 This is Section 12 of newspaper articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper articles by Mark Twain, Section 12, Territorial Enterprise, December 1863. Territorial Enterprise, December 1st through 3rd, 1863, excerpt from original article concerning an affair in Virginia City. A Tide of Elegance Afterwards, Mr. Mark Twain, being enthusiastically called upon, arose, and without previous preparation, burst forth in a tide of eloquence so grand, so luminous, so beautiful, and so resplendent with the gorgeous fires of genius, that the audience were spellbound by the magic of his words, and gazed in silent wonder in each other's faces, as men who felt that they were listening to one gifted with inspiration. Applauds! The proceedings did not end here, but at this point we deemed it best to stop reporting and go to dissipating, as the dread solitude of our position as a sober, rational Christian, in the midst of the driveling and besotted multitude around us, had begun to shroud our spirits with a solemn sadness tinged with fear. At ten o'clock the curtain fell. Territorial Enterprise, December 1863, Letter from Mark Twain, Carson City, December 5th, 1863. Editors, Enterprise. The Church in Carson Prosperous. A fine edifice will soon be completed here, wherein the Gospel may be comfortably preached, and listened to in comfort likewise. A complementary benefit to this Enterprise was given at the theatre last night by Hon. James Stark and Mrs. Cutler, the profits of which amounted to upward of two hundred dollars. Mrs. Cutler recited several poems, and sang a few choice songs with such grace and excellence as one for her the compliment of repeated and enthusiastic encores. Mr. Stark's readings were well selected and admirably delivered. His recital of the speech of Sergeant Buzzfuzz in the Great Breach of Promise case of Bardell v. Pickwick was a very miracle of declamation. If all men could read it like him, that speech would live after Cicero's very creditable efforts had been forgotten. Yet, here to fore, I had looked upon that as the tamest of Mr. Dickens' performances. And just here, I am constrained in behalf of the community to do justice to Charlie Parker's liberality and good citizenship. He prepared his theatre for this church benefit, put a stove in the green room, and had the house duly cleaned and lighted, all at his own expense. It was a good action, and gracefully and un ostentatiously performed. The Convention will probably complete its labours about Wednesday. The members are growing restive and impatient under this long exile from their private business, and are anxious to finish their work and get back home. Three of the Esmeralda delegation—Mrs. Stark, Conner, and Bechtel—being imperatively called away by the necessity of attending to their private affairs—have been granted indefinite leave of absence. These gentlemen have been constantly at their posts, and unremitting in the discharge of their duties, and well deserved this kindness at the hands of the Convention. And between you and me, if there were no ladies in Carson, my estimable old fossil Colonel Young's would ask permission to go home also. Now, why will a man, when he gets to be a thousand years old, go on hanging around the women and taking chances on fire and brimstone, instead of joining the church and endeavouring with humble spirit and contrite heart, to ring in at the eleventh hour, like the thief on the cross? Why will he? Questions of Privilege Mr. Stearns rose to a question of privilege again, today, and requested that the reporters would publish his speeches verbatim or not at all. The fact is, they ought to be reported verbatim. But then we work eighteen hours a day, and still have not time to give more than the merest skeletons of the speeches made in the Convention. Johnson and Stewart and LaRoe and Bryan and others complain not, however, although we condense their remarks fearfully. Even Judge Brosnan's stately eloquence, adorned with beautiful imagery and embellished with classic quotations, hath been reported by us, thus tersely, Mr. Brosnan opposed the motion. Only that, and nothing more. But we had taste enough not to mar a noble speech with the deadly engines of reduction and the third person. Now, in condensing the following speech the other day, we were necessarily obliged to leave out some of its most salient points, and I acknowledge that my friend Stearns had ample cause for being annoyed at its mutilation. I hope he will find the present report all right, though, albeit the chances are infernally against that result, have got his style verbatim, whether I have the substance or not. Mr. Stearns' speech. The question being on the amendment offered in Committee of the Whole to Mr. Stewart's proposed substitute for Section I of the article entitled Taxation as reported from the Standing Committee. Mr. Stearns said, Mr. President, I am opposed. I am hostile. I am uncompromisingly against this proposition to tax the minds. I will go further, sir. I will openly assert, sir, that I am not in favour of this proposition. It is wrong, entirely wrong, sir, as the gentleman from Washu has already said. I fully agree with the gentleman who has just taken his seat that it is unjust and unrighteous. I do