekly that I was in a hurry, and it affected him
as strongly as if he had never heard it. He shoved up my head and put
a napkin under it. He ploughed his fingers into my collar and fixed a
towel there. He explored my hair with his claws and suggested that it
needed trimming. I said I did not want it trimmed. He explored again
and said it was pretty long for the present style--better have a little
taken off; it needed it behind, especially. I said I had had it cut only
a week before. He yearned over it reflectively a moment, and then asked,
with a disparaging manner, who cut it. I came back at him promptly with
a "You did!" I had him there. Then he fell to stirring up his lather and
regarding himself in the glass, stopping now and then to get close and
examine his chin critically or torture a pimple. Then he lathered one
side of my face thoroughly, and was about to lather the other, when a
dog fight attracted his attention, and he ran to the window and stayed
and saw it out, losing two shillings on the result in bets with the
other barbers, a thing which gave me great satisfaction. He finished
lathering, meantime getting the brush into my mouth only twice, and
then began to rub in the suds with his hand; and as he now had his head
turned, discussing the dog fight with the other barbers, he naturally
shovelled considerable lather into my mouth without knowing it, but
I did. He now began to sharpen his razor on an old suspender, and was
delayed a good deal on account of a controversy about a cheap masquerade
ball he had figured at the night before, in red cambric and bogus
ermine, as some kind of a king. He was so gratified with being chaffed
about some damsel whom he had smitten, with his charms, that he used
every means to continue the controversy by pretending to be annoyed
at the chaffings of his fellows. This matter begot more surveyings of
himself in the glass, and he put down his razor and brushed his hair
with elaborate care, plastering an inverted arch of it down on his
forehead, accomplishing an accurate "part" behind, and brushing the two
wings forward over his ears with nice exactness. In the mean time the
lather was drying on my face, and apparently eating into my vitals. Now
he began to shave, digging his fingers into my countenance to stretch
the skin, making a handle of my nose now and then, bundling and tumbling
my head this way and that as convenience in shaving demanded, and
"hawking" and expectorating pleasantly all the while. As long as he was
on the tough sides of my face I did not suffer; but when he began to
rake, and rip, and tug at my chin, the tears came. I did not mind his
getting so close down to me; I did not mind his garlic, because all
barbers eat garlic, I suppose; but there was an added something that
made me fear that he was decaying inwardly while still alive, and this
gave me much concern. He now put his finger into my mouth to assist
him in shaving the corners of my upper lip, and it was by this bit of
circumstantial evidence that I discovered that a part of his duties in
the shop was to clean the kerosene lamps. I had often wondered in an
indolent way whether the barbers did that, or whether it was the boss.
About this time I was amusing myself trying to guess where he would be
most likely to cut me this time, but he got ahead of me and sliced me
on the end of the chin before I had got my mind made up. He immediately
sharpened his razor--he might have done it before. I do not like a close
shave, and would not let him go over me a second time. I tried to get
him to put up his razor, dreading that he would make for the side of
my chin, my pet tender spot, a place which a razor cannot touch twice
without making trouble. But he said he only wanted to just smooth off
one little roughness, and in that same moment he slipped his razor along
the forbidden ground, and the dreaded pimple-signs of a close shave rose
up smarting and answered to the call. Now he soaked his towel in bay
rum, and slapped it all over my face nastily; slapped it over as if a
human being ever yet washed his face in that way. Then he dried it by
slapping with the dry part of the towel, as if a human being ever
dried his face in such a fashion; but a barber seldom rubs you like a
Christian. Next he poked bay rum into the cut place with his towel,
then choked the wound with powdered starch, then soaked it with bay rum
again, and would have gone on soaking and powdering it for evermore, no
doubt, if I had not rebelled and begged off. He powdered my whole face
now, straightened me up and began to plough my hair thoughtfully with
his hands and examine his fingers critically. Then he suggested a
shampoo, and said my hair needed it badly, very badly. I observed that
I had shampooed it myself very thoroughly in the bath yesterday. I "had
him" again. He next recommended some of "Smith's Hair Glorifier," and
offered to sell me a bottle. I declined. He praised the new perfume,
"Jones's Delight of the Toilet," and proposed to sell me some of that.
I declined again. He tendered me a tooth-wash atrocity of his own
invention, and when I declined, offered to trade knives with me. He
returned to business after the miscarriage of this last enterprise,
sprinkled me all over, legs and all, greased my hair in defiance of my
protests against it, rubbed and scrubbed a good deal of it out by the
roots, and combed and brushed the rest, parting it behind and plastering
the eternal inverted arch of hair down on my forehead, and then, while
combing my scant eyebrows and defiling them with pomade, strung out an
account of the achievements of a six-ounce black and tan terrier of his
till I heard the whistles blow for noon, and knew I was five minutes too
late for the train. Then he snatched away the towel, brushed it lightly
about my face, passed his comb through my eyebrows once more, and gayly
sang out "Next!"

