 CHAPTER 77 I stumbled upon one curious character in the island of Manny. He became a sore annoyance to me in the course of time. My first glimpse of him was in a sort of public room in the town of Lahaina. He occupied a chair at the opposite side of the apartment, and sat eyeing our party with interest for some minutes, and listening as critically to what we were saying, as if he fancied we were talking to him and expecting him to reply. I thought it very sociable in a stranger. Presently in the course of conversation, I made a statement bearing upon the subject under discussion, and I made it with due modesty, for there was nothing extraordinary about it, and it was only put forth in illustration of a point at issue. I had barely finished when this person spoke out with rapid utterance and feverish anxiety. Oh! that was certainly remarkable after a fashion, but you ought to have seen my chimney! You ought to have seen my chimney, smoke! I wish I may hang if Mr. Jones you remember that chimney. You must remember that chimney. No, no, I recollect now. You aren't living on this side of the island then, but I am telling you nothing but the truth, and I wish I may never draw another breath if that chimney didn't smoke, so that the smoke actually got caked in it, and I had to dig it out with a pickaxe. You may smile, gentlemen, but the high sheriff's got a hunk of it which I dug out before his eyes, and so it's perfectly easy for you to go and examine for yourselves. The interruption broke up the conversation, which had already begun to lag, and we presently hired some natives and an outrigger canoe or two, and went out to overlook a grand surf-bathing contest. Two weeks after this, while talking in a company, I looked up and detected this same man, boring through and through me with his intense eye, and noted again his twitching muscles and his feverish anxiety to speak. The moment I paused, he said, Beg your pardon, sir, beg your pardon, but it can only be considered remarkable when brought into strong outline by isolation. Sir, contrasted with a circumstance which occurred in my own experience, it instantly becomes commonplace. No, not that, for I will not speak so discourteously of any experience in the career of a stranger and a gentleman, but I am obliged to say that you could not, and you would not ever again refer to this tree as a large one, if you could behold, as I have, the great Yakhmatak tree in the island of Onaskar, sea of Kamchatka, a tree, sir, not one inch less than four hundred and fifteen feet in solid diameter. And I wish I may die in a minute if it isn't so. Oh, you needn't look so questioning, gentlemen. Here's old Captain Saltmarsh can say whether I know what I am talking about or not. I showed him the tree. Captain Saltmarsh, come now, catch your anchor, lad. You're heaving too taut. You promised to show me that stunner, and I walked more than eleven miles with you through the cussidous jungle I ever see, hunting for it. But the tree you showed me finally weren't as big round as a beer-cask, and you know that your own self, Marcus. Here the man talk. Of course the tree was reduced that way, but didn't I explain it? Answer me, didn't I? Didn't I say I wished you could have seen it when I first saw it? When you got up on your ear and called me names and said I had brought you eleven miles to look at a sapling, didn't I explain to you that all the whale ships in North Seas had been wooding off of it for more than twenty-seven years? And didn't you suppose the tree could last forever confounded? I don't see why you want to keep back things that way, and try to injure a person that's never done you any harm. Somehow this man's presence made me uncomfortable, and I was glad when a native arrived at that moment to say that Macawal, the most companiable and luxurious among the rude war-chiefs of the islands, desired us to come over and help him enjoy a missionary whom he had found trespassing on his grounds. I think it was about ten days afterward that, as I finished a statement I was making for the instruction of a group of friends and acquaintances, and which made no pretense of being extraordinary, a familiar voice chimed instantly in on the heels of my last word and said, But my dear sir, there was nothing remarkable about that horse or the circumstance either. Nothing in the world. I mean no sort of offense when I say it, sir, but you really do not know anything whatever about speed. Bless your heart if you could only have seen my mere Margareta. There was a beast. There was lightning for you. Trot. Trot is no name for it. She flew. How she could whirl a buggy along. I started her out, sir. Colonel Bilgewater, you recollect that animal perfectly well. I started her out about thirty or thirty-five yards ahead of the awfulest storm I ever saw in my life, and it chased us upwards of eighteen miles. It did by the everlasting hills. And I'm telling you nothing but the unvarnished truth when I say that not one single drop of rain fell on me, not a single drop, sir, and I swear to it. But my dog was a swimming behind the wagon all the way. For a week or two I stayed mostly within doors, for I seemed to meet this person everywhere, and he had become utterly hateful to me. But one evening I dropped in on Captain Perkins and his friends, and we had a sociable time. About ten o'clock I chanced to be talking about a merchant friend of mine, and without really intending it, the remark slipped out that he was a little mean and parsimonious about paying his workmen. Instantly, through the steam of a hot whiskey punch, on the opposite side of the room, a remembered voice shot, and for a moment I trembled on the imminent verge of profanity. Oh, my dear sir, really you expose yourself when you parade that as a surprising circumstance. Place your heart and hide, you are ignorant of the very ABC of meanness. Ignorant as the unborn babe. Ignorant as unborn twins. You don't know anything about it. It is pitiable to see you, sir, a well-spoken and pre-possessing stranger making such an enormous pow-wow here about a subject concerning which your ignorance is perfectly humiliating. But look me in the eye, if you please. Look me in the eye. John James Gottfrey was the son of poor but honest parents in the state of Mississippi, boyhood friend of mine, bosom comrade in later years. Heaven rest his noble spirit, he is gone from us now. John James Gottfrey was hired by the haybloss and mining company of California to do some blasting for them. The incorporated company of mean men, the boys used to call it. Well, one day he drilled a hole about four feet deep and put in an awful blast of powder, and was standing over it, ramming it down with an iron crowbar about nine feet long. When the cusset things struck a spark and fired the powder and scat away John Gottfrey whizzed like a skyrocket. Him and his crowbar. Well, sir, he kept on going up in the air higher and higher till he didn't look any bigger than a boy, and he kept going on up higher and higher till he didn't look any bigger than a doll, and he kept on going up higher and higher till he didn't look any bigger than a little small bee, and then he went out of sight. Presently he came in sight again looking like a little small bee, and he came along down further and further till he looked as big as a doll again, and down further and further till he was as big as a boy again, and further and further till he was a full-sized man once more, and then him and his crowbar came a whizzing down and lit right exactly in the same old tracks, and went to rammin' down and rammin' down and rammin' down again, just the same as if nothing had happened. Now, do you know that poor cuss warn't gone only sixteen minutes, and yet that incorporated company mean men docked him for the lost time? I said I had the headache, and so excused myself and went home, and on my diary I entered another night spoiled by this offensive loafer, and a fervent curse was set down with it to keep the item company, and the very next day I packed up out of all patience and left the island. Almost from the very beginning I regarded that man as a liar. The line of points represents an interval of years, at the end of which time the opinion hazarded in that last sentence came to be gratifyingly and remarkably endorsed and by wholly disinterested persons. The man, Marcus, was found one morning hanging to a beam of his own bedroom. The doors and windows securely fastened on the inside, dead, and on his breast was pinned to paper in his own handwriting begging his friends to suspect no innocent person of having anything to do with his death, for that it was the work of his own hands entirely. Yet the jury brought in the astounding verdict that deceased came to his death by the hands of some person or person's unknown. They explained that the perfectly undeviating consistency of Marcus's character for thirty years towered aloft as colossal and indestructible testimony that whatever statement he chose to make was entitled to instant and unquestioning acceptance as a lie, and they furthermore stated their belief that he was not dead, an instance the strong circumstantial evidence of his own word that he was dead, and beseeched the coroner to delay the funeral as long as possible, which was done. And so in the tropical climate of Lahaina the coffin stood open for seven days, and then even the loyal jury gave him up, but they sat on him again and changed their verdict to Suicide induced by mental aberration, because they said, with penetration, he said he was dead and he was dead, and would he have told the truth if he had been in his right mind? No sir. CHAPTER 78 After half a year's luxurious vagrancy in the islands, I took shipping in a sailing vessel, and regretfully returned to San Francisco. A voyage in every way delightful, but without an incident, unless lying two long weeks in a dead calm eighteen hundred miles from the nearest land may rank as an incident. Schools of Wales grew so tame that day after day they played about the ship among the porpoises and the sharks without least apparent fear of us, and we pelted them with empty bottles for lack of better sport. Twenty-four hours afterward these bottles would be still lying on the glassy water under