think, Mr. President, that, as has been suggested by the gentleman from Ormsby, we owe it to our constituents to defeat this pernicious measure. Incorporate it into your constitution, sir, and, as was eloquently and beautifully set forth in the speech of the gentleman from Storie, the gaunt forms of want and poverty and starvation and despair will shortly walk in the high places of this once happy and beautiful land. Add it to your fundamental law, sir, and, as was stated yesterday by the gentleman from Lander, God will cease to smile upon your labours. In the language of my colleague, I entreat you, sir, and, gentlemen, inflect not this mighty iniquity upon generations yet unborn. Heed the prayers of the people and be merciful. Ah, sir, the quality of mercy is not strained, so to speak, as has been aptly suggested here before, but droppeth like the gentle dew from heaven as it were. The gentleman from Douglas has said this law would be unconstitutional, and I cordially agree with him. Therefore let its course to the ramparts be hurried. Let the flames that shook the battle's wreck shine round it or the dead. Let it go hence to that undiscovered country from whose born no traveller returns, as hath been remarked by the gentleman from Washu, Mr. Champ. And in thus guarding and protecting the poor miner, let us endeavour to do unto others as we would that others should do unto us, as was very justly and properly observed by Jesus Christ upon a former occasion. After which the convention not knowing of any good reason why they should not tax the miners, they went to work and tax them. Now, that is verbatim, as nearly as I could come at it. I took it from my own mysterious shorthand notes, which are mighty shaky, I am willing to admit. But then I guarded against inaccuracy by consulting the several authorities quoted in the speech, and from them I have the assurance that my report of Mr. Stern's comprehensive declamation is eminently correct. I cannot bet on it, though, nevertheless. I cannot possibly bet on it. I think I have hit upon the right plan now. It is better to report a member verbatim occasionally, and keep him pacified, than have him rising to these uncomfortable questions of privilege every now and then. I hope to be able to report Bill Stewart verbatim in the course of a day or two, if he will hold on a spell. Territorial Enterprise, December 1863, Letter from Mark Twain. Carson City, December 12, 1863. The Logan Hotel. Such is my destination. Thither I go to recuperate. I take with me a broken spirit, blighted hopes, and a busted constitution. Also, some gin. I shall return again, after many days, restored to vigorous health, restored to original purity, free from sin, and prepared to accept any lucrative office the people can be induced to force upon me. If elected, I shall donate my salary to charitable institutions. I will finish building this chronic brick church here, and lease a high-priced parson to run it. Also, an exorbitant choir. Everything connected with the church shall be conducted in the bulliest manner. The Logan Hotel is situated on the banks of Lake Bigler, or Lake Tahoe, which signifies a grasshopper in the digger-tongue. I am not going with any of the numerous pleasure-parties which go daily to the lake and infest the Logan Hotel. I shall travel like Baxter's Hog, in a gang, by myself. I am weary of the gay world, and I pine for an hour of solitude. The hotel is new, handsomely furnished, and comodious. It stands within fifty feet of the water's edge, and commands a view of all the grand scenery thereabout. Its table is furnished with the best the market affords, and, behold, they eat trout there every day. Fifteen miles over the new King's Canyon Road is all the journey it is necessary to take, after which the Warren Pilgrim may rest in peace in the bosom of Logan and Stewart. That is as good a thing as I want, as long as I am not married. No more mines. A year from now there will not be a mine left in this territory. This is an appalling statement, but it is a true one. I guessed it from remarks made by that disreputable old cotton-head, Bill Stewart, who is good as promised me ten feet in the justice, and then back down again when the stock went up to eighty dollars a foot. That was a villainous way to treat me, who have gone on juries for him, and held my grip through all the monstrous fabrications he chose to present in his eloquent sophistry, and then brought in a verdict for him when it seemed morally certain that Providence would interfere and stop the nefarious business. I said, the last time, that I would never serve on one of Bill Stewart's juries again, until they put a lightning rod on the courthouse. I said it, and my word is good. I am not going to take any more chances like that. But what I commenced to tell about was that, last night, after the convention adjourned, and the political meeting was called together, Bill Stewart went to work with his characteristic indecent haste—just a parallel case with that justice affair—to construe the Constitution, construe and determine the species of the new-laid egg from which is to be hatched our future power and greatness, while the tender thing was warm yet. Bill Stewart is always construing something, eternally distorting facts and