This barber fell down and died of apoplexy two hours later. I am waiting
over a day for my revenge--I am going to attend his funeral.

INDEX
=====

ABOUT BARBERS.

ACADEMY OF DESIGN

ACCIDENT INSURANCE

ACCIDENT INSURANCE COMPANY

ACCIDENTS

ACCOMMODATING WITNESS

ACTORS

ADJECTIVES

ADMIT BAD WOMEN INTO PRIVATE ROOMS IN ONE OF THE DEPARTMENTS

ADVICE

ADVICE TO WITNESSES

AFFLUENT MARK

AFRAID

AGASSIZ

AH SOW DISCHARGED

AJAX VOYAGE CONTINUED

ALCATRACES

ALEXANDRE DUMAS

ALL DRAMADOM AFFECTED

ALLEGORY OF UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER

ALMIGHTY, OF A NECESSITY, THINKS EXACTLY AS HE DOES

ALPHABET WARREN.

ALTOGETHER UNNECESSARY ENERGY AND ENTHUSIASM

ALWAYS GO TO CHURCH

AMAZONIAN PASTIMES

AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY

AMONG THE SPIRITS

ANCIENT CASTILLO

ANDERSONVILLE

ANDREW JOHNSON

ANOTHER LAZARUS

APOCHRYPHAL NEW TESTAMENT

APOLOGETIC

ARABIAN NIGHTS REPEATED

ARITHMETIC

ARREST OF A SECESH BISHOP

ARREST OF ANOTHER OF THE ROBBING GANG

ARRESTED FOR BIGAMY

ARSON

ART 1 2

ART CRITICS

ARTEMUS WARD 1 2 3 4

ARTIST STRIKES AN ATTITUDE

ASHORE

ASSASSINATE A PAWNBROKER

ASSAULT

ASSAULT BY A HOUSE

AT LARGE.

AT SEA.

ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF A DETECTIVE OFFICER

ATTEMPTED SUICIDE 1 2

AVITOR

AWA

AWAY

BAD GOVERNMENT

BAD HOTEL, BUT GIFTED PORTER

BAD JOKES.

BALBOA 1 2

BALLAD INFLICTION

BARBERS

BARNUM

BATHOS

BATHS

BATTLE-GROUND

BE GOOD, SO THAT GOD WIL NOT MAKE ME ONE

BEARDING THE FENIAN IN HIS LAIR

BEAUTIFUL WORK

BEECHER

BEEF CONTRACT

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

BEREAVEMENT

BETTER TO BE DEAD AND BURIED

BEWITCHING NEW FASHIONS

BIG TREES

BIGAMIST 1 2

BIGAMY 1 2

BIGLER VS. TAHOE

BILLBOARDS

BIOGRAPHY OF WASHINGTON

BIRD OF A NEW SPECIE

BISHOP SOUTHGATE'S MATINEE

BLACK HOLE OF SAN FRANCISCO

BLIGHTING SARCASMS

BLIND

BLIND ASYLUM

BLIND TOM.

BLOODY MASSACRE 1 2

BLUE LAWS

BOARD AND LODGING SECURED

BOAT SALVAGE

BOLTERS IN CONVENTION

BONNETS

BOOTBLACKS

BORE

BORE CONQUERED

BORES

BOSS EARTHQUAKE

BOSTON

BOSTON ANTIQUITIES

BOSTON POLITENESS.

BOSTON TEA PARTY

BOUND EAST AGAIN

BRANNAN'S PALACE

BRETT HART

BRIDGET DURGAN

BRIGHAM YOUNG

BROADWAY BRIDGE

BROOKLYN

BROWN DELIVERED OF A JOKE:

BROWN'S LOG-BOOK

BUFFALO

BULL DRIVER'S CONVENTION

BUMMER

BUNKER HILL

BURGLAR ARRESTED

BURGLARY

BURGLARY--THE BURGLAR CAUGHT IN THE ACT

BURNING OF THE CLIPPER SHIP HORNET AT SEA

BUSTED, AND GONE ABROAD

CALABOOSE THEATRICALS

CALIFORNIA WINES 1 2

CALIFORNIANS

CAMANCHE 1 2 3 4

CAN'T KEEP MY TEMPER IN NEW YORK

CANNOT BE HEALTHY TO HAVE THEM AROUND

CANNOT GO ANYWHERE IN NEW YORK IN AN HOUR

CANOE VOYAGE

CAPITOL AND CONGRESS

CAPITOL POLICE

CAPT. NED WAKEMAN

CAPTAIN

CAPTAIN COOK

CAPTAIN COOK'S DEATH-PLACE

CAPTAIN KIDD

CAPTAIN NED WAKEMAN, MARINER.

CAPTAIN'S SPEECH

CARD FROM MARK TWAIN.