our noses, showing that the ship had not moved out of her place in all that time. The calm was absolutely breathless, and the surface of the sea absolutely without a wrinkle. For a whole day and part of a night we lay so close to another ship that had drifted to our vicinity that we carried on conversations with her passengers, introduced each other by name, and became pretty intimately acquainted with people we had never heard of before and have never heard of since. This was the only vessel we saw during the whole lonely voyage. We had fifteen passengers, and to show how hard-pressed they were at last for occupation and amusement, I will mention that the gentlemen gave a good part of their time every day during the calm to trying to sit on an empty champagne bottle lying on its side and thread a needle without touching their heels to the deck or falling over, and the ladies sat in the shade of the mainsail and watched the Enterprise with absorbing interest. We were at sea five Sundays, and yet, but for the Almanac, we never would have known, but that all the other days were Sundays, too. I was home again in San Francisco without means and without employment. I tortured my brain for a saving scheme of some kind, and at last a public lecture occurred to me. I sat down and wrote one in a fever of hopeful anticipation. I showed it to several friends, but they all shook their heads. They said nobody would come to hear me. I would make a humiliating failure of it. They said that as I had never spoken in public I would break down in the delivery anyhow. I was disconsolate now. But at last an editor slapped me on the back and told me to go ahead. He said, take the largest house in town and charge a dollar a ticket. The audacity of the proposition was charming. It seemed fraught with practical worldly wisdom, however. The proprietor of the several theaters endorsed the advice and said I might have his handsome new opera house at half price, fifty dollars. In sheer desperation I took it, on credit, for sufficient reasons. In three days I did a hundred and fifty dollars worth of printing and advertising, and was the most distressed and frightened creature on the Pacific coast. I could not sleep. Who could under such circumstances? For other people there was facetiousness in the last line of my posters, but to me it was plaintive with a pang when I wrote it. Doors open at seven and a half. The trouble will begin at eight. That line has done good service since. Showmen have borrowed it frequently. I have even seen it appended to a newspaper advertisement, reminding school pupils and vacation what time next term would begin. As those three days of suspense dragged by I grew more and more unhappy. I had sold two hundred tickets among my personal friends, but I feared they might not come. My lecture, which had seemed humorous to me at first, grew steadily more and more dreary, till not a vestige of fun seemed left, and I grieved that I could not bring a coffin on the stage and turn the thing into a funeral. I was so panic-stricken at last that I went to three old friends, giants in stature, cordial by nature, and stormy voiced, and said, This thing is going to be a failure. The jokes in it are so dim that nobody will ever see them. I would like to have you sit in the parquet and help me through. Well, they said they would. Then I went to the wife of a popular citizen and said that if she was willing to do me a very great kindness I would be glad if she and her husband would sit prominently in the left-hand stage-box where the whole house could see them. I explained that I should need help, and would turn toward her and smile as a signal when I had been delivered of an obscure joke, and then I added, Don't wait to investigate, but respond. She promised. Down the street I met a man I never had seen before. He had been drinking and was beaming with smiles and good nature. He said, My name is Sawyer. You don't know me, but that don't matter. I haven't got a cent, but if you knew how bad I wanted to laugh you'd give me a ticket. Come now, what do you say? Is your laugh hung on a hair-trigger? That is, is it critical, or can you get it off easy? My drawing infirmity of speech so affected him that he laughed a specimen or two that struck me as being about at the article I wanted, and I gave him a ticket, and appointed him to sit in the second circle in the centre and be responsible for that division of the house. I gave him minute instructions about how to detect indistinct jokes, and then went away and left him chuckling placidly over the novelty of the idea. I ate nothing on the last of the three eventful days. I only suffered. I had advertised that on this third day the box office would be opened for the sale of reserved seats. I crept down to the theatre at four in the afternoon to see if any sales had been made. The ticket seller was gone. The box office was locked up. I had to swallow suddenly, or my heart would have got out. No sales, I said to myself. I might have known it. I thought of suicide, pretended illness, flight. I thought of these things in earnest, for I was very miserable and scared. But, of course, I had to drive them away and prepare to meet my fate. I could not wait for half-past seven. I wanted to face the horror, and ended. The feeling of many a man doomed to hang, no doubt. I went down back streets at six o'clock and entered the theatre by the back door. I stumbled my way in the dark among the ranks of canvas scenery and stood on the stage. The house was gloomy and silent, and its emptiness depressing. I went into the dark among the scenes again, and for an hour and a half gave myself up to the horrors, wholly unconscious of everything else. Then I heard a murmur. It rose higher and higher, and ended in a crash, mingled with cheers. It made my hair raise. It was so close to me, and so loud. There was a pause, and then another. Presently came a third. And before I well knew what I was about, I was in the middle of the stage, staring at the sea of faces bewildered by the fierce glare of the lights, and quaking in every limb with a terror that seemed like to take my life away. The house was full, aisles and all. The tumult in my heart and brain and legs continued a full minute before I could gain any command over myself. Then I recognized the charity and the friendliness in the faces before me, and little by little my fright melted away, and I began to talk. Within three or four minutes I was comfortable and even content. My three chief allies with three auxiliaries were on hand in the parquet, all sitting together, all armed with bludgeons, and all ready to make an onslaught upon the feeblest joke that might show its head. And whenever a joke did fall, their bludgeons came down, and their faces seemed to split from ear to ear. Sawyer, whose hearty countenance was seen looming readily in the center of the second circle, took it up, and the house was carried handsomely. Inferior jokes never fared so royally before. Presently I delivered a bit of serious matter with impressive unction, it was my pet, and the audience listened with an absorbed hush that gratified me more than any applause. And as I dropped the last word of the clause, I happened to turn and catch Mrs. Her intent and waiting eye. My conversation with her flashed upon me, and in spite of all I could do I smiled. She took it for the signal, and promptly delivered a mellow laugh that touched off the whole audience, and the explosion that followed was the triumph of the evening. I thought that that honest man Sawyer would choke himself, and as for the bludgeons they performed like pile-drivers. But my poor little morsel of pathos was ruined. It was taken in good faith as an intentional joke, and the prize one of the entertainment, and I wisely let it go at that. All the papers were kind in the morning. My appetite returned. I had an abundance of money. All's well that ends well. Launched out as a lecturer now with great boldness. I had the field all to myself, for public lectures were almost an unknown commodity in the Pacific market. They are not so rare now, I suppose. I took an old personal friend along to play agent for me, and for two or three weeks we roamed through Nevada and California and had a very cheerful time of it. Two days before I lectured in Virginia City, two stagecoaches were robbed within two miles of the town. The daring act was committed just at dawn by six masked men who sprang up alongside the coaches, presented revolvers at the heads of the drivers and passengers, and commanded a general dismount. Everybody climbed down and the robbers took their watches and every cent they had. Then they took gunpowder and blew up the express-species boxes and got their contents. The leader of the robbers was a small, quick-spoken man, and the fame of his vigorous manner and his intrepidity was in everybody's mouth when we arrived. The night after instructing Virginia, I walked over the desolate divide and down to Gold Hill and lectured there. The lecture done, I stopped to talk with a friend and did not start back till eleven. The divide was high, unoccupied ground between the towns, the scene of twenty midnight murders and a hundred robberies. As we climbed up and stepped out on this eminence, the Gold Hill lights dropped out of sight at our backs, and the night closed down gloomy and dismal. The sharp winds swept the place too and chilled our perspiring bodies through. I tell you, I don't like this place at night," said Mike, the agent. Well, don't speak so loud, I said. You needn't remind anybody that we are here. Just then a dim figure approached me from the direction of Virginia, a man, evidently. He came straight at me and I stepped aside to let him pass. He stepped in the way and confronted me again. Then I saw that he had a mask on and was holding something in my face. I heard a click, click, and recognized a revolver in the dim outline. I pushed the barrel aside with my hand and said Don't. He ejaculated sharply. Your watch! Your money! I said, you can have them with pleasure, but take the pistol away from my face, please. It makes me shiver. No remarks. Hand out your money. Certainly, I put up your hands. Don't you go for a weapon? Put them up higher. I held them