principles. He would climb out of his coffin and construe the burial service. He is a long-legged, bullheaded, whopper-jawed, constructionary monomaniac. Give him a chance to construe the sacred law, and there wouldn't be a damned soul in perdition in a month. I have my own opinion of Bill Stewart, and if it would not appear as if I were a little put out about that justice—that was an almighty mean thing—I would as soon express it as not. He construed the Constitution last night, as I remarked before. He gave the public to understand that the clause providing for the taxation of the mines meant nothing in particular, that he wanted the privilege of construing that section to suit himself, that a mere hole in the ground was not a mine, and it wasn't property. He slung that in because he has a costly well on his premises in Virginia, and that it would be a difficult matter to determine in our courts what does really constitute a mine. Do you see his drift? Well, I do. He will prove to the satisfaction of the courts that there are only two definite kinds of mine, that one of these is an excavation from which metallic ores or other mineral substances are dug, which is the dictionary phrase, then of course the miners will know enough to stop digging and go to blasting. Bill Stewart will then show easily enough that these fellows' claims are not mines, according to the dictionary, and consequently they cannot be taxed. He will show that the only other species of mine is a pronomial adjective, and proceed to prove that there is nothing in the Constitution that will permit the state to tax English grammar. He will demonstrate that a mere hole in the ground is not a mine, and is not liable to taxation. The end will be that a year from now we shall all own in these holes in the ground, but no man will acknowledge that he owns in a mine. And about that time custom and policy and construction combined will have taught us to speak of the staunch old bulwark of the state as the great gould and curry hole in the ground. Bill Stewart will put them up to it. In one short year, sir, from this date I feel within me that Bill Stewart will have succeeded in construing the last vestige of a mine out of this country. State Printer This subject worried the convention some. In the first place the Standing Committee reported an article providing for the election of a state printer whose compensation was to be fixed by law, etc. The members, without even showing the Committee the courtesy of discussing the matter, snubbed them very pointedly by pitching the bill overboard without offering the semblance of an apology for their conduct. They substituted an article providing for printing state work by contract. That was debated to death and duly buried with its stillborn predecessor. Then they tried a superintendent of public printing. That plan appeared to suit them. They adopted it, and looked upon the work of their hands and pronounced it good. There the matter rested until last night, when Governor Johnson got up and asked unanimous consent to substitute the original state printer article for the superintendent. He pointed out to the convention that the office of superintendent would be turned into a mere sinecure, and its incumbent would accomplish no good to the state, and behold, without a word of objection, the change was made. Verily it is vastly better to yield to wisdom at last than not at all. School fund. Speaking of state printer reminds me that we made a mistake in the report published this morning. We said the school monies were to be invested only in United States bonds, whereas the truth is it was decided that they might be invested in either United States or state bonds. Hank Monk. A superb gold watch worth five or six hundred dollars was presented to Hank Monk here night before last. The donors were John S. Henning, Joe Clark, H. H. Raymond, Alexander O'Neill, William Thompson Jr., John O. Earl, W. M. Lent, and three others. The ceremonies were conducted at Frank Ludlow's Dagarian Rooms. Judge Turner made the presentation speech, and Judge Hardy replied on behalf of the defendant. Champagne flowed freely. The watch is gorgeously embellished with coaches and horses, and with charms and seals and keeping with the same, and bears for a motto Hank's famous remark to Horace Greeley, Keep your seat, Horace! I'll get you there on time! Old Pah, Utah. Lovejoy has issued the first number of his paper at Washoo City, and the above is its name. It is as pretty as a sweetheart, and as readable as a love letter, and, in my experience, these similes express a good deal. But why should Lovejoy spell it Pah, Utah? That isn't right. It should be Pah, Utah, or Pah, Utah. I speak by authority, because I have carefully noted the little speeches of self-gratulation of our noble red brother, and he always delivers himself in this wise. Pah, Utah, boy, heapy work, Washoo, heap lazy. But if you question his nationality he remarks with oppressive dignity. Me no damn Washoo, me Paiute. Wherefore my researchers have satisfied me that one of these, or both, is right. Lovejoy ought to know this even better than me. He came here before May 1860, and is, consequently, a blooded Paiute, while I am only an ignorant half-breed. Carson City. Call your Constitutioners