 This is Section 8 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. 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 said Goodman having accepted such challenge, and chosen Thomas 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 cannon below the Gould and Curry Mill. Weapons, navy six-shooters, distance, fifteen paces, conditions, the first fire to be delivered at the word of 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 humanity, 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 away 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 the company of young Wilson we took a room at the International, to the end that through the vigilance of the Watchmen 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 grey 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 desperados 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-sold, 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 Story County, these miserable meddling whelps arrested the whole party and marched them back to town, and at the very moment 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 five thousand dollars 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 all mighty smart, but we calculate to get even with them. Royal 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, August 19, 1863 From Steamboat Springs, Nevada Territory, dated August 18, 1863 Letter from Mark Twain Editors, 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 I 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 Marshall 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 myself, I'll warrant, or else you wish to bring in to 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, number five, 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 bullfrog, 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 Eric, Mr. Borek, 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, or 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 Mrs. Holmes and Stowe. At Washoo we ate a supper of unimpeachable squareness at the Washoo Exchange, where I found Honorable J. K. Lovejoy, Dr. Baumann, 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 ranch men 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 one thousand dollars, whereas the damage already done the crops by the withdrawal of the water amounts to more than twenty thousand dollars. 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. Moreover, 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, without 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 notebook again. I think I could lose a thousand notebooks 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 August 25, 1863 Letter from Mark Twain, Steamboat Springs Hotel, August 23, 1863 The Springs Editors, 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 Washoo City and twenty from Carson. They are natural. The devil boils the water, and the white steam puffs up out of crevices 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 which smells vileer than its fellow, and the sides of the springs are embellished with very pretty, party-coloured 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 Missers Haynes, Ellsworth, and Bingham. These gentlemen will never allow you to get ill-humoured 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. 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. Ells, the proprietor of the springs, has erected a large, tastefully designed, uncomfortable 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. Ells 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. For 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, erosipilus, etc. But then all ordinary ailments can be quickly and pleasantly cured here without a resort to deadly physics. More than two-thirds of the people who come here are afflicted with venereal diseases. Those 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 nonetheless 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 bathrooms 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 anti-room and take a cold shower-bath, or let alone if you choose. Then you step into a sort of little dark closet floor with a wooden grating, up through which come puffs and volumes of the hottest steam you ever performed to, because the awkwardness 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 thence forward, 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 the second only remarking, ouch, 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 fiber of his body. It will always be a comfort to me to recall these little incidents. After the shower-bath you return to the anti-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. Again 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 wheel. 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 billious 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 someone 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's 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 un-austentatiously 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 tablespoon. 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 vileer 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 and 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 and Company, 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 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 physics 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 today, though I disliked a 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 Cyphorith 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 cipher 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 boarding-house 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 seven hundred and thirty million dollars. 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 and Curry bar with two thousand dollars in it weighs nearly one hundred pounds. One hundred thousand dollars 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 one hundred thousand dollars without discommoting the passengers. It would take one hundred stages to carry five million dollars, two thousand stages to carry one hundred million dollars, and fourteen thousand six hundred stages to carry the Bulletin's annual yield of seven hundred and thirty million dollars. Wells Fargo and Company 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 accepted, 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 stages. They didn't each carry a ton of bullion though, only smarty from Hong Kong. The Bulletin also estimates the average yield of ore from our mines at one thousand dollars 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 four hundred dollars. From sixty to two hundred is good rock in the oafer, and when that company, or the Gould and Curry, or the Spanish, or any other of our big companies, get into a chamber that pays over five hundred dollars, 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 one hundred to two hundred dollars, and when better is found, it is shipped also. Rhys River appears to be very rich, but you can't make an average there yet a while. Let her mines be developed first. We place the average yield of the ore of our territory at one hundred dollars 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 one hundred and fifty. 