above my head. A pause. Then are you going to hand out your money or not? I dropped my hands to my pockets and said Certainly, I put up your hands. Do you want your head blown off higher? I put them above my head again. Another pause. Are you going to hand out your money or not? Again? Put up your hands. By George, you want the head shot off you awful bad. Well, friend, I'm trying my best to please you. You tell me to give up my money, and when I reach for it, you tell me to put up my hands. If you would only... Oh, now don't. All six of you at me. That other man will get away while. Now, please, take some of those revolvers out of my face. Do, if you please. Every time one of them clicks, my liver comes up into my throat. If you have a mother, any of you, or if any of you have ever had a mother, or a grandmother, or a... jeez it, will you give up your money or have we got to... there? There are none of that. Put up your hands. Gentlemen, I know you are gentlemen by your silence. If you want to be facetious, young man, there are times and places more fitting. This is serious business. You prick the marrow of my opinion. The funerals I have attended in my time were comedies compared to it. Now, I think, curse your plumber, your money, your money, your money. Hold. Put up your hands. Gentlemen, listen to reason. You see how I am situated. Now, don't put those pistols so close. I smell the powder. You see how I am situated. If I had four hands, so that I could hold up two and throttle him, gag him, kill him. Gentlemen, don't. Nobody's watching the other fellow. Why don't some of you... ouch, take it away, please. Gentlemen, you see that I've got to hold up my hands, and so I can't take out my money. But if you'll be so kind as to take it out for me, I will do as much for you some... Search him, Beauregard, and stop his jaw with a bullet quick if he wags it again. Help, Beauregard! Stonewall! Then three of them, with a small, spry leader, adjourned to Mike and fell to searching him. I was so excited that my lawless fancy tortured me to ask my two men all manner of facetious questions about their rebel brother-generals of the South. But considering the order they had received, it was but common prudence to keep still. When everything had been taken from me, watch, money, and a multitude of trifles of small value, I supposed I was free, and forthwith put my cold hands into my empty pockets, and began an inoffensive jig to warm my feet and stir up some latent courage. But instantly all pistols were at my head, and the order came again. They stood Mike up alongside of me, with strict orders to keep his hands above his head, too. And then the chief highwayman said, Beauregard, hide behind that boulder. Phil Sheridan, you hide behind that other one. Stonewall Jackson, put yourself behind that sage-bush there. Keep your pistols bearing on these fellows, and if they take down their hands within ten minutes or move a single peg, let them have it. Then three disappeared in the gloom toward the several ambushes, and the other three disappeared down the road toward Virginia. It was depressingly still and miserably cold. Now this whole thing was a practical joke, and the robbers were personal friends of ours in disguise, and twenty more lay hidden within ten feet of us during the whole operation listening. Mike knew all of this, and was in the joke. But I suspected nothing of it. To me it was most uncomfortably genuine. When we had stood there in the middle of the road five minutes, like a couple of idiots, with our hands aloft, freezing to death by inches, Mike's interest in the joke began to wane. He said, The time's up now, ain't it? No, you keep still. Do you want to take any chances with these bloody savages? Presently Mike said, Now the time's up anyway. I'm freezing. Well, freeze. Better freeze than carry your brains home in a basket. Maybe the time is up, but how do we know? Cut no watch to tell by. I mean to give them good measure. I calculate to stand here fifteen minutes or die. Don't you move? So, without knowing it, I was making one joker very sick of his contract. When we took our arms down at last, they were aching with cold and fatigue. And when we went sneaking off, the dread I was in, that the time might not yet be up, and that we would feel bullets in a moment, was not sufficient to draw all my attention from the misery that wracked my stiffened body. The joke of these highwayman friends of ours was mainly a joke upon themselves, for they had waited for me on the cold hilltop two full hours before I came, and there was very little fun in that. They were so chilled that it took them a couple of weeks to get warm again. More over, I never had a thought that they would kill me to get money, which it was so perfectly easy to get without any such folly. And so they did not really frighten me bad enough to make their enjoyment worth the trouble they had taken. I was only afraid that their weapons would go off accidentally. Their very numbers inspired me with confidence that no blood would be intentionally spilled. They were not smart. They ought to have sent only one highwayman with a double-barreled shotgun, if they desired to see the author of this volume, Climatree. However, I suppose that in the long run I got the largest share of the joke at last, and in a shape not foreseen by the highwaymen. For the chilly exposure on the divide, while I was in a perspiration, gave me a cold which developed itself into a troublesome disease and kept my hands idle some three months, besides costing me quite a sum in doctor's bills. Since then I play no practical jokes on people, and generally lose my temper when one is played upon me. When I returned to San Francisco I projected a pleasure journey to Japan and thence westward around the world. But a desire to see home again changed my mind, and I took a birth in the steamship, bad goodbye to the friendliest and the livest, heartiest community on our continent, and came by the way of the isthmus to New York, a trip that was not much of a picnic excursion, for the cholera broke out among us on the passage, and we buried two or three bodies at sea every day. I found home a dreary place after my long absence, for half the children I had known were now wearing whiskers or waterfalls, and few of the grown people I had been acquainted with remained at their hearthstones prosperous and happy. Some of them had wandered to other scenes, some were in jail, and the rest had been hanged. These changes touched me deeply, and I went away and joined the famous Quaker City European excursion, and carried my tears to foreign lands. Thus, after seven years of vicissitudes, ended a pleasure trip to the silver mines of Nevada, which had originally been intended to occupy only three months. However, I usually miss my calculations further than that. Moral. If the reader thinks he is done now, and that this book has no moral to it, he is in error. The moral of it is this. If you are of any account, stay at home, and make your way by faithful diligence. But if you are no account, go away from home, and then you will have to work whether you want to or not. Thus you become a blessing to your friends by ceasing to be a nuisance to them, if the people you go among suffer by the operation. THE END. END OF CHAPTER 79. This is Appendix A of Ruffing It. Ruffing It by Mark Twain. Appendix A. Brief sketch of Mormon history. Mormonism is only about forty years old. But its career has been full of stir and adventure from the beginning, and it is likely to remain so to the end. Its adherents have been hunted and hounded from one end of the country to the other, and the result is that for years they have hated all Gentiles indiscriminately and with all their might. Joseph Smith, the finder of the Book of Mormon and founder of the religion, was driven from state to state with his mysterious copper plates and the miraculous stones he read their inscriptions with. Finally he instituted his church, in Ohio, and Brigham Young joined it. The neighbors began to persecute, and apostasy commenced. Brigham held to the faith and worked hard. He arrested desertion. He did more. He added converts in the midst of the trouble. He rose in favor and importance with the brethren. He was made one of the twelve apostles of the church. He shortly fought his way to a higher post and more powerful, president of the twelve. The neighbors rose up and drove the Mormons out of Ohio, and they settled in Missouri. Brigham went with them. The Missourians drove them out, and they retreated to Norview, Illinois. They prospered there, and built a temple which made some pretensions to architectural grace, and achieved some celebrity in a section of country where a brick courthouse with a tin dome and a cupule on it was contemplated with reverential awe. But the Mormons were badgered and harried again by their neighbors. All the proclamations Joseph Smith could issue denouncing polygamy and repudiating it as utterly anti-Mormon were of no avail. The people of the neighborhood on both sides of the Mississippi claimed that polygamy was practiced by the Mormons, and not only polygamy, but a little of everything that was bad. Brigham returned from a mission to England where he had established a Mormon newspaper, and he brought back with him several hundred converts to his preaching. His influence among the brethren augmented with every move he made. Finally, Norview was invaded by the Missouri and Illinois Gentiles, and Joseph Smith killed. A Mormon named Ridgden assumed the presidency of the Mormon church and government in Smith's place, and even tried his hand at a prophecy or two. But a greater than he was at hand, Brigham seized the advantage of the hour, and without other authority than superior brain and nerve and will, hurled Ridgden from his high place and occupied it himself. He did more. He launched an elaborate curse at Ridgden and his disciples, and he pronounced Ridgden's prophecies emanations from the devil, and ended by handing the false prophet over to the buffettings of Satan for a thousand years—probably the longest term ever inflicted in Illinois. The people recognized their master. They straightaway elected Brigham Young, president, by a prodigious majority, and have never