home. They do nothing but sing the praises of Carson City and Carson Society and Carson Climate. Height and Brosnan and Youngs and Stearns, and half the balance of them, are more than half inclined to stay here. It is absurd. Pipe to Quarters. Final Report The third house of the Constitutional Convention met in solemn grandeur at eleven o'clock last night. Tomorrow or next day I shall compile a verbatim report of its proceedings for the forthcoming volume of official reports of the Convention, and if you think you can afford to pay enough for it, I will allow you to publish it in advance of that volume. Mark Twain. President, Constitutional Convention, Third House Territorial Enterprise, December 1863. The Third House was an informal group of pranksters who often met and burlesque the legislative process. Nevada State Constitutional Convention, Third House, Carson City, December 13, 1863. Reported in phonographic shorthand by Mark Twain. The Third House met in the Hall of the Convention at eleven p.m. Friday, immediately after the final adjournment of the First House. On motion of Mr. Nightingill, the rules were suspended and the usual prayer dispensed with, on the ground that it was never listened to by the members of the First House, which was composed chiefly of the same gentlemen which constitute the Third, and was consequently merely ornamental and entirely unnecessary. Mr. Mark Twain was elected President of the Convention, and Mrs. Small and Hickock appointed to conduct him to the Chair, which they did amid a dense and respectful silence on the part of the House, Mr. Small stepping grandly over the desks, and Mr. Hickock walking under them. The President addressed the House as follows, taking his remarks down in shorthand as he proceeded. Gentlemen, this is the proudest moment of my life. I shall always think so. I think so still. I shall ponder over it with unspeakable emotion down to the latest syllable of recorded time. It shall be my earnest endeavour to give entire satisfaction in the high and bully position to which you have elevated me. Applauds. The President appointed Mr. Small, Secretary, Mr. Gibson, Official Reporter, and Mr. Pete Hopkins, Chief Page, and Uncle Billy Patterson, First Assistant Page. These officers came forward and took the following oath. We do solemnly affirm that we have never seen a duel, never been connected with a duel, never heard of a duel, never sent or received a challenge, never fought a duel, and don't want to. Furthermore, we will support, protect, and defend this Constitution which we are about to frame, until we can't rest, and will take our pay in script. Mr. Young's— Mr. President, I—uh, I—that is, the President—Mr. Young's, if you have got anything to say, say it, and don't stand there and shake your head and gasp, I—uh, as you have been in the habit of doing in the former Convention—Mr. Young's—well, sir, I was only going to say that I liked your inaugural, and I perfectly agree with the sentiments you appeared to express in it, but I didn't rightly understand what—the President—you have been sitting there for thirty days, like a bump on a log, and you never rightly understand anything. Take your seat, sir, you are out of order. You rose for information? Well, you'll not get it. Sit down. You will appeal from the decision of the Chair? Take your seat, sir. The Chair will entertain no appeals from its decisions. And I would suggest to you, sir, that you will not be permitted here to growl in your seat, and make malicious side-remarks in an undertone for fifteen minutes after you have been called to order, as you have habitually done in the other House. The President, the subject before the House is as follows, the Secretary will read. Secretary, R R T E T T R T R article! The President, what are you trying to do, sir? Secretary, well, I am only a helpless orphan, and I can't read writing. singing. The chair appointed Mr. Hickock to assist Mr. Small and discharge Mr. Gibson, the official reporter, because he did not know how to write. Mr. Young's, singing. For the lady I love will soon be a bride with a diadem on her brow. Ah-how! President, order! You snuffling old granny! Mr. Young's, I am in order, sir! The President, you are not, sir. Sit down. Mr. Young's, I won't, sir. I appeal to— The President, take your seat. Mr. Young's, but I insist that Jefferson's manual— The President, damn Jefferson's manual! The chair will transact its own business in its own way, sir! Mr. Chapin, Mr. President, I do hope the amendment will not pass. I do beg of gentlemen, I do beseech of gentlemen, that they will examine this matter carefully, and earnestly, and seriously, and with a sincere desire to do the people all the good, and all the justice, and all the benefit it is in their power to do. I do hope, Mr. President—The President, now there you go! What are you trying to get through your head? There's nothing before the house—the question being on Section 4, Article 1, Free Exercise of Religious Liberty. Mr. Stewart said, Mr. President, I insist upon it, that if you tax the mines, you impose a burden upon the people which will be heavier than they can bear. And when you tax the poor miner's shafts, and drifts, and bedrock tunnels, you are not taxing his property, you