 This is section 24 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. Territorial Enterprise, December 8 through 10, 1865. A rich epigram. Tom McGuire, torn with ire, lighted on MacDougall, grabbed his throat, tore his coat, and split him in the bugle. Shame! Oh, fire! McGuire, why will you thus gaggle? 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 through 15, 1865. Portion of San Francisco Letter, written December 11, 1865. Christian Spectator. Reverend O. P. Fitzgerald, of the Miner 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 hellfire and brimstone, and wicked young men knocked endwise 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 heist of some old slow coach of a preacher for not getting subscribers for the Spectator fast enough. 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, Tennessee. 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 bloodthirsty 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's 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 favour with. But it was only an allegory, after all. The impossible policeman 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. See a clothes 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 a bile on her nose. Her eyes snapped. You call her a girl? You shall find out yourself. She is a lady, if you please. They all are 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 Thunderbolt 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 Thunderbolt Saloon, and got so spoony in his attention, that he hung around her night after night, and breathed her garlicky size 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 numbskull 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. December 16th and 17th, 1865 Extract of original letter dated December 13th, pertaining to theatre 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 relation 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 news boys and shoemakers would, with the caustic, the cutting, the withering old standby which they have used with such blighting effect on so many similar occasions, to it. 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 a special reference to large stature and powerful muscle, and he only gets a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month, but the detective is chosen with a special regard to brains, and the position pays better than a lucky farrel 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 barkeeper 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 Saluxero, 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 a cake that cannot lie, and makes him shed his boots and finds two hundred dollars in green-backs in them, and makes him shuck himself and finds upon him store of stolen gold. And so Saluxero goes to the station-house. The detectives are smart, but I remark 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 a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month. It was not a bad idea. Still, I contend that some of them could not afford to be Daniel Webster's 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 the First, Emperor, which was tolerably good, but not as good as the Chando's 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 political merit or demerit than I conceive him to be himself. Therefore, rather than do fit smith and 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 near shall sever Gone, gone, gone Wherever, oh, wherever Gone, gone, gone Gone to his endeavour Recapitulation Gone forever To wherever, near shall sever His endeavour From our soul's high recompense I consider that the chief fault in this poem is that it is ill-balanced, lopsided, so to speak. There is too much gone in it, and not enough forever. I will do the author of 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 Accentrics The Accentric 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 four-teener sallies forth in a gang by himself, like Baxter's hog, and in the course of an hour he has captured a horse or way-laid a stage-coach, 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 horse-stormy way when they stampede. Oh, they are gay! I am really sorry to see that Colonel Drum is about to tone down the exuberance of the four-teeners, 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 runaway beer-wagon items, whereas lately it has scintillated with the most thrilling and readable exploits and adventures of the four-teeners. Colonel Drum 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 four-teeners 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. They look upon such as only a troublesome interruption to their amusements, but not a positive obstruction. Territorial Enterprise December 19th through 21st, 1865. Portion of San Francisco Letter. Grand Fet Day at the Cliff House. Performance to commence precisely at high noon. The following celebrated artists have been engaged at a ruinous expense, and will perform the following truly marvelous feats. Pete Hopkins, the renowned specter of the mountains, will walk a tightrope, 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 Yoff will exhibit the horse Petchen, and explain why he did not win the last race. Harry Covey will exhibit Lody, and Jim Barton, and Billy Williamson will favour the audience with their pedigree and sketches of their history. Naughty Bene, this will be very entertaining. Jerome Leyland will exhibit the famous cowl 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 Gallipade, in which fine exhibition he will be assisted by several prominent brokers, after which Judge Bryan will sing two verses of Neapolitan by request. The whole to conclude with the grand tableau of the Children in the Wood, Children in the Wood, Emperor Norton and the Specter of the Mountains. Territorial Enterprise December 22 through 23 1865. McDougal versus McGuire. The talk, occasioned by McGuire's unseemly castigation of McDougal, while the latter was engaged in conversation with a lady, was dying out, happily for both parties, but Mr. McDougal has set it going again by bringing that suit of his for five thousand dollars 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 five thousand dollars entirely soothe him and put an end to the comments and criticisms of the public? It is questionable. If he would pitch in and wail McGuire, 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 plaintive 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, o bunged-up lump of clay. No! Arise! Be wise! MacDougall, damned your eyes! Don't legal quips devise to mend your reputation and to face the degradation of a blow that struck in ire. But where of execration, unless you take your station in a strategic location, in mood of desperation and lamb-like-all creation, is infernal Tom McGuire? Territorial Enterprise December 24 or 26, 1865. Portion of a letter. San Francisco Letter. San Francisco December 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 altar of this morning in the un-ostentatious 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 morning 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, sattons, laces, articles of gold and silver, jewels, porcelains from Sevres, and from Dresden, Bohemian and Venetian class. 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 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 residence as well. All appearances do indicate that this blithe time of holiday in San Francisco will be one of liveliness unusual and brilliancy with all. 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 altar is brilliant. The fine poem I have quoted is coppered by a scintillation of fit smiths in the same column. He calls the thieving scallywags of the fourteenth infantry nyptomaniacs. 