faltered in their devotion to him from that day to this. Brigham had forecast a quality which no other prominent Mormon has probably ever possessed. He recognized that it was better to move to the wilderness than be moved. By his command the people gathered together their meager effects, turned their backs upon their homes and their faces toward the wilderness, and on the bitter night in February, filed in sorrowful procession across the frozen Mississippi, lighted on their way by the glare of their burning temple, whose sacred furniture their own hands had fired. They camped several days afterward on the western verge of Iowa, and poverty, want, hunger, cold, sickness, grief, and persecution did their work, and many succumbed and died, martyrs, fair and true, whatever else they might have been. Two years the remnant remained there, while Brigham and a small party crossed the country and founded Great Salt Lake City, purposely choosing a land which was outside the ownership and jurisdiction of the hated American nation. Note that. This was in 1847. Brigham moved his people there, and got them settled just in time to see disaster fall again. For the war closed and Mexico ceded Brigham's refuge to the enemy, the United States. In 1849 the Mormons organized a free and independent government and erected the State of Desiree, with Brigham and Young as its head. But the very next year Congress deliberately snubbed it and created the territory of Utah, out of the same accumulation of mountains, sagebrush, alkali, and general desolation, but made Brigham governor of it. Then for years the enormous migration across the plains to California poured through the land of the Mormons, and yet the church remained staunch and true to its lord and master. Neither hunger, thirst, poverty, grief, hatred, contempt, nor persecution could drive the Mormons from their faith or their allegiance, and even the thirst for gold, which gleaned the flour of the youth and strength of many nations, was not able to entice them. That was the final test. An experiment that could survive that was an experiment with some substance to it somewhere. Great Salt Lake City throve, finally, and so did Utah. One of the last things which Brigham Young had done before leaving Iowa was to appear in the pulpit dressed to personate the worshipped and lamented prophet Smith, and confer the prophetic succession with all its dignities, emoluments, and authorities upon President Brigham Young. The people accepted the pious fraud with the maddest enthusiasm, and Brigham's power was sealed and secured for all time. Within five years afterward he openly added polygamy to the tenets of the church by authority of a revelation which he pretended had been received nine years before by Joseph Smith, albeit Joseph is amply on record as he denouncing polygamy to the day of his death. Now as Brigham become a second Andrew Johnson in the small beginning and steady progress of his official grandeur, he had served successively as a disciple in the ranks, home missionary, foreign missionary, editor and publisher, apostle, president of the board of apostles, president of all Mormondom, civil and ecclesiastical, successor to the great Joseph by the will of heaven, prophet, seer, revelator. There was but one dignity higher which he could aspire to, and he reached out modestly and took that. He proclaimed himself a god. He claims that he is to have a heaven of his own hereafter, and that he will be its god, and his wives and children its goddesses, princes and princesses. Into it all faithful Mormons will be admitted with their families, and will take rank and consequence according to the number of their wives and children. If a disciple dies before he has had time to accumulate enough wives and children to enable him to be respectable in the next world, any friend can marry a few wives and raise a few children for him after he is dead, and they are duly credited to his account and his heavenly status advanced accordingly. Let it be borne in mind that the majority of the Mormons have always been ignorant, simple, of an inferior order of intellect, unacquainted with the world and its ways, and let it be borne in mind that the wives of these Mormons are necessarily after the same pattern and their children likely to be fit representatives of such a conjunction, and then let it be remembered that for forty years these creatures have been driven, driven, driven relentlessly, and mobbed, beaten, and shot down, cursed, despised, expatriated, banished to a remote desert, whether they journeyed gaunt with famine and disease, disturbing the ancient solitudes with their lamentations and marking the long way with graves of their dead, and all because they were simply trying to live and worship God in the way which they believed with all their hearts and souls to be the true one. Let all these things be borne in mind, and then it will not be hard to account for the deathless hatred which the Mormons bear our people and our government. That hatred has fed fat its ancient grudge, ever since Mormon Utah developed into a self-supporting realm, and the church waxed rich and strong. Brigham, as territorial governor, made it plain that Mormondon was for the Mormons. The United States tried to rectify all that by appointing territorial officers from New England and other anti-Mormon localities, but Brigham prepared to make their entrance into his dominions difficult. Three thousand United States troops had to go across the plains and put these gentlemen in office, and after they were in office they were as helpless as so many stone images. They made laws which nobody minded and which could not be executed. The federal judges opened court and land filled with crime and violence and sat as holiday spectacles for insolent crowds to gape at, for there was nothing to try. Nothing to do, nothing on the dockets. And if a Gentile brought a suit, the Mormon jury would do just as it pleased about bringing in a verdict, and when the judgment of the court was rendered, no Mormon cared for it and no officer could execute it. Our presidents shipped one cargo of officials after another to Utah, but the result was always the same. They sat in a blight for a while, they fairly feasted on scowls and insults day by day, they saw every attempt to do their official duties find its reward in darker and darker looks, and in secret threats and warnings of a more and more dismal nature, and at last they either succumbed and became despised tools and toys of the Mormons, or got scared and discomforted beyond all endurance and left the territory. If a brave officer kept on courageously till his pluck was proven, some pliant Buchanan or Pierce would remove him and appoint a stick in his place. In 1857 General Harney came very near being appointed Governor of Utah, and so it came very near being Harney, Governor, and Crattlebow, Judge. Two men who never had any idea of fear further than the sort of murky comprehension of it which they were enabled to gather from the dictionary. Simply, if for nothing else, for the variety they would have made in a rather monotonous history of federal servility and helplessness, it is a pity they were not fated to hold office together in Utah. Up to the date of our visit to Utah such had been the territorial record. The territorial government, established there, had been a hopeless failure, and Brigham Young was the only real power in the land. He was an absolute monarch, a monarch who defied our president, a monarch who laughed at our armies when they camped about his capital. A monarch who received without emotion the news that the August Congress of the United States had enacted a solemn law against polygamy, and then went forth calmly and married twenty-five or thirty more wives. End of Appendix A This is Appendix B of Ruffing It This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org Ruffing It by Mark Twain Appendix B The Mountain Meadows Massacre The persecutions which the Mormons suffered so long and which they consider they still suffer in not being allowed to govern themselves, they have endeavored and are still endeavoring to repay. The now almost forgotten Mountain Meadows Massacre was their work. It was very famous in its day. The whole United States rang with its horrors. A few items will refresh the reader's memory. A great emigrant train from Missouri and Arkansas passed through Salt Lake City, and a few disaffected Mormons joined it for the sake of the strong protection it afforded for their escape. In that matter lay sufficient cause for hot retaliation by the Mormon chiefs. Besides, these 145 or 150 unsuspecting emigrants being in a part from Arkansas where a noted Mormon missionary had lately been killed, and in part from Missouri, a state remembered with execrations as a bitter persecutor of the saints when they were few and poor and friendless, here were substantial additional grounds for lack of love for these wayfarers. And finally this train was rich, very rich, in cattle, horses, mules, and other property. And how could the Mormons consistently keep up their coveted resemblance to the Israeliteish tribes and not seize the spoil of an enemy when the Lord had so manifestly delivered it into their hand? Wherefore, according to Mrs. C. V. Wates' entertaining book, The Mormon Prophet, it transpired that a revelation from Brigham Young, as great grand archie, or God, was dispatched to President J. C. Haight, Bishop Higby and J. D. Lee, adopted son of Brigham, commanding them to raise all the forces they could muster and trust, follow those cursed Gentiles, so read the revelation, attack them disguised as Indians, and with the arrows of the Almighty make a clean sweep of them and leave none to tell the tale. And if they needed any assistance, they were commanded to hire the Indians as their allies, promising them a share of the booty. They were to be neither slothful nor negligent in their duty, and to be punctual in sending the teams back to him before winter set in, for this was the mandate of Almighty God. The command of the revelation was faithfully obeyed. A large party of Mormons, painted and tricked out as Indians, overtook the train of immigrant wagons some three hundred miles south of Salt Lake City and