are not taxing his substance, you are not taxing his wealth. No, but you are taxing what may become property some day, or may not. You are taxing the shadow from which the substance may eventually issue, or may not. You are taxing the visions of Al-Nashar, which may turn to minted gold, or merely prove the forerunners of poverty and misfortune. In a word, sir, you are taxing his hopes, taxing the aspirations of his soul, taxing the yearnings of his heart of hearts. Ah, sir, I do insist upon it, that if you tax the mines, you will impose a burden upon the people which will be heavier than they can bear. And when you tax the poor miner's shafts, and drifts, and bedrock tunnels, the President, take your seat, Bill Stewart. I am not going to sit here and listen to that same old song over and over again. I have been reporting and re-reporting that infernal speech for the last thirty days, and want you to understand that you can't play it off on this convention any more. When I want it, I will repeat it myself, I know it by heart anyhow. You and your bedrock tunnels and blighted miner's blasted hopes have gotten to be a sort of nightmare to me, and I won't put up with it any longer. I don't wish to be too hard on your speech, but if you can't add something fresh to it, or say it backwards, or sing it to a new tune, you have simply got to simmer down for a while. Mr. Johnson, Mr. President, I wish it distinctly understood that I am not a candidate for the Senate, or any other office, and have no intention of becoming one, and I wish to call the attention of the convention to the fact, sir, that outside influences have been brought to bear here, that—the President. Governor Johnson, there is no necessity of your putting in your shovel here, until you are called upon to make a statement, and if you allude to the engrossing clerk as an outside influence, I must inform you, sir, that his battery has been silenced with territorial script at forty cents on the dollar. Mr. Stearns, Mr. President, I cordially agree with the gentleman from Story County, that if we tax the mines, we shall impose a burden upon the people that will be heavier than they can bear. I agree with him, sir, that in taxing the poor miner shafts, and drifts, and bedrock tunnels, we would not be taxing his property, or his wealth, or his substance, but only that which may become such at some future day. An al-Nasharyan vision, which might turn to coin, or might only result in disaster and disappointment to the defendant. In a word, sir, I coincide with him in the opinion that it would be equivalent to taxing the hopes of the poor miner. His aspirations! The dear yearnings of his—the President—yearnings of his grandmother! I'll slam this mallet at the next man that attempts to impose that tiresome old speech on this body. Set down! You have been pretty regular about rehashing other people's platitudes here to form, Mr. Stearns, but you have got to be a little original in the Third House. Your sacrilegious lips will be marring the speeches of the Chair next. Mr. Ralston, Mr. President, I have but a word to say, and I do not wish to occupy the attention of the House any longer than I can help. Although I could, perhaps, throw more light upon the matter of our eastern boundary than those who have not visited that interesting but comparatively unknown section of our budding Commonwealth, it is growing late, and I do not feel as if I had a right to tax the patients, the President. Tax! Take your seat, sir. Take your seat. I will not be bully-ragged to death with this threadbare subject of taxation. You are out of order anyhow. How do you suppose anybody can listen in any comfort to your speech when you are fumbling with your coat all the time you are talking and trying to button it with your left hand when you know you can't do it? I have never seen you succeed yet, until just as you got the last word out. And then the moment you sit down, you always unbutton it again. You may speak hereafter, Mr. Ralston, but I want you to understand that you have got to button your coat before you get up. I do not mean to be kept in hot water all the time by your little oratorical eccentricities, Mr. Laroe. Mr. President, there are nine mills in Lander County already. Let me see. There is Dobson's five-stamp, Thompson's eight-stamp, Johnson's three-stamp. Well, I cannot give the names of all of them, but there are nine, sir, nine splendid steam-power quartz mills, disturbing with their ceaseless thunder the dead silence of centuries. Nine noble quartz mills, sir, cheering with the music of their batteries the desponding hearts of pilgrims from every land. Nine miraculous quartz mills, sir, from whose steam-pipes and chimneys ascends a grateful incense to the God of labor and progress. Nine septored and anointed quartz mill, sir, whose mission it is to establish the power and the greatness and the glory of Nevada and place her high along the president. Now will you just take your seat and hold your clatter until somebody asks you for your confounded Reese River quartz mill statistics? What has Reese River got to do with religious freedom? And what have quartz mills got to do with it? And what have you to do with it yourself? You are out of order, sir, plant yourself. And, moreover, when