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 fit smith 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 fit smith's birth, and they read the stars and prophesied that he was destined to lead a long and eventual 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 stillborn, 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 marvellous humor, and then his head would cave in and his bowels be rentous under and his arms and his legs would drop off and he would fall down and die in dreadful agony. Nip-domaniac is a felicitous expression, but God be thanked if his not a joke. If it had been, it would have killed him. The mission of Armand Leonidas Fitzsmyth would have been accomplished. Mayo and Aldridge. The last news from Frank Mayo will be gratifying to his host of friends and admirers in California, 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 Keens, starring by himself in after-pieces, and playing with the Keens when there was no after-piece, taking such parts as Henry VIII. The Philadelphia papers said the Keens were very well, but Mr. Mayo was the best actor in the lot. Lewis Aldridge in his new Boston engagement will take high rank and play first old men and such characters. He will do well in the East. He never saw a man make such striding advances in professional excellence as Aldridge 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 Wash U and I make an extract. In the large city of Virginia, the San Francisco system of moneyed exclusiveness prevails completely. Two or three users 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 and 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 affect 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 principles 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 principles 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 some times to go along 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. These the presence of a large number of cats in a village is favourable 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 rhinepast 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. Stevens. They arrived in admirable condition, finer and fatter than they were when they started, for oysters enjoy travelling 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 Washu of European tourists I could mention. But they are dignified and do not dabble about it so much. I would rather have the society of a travelled 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 God! I went up to Liverpool, and there I took the cars and went to London by blank, blank. I been in Palmall, and Sheepside, and White Friars, and all of them places. Been in all of them. I been in the Tower of London, and seen all them damned armours, and things they used to wear in an early day. I hired a feller for a shillin', and he took me all round there, and showed me the whole hell-fired arrangement, you know, by God! And I give him a glass of off-and-off, as they call it, and he just froze to me. You show one of them fellers the colour of a bit, and he'll stay with you all day by blank, blank. And I went to Rome. That ain't no slouch of a town, you know. An old... blank, blank. 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 damned thing about Rome without you see it by. And I been to Paris. Paris, French call it. You never hear them say Paris. They would laugh if they was to hear anybody call it Paris, you know. I was there three weeks. I was on the Pong-Nuff. And I been to the Palais Royale, and the Tuileries, all of them damned places, and the Boulevard, and the Bois-de-Boulogne. I stood there, and the Bois-de-Boulogne, and see old Louis Napoleon and his wife come by in his carriage. I was as close to him as from here to that counter there by God. I see him take his hat off, and bow to them whooping French bilks by blank, blank. 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 of mine to, by hell. A feller might live here a million years, and what he ever see by God. Paris the place. Style there, you know. People got money there by blank, blank. Let's take a drink by God. I wouldn't let a traveled oyster inflict that sort of thing on me, you understand, and refer to the deity and to the Saviour by his full name to verify every other important statement. I would rather have the oysters company than marshals, when his places are big within him. But the moment I received the information that I been to Europe and all them places by God, I would start that oyster on a journey that would astonish it more than all the wonders of Paris and all them damn 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 an innocent pleasure upon one's fellow creatures, which is so cheering, so calmly blissful to the plodding pilgrims 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 exalt and say, Through the labours 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 Bane, the unknown Bane from Petaluma Creek by the obscure Catherine McCarthy, out of three hundred dollars, 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. Fifty-two 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. Sixty-four lines. I printed some other extraordinary occurrences. Runaway horse, twenty-eight lines. Dog fight, thirty lines. Chinaman captured by Officer Rose for stealing chickens, ninety lines. Unknown Chinaman dead on Sacramento steamer, five lines. Several four-tenor items concerning people frightened and boots stolen. Fifty-two 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 anyone'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 complained 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 bathroom 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 springboards 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 prized carrots, though this is not a good flesh color. Therefore 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-dobbing to appreciate the absurdity of anyone's modesty being offended by it. I have no doubt all those who are complaining of this sign went to see the Menken play Mazepa in her much scantier attire, and blushed not. Territorial Enterprise December 10th through 31st, 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 a 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, 1st District, California, Name, M. Twain, Residence, at large, List an amount of tax, $31.25, Penalty, $3.12, Warrant, $2.45, Total amount, $36.82, Date, November 20, 1865, C. S. T. G. G., 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 to many generations of my posterity that I was a man of consequence in the land, and 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 Sol, Collector of Internal Revenue. Some of the flights of fancy in this 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 destrain 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 Shakespeare. 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 is poetry for you. They are going to commence on my real estate. This is very rough. But then the officer is expressly instructed to get 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 three dollars and twelve cents. Every month of thirty-one days ten dollars. Every year a hundred and twenty dollars. Every century twelve thousand dollars. At the end of a hundred thousand years one billion two hundred million dollars 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 Shepard and Dick Robinson, the old reporter, and will kill Judge Rick's and Fitzsmeith 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 infernalist smelling den on earth perhaps. A deserted slaughter house, festering in the sun, is bearable because it only has one smell, albeit is a lively one. A soap factory has its disagreeable features, but the soap factory has but one smell also. To stand to lure it of a sweating negro is rough, but even a sweating negro has but one smell. The salute of the playful pole cat has its little drawbacks, but even the playful pole cat has but one smell, and you can bury yourself to the chin and 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 pole cat, 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 twenty-four by forty 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 for ranks deep, a solid mass of rotting, steaming corruption. In the center of the room are Dan Murphy, Zebriski, the citizen Sam Platt, prosecuting attorney Lauterbach, and other lawyers, either of whom would do for a censor 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 Lauterbach. Lauterbach, 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. Lauterbach addresses the witness. Did this all happen in the city and 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 and 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, Lauterbach 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. Someone, 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 Dequill, W. M. Gillespie, Alph Doughton, Robert Lowry, 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 Doughton—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, Dequill, with its expression of pitiless malignity, is a study. Those of the light-fingered gentry, Lowry 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.