made an attack. But the immigrants threw up earthworks, made fortresses of their wagons, and defended themselves gallantly and successfully for five days. Your Missouri or Arkansas gentleman is not much afraid of the sort of scurvy apologies for Indians, which the southern part of Utah affords. He would stand up and fight five hundred of them. At the end of the five days the Mormons tried military strategy. They retired to the upper end of the Meadows, resumed civilized apparel, washed off their paint, and then, heavily armed, drove down in wagons to the beleaguered immigrants, bearing a flag of truce. When the immigrants saw white men coming, they threw down their guns and welcomed them with cheer after cheer. And, all unconscious of the poetry of it, no doubt, they lifted a little child aloft dressed in white in answer to the flag of truce. The leaders of the timely white deliverers were President Haight and Bishop John D. Lee of the Mormon Church. Mr. Cradlebow, who served a term as Federal Judge in Utah and afterward was sent to Congress from Nevada, tells in a speech delivered in Congress how these leaders next proceeded. They professed to be on good terms with the Indians and represented them as being very mad. They also proposed to intercede and settle the matter with the Indians. After several hours parley they, having apparently visited the Indians, gave the ultimatum of the savages, which was that the immigrants should march out of their camp, leaving everything behind them, even their guns. It was promised by the Mormon bishops that they would bring a force and guard the immigrants back to the settlements. The terms were agreed to, the immigrants being desirous of saving the lives of their families. The Mormons retired and subsequently appeared with thirty or forty armed men. The immigrants were marched out, the women and children in front and the men behind, the Mormon guard being in the rear. When they had marched in this way about a mile, at a given signal the slaughter commenced. The men were almost all shot down at the first fire from the guard. Two only escaped, who fled to the desert and were followed one hundred and fifty miles before they were overtaken and slaughtered. The women and children ran on, two or three hundred yards further, when they were overtaken, and with the aid of the Indians they were slaughtered. Seventeen individuals only, of all the immigrant party, were spared, and they were little children. The eldest of them being only seven years old. Thus, on the tenth day of September 1857, was consummated one of the most cruel, cowardly, and bloody murders known in our history. The number of persons butchered by the Mormons on this occasion was one hundred and twenty. With unheard of temerity, Judge Cradlebow opened his court and proceeded to make Mormon dumb answer for the massacre. And what a spectacle it must have been to see this grim veteran, solitary, and alone in his pride and his pluck, glowering down on his Mormon jury and Mormon auditory, deriding them by turns, and by turns breathing threatenings and slaughter. An editorial in the Territorial Enterprise of that day says of him and of the occasion, He spoke and acted with the fearlessness and resolution of a Jackson, but the jury failed to indict or even report on the charges, while threats of violence were heard in every quarter, and an attack on the U.S. troops intimated if he persisted in his course. Finding that nothing could be done with the juries, they were discharged with a scathing rebuke from the judge. And then, sitting as a committing magistrate, he commenced his task alone. He examined witnesses, made arrests in every quarter, and created a consternation in the camps of the Saints greater than any they had ever witnessed before since Mormon was born. At last accounts terrified elders and bishops were decamping to save their necks, and developments of the most startling character were being made, implicating the highest church dignitaries in the many murders and robberies committed upon the Gentiles during the past eight years. Had Harney been Governor, Cradle Bow would have been supported in his work, and the absolute proofs adduced by him of Mormon guilt in this massacre, and in a number of previous murders would have conferred gratuitous coffins upon certain citizens, together with occasion to use them. But coming was the Federal Governor, and he, under a curious pretense of impartiality, sought to screen the Mormons from the demands of justice. On one occasion he even went so far as to publish his protest against the use of the U.S. troops in aid of Cradle Bow's proceedings. Mrs. C. V. Waite closes her interesting detail of the great massacre with the following remark, an accompanying summary of the testimony, and the summary is concise, accurate, and reliable. For the benefit of those who may still be disposed to doubt the guilt of young and his Mormons in this transaction, the testimony is here collated and circumstances given, which go not merely to implicate, but to fasten conviction upon them by confirmation strong as proofs of holy writ. One. The evidence of Mormons themselves engaged in the affair as shown by the statements of Judge Cradle Bow and Deputy U.S. Marshal Rogers. Two. The failure of Brigham Young to embody any account of it in his report as Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Also his failure to make any allusion to it whatever from the pulpit, until several years after the occurrence. Three. The flight to the mountains of men high in authority in the Mormon Church and State when this affair was brought to the ordeal of a judicial investigation. Four. The failure of the Desiree News, the Church Organ, and the only paper then published in the Territory to notice the massacre until several months afterward, and then only to deny that Mormons were engaged in it. Five. The testimony of the children saved from the massacre. Six. The children and the property of the emigrants found in the possession of the Mormons, and that possession traced back to the very day after the massacre. Seven. The statements of Indians in the neighborhood of the scene of the massacre. These statements are shown not only by Cradle Bow and Rogers, but by a number of military officers and by J. Forney, who was, in 1859, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Territory. To all these were such statements freely and frequently made by the Indians. Eight. The testimony of R. P. Campbell, Captain's Second Dragoons, who was sent in the Spring of 1859 to Santa Clara to protect travelers on the road to California and to inquire into Indian depredations. End of Appendix B. This is Appendix C of Roughing It. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. Roughing It by Mark Twain. Appendix C. Concerning a frightful assassination that was never consummated. If ever there was a harmless man, it is Conrad Weigand of Gold Hill, Nevada. If ever there was a gentle spirit that thought itself unfired gunpowder and latent ruin, it is Conrad Weigand. If ever there was an oyster that fancied itself a whale, or a jack-o'-lantern confined to a swamp, that fancied itself a planet with a billion-mile orbit, or a summer zaffer that deemed itself a hurricane, it is Conrad Weigand. Therefore what wonder is it that when he says a thing he thinks the world listens, that when he does a thing the world stands still to look, and that when he suffers there is a convulsion of nature? When I met Conrad he was superintendent of the Gold Hill Asset Office, and he was not only its superintendent, but its entire force, and he was a street preacher too, with a mongrel religion of his own invention whereby he expected to regenerate the universe. This was years ago. Here, laterally, he has entered journalism, and his journalism is what it might be expected to be. Colossal to ear, but pygmy to the eye. It is extravagant grand delinquents confined to a newspaper about the size of a double-letter sheet. He doubtless edits, sets the type, and prints his paper all alone, but he delights to speak of the concern as if it occupies a block and employs a thousand men. Something less than two years ago Conrad assailed several people mercilessly in his little people's tribune, and got himself into trouble. Straightway he heirs the affair in the territorial enterprise, in a communication over his own signature. And I propose to reproduce it here, in all its native simplicity and more than human candor. Long as it is, it is well worth reading, for it is the richest specimen of journalistic literature the history of America can furnish perhaps. From the Territorial Enterprise, January 20, 1870. Seeming plot for assassination miscarried. To the editor of the Enterprise. Months ago, when Mr. Sutro incidentally exposed mining management on the Comstock, and among others, roused me to protest against its continuance in great kindness, you warned me that any attempt by publications, by public meetings, and by legislative action aimed at the correction of chronic mining evils in Story County must entail upon me a. business ruin, b. the burden of all its costs, c. person of violence, and if my purpose were persisted in, then d. assassination, and after all nothing would be affected. Your prophecy fulfilling. In large part, at least, your prophecies have been fulfilled for a. assaying, which was well attended to in the Gold Hill Assay Office, of which I am superintendent, in consequence of my publication has been taken elsewhere, so the president of one of the companies assures me. With no reason assigned, other work has been taken away. With but one or two important exceptions, our assay business now consists simply of the gleaning of the vicinity. b. though my own personal donations to the People's Tribune Association have already exceeded one thousand five hundred dollars, outside of our own numbers we have received, in money, less than three hundred dollars, as contributions and subscriptions for the journal. c. On Thursday last, on the main street in Gold Hill, near noon, with neither warning nor cause assigned, by a powerful blow, I was fell to the ground, and while down I was kicked by a man who it would seem had been led to believe that I had spoken derogatorily of him, by