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 two hundred and seventy thousand dollars worth of bullion passed through that office. During the next quarter, five hundred and seventy thousand dollars. Next quarter, eight hundred thousand dollars. Next quarter, nine hundred and fifty-six thousand dollars. Next quarter, one million, two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. And for the quarter ending on the thirtieth of last June, about one million, six hundred thousand dollars. Thus in a year and a half the Virginia office only shipped five million, three hundred and thirty thousand dollars in bullion. During the year 1862 they shipped two million, six hundred and fifteen thousand dollars, 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 five hundred thousand dollars 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 six million dollars for the year. Both Hill and Silver City together can beat us. We will give them eight, no, to be liberal, ten million dollars. To Dayton, Empire City, Ofer, and Carson City we will allow an aggregate of eight million dollars, which is not over the mark, perhaps, and may possibly be a little under it. To Esmeralda we give four million dollars. To Reese River and Humboldt two million dollars, 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 thirty million dollars. Placing the number of mills in the territory at one hundred, this gives to each the labor of three hundred thousand dollars in bullion during the twelve months. Allowing them to run three hundred days in the year, which none of them more than do, this makes their work average one thousand dollars a day, one ton of the Bulletin's rock, or ten of ours. Say the mills average twenty tons of rock a day, and this rock worth fifty dollars a general thing, and you have got the actual work of our one hundred mills figured down just about to a spot, one thousand dollars a day each, and thirty million dollars a year in the aggregate. Oh no, we have never been to school. We don't know how to cipher, 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 seven hundred and thirty million dollars as neatly as a regular banker's clerk could have done it. End of Section 8. This is Section 9 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. Territorial Enterprise, September 1863. Territorial Enterprise, September 4th and 5th, 1863. Bigler versus 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 to sleep 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 indurable? What if I know myself? I yearn for the scalp of the soft shell crab, be he Injun or Whiteman, who conceived of that spoony, slobbering, summer complaint of a name. Why, if I had a grudge against a half-priced 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. Well 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 Messers Carpenter and Hooke Stage is a pleasant one, and from thence over the mountains by the Pioneer would be another, if there were less of it. You naturally want an outside seat in the daytime, 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 a 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 companiable 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 weren'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. Glang! Damn that horse! He knows there's a parson and an old maid inside, and that's what makes him cut up so. I've seen him act just so more than 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've seen a poor cuss, but you're asleep again, you know, and you've rammed your head again my side pocket and busted a bottle of nasty rotten medicine that I'm taken 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 that's vitals and drink to him. Anybody that ain't used to him can't go near him. He'd stun him. He'd suffocate him. His breath smells like a graveyard after an earthquake. You, Bob, allow to scalp that ordinary horse yet, if he keeps on this way. You see, he's been on the overland till about two weeks ago, and every stump he sees, he calates it's an engine. 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 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 again a boulder, and in a second there wasn't anything left of him but a promiscuous pile of hash. It was moonlight, and when I got down and looked at him, he was grivering like jelly, and sort of 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 a ghostly light of his cigar. He weren't in misery long though. In a minute and a half he was dead in 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 side in such a way as to render me useless for ever after, unless perhaps someone 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 Washu 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 nobody 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, Mazepa, 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 unexceptional 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 caverting around after Olinska. She bends herself back like a bow. She pitches head foremost at the atmosphere like a battering ram. She works her arms and her legs and her whole body like a dancing jack. Here 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 wallops 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 Mazzepa on his back, fore and aft, and face uppermost. And the horse goes cantering upstairs 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 round 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 footlights, and beholds once more—oh, gods, the familiar faces of the fiddlers in the orchestra! The noble old steed is happy then, but poor Mazzepa 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. Mazzepa 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 Mazzepa. 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 Mazzepa with them. I am tired of writing now, so you will get no news in this letter. I have got a notebook 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 Hall at Union Hall last Wednesday night. LADE ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON, AFTER THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE AWARDS IN CLASS A, HAD BEEN MADE, ALL THE STOCK HAD RECEIVED PREMIUMS, FORMED IN A SORT OF TRIUMPHUL PROCESSION, WITH A BAND AT THE HEAD, AND THE STOCK FOLLOWING IN THE ORDER OF PRECEDENCE, TO WHICH THEY WERE INTITLED, BY THE DECISION OF THE JUDGES, AND MARCHED DOWN TO THE CITY, THROUGH THE PRINCIPLE 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 Pantamime 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 favour those present with a speech on a 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 favoured with a look at the speech as taken down by the reporter, and given the following extract, quote, exclamation, exclamation, question, exclamation, question, semicolon, comma, comma, exclamation, exclamation, exclamation, period, close quotes. 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 three hundred dollars, catch weights, barring Breckenridge, was accepted by Kate Mitchell, but today 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 twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents, single dash of a mile. In starting Gray 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 Gray Dick dashed forward when the cry of come-back was raised by several, also by a voice or two on the judge's stand. Gray 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 rider's 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, Theodore Winters paid the entrance fees for the three horses, amounting to fifteen dollars, purse, twenty dollars, single dash of a mile. The horses got a very fair start. On the first quarter Sheep got the lead, Gray Dick came next and Split Ear brought up the rear. Sheep still held his own on nearing the home stretch, but Gray 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 Gray Dick. Sheep seemed to be the favorite and the excitement was intense. Sheep passed the score six inches ahead of Gray Dick, winning the purse, time one minute fifty-eight seconds. A purse of sixteen dollars and twenty-five cents was now made up, the same horses to run, single dash of one mile. Gray Dick had the track, Split Ear second, Sheep third. The horses got a very good start. Gray Dick led for the first half-mile, Sheep followed closely and Split Ear far behind. Gray Dick kept the lead down the home stretch and 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. Gray Dick won the purse, time two minutes eight seconds. A purse of twenty-five dollars 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, Gray 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 around the track. Gray Dick came in first, Split Ear second and Sheep rolled along far behind. Sheep won the race and purse, time two minutes seventeen seconds. 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 a 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 plots 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. Currie, 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 two thousand dollars 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 two hundred dollars. Afterwards he presented to the society all his winnings, amounting to two hundred and twenty-five dollars, and has in various other ways aided the institution to near the amount of one thousand dollars. 