you get up here to make a speech, I don't want you to yell at me as if you thought I were in San Francisco. I am not hard of hearing. I don't see why President North didn't tone you down long ago, Mr. LaRoe. I think I am in order, Mr. President. It was a rule in the other convention that no member could speak when there was no question before the house. But after the question had been announced by the chair, members could then go on and speak on any subject they pleased. Or, rather, that was the custom, sir, the ordinary custom, the president. Yes, sir, I know it has been the custom for thirty days and thirty nights in the other convention, but I will let gentlemen know that they can't ring in the three-stamped Reese River Quartz mills on the third house when I am considering the question of religious liberty, the same being dear to every American heart. Plant yourself, sir, plant yourself. I don't want any more yowling out of you now." Mr. Small. The secretary would beg leave to state for the information of the con. As President. There, now, that's enough of that. You learned that from Gillespie. I won't have any of that kind of nonsense here. When you have got anything to say, talk it right out, and see that you use the personal pronoun I, also, and drop that presumptuous third person. The secretary would beg leave to state. That well he would. Now, suppose you take a back seat and wait until somebody asks you to state something. Mr. Chapin, you will please stop catching flies while the chair is considering the subject of religious toleration. Mr. Ball. Mr. President, the finance committee of which I have the honor to be chairman, have arrived at the conclusion that it is a hundred and thirty miles from here to Folsom, that it will take two hundred and thirty miles of railroad iron to build a road that distance, without counting the switches. This would figure up as follows. Bars, fourteen feet, three inches long. Weight, eight hundred pounds. One thousand bars to the mile. Eight hundred thousand pounds. One hundred and thirty thousand bars for the whole distance. Weight, a hundred and four million pounds. Original cost of the iron, with insurance and transportation to Folsom, from St. Louis, via Salt Lake City, added, say, three dollars and a half a pound, would mount to a fraction over or under three hundred and twelve million seven hundred and twenty-two thousand two hundred and thirty-nine dollars and forty-two cents. Three hundred and twelve million seven hundred and twenty-two thousand two hundred and thirty-nine dollars and forty-two cents, sir. That is, the estimate of the committee, sir, for prime cost of one class of material without counting labor and other expenses. In view of these facts, sir, it is the opinion of the committee that we had better not build the road. I did not think it necessary to submit a written report, because, the President, take your seat, Mr. Ball. Take your seat, sir. Your evil eye never lights upon this chair, but the spirit moves you to confuse its intellect with some of your villainous algebraical monstrosities. I will not entertain them, sir. I don't know anything about them. You needn't mind bringing in any written reports here, or verbal ones, either, unless you can confine yourself to a reasonable number of figures at a time, so that I can understand what you are driving at. No, sir. The third house will not build the railroad. The other convention's donation of three million dollars in bonds, worth forty cents on the dollar, will buy enough of one of those bars to make a breastpin, and that will have to satisfy this commonwealth for the present. I observe that Mrs. Wasson, and Gibson, and Noteware, and Kennedy have their feet on their desks. The Chief Page will proceed to remove those relics of ancient conventional barbarism from sight. Mr. Musser, Mr. President, to be or not to be, that is the question—the President—no, sir. The question is, shall we tolerate religious indifference in this community, or the rights of conscience, or the right of suffrage, or the freedom of the press, or free speech, or free schools, or free niggers? The Chair trusts it knows what it is about without any instructions from the members. Mr. Musser, but, sir, it was only a quotation from the President. Well, I don't care. I want you to sit down. The Chair don't consider that you know much about religion anyhow, and consequently the subject will suffer no detriment from your letting it alone. You and Judge Hardy can subside and study over the preamble until you are wanted. Mr. Brosnan, Mr. President, these proceedings have all been irregular, extremely, and customarily irregular. I will move, sir, that the question be passed for the present, and that we take up the next section. Mr. Mitchell, I object to that, Mr. President. I move that we go into committee with a hole on it. Mr. Wasson, I move that it be referred back to the Standing Committee. Mr. North, I move that the rules be suspended and the whole article placed upon its final passage. The President, gentlemen, those of you who are in favor of adopting the original proposition, together with the various motions now pending before the House, will signify the same by saying I. No one voting in the negative the Chair decided the