whom he was so induced to believe I am as yet unable to say. On Saturday last I was again assailed and beaten by a man who first informed me why he did so, and who persisted in making his assault even after the erroneous impression under which he also was at first laboring had been clearly and repeatedly pointed out. This same man, after failing through intimidation to elicit from me the names of our editorial contributors, against giving which he knew me to be pledged, beat himself weary upon me with a raw hide, I not resisting, and then paintingly threatened me with permanent disfiguring mayhem, if ever again I should introduce his name into print, and who but a few minutes before his attack upon me assured me that the only reason I was permitted to reach home alive on Wednesday evening last, at which time the people's tribune was issued, was that he deems me only half witted, and be it remembered the very next morning I was knocked down and kicked by a man who seemed to be prepared for flight, he sees doom impending. When will the circle join? How long before the whole of your prophecy will be fulfilled I cannot say, but under the shadow of so much fulfillment in so short a time, and with such threats from a man who is one of the most prominent exponents of the San Francisco Mining Ring, staring me and this whole community defiantly in the face and pointing to a completion of your augury, do you blame me for feeling that this communication is the last I shall ever write for the press, especially when a sense alike of personal self-respect, of duty to this money-opressed and fear-ridden community, and of American fealty to the spirit of true liberty all command me, and each more loudly than love of life itself, to declare the name of that prominent man to be John B. Winters, president of the Yellow Jacket Company, a political aspirant, and a military general. The name of his partially duped accomplice, and a better in this last marvelous assault, is no other than Philip Lynch, editor and proprietor of the Gold Hill News. Despite the insult and wrong heaped upon me by John B. Winters on Saturday afternoon, only a glimpse of which I shall be able to afford your readers, so much do I deplore clenching, by publicity, a serious mistake of any one, man or woman, committed under natural and not self-wrought passion, in view of his great apparent excitement at the time, and in view of the almost perfect privacy of the assault, I am far from sure that I should not have given him space for repentance before exposing him, or it not that he himself has so far exposed the matter as to make it the common talk of the town, that he has horse-whipped me. That fact, having been made public, all the facts in connection need to be also, or silence on my part would seem more than singular, and with many would be proof either that I was conscious of some unworthy aim in publishing the article, or else that my non-combatant principles are but a convenient cloak alike of physical and moral cowardice. I therefore shall try to present a graphic but truthful picture of this whole affair, but shall forbear all comments presuming that the editors of our own journal, if others do not, will speak freely and fittingly upon this subject in our next number. Whether I shall then be dead or living, for my death will not stop, though it may suspend the publication of the people's tribune. The non-combatant sticks to principle, but takes along a friend or two of a conveniently different stripe. The Trap Sat. On Saturday morning John B. Winters sent verbal word to the Goldhill Asset Office that he desired to see me at the Yellowjacket Office. Though such a request struck me as decidedly cool in view of his own recent discurtices to me there, alike as a publisher and as a stockholder in the Yellowjacket mine, and though it seemed to me more like a summons than the courteous request by one gentleman to another for a favour, hoping that some conference with Sharon looking to the betterment of mining matters in Nevada might arise from it, I felt strongly inclined to overlook what possibly was simply an oversight in courtesy. But as then it had only been two days since I had been bruised and beaten under a hasty and false apprehension of facts, my caution was somewhat aroused. Moreover I remembered sensitively his contemptuousness of manner to me at my last interview in his office. I therefore felt it needful, if I went at all, to go accompanied by a friend whom he would not dare to treat within civility and whose presence with me might secure exemption from insult. Accordingly I asked a neighbour to accompany me. The Trap Almost Detected Although I was not then aware of this fact, it would seem that previous to my request this same neighbour had heard Dr. Zabriski state publicly in a saloon that Mr. Winters had told him he had decided either to kill or to horse with me, and had not finally decided on which. My neighbour therefore felt unwilling to go down with me until he had first called on Mr. Winters alone. He therefore paid him a visit. From that interview he assured me that he gathered the impression that he did not believe I would have any difficulty with Mr. Winters, and that he, Winters, would call on me at four o'clock in my own office. My own precautions! As Sheriff Cummings was in Gold Hill that afternoon, and as I desired to converse with him about the previous assault, I invited him to my office, and he came. Although a half-hour had passed beyond four o'clock, Mr. Winters had not called, and we both of us began preparing to go home. Just then Philip Lynch, publisher of the Gold Hill News, came in and said blandly and cheerily as if bringing good news, Hello, John B. Winters wants to see you. I replied, Indeed! Why, he sent me word that he would call on me here this afternoon at four o'clock. Oh, well, it don't do to be too ceremonious just now. He's in my office, and that will do as well. Come on in. Winters wants to consult with you alone. He's got something to say to you. Though slightly uneasy at this change of program, yet believing that in an editor's house I ought to be safe, and anyhow, that I would be within hail of the street, I hurriedly and but partially whispered my dim apprehensions to Mr. Cummings, and asked him if he would not keep near enough to hear my voice in case I should call. He consented to do so while waiting for some other parties, and to come in if he heard my voice, or thought I had need of protection. On reaching the editorial part of the news office, which viewed from the street is dark, I did not see Mr. Winters, and again my misgivings arose. Had I paused long enough to consider the case, I should have invited Sheriff Cummings in. But as Lynch went downstairs he said, This way, wagon, it's best to be private, or some such remark. I do not desire to strain the reader's fancy hurtfully, and yet it would be a favour to me if he would try to fancy this lamb in battle, or the dueling-ground, or at the head of a vigilance committee—M.T. I followed, and without Mr. Cummings, and without arms, which I never do or will carry, unless as a soldier in war, or unless I should yet come to feel I must fight a duel, or to join an aid in the ranks of a necessary vigilance committee. But by following I made a fatal mistake. Following was entering a trap, and whatever animal suffers itself to be caught should expect the common fate of a caged rat, as I fear events to come will prove. Traps commonly are not set for benevolence. His bodyguard is shut out. The trap inside. I followed Lynch downstairs. At their foot a door to the left opened into a small room. From that room another door opened into yet another room, and once entered I found myself invagled into what many will ever henceforth regard as a private, subterranean, gold-hill den, admirably adapted in proper hands to the purposes of murder, raw, or disguised, for from it, with both or even one door closed, when too late, I saw that I could not be heard by Sheriff Cummings, and from it, by violence and by force, I was prevented from making a peaceable exit. When I thought I saw the studious object of this consultation was no other than to compass my killing in the presence of Philip Lynch as a witness, as soon as by insult a proverbially excitable man should be exasperated to the point of assailing Mr. Winters, so that Mr. Lynch, by his conscience and by his well-known tenderness of heart toward the rich and potent, would be compelled to testify that he saw General John B. Winters kill Conrad Wagon in self-defense. But I am going too fast. Our host. Mr. Lynch was present during the most of the time, say a little short of an hour, but three times he left the room. His testimony, therefore, would be available only as to the bulk of what transpired. On entering this carpeted den I was invited to a seat near one corner of the room. Mr. Lynch took a seat near the window. J. B. Winters sat, at first, near the door, and began his remarks essentially as follows. I have come here to exact of you a retraction, in black and white, of those damnably false charges which you have preferred against me in that infamous lying sheet of yours, and you must declare yourself their author, that you publish them knowing them to be false and that your motives were malicious. Hold, Mr. Winters, your language is insulting, and your demand an enormity. I trust I was not invited here either to be insulted or coerced. I supposed myself here by invitation of Mr. Lynch at your request. Nor did I come here to insult you. I have already told you that I am here for a very different purpose. Yet your language has been offensive, and even now shows strong excitement. If insult is repeated, I shall either leave the room or call in Sheriff Cummings, whom I just left standing and waiting for me outside the door. No, you won't, sir. You may just as well understand it at once as not. Here you are, my man, and I'll tell you why. Months ago you put your property out of your hands, boasting that you did so to escape losing it on prosecution for libel. It is true that I did convert all my immovable property into personal property, such as I could trust safely to others and chiefly to escape ruin through possible libel suits. Very good, sir. Having placed