CARD TO THE HIGHWAYMEN.

CATS

CATS ENOUGH FOR THREE APIECE ALL AROUND

CELEBRATED JUMPING FROG, AND OTHER SKETCHES

CEMETERIAL GHASTLINESS

CENTURY CLUB

CHALLENGE TO A DUEL

CHAMBERMAIDS

CHAMPAGNE

CHANGE

CHAPMAN FAMILY

CHARACTERISTIC

CHARGE AGAINST A POLICE OFFICER

CHARITY

CHARLES DICKENS.

CHARTER OAK.

CHEAPER TOSPEND THREE WEEKS AT SEA

CHEERFUL GUEST

CHEERFULNESS

CHINAMAN

CHINAMAN'S SOJOURN IN AMERICA

CHINESE RAILROAD OBSTRUCTIONS

CHINESE SLAVES

CHINESE TEMPLE 1 2

CHIVALROUS

CHIVALROUS WHOLESALE BUTCHERIES

CHOIR

CHOLERA 1 2 3 4

CHRISTIAN CHARITY

CHRISTIAN FAIR

CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION IN WARM QUARTERS

CHRISTIANS TO READ

CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR

CHRISTMAS GIFT

CHURCH-GOING

CIGAR'S

CIGARS

CITY OF REFUGE

CLEVELAND

CLIFF HOUSE

CLIMATE OF NEVADA

CLIMATIC

CLOSED OUT

COFFIN

COL. ELI PARKER

COLLISION

COLONEL ELY PARKER

COLOR

COLORADO AT THE DOOR

COLORED CHILDREN

COLORED MAN

COMING MAN

COMPLAININGS

COMPLIMENTS

COMPOSITIONS

CONCEIT

CONCERNING HACKMEN

CONCILIATING THE SOUTH

CONDUCT OURSELVES THAT WHEN WE COME TO DIE WE CAN DO IT.

CONFIDENCE IS THE MAINSTAY OF EVERY CLASS OF COMMERCIAL ENTERPRI

CONGRESS 1 2

CONGRESSIONAL POETRY.

CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY AND SECESSION AFFILIATIONS

CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION

CONTROVERSY 1 2

CONVERT

CONVULSIONS

COOPER INDIANS

COPPERHEADS

CORNING

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

CORRESPONDENTS' CLUB

COSMOPOLITAN HOTEL BESIEGED

COUCHING TREASON IN LOYAL PHRASES

COUNTRY SCHOOL EXHIBITION.

COUNTY HOSPITAL DEVELOPMENTS

COUNTY PRISON

COWARDS

CRIME

CRITICIZES THE CHAMPAGNE

CROOKEDNESS OF THE STREETS

CROSS SWEARING

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS 1 2

CURIOSITIES

CURIOSITY

CURIOUS IDEA

CURIOUS RELIC FOR SALE.

CUSTOM HOUSE RESIGNATIONS

DALTON TUNNEL

DAMAGES AWARDED

DAN REASSEMBLED

DANCE

DANGER OF LYING IN BED

DANIEL WEBSTER

DARK TRANSACTION

DAY WAS GENERALLY DISAGREEABLE

DEAD AND BURIED

DEAD-HOUSE

DEATH

DEDICATION OF BUSH STREET SCHOOL

DEFIANCE OF GRAMMAR

DELICACY

DEMOCRATIC MEETING AT HAYES' PARK

DEMOCRATIC RATIFICATION MEETING

DEMOCRATIC STATE CONVENTION

DEMOCRATS 1 2

DEMORALIZING YOUNG GIRLS

DEPRESSION

DESIRE

DESPERADO

DETECTIVE ROSE AGAIN

DICKENS

DICKENS DEATH

DIDN'T UNDERSTAND A WORD

DIGNIFIED POVERTY IS THOROUGHLY RESPECTABLE

DIGRESSION

DISAPPOINTED

DISGUSTED AND GONE

DISSATISFIED SHANTIES

DISSIPATION OF ASPINWALL.

DISTRESSING ACCIDENT.

DIVORCE

DIVORCES

DOCTORS

DOG STORY

DOMESTIC SILKS

DON'T KNOW 1 2

DRAW SUSPICION UPON THE CAT

DREAM

DUE WARNING

DUEL 1 2

DUEL PREVENTED

DUNKIRK, COUNTY OF CHAUTAUQUA

DUPLICITY

DUTIES OF A JOURNALIST

E. PLURIBUS UNIM.

EARNESTNESS

EARTHQUAKE 1 2 3 4 5

EDIT ONE ISSUE OF THE PAPER JUDICIOUSLY

EGOTISM

ELASTIC IN CONSCIENCE

ELOPEMENT

ELOPEMENT-SENSATION

ENGAGEMENT RINGS

ENGLISH CRITIC ON MARK TWAIN

ENLISTED FOR THE WAR

EPIGRAM

EQUESTRIAN EXCURSION

ESCAPED

ETIQUETTE 1 2

EUCHRE HORNS

EUCLID AVENUE

EUROPEAN PLEASURE TRIP

EVASION OF THE LAW, BUT NOT IN VIOLATION OF IT.