vote to be unanimous in the affirmative. The President, gentlemen, your proceedings have been exactly similar to those of the convention which preceded you. You have considered a subject which you knew nothing about. Spoken on every subject but the one before the House, and voted without knowing what you were voting for, or having any idea what would be the general result of your action. I will adjourn the convention for an hour, on account of my cold, to the end that I may apply the remedy prescribed for it by Dr. Chater, the same being Jinn and Molasses. The Chief Page is hereby instructed to provide a spoonful of Molasses and a gallon of Jinn for the use of the President. Our Carson Dispatch, Second Session, by Telegraph. Third House met after recess and transacted the following business. Secretary read Section 15, Legislative Department. Section 15. The doors of each House shall be kept open during the session. King Ked moved to amend, by adding the words, and the windows also if the weather will permit. Secretary read Section 32, Legislative Department. Section 32. No law shall be passed authorizing married women to carry on business as sole traders. On motion of stems construed to mean that married women shall not preach. Secretary read Section 6, Declaration of Rights. Section 6. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed. Youngs moved to amend by striking out the word, bear, and inserting the word, board, adopted unanimously. Section 1. Miscellaneous provisions was amended so as to read as follows. Section 1. The seat of government shall be at Carson, and the legislature shall hold its session in the plaza during the first six years. Section added, empowering the President of the Third House of the Convention to convene, by proclamation, the Third House of the State Legislature, for the purpose of electing two United States Senators within thirty days after the Constitution shall have been ratified. Name of the State changed to Washu, in conformity with the law which called the Convention together. New section added as follows. Section blank. No sheriff or other officer shall be expected to arrest any assassin or other criminal on strong presumptive evidence merely, nor any other evidence, unless such assassin or other criminal shall insist upon his privilege of being arrested. The hour having arrived for the President to take his regular gin and molasses, the Convention adjourned. Last night, about twelve o'clock, here the telegraph ceased working. Bloomer, operator. Territorial Enterprise December 25th through 27th, 1863. Local column. A Christmas gift. Mr. Twain, compliments of Miss Chase. Christmas, 1863. This handwriting disposed us to suspect treachery and to regard the box as a deadly infernal machine. It was on this account that we got a stranger to open it. This precaution was unnecessary. The diabolical box had nothing in it but a ghastly naked porcelain doll baby. However, we are much obliged. We always had a hankering to have a baby, and now we are satisfied. The mythical Miss Chase helped us to the business, and she has our cordial thanks for her share in it. Territorial Enterprise, late December, 1863. Mark Twain's review of Artemis Ward's lecture. There are, perhaps, fifty subjects treated in it, and there is a passable point in every one of them, and a healthy laugh also, for any of God's creatures who hath committed no crime, the ghastly memory of which debars him from smiling again while he lives. The man who is capable of listening to the babes in the wood, from beginning to end, without laughing either inwardly or outwardly, must have done murder, or at least meditated it at some time during his life. Territorial Enterprise, December 29, 1863. Local Column Christmas Presence. We received from Carson Saturday a long yellow box of suspicious appearance, with the following inscription upon it. Mark Twain, Enterprise Office, Virginia. Free, Politeness Langton's Pioneer Express. Behemis Suavein. That last phrase is Greek, and means, bully for you. We are not sure that it was written by Mrs. H. F. R. of Carson, and there was no evidence accompanying the box to show that it was. This is what makes us so obstinate in the opinion that it might have been written by somebody else. The box contained a toy rabbit of the jackass persuasion, gifted with ears of aggravated dimensions, and swathed in sage brush. An Indian chief, a mere human creation made of raisins, strung on a skeleton formed of a single knitting needle, with a solitary fig for a body, and a chicken feather driven into the head of the effigy, to denote its high official character. One more present remained, the same being a toy watchman's rattle, made of pine and tastefully painted. We are glad to have that rattle now, but when we ask for such a thing at a certain convivial party in Carson, it will be remembered that we meant to bestow it upon another young man who was present, and whose absent mind, we imagined, might be collected together and concentrated by means of such an instrument. We have presented the rabbit to Artemis Ward, to be preserved as a specimen of our resources. The other presence we shall always wear near our heart. The following report of the committee accompanying the box has been received, accepted, adopted, and