yourself beyond the pale of the law, may God help your soul if you don't make precisely such a retraction as I have demanded. I've got you now, and by, before you can get out of this room, you've got to both write and sign precisely the retraction I have demanded, and before you go, anyhow, you low-lived, lying, I'll teach you what personal responsibility is outside of the law, and buying Sheriff Cummings and all the friends you've got in the world besides can't save you, you, etc. No, sir. I'm alone now, and I'm prepared to be shot down just here and now rather than be vilified by you as I have been and suffer you to escape me after publishing those charges, not only here where I am known and universally respected, but where I am not personally known and may be injured. I confess this speech with its terrible and but too plainly implied threat of killing me, if I did not sign the paper he demanded, terrified me, especially as I saw he was working himself up to the highest possible pitch of passion and instinct told me that any reply other than the one seeming concession to his demands would only be fueled to a raging fire, so I replied, well, if I've got to sign, then I pause some time, resuming, I said, but Mr. Winters, you are greatly excited. Besides, I see you are laboring under a total misapprehension. It is your duty not to inflame, but to calm yourself. I am prepared to show you, if you will only point out the article that you allude to, that you regard as charges what no calm and logical mind has any right to regard as such. Show me the charges, and I will try at all events, and if it becomes plain that no charges have been preferred, then plainly there can be nothing to retract, and no one could rightly urge you to demand a retraction. You should be aware of making so serious a mistake, for however honest a man may be, every one is liable to misapprehend. Besides, you assume that I am the author of some certain article which you have not pointed out. It is tasty to do so. He then pointed to some numbered paragraphs in a Tribune article headed, Once the Matter with Yellow Jacket, saying, That's what I refer to. To gain time for general reflection and resolution, I took up the paper and looked it over for a while. He remaining silent, and as I hoped, cooling. I then resumed saying, As I supposed, I do not admit having written that article, nor have you any right to assume so important a point, and then base important action upon your assumption. You might deeply regret it afterwards. In my published Address to the People, I notified the world that no information as to the authorship of any article would be given without the consent of the writer. I therefore cannot honorably tell you who wrote that article, nor can you exact it. If you are not the author, then I do demand to know who is. I must decline to say. Then buy, I brand you as its author, and shall treat you accordingly. Passing that point, the most important misapprehension which I notice is that you regard them as charges at all, when their context, both at their beginning and end, show they are not. These words introduce them. Such an investigation, just before indicated, we think might result in showing some of the following points. Then follow eleven specifications, and the succeeding paragraph shows that the suggested investigation might exonerate those who are generally believed guilty. You see, therefore, the context proves they are not preferred as charges, and this you seem to have overlooked. While making those comments, Mr. Winters frequently interrupted me in such a way as to convince me that he was resolved not to consider candidly the thoughts contained in my words. He insisted upon it that they were charges, and buy, grrrr! He would make me take them back as charges, and he referred the question to Philip Lynch, to whom I then appealed as a literary man, as a logician, and as an editor. Calling his attention especially to the introductory paragraph just before quoted, he replied, if they are not charges, they certainly are insinuations, whereupon Mr. Winters renewed his demands for retraction precisely such as he had before named, except that he would allow me to state who did write the article if I did not myself, and this time shaking his fist in my face with more cursings and epithets. When he threatened me with his clenched fist, instinctively I tried to rise from my chair, but Winters then forcibly thrust me down as he did every other time, at least seven or eight, when under similar imminent danger of bruising by his fist, or for all I could know worse than that after the first stunning blow, which he could easily and safely to himself have dealt me so long as he kept me down and stood over me. This fact it was, which more than anything else convinced me that by plan and plot I was purposely made powerless in Mr. Winters' hand, and that he did not mean to allow me that advantage of being afoot which he possessed. Moreover I then became convinced that Philip Lynch, and for what reason I wondered, would do absolutely nothing to protect me in his own house. I realized then the situation thoroughly. I had found it equally vain to protest or argue, and I would make no unmanly appeal for pity, still less apologize. Yet my life had been by the plainest possible implication threatened. I was a weak man. I was unarmed. I was helplessly down, and Winters was afoot and probably armed. Lynch was the only witness. The statements demanded, if given and not explained, would utterly sink me in my own self-respect, in my family's eyes, and in the eyes of the community. On the other hand, should I give the author's name, how could I ever expect that confidence of the people, which I should no longer deserve, and how much dearer to me and to my family was my life, than the life of the real author to his friends? Yet life seemed dear, and each minute that remained seemed precious, if not solemn. I sincerely trust that neither you nor any of your readers, and especially none with families, may ever be placed in such seeming direct proximity to death while obliged to decide the one question I was compelled to, these, what should I do? I, a man of family, and not as Mr. Winters is alone. The reader is requested not to skip the following. M.T. Strategy and Mesmerism. To gain time for further reflection and hoping that by a seeming acquiescence I might regain my personal liberty, at least, till I could give an alarm or take advantage of some momentary inadvertence of Winters, and then without a cowardly flight escape, I resolved to write a certain kind of retraction, but previously had inwardly decided, first, that I would studiously avoid every action which might be construed into the drawing of a weapon, even by a self-infuriated man, no matter what amount of insult might be heaped upon me, for it seemed to me that this great excess of compound profanity, foulness, and epithet must be more than a mere indulgence, and therefore must of some object. Surely in vain, the net is spread in the sight of any bird, therefore, as before without thought, I thereafter by intent kept my hands away from my pockets, and generally in sight, and spread upon my knees. Second, I resolved to make no motion with my arms or hands which could possibly be construed into aggression. Third, I resolved completely to govern my outward manner and suppress indignation. To do this I must govern my spirit. To do that, by force of imagination, I was obliged, like actors on the boards, to resolve myself into an unnatural mental state, and see all things through the eyes of an assumed character. Fourth, I resolved to try on winters silently and unconsciously to himself a mesmeric power which I possess over certain kinds of people, and which at times I have found to work even in the dark over the lower animals. Does any one smile at these last counts? God save you from ever being obliged to beat in a game of chess whose stake is your life, you having but four poor pawns and pieces and your adversary with his full force unshorn. But if you are, provided you have any strength with breadth of will, do not despair. Though mesmeric power may not save you, it may help you. Try it at all events. In this instance I was conscious of power coming into me, and by a law of nature I know winters was correspondingly weakened. If I could have gained more time I am sure he would not even have struck me. It takes time both to form such resolutions and to recite them. That time, however, I gained while thinking of my retraction, which I first wrote in pencil, altering it from time to time till I got it to suit me, my aim being to make it look like a concession to demands, while in fact it should tersely speak the truth into Mr. Winter's mind. When it was finished I copied it in ink, and if correctly copied from my first draft it should read as follows. In copying I do not think I made any material change. Copy to Philip Lynch, editor of the Gold Hill News. I learned that General John B. Winter's believes the following, pasted on, clipping from the People's Tribune of January, to contain distinct charges of mine against him personally, and that as such he desires me to retract them unqualifiedly. In compliance with his request permit me to say that, although Mr. Winter's and I see this matter differently, in view of his strong feelings in the premises, I hereby declare that I do not know those charges, if such they are, to be true, and I hope that a critical examination would altogether disprove them. Conrad Weigand, Gold Hill, January 15, 1870. I then read what I had written and handed it to Mr. Lynch, whereupon Mr. Winter's said, That's not satisfactory and it won't do, and then addressing himself to Mr. Lynch he further said, How does it strike you? Well, I confess I don't see that it retracts anything. Nor do I, said Winter's. In fact I regarded it as adding insult to injury. Mr. Weigand, you've got to do better than that. You are not the man who can pull wool over my eyes. That, sir, is the only retraction I can write. No, it isn't, sir, and if you so much as say so again, you do it at your peril, for I'll thrash you to within an inch of your life, and by— Sir, I don't pledge myself to spare you even that inch, either. I want you