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, every 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. 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 were now engaged in the cultivation of the soil of Washu, 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 to soon see orchards in all our valleys and vineyards gracing the slopes of all our hills. Royal 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 Knicks. 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. During 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's 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 a share of gashary, 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 axe 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. Everybody 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 minds 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 Dainey 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 resulting 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. Putnam's Dan Dequill 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 Knicks 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. End of Section 10. This is Section 11 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section 11, Territorial Enterprise, November 1863. Territorial Enterprise, November 1863. Letter from Mark Twain. Carson City, November 7, 1863. Editors' Enterprise. This has been a busy week, a notable and 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 ideas to where Virginia City is, as the place which sends silver bricks to the Sanitary Fund, and some other dozens have heard of Washoo, 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 sagebrush, 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 created silver in that form. This week's worth 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 man 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, William M. Steward, Judge Brian, 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 Mrs. Steward, Johnson, LaRoe, and Brian. 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 awhile. 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 three thousand dollars, and the script for it will not yield one thousand five hundred dollars. The new State will have to shoulder the present territorial debt of ninety thousand dollars, but it seems to me we might usher her into the world without adding to this an Akushmafi, so to speak, of ten or fifteen thousand more. While the convention is so poor that it cannot even furnish newspapers for its members to read, kerosene merchants hesitate to afford it light. Unfeeling dremen 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 spatoons to this day. In fact there is only one spatoon to every seven members, and they furnish their own fine cut into the bargain. In my opinion there are not ink stands enough to go around, or pens either for that matter. Colonel Youngs, Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, to pay expenses, has gone blind and bald-headed 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 script 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 standstill 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 script were revealed to the house yesterday by Colonel Young's, 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. Honourable 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 thirteenth. 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. Jader 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. Messers Pete Hopkins and A. Currie have compromised with me, and there is no longer any animosity existing on either side. They were a little worried at first, if 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. Labor's Enterprise. Compiled by our own reporter. Thus the Virginia Union of this morning gobbles up the labours 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 trade 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 Lehigh, 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 jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith. 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 jawbone 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 requriant to the trust, even though the very people whom I try to serve upbraed 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 jawbone of one of his ancestors, and he never heard of it before. Mark Territorial Enterprise, November 1863. Note Ingomar the Barbarian was presented at McGuire's Opera House in Virginia City during the fall of 1863. Mark Twain reviewed the play after his own fashion. Review of Ingomar the Barbarian. Act I. Mrs. Cloughly 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 II. 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 without any perceptible foreign accent. Scene III. 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 Rhys River. They hold him as a slave. It will cost thirty ounces of silver to get him out of soak. Scene IV. 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. She 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 II. Comanches on the war-path, headed by the chief, Ingemar. 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 Ingemar 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 III. Parthenia and Ingemar alone in the woods. Two souls with but a single thought, etc. She tells him that his love. He can't see it. Scene IV. The thing works around about as we expected it would in the first place. Ingemar gets stuck after Parthenia. Scene V. Ingemar declares his love. He attempts to embrace her. She waves him off gently but firmly. She remarks, Not too brash, Inge, not too brash now. Ingemar subsides. They finally flee away and hide them to Parthenia's home. Acts III and IV. Joy! Joy! On the summit of a hill Parthenia beholds once more the spires and domes of Silver City. Scene II. 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 III. Myron tells Ingemar 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. Ingemar weakens. He lets down. He is utterly demoralized. Scene IV. Enter Old Timurk, chief of police. He offers Ingemar, but this scene is too noble to be trifled with in Burlesque. Scene V. Ingemar presents his bill, two hundred and thirteen drachmas. Busted again, the old man cannot pay. Ingemar compromises by becoming the slave of Palladour. Scene VI. The Comanches again, with Thorn at their head. He asks, who enslaved the chief? Ingemar points to Palladour. Lo! Thorn seizes the trembling broker and snatches him bald-headed. Scene VII. 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 Ingemar to be its mayor. Applauds by the soups. Scene VIII. Grand Tableau. Comanches, police, payutes, and citizens generally. Ingemar and Parthenia hanging together in the center. The old thing, the old poetical quotation we mean, they double on it. Ingemar observing two souls with but a single thought, and sheek 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, November 29, 1863. Territorial Enterprise, circa November 27, 1863. Arctwain on Artemis Ward, the Wild Humorous of the Plains. We understand that Artemis Ward contemplates visiting this region to deliver his lectures, and perhaps make some additions to his big show. In his last letter to us he appeared particularly anxious to secure a couple of horned toads. Though a lizard, which it may be possessed of two tails, or any comical snakes, and any such little unconsidered trifles, as the poets say, which they do not interest the common mind. Further be it known that I would like a opportunity for to make a model in wax of an average size wash-o-man, with feet attached, as an companion picture to a waxen figure of a nigger I have secured, at a large outlay, which it has a unnatural big head unto it. Could you also manage to gobble up the sculpt of the late Mrs. Hopkins? I adore such footprints of atrocity as it were, muchly. I was ruminatin' on gittin' the bust of Mark Twain, but I've quit contemplatin' the work. They tell me down here to the bay that the busts ere so common it would only be in waste of wax, to get us counterfeit presentiment. We shall assist Mr. Ward in every possible way about making his wash-shoe collection, and have no doubt but he will pick up many curious things during his sojourn. End of section 11.