the same referred to the Committee of the Whole People. Carson City, December 25, 1863 Mr. Mark Twain Sir, the underside has the honour to be selected by the gay company of ladies and gentlemen, and boys and girls, and Santa Claus, who came in person with Judge Dixon's wolfskin cap, coat, pants, and a mask, and sleigh bells around his waist, and dashed in the room just after Mrs. Cutter and two long rows of children had sung a pretty piece and read a letter from Santa Claus, when that individual immediately dashed into the room to the terror of some of the children, thirty-six in all, and climbed the Christmas tree, all covered with presents, and little lighted candles, and handed down things for everybody, and afterwards danced with the now reconciled children, and then dashed out, after which there was supper and dancing by the ladies and gentlemen, and the school which was thus made to enjoy themselves last night till midnight was Miss H.K. Clap and Mrs. Cutter's Seminary, which is one of the best there is, and instructed me to send you these things, which I do by Langtons Express, handed down from the Christmas tree by Santa Claus, marked Mark Twain, to it, one rabbit under a sage brush, to represent your design for a seal in the Constitutional Convention, one rattle, presented by a lady of whom you begged for one when you were here last, and a paiute to be eaten, being a chief with a chicken feather in his hat, composed of a fig for his body and otherwise raisins, sent to you by request of a lady of the medical profession, all of which is submitted by William A. Trinity Committee. Territorial Enterprise, December 30, 1863. The Bolters in Convention. At seven o'clock last night a large number of citizens met at the courthouse for the purpose of selecting sixteen new delegates, which they hoped might prove more acceptable to the State Convention, than those elected by the Regular County Convention day before yesterday. There appeared to be some discord in this Convention, as well as in that which preceded it, but of course the manner in which it was constituted prevented the possibility of any one's bolting from it in the regular and recognized way. It was a gorgeous sight to behold those two hundred fearless spirits of story, those noble human soda-bottles, so to speak, effervescing with the holy gas of pure, unselfish patriotism rising in their might to bust out, as it were, the infamous action of three thousand voters of Story County, as done in the County Convention, by their chosen representatives. But we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and we glorious Americans will occasionally astonish the God that created us when we get a fair start. The proceedings opened with three cheers and a tiger for the stars and stripes. Mr. Corson moved that Dr. Meneer, be elected Chairman of the meetings, carried. Mr. Barkley nominated William H. Davenport and James Feelen as Secretaries. They were elected without opposition. The following Vice Presidents were then elected. James Brannon, Deighton Corson, Judge Laconi, J. W. Noyes, Thomas Lynch, Judge Ferris, John A. Collins, A. B. Elliott, E. Bond, W. H. Young, J. S. Black, Thomas G. Taylor, S. A. Kellogg, Judge Frizzle, J. H. Hileshorn, P. Quigley, J. T. Sage, John Church, W. R. Warnock, and R. H. Rider. Several of these gentlemen were said to be present. The Chairman reviewed the action of the County Convention and said it was not satisfactory to the majority of the community. Therefore the people had met now to improve upon that action in their sovereign capacity as fountainhead of power in the land. He said the present convention would nominate sixteen delegates and hoped they would be accepted by the State Convention in preference to the delegates elected by the late Pact Convention. A voice, three cheers! No response. A committee previously and mysteriously appointed immediately brought in a report containing the following names. There was no suspicion of packing about it, however. The report reads as follows. Report of the committee appointed by a meeting of citizens held at the courthouse on Monday evening, December 29, to select the names of sixteen citizens to be presented to the mass meeting this evening as suitable persons to represent Story County in the Union State Convention to be held at Carson on the 31st inst, beg leave to submit the following names. Dr. Geiger, John Dole, Thomas Lynch, Captain White, Joseph Lorea, J. L. Black, George E. Brickett, Thomas Hannah, J. D. Meager, Augustus Ash. Mr. Corson moved that the report be accepted and the committee discharged. Carried. Mr. Fitch was called for and addressed the convention at great length, rehashing, adding to and improving his most recent editorials in the Virginia Union. He was heard with interest and was frequently applauded. As is always his custom, Mr. Brosnan spoke eloquently and feelingly, and was repeatedly and loudly cheered. Public speakers are not given to adhering strictly to the truth as a general thing, but we know Judge Brosnan is. However, he stood up there last night and misrepresented old Nestor, a poor devil who has been dead hundreds and hundreds of years, and Judge Brosnan knew perfectly well that he was departing from the record when he unblushingly