EXAMINATION OF TEACHERS

EXCEPT WHEN PERMITTED TO HAVE HER OWN WAY

EXCISE

EXCISE LAW

EXECRABLE

EXECUTION

EXPLOSION OF THE STEAMER WASHOE

EXTRAORDINARY DELICACY

EXTRAORDINARY ENTERPRISE

EYES

FALL OF THE ISAAC

FALSE PRETENCES

FASHIONS 1 2 3 4 5 6

FATAL TO BE NOTICED BY GREATNESS

FATHER AND I WERE ALWAYS ON THE MOST DISTANT TERMS

FATHER'S FUNERAL

FAVORS FROM CORRESPONDENTS 1 2

FELIX O'BYRNE.

FEMALE SUFFRAGE

FIRESIDES

FIREWORKS

FIRST BOOK

FIRST DEATH

FIRST LITERARY VENTURE

FIRST VISIT TO BOSTON

FISH DIET RECOMMENDED

FISH IN LAKE TAHOE ARE NOT TROUBLESOME

FISHING

FITZ SMYTHE'S HORSE

FITZGERALD

FLATTERY

FOOLISHNESS

FOOT-PRINTS THEY MAKE ON THE BRICK PAVEMENTS

FOR CHRISTIANS TO READ

FOREIGNERS ALL SPELL BETTER THAN THEY PRONOUNCE

FOURTH OF JULY

FRANKLIN

FREE FIGHT

FREE-AND-EASY FASHIONS OF NATIVE WOMEN

FRIGHTFUL ACCIDENT TO DAN DE QUILLE

FRUIT SWINDLING

FULL

FUNERAL OF THE PRINCESS

FUNERALS OF DEAD CHIEFS

FUNNY

FUNNY SCRAP OF HISTORY

GADSBY'S

GALE

GENERAL ACCIDENTS

GENERAL REPLY

GENERAL SUTTER

GENUINE OLD SALT

GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN

GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN 1 2

GEORGE WASHINGTON

GHOST STORY

GHOSTS

GIANTS IN THOSE DAYS

GOLDSMITH'S FRIEND ABROAD AGAIN 1 2 3

GOOD EFFECTS OF A HIGH TARIFF

GORGEOUS SWINDLE

GOULD & CURRY

GOVERNMENT

GRACEFUL COMPLIMENT

GRAND EUROPEAN PLEASURE TRIP

GRAND FETE-DAY AT THE CLIFF HOUSE

GRANT 1 2 3

GRANT'S RECEPTION.

GRATIFIED ACQUAINTANCES

GREAT DISADVANTAGE WHEN HE LOSES HIS TEMPER

GREAT VOLCANO OF KILAUEA

GREELEY AND JEFF. DAVIS

GREENBACKS

GRUMBLE

HACKMEN

HAD A FIT

HANCOCK

HANG HIM A LITTLE WHILE

HANGING WITNESSED

HANNIBAL 1 2

HAPPY

HARD-MONEY DEMONSTRATION

HARRIS

HARTFORD 1 2 3

HAWAIIAN FLAG

HAWAIIAN LEGISLATURE

HAWAIIAN MILL

HAWAIIAN TRADE

HAWAIIAN TREATY

HAY

HEALTH OFFICERS

HEATHEN

HEAVEN

HELL

HELP HIM WITH A KICK

HENRY WARD BEECHER

HERALD" "PERSONALS

HERO OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL BOOKS

HIAWATHA

HIGGINS

HIGH CHIEF OF SUGARDOM

HIGH PRICE OF PORK.

HIGH TARIFF

HILARITY RESTORED

HOG DISPUTE

HOGWASH

HOLY LAND EXCURSION

HOME AGAIN 1 2

HOME AGAIN 1 2

HONESTY

HONOLULU

HONOR TO WHOM, &C.

HOPE DEFERRED MAKETH THE HEART SICK

HORRIBLE AFFAIR

HORSE

HOSTILITY OF COLOR

HOTEL ROOM--HIGH

HOTELS

HOUSE AT LARGE

HOW AMONG THE DOCTORS

HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN!

HOW IS YOUR AVITOR?

HOW THEY DID IN ANCIENT TIMES--FUNERALS

HUCKLEBERRIES

HUGGING THE BUGBEAR OF MARTYRDOM

HULAHULA

HUMAN NATURE

HUMANITARIANS

HUNGER DRIVETH TO DESPERATE ENTERPRISES

HYPOCRISY

ICE

ICICLE

ILLUSTRIOUS DEPARTED

IMMORAL SHOW

IMMORALITY

IMPEACHMENT 1 2

3 4

INDEPENDENT CANDIDATE FOR STOCKTON

INDIAN ROW

INDIAN TROUBLES

INDIANS

INDIGENT NOMENCLATURE LEGEND.