to understand I have asked you for a very different paper, and that paper you've got to sign. Mr. Winter's, I assure you that I do not wish to irritate you, but at the same time it is utterly impossible for me to write any other paper than that which I have written. If you are resolved to compel me to sign something, Philip Lynch's hand must write at your dictation, and if when written I can sign it I will do so, but such a document as you say you must have for me I never can sign. I mean what I say. Well, sir, what's to be done must be done quickly, for I've been here long enough already. I'll put the thing in another shape, and then pointing to the paper, don't you know those charges to be false? I do not. Do you know them to be true? Of my own personal knowledge I do not. Then why did you print them? Because rightly considered in their connection they are not charges, but pertinent and useful suggestions in answer to the queries of a correspondent who stated facts which are inexplicable. Don't you know that I know they are false? If you do, the proper course is simply to deny them and court an investigation. And do you claim the right to make me come out and deny anything you may choose to write and print? To that question I think I made no reply, and he then further said, Come now, we've talked about the matter long enough. I want your final answer. Did you write that article or not? I cannot in honor tell you who wrote it. Did you not see it before it was printed? Most certainly, sir. And did you deem it a fit thing to publish? Most assuredly, sir, or I would never have consented to its appearance. Of its authorship I can say nothing whatever, but for its publication I assume full soul and personal responsibility. And do you then retract it or not? Mr. Winters, if my refusal to sign such a paper as you have demanded must entail upon me all that your language in this room fairly implies, then I ask a few minutes for prayer. Prayer? How are you? This is not your hour for prayer. Your time to pray was when you were writing those lying charges. Will you sign or not? You already have my answer. What? Do you still refuse? I do, sir. Take that, then. And to my amazement and inexpressible relief he drew only a raw hide, instead of what I expected, a bludgeoner pistol. With it, as he spoke, he struck at my left ear downward, as if to tear it off, and afterwards on the side of the head. As he moved away to get a better chance for a more effective shot, for the first time I gained a chance under peril to rise, and I did so pitying him from the very bottom of my soul, to think that one so naturally capable of true dignity, power, and nobility could, by the temptations of this state, and by unfortunate associations and aspirations, be so deeply debased as to find in such brutality anything which he could call satisfaction. But the great hope for us all is in progress and growth, and Mr. B Winters, I trust, will yet be able to comprehend my feelings. He continued to beat me with all his great force until absolutely weary, exhausted, and panting for breath. I still adhered to my purpose of non-aggressive defense, and made no other use of my arms than to defend my head and face from further disfigurement. The mere pain arising from the blows he inflicted upon my person was, of course, transient, and my clothing, to some extent, deadened at severity, as it now hides all remaining traces. When I supposed he was through, taking the butt-end of his weapon and shaking it in my face, he warned me, if I correctly understood him, of more yet to come, and furthermore said, if ever I again dared introduce his name to print in either my own or any other public journal, he would cut off my left ear, and I do not think he was justing, and send me home to my family a visibly mutilated man, to be a standing warning to all low-lived puppies who seek to blackmail gentlemen, and to injure their good names. And when he did so operate, he informed me that his implement would not be a whip, but a knife. When he had said this, unaccompanied by Mr. Lynch, as I remember it, he left the room, for I sat down by Mr. Lynch, exclaiming, The man is mad. He is utterly mad. This step is his ruin. It is a mistake. It would be ungenerous in me, despite of all the ill usage I have here received, to expose him, at least until he has had an opportunity to reflect upon the matter. I shall be in no haste." "'Winters is very mad just now,' replied Mr. Lynch, but when he is himself he is one of the finest men I ever met. In fact, he told me the reason he did not meet you upstairs was to spare you the humiliation of a beating in the sight of others. I submit that that unguarded remark of Philip Lynch convicts him of having been privy in advance to Mr. Winter's intentions whatever they may have been, or at least to his meaning to make an assault upon me, but I leave to others to determine how much censure an editor deserves for invagaling a weak, non-combatant man, also a publisher, to a pen of his own to be horse-whipped, if no worse, for the simple printing of what is verbally in the mouth of nine out of ten men and women, too, upon the street. While writing this account, two theories have occurred to me, as possibly true, respecting this most remarkable assault. First, the aim may have been simply to extort from me such admissions as in the hands of money and influence would have sent me to the penitentiary for libel. This however seems unlikely because any statements elicited by fear or force could not be evidence in law, or could be so explained as to have no force. The statements wanted so badly must have been desired for some other purpose. Second, the other theory has so dark and willfully murderous a look that I shrink from writing it. Yet, as in all probability my death at the earliest practicable moment has already been decreed, I feel I should do all I can before my hour arrives, at least to show others how to break up that aristocratic rule and combination which has robbed all Nevada of true freedom, if not of manhood itself. Although I do not prefer this hypothesis as a charge, I feel that as an American citizen I still have a right both to think and to speak my thoughts even in the land of Sharon and Winters, and as much so respecting the theory of a brutal assault, especially when I have been in subject, as respecting any other apparent enormity. I give the matter simply as a suggestion which may explain to the proper authorities and to the people whom they should represent a well ascertained but not withstanding a darkly mysterious fact. The scheme of the assault may have been, first, to terrify me by making me conscious of my own helplessness after making actual, though not legal, threats against my life. Second, to imply that I could save my life only by writing or signing certain specific statements which have not subsequently explained would eternally have branded me as infamous and would have consigned my family to shame and want, and to the dreadful compassion and patronage of the rich. Third, to blow my brains out the moment I had signed, thereby preventing me from making any subsequent explanation such as could remove the infamy. Fourth, Philip Lynch to be compelled to testify that I was killed by John B. Winters in self-defense, for the conviction of Winters would bring him in as an accomplice. If that was the program in John B. Winters' mind, nothing saved my life but my persistent refusal to sign, when that refusal seemed clearly to me to be the choice of death. The remarkable assertion made to me by Mr. Winters that pity only spared my life on Wednesday evening last almost compels me to believe that at first he could not have intended me to leave that room alive, and why I was allowed to, unless through Ms. Merrick or some other invisible influence I cannot divine. The more I reflect upon this matter, the more probable, as true, does this horrible interpretation become. The narration of these things I might have spared both to Mr. Winters and to the public had he himself observed silence, but as he has both verbally spoken and suffered a thoroughly garbled statement of facts to appear in the Gold Hill News, I feel it due to myself no less than to this community and to the entire independent press of America and Great Britain to give a true account of what even the Gold Hill News has pronounced a disgraceful affair, and which it deeply regrets because of some alleged telegraphic mistake in the account of it, who received the erroneous telegrams. Though he may not deem it prudent to take my life just now, the publication of this article I feel sure must compel General Winters, with his peculiar views about his right to exemption from criticism by me, to resolve on my violent death, though it may take years to compass it. Notwithstanding I bear him no ill will, and if W. C. Ralston and William Sharon and other members of the San Francisco Mining and Milling Ring feel that he above all other men in this state and California is the most fitting man to supervise and control Yellowjacket matters, until I am able to vote more than half their stock, I presume he will be retained to grace his present post. Meantime I cordially invite all who know of any sort of important villainy which only can be cured by exposure, and who would expose it if they felt sure they would not be betrayed under bullying threats, to communicate with the people's tribune, for until I am murdered, so long as I can raise the means to publish, I propose to continue my efforts at least to revive the liberties of the state, to curb oppression, and to benefit man's world and God's earth. Conrad Weigand. It does seem a pity that the sheriff was shut out, since the good sense of a general of militia and of a prominent editor failed to teach them that the merited castigation of this weak half-witted child was a thing that ought to have been done in the street, where the poor thing could have a chance to run. When a journalist maligns a citizen, or attacks his good name on hearsay evidence, he deserves to be thrashed for it, even if he is a non-combatant weakling, but a generous adversary would at least allow such a lamb the use of his legs at such a time. M.T. of Appendix C. and of Roughing It. Read by John Greenman.