INDIGNITY

INFAMOUS PROCEEDING

INFORMATION WANTED 1 2

INGOMAR THE BARBARIAN

INGRATITUDE

INHERIT THE THRONE

INNOCENTS ABROAD

INSANITY PLEA

INSIGNIFICANCE IN OFFICE

INSIPID THINGS

INSPECTION OF THE FORTIFICATIONS

INSURANCE COMPANY

INTELLIGENCE OFFICE ROW

INTERESTING LITIGATION

INTERNATIONAL BOAT RACE.

IRISH STORY

ISAAC

JEFF. DAVIS

JESUS WEPT

JIM TOWNSEND'S TUNNEL

JOHN W. HANCOCK

JOHNSON

JOKE

JOKES

JOURNALISM

JUMP'S PICTURES.

JUMPING FROG

JURISDICTION

JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE BY AN INSANE PERSON

JUVENILE CRIMINALS

KAHN OF TARTARY

KEOKUK AND QUINCY

KEY WEST

KILAUEA

KIND OF PEOPLE TO TRAVEL WITH

KING

KING HEROD

KISS FOR OLD ACQUAINTANCE SAKE

KNEW WHERE A DISPLAY OF HEROISM WOULD BE SAFE

KNOW-IT-ALL

KONA

LABOR OF OTHER PEOPLE

LADIES' FAIR

LAKE BIGLER

LAKE NICARAGUA

LAVA

LAW AGAINST KILLING GAME

LAW STUDENT'S LOVE NOTE

LAZARUS 1 2

LEAKAGE AND SHRINKAGE

LEGAL OPINION

LEGEND

LEGEND OF THE MUSKET

LEGISLATION

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS

LEGISLATURES

LEPROSY OF HONESTY

LETTERS FROM WASHINGTON.

LIE NAILED

LIES

LIFE-RAFT

LINCOLN 1 2

LITERARY "OLD OFFENDER"

LITERARY ADVICE

LITERARY DEBAUCH.

LITERARY VENTURE

LITIGATION

LONELY IN THE MIDST OF A MILLION OF HIS RACE

LOST CHIEF FOUND

LOST CHILD

LOST CHILD RECLAIMED

LOST STEAMER

LULLABY OF THE RAIN

LYING

MACDOUGALL VS. MAGUIRE

MAKLNG SAIL

MAN RUN OVER

MAN WHO STOPPED AT GADSBY'S

MANNER IS EVERYTHING IN THESE CASES

MANSLAUGHTER

MAP OF PARIS

MARION CITY

MARK TWAIN IN THE METROPOLIS

MARK TWAIN'S MAP OF PARIS.

MARK TWAIN'S" FAREWELL

MARRIAGE ADVICE

MARRIAGE OF THE RUNAWAY COUPLE

MARRIED

MASQUERADE

MASQUERADING ON THE ROAD

MATRIMONY WILL BE BROUGHT WITHIN THE REACH OF ALL

MAY DAY--A CONTRAST.

MAYHEM

MAZEPPA

MCCLELLAN

MCGRORTY

MEAGRENESS THAT WOULD MAKE A PARASOL BLUSH

MEAN PEOPLE.

MEANING WELL AND DOING WELL ARE TWO VERY DIFFERENT THINGS

MECHANIC'S FAIR

MEDIOCRITY

MEMBER OF SOMETHING OR OTHER

MENKEN 1 2 3

MERITED PENALTY

METROPOLIS

MIDNIGHT MISSION

MIGHTY FALLEN

MINING COLLEGE PROPOSED

MINING COMPANIES' ACCOUNTS

MINING SCHOOL

MINISTERIAL CHANGE

MINT 1 2 3

MINT DEFALCATION

MISCEGENATION

MISCEGNATION

MISREPRESENTED

MISS CLAPP'S SCHOOL.

MISSIONARIES

MISSIONARIES WANTED FOR SAN FRANCISCO

MISSIONARY BUSINESS

MISSISSIPPI

MOCK-HEROICS

MODEL ARTISTS

MODEL EXCURSION

MODERN CRETAN LABYRINTH

MOLASSES

MONKEY 1 2

MONSTER CAGED

MONUMENT TO CAPTAIN COOK

MORAL FROM THAT STORY

MORALITY AND HUCKLEBERRIES.

MORALIZING

MORE CHILDREN

MORMONISM

MOSES IN THE BULRUSHES AGAIN

MOTHER'S ADMONITIONS TO HER SON.

MOURNING

MOURNING FOR THE DEAD

MOVEMENT IN BUCKEYE

MRS. LINCOLN

MRS. O'FARRELL

MUCH MARRIED

MURDERER

MUSICAL EMERGENCY

MUSKET

MYSTERIES

NANTUCKET

NASBY 1 2

NATIVE CANOE IS AN IRRESPONSIBLE LOOKING CONTRIVANCE

NATURAL VOICE

NEODAMODE

NEVADA HISTORY

NEVER MIND THE DATE

NEW ENGLAND FOREST IN OCTOBER

NEW FASHIONS

NEW HAVEN

NEW SWIMMING BATH

NEW YEAR'S DAY 1 2

NEW YORK 1 2

NEW YORK WEATHER

NEWSPAPER

NICARAGUA 1 2

NOT BAD ENOUGH TO BE GOOD

NOT GOING TO PARIS?

NOT IN HIS RIGHT MIND AT THE TIME, AND HARDLY EVER IS.

NOT UNPLEASANT TO A SINNER

NOTARIES

NOTHING BUT TRUTH

NUISANCE 1 2

NUISANCE OF ADVICE

OBJECTIVISM

OBSCENE

OBSCENE PICTURE

OBSCENE PICTURES 1 2

OFF

OFFICE-HUNTING.

OFFICE-SEEKING.

OIL AND BONE

OLD MASTERS

OLD SALT

ONE GOOD POINT

ONE OF MANKIND'S BORES.

ONE'S AFRAID AND 'T'OTHER DAR'N'T

OPEN LETTER TO MARK TWAIN.

OPERA HOUSE

OPIUM SMUGGLERS

ORIGINAL NOVELETTE

ORIGINATE AN IDEA

OSTENTATIOUS SORROW

OUR CONFOUNDED CHOIR

OUT OF JAIL

OUTCROPPINGS

OUTLANDISH AND UGLY COSTUMES

OVERGROWN METROPOLIS

OVERLAND MONTHLY

OYSTER BEDS IN NEW YORK HARBOR

OYSTERS

PACIFIC

PACIFIC COAST

PACIFIC RAILROAD

PAH-UTES

PANAMA RAILROAD

PARADISE AND THE PARI

PARDN THIS DIGRESSION

PARIS

PARKER

PASSING AWAY THE WEARY TIME

PATENT MEDICINES

PEOPLE WHO COLLECT MONEY FOR BENEVOLENT PURPOSES

PEOPLED PARADISE

PERJURY 1 2

PERSONAL 1 2 3

PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE

PERSONAL INQUIRY

PERSONALITIES

PERSONALS

PETRIFIED MAN 1 2

PETROLEUM V. NASBY

PHILANTHROPIC NATION

PHOTOGRAPH OF PITTSBURG, ETC.

PHOTOGRAPHS

PHYSICIAN'S WRITING

PIONEER'S BALL

PITTSBURG

PLACE OF EXECUTION

PLEASURABLE DISGUST

PLEASURE EXCURSION

POEM

POETRY 1 2

POI

POLICE 1 2 3

POLICE COMMISSIONERS

POLICE COURT TRANSACTIONS

POLICE MISCONDUCT

POLICEMEN WERE AS SMART AS THEY COULD AFFORD TO BE FOR $125 A MONTH

POLICY--POLITICS

POLITICAL BITTERNESSES

POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS

POLITICAL DETERMINATIONS

POLITICAL STINK-POTS OPENED

POLITICS

POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT

POVERTY 1 2

PRAISES ALL ALIKE--MAKES NO DISTINCTION.

PRAYED

PREACHED A SERMON AGAINST IT

PREACHER

PREACHERS

PREACHING

PRESCRIPTIONS

PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESIDENT

PRESIDENTIAL PRESENTS.

PRESS LEAKS

PRETTY GIRLS

PRINCESS

PRISON 1 2

PROGRESS AND PROSPERITY

PROPER TIME TO SAIL

PROSE WHICH IS SPELLED ATROCIOUSLY

PROSECUTING ATTORNEY

PROSECUTING PEOPLE

PROSECUTION

PROVIDENCE WASN'T NOTICING.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS

PUBLIC STEALING.

PURCHASES

PURLOINER OF OTHER MEN'S IDEAS AND HANDICRAFT

PUSHED OVER THE YO SEMITE FALLS

PUZZLES

QUAKER CITY

QUALITY OF MERCY

QUEEN'S ARRIVAL

QUEER FISH

RACE FOR THE OCCIDENTAL HOTEL PREMIUM

RACING

RAILROAD IS LIKE A LIE

RAIN

RAINING

RAINY

RAPE

RAPE CASE

RECEIVE UNDER MILD PROTEST

RECEPTION AT THE PRESIDENT'S

RECEPTIONS

RECONSTRUCTION

RECONSTRUCTION ACTS

RECOVERED

RED JACKET

REFORMED CATHOLIC CHURCH

REFRESHING TO SEE MEN BREAK LAWS SO COOLLY WHOSE SOLE BUSINESS

REFUSED GREENBACKS

RELIC

REMARKABLE DREAM

REMARKABLE STRANGER

REMINISCENCE OF THE BACK SETTLEMENTS

REMOVAL OF THE CAPITAL

RENTS

RESPECTABLE

RETRENCHMENT 1 2

RETURN OF THE SUTRO TUNNEL FROM EUROPE.

REV. DR. CHAPIN

REV. MR. TWAIN

REVIVALIZED CONVERT

REWARDS ARE CONFERRED FOR CONNIVING AT DISHONESTY

RIGHT MIND

RISTORI

ROBBERY

ROMANCE IN REAL LIFE.

ROMANTIC GOD LONO

ROOSTER

ROUGH CUSTOMER

ROUGH ON KEATING

ROYAL COMPLIMENT

RUINS OF AN ANCIENT HEATHEN TEMPLE

RUNAWAY

RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR.

RUSHING INTO PRINT, LIKE MEDIOCRITY THE WORLD OVER

SABBATH REFLECTIONS

SAD ACCIDENT--DEATH OF JEROME RICE

SAFE AT LAST IN "THE STATES"

SALARIES AND CLERKSHIPS.

SAMSON, AND WHETHER SUICIDE WAS A SIN OR NOT

SAN FRANCISCO SHOWMEN

SAN JUAN AND CHOLERA

SANCTIMONIOUS OLD ICEBERG

SANDWICH

SANDWICHES 1 2

SANITARY BALL

SANITARY CONTRIBUTIONS

SANITARY MOLASSES

SATISFIED CURIOSITY

SAVING THE COUNTRY ALL THE TIME

SCANDAL

SCARED IN THE DIRECTION OF HEAVEN

SCHOOLCHILDREN'S REHEARSAL

SCHOOLS

SCHOOLS FOR COLORED CHILDREN

SCIENCE AMONG BARBARIANS

SCOTCH VERSE

SCRIPTURAL STUDENT

SEA 1 2 3

SEA LEGS

SEANCE

SECESH BISHOP

SELF-COMPLACENCY

SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS

SENATOR CHANDLER'S PARTY

SENATORIAL

SENSATIONAL PLAY

SENTIMENTAL LAW STUDENT

SENTIMENTALITY

SEQUEL TO THE ELOPEMENT

SERIOUS CRITIQUE

SEVERAL EFFECTS OF THE TURBULENT SEA

SHAM SENTIMENTALITY

SHARP PRACTICE

SHERMAN 1 2 3

SHERMAN HOUSE

SHIP WAS ROLLING FEARFULLY

SHIPWRECK

SHOP-LIFTING

SIERRA NEVADA

SIGNAL CORPS

SILVER BARS--HOW ASSAYED

SIN IN THIS WORLD

SINNER

SIVINTY-FOIVE DOLLARS FOR STOOFFIN' DAN

SKYROCKET

SMALL POX.

SMART AS THEY COULD AFFORD TO BE

SMART CHILD

SMELTING FURNACE

SMOKING

SO-LONG 1 2

SOCIABLES 1 2

SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS

SOLDIER MURDERED

SOLONS AT WORK

SOMBRE FESTIVITIES

SOME DIFFERENCES OF OPINION THAT WE CANNOT TOLERATE

SOME NEW KIND OF IDIOT

SORROWS

SPANISH MINE 1 2

SPECIMEN BRICK

SPECULATION

SPIRIT OF THE LOCAL PRESS

SPIRITS

SPIRITUALISM 1 2

SQUAWS

ST. ALBAN'S

ST. LOUIS 1 2

STABBED

STABBED AH WONG "NOT TOO LITTY, NOT TOO MUCH,"

STAG

STAGE ROBBER AMONGST US

STAGE ROBBERS

STAGECOACH

STANTON

STATION HOUSE

STATISTICS

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS HOTEL,

STEAMBOATING

STEAMER'S ENGINES

STEREOTYPING MACHINE

STEWART'S PALACE'

STEWART'S SPEECH 1 2

STILL AT SEA

STOCK REMARKS

STOCK REPORTS

STOLEN HAT

STORM AT SEA

STORY OF CAPTAIN COOK

STORY OF THE GOOD LITTLE BOY WHO DID NOT PROSPER

STRABISMUS

STRATEGY

STRIKE OF THE STEAMER EMPLOYEES

SUCCESS IS POSSIBLE, THOUGH THERE ARE CHANCES AGAINST IT.

SUFFRAGE

SUICIDE 1 2

SUICIDE OF DR. RAYMOND

SUICIDE OUT OF PRINCIPLE

SUNDAY AMUSEMENTS

SUNDRIES

SUNSETS

SUPERNATURAL IMPUDENCE

SUT LOVINGOOD

SUTRO

SUTRO TUNNEL

SWILL MUSIC

SWINDLE

SWINDLING

TAHOE

TAHOE LAKE

TAKE THE STAND, FITZ SMYTHE

TALENT FOR MAKING A NOISE

TALKATIVE

TARIFF

TEACHERS

TELEGRAMS OFFERING SUPPORT AND ENCOURAGEMENT

TELEGRAPH MONOPOLY

TEMPER

TEMPERANCE PICNIC

TEMPERANCE SOCIETY

TEMPORARY INSANITY

TEMPTATION

TENEMENT HOUSES

TERRIBLE CALAMITY

TERRIBLE WEAPON

THE BANQUET.

THE DEAF MUTES AT THE FAIR

THE OLD THING

THE UNRELIABLE

THIEF-CATCHING

THIRD HOUSE 1 2

THREADBARE PLATITUDES

TOBACCO SMOKE AS MEDICATION

TONE-IMPARTING COMMITTEE

TOO LARGE

TOO RAINY TO GO TO SCHOOL

TOURNAMENT

TRANQUIL SIMPLICITY OF SELF CONCEIT

TRANSLATION SHIPBOARD TERMS

TRAVELLERS' CLUB

TRIVIAL REMINISCENCES OUT OF HIS INSIGNIFICANT HISTORY

TROT HER ALONG

TROUBLE WILL BEGIN AT EIGHT

TRUTH

TUNNEL 1 2

TURBULENT SEA

TURNED OUT OF OFFICE

TWIN MOUNTAINS

TWO EARTHQUAKES A MONTH WAS NOT CONSIDERED IN THE SALARY

UNBURLESQUABLE THINGS.

UNCLE LIGE

UNDER WAY AGAIN

UNDERTAKER

UNDERTAKERS 1 2

3 4

UNFORTUNATE

UNFORTUNATE THIEF

UNITED STATES CIRCUIT COURT

UNITED STATES REVENUE OFFICE

UNPEOPLED PARADISE

UNRELIABLE

UNSELFISHNESS OP THE NATIVES

UNSPEAKABLY RESPECTABLE

UP AMONG THE CLOUDS

USED TO BE

UTTER IMPERVIOUSNESS

VAGARIES OF AN INNOCENT

VALEDICTORY

VALENTINE S DAY.

VENUS AT THE BATH

VETERANS OF GRANT, SHERMAN AND SHERIDAN

VINNIE REAM.

VIRGINIA REELS

VIRTUES BE REMEMBERED

VOYAGE OF THE AJAX

WAGES OF TEACHERS

WAITING FOR A VACANCY IN THE TRINITY

WAKE-UP-JAKE

WASHINGTON 1 2 3

WASHINGTON CRIME.

WASHINGTON D.C.

WASHINGTON II.

WASHINGTON MONUMENT

WASHINGTON MORALS

WASHINGTON OPULENCE

WASHINGTON POLICY

WASHINGTON RASCALITY.

WASHINGTON SECOND

WASHOE

WATERFALL 1 2

WEATHER 1 2 3

WEATHER SAME, OR MORE SO.

WEDDING GIFT

WEIGHS HIM AND MEASURES HIM

WEIGHTED DOWN WITH THE WISDOM OF AN INFANT

WHALING TRADE

WHAT BLINDED THEM

WHAT DISEASES DO THEY DIE OF MOSTLY?

WHAT HAVE THE POLICE BEEN DOING?

WHAT THE OWNER WANTED TO THROW IT AWAY FOR

WHEN ROGUES FALL OUT, HONEST MEN GET THEIR DUES

WHERE ARE THE POLICE?

WHERE IS MCGRORTY?

WHILE WE WERE MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA

WHIPPED

WHIPPED HIS HORSE

WHISKEY WAS AS GOOD AS TALENT

WHITE MAN MIGHTY ONSARTAIN

WHO CAN DECIDE WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE?

WHO HAD NEVER PRAYED IN THEIR LIVES BEFORE

WHOLESOMELY EXECRABLE AND EXASPERATING.

WHY HELL, THAT AINT NOTHIN

WICKEDEST MAN

WIDOW'S LAMENT

WIFE TALKED HIM TO DEATH

WINCES UNDER THE RETURN SHOT

WIND BEGAN TO RISE

WISCONSIN LEGISLATURE

WISDOM

WISDOM TO KEEP STILL

WOMAN

WOMAN-SLAUGHTER 1 2

WOMEN IN NEW YORK

WON'T YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR

WOOD

WORDS MADE UP

WRITE SOME "PIECES" AND TAKE THEM DOWN TO THE EDITOR

WRITE WITHOUT PAY UNTIL SOMEBODY OFFERS PAY

YOSEMITE

YOU'RE A FRAUD

YOUNG OFFENDER

THE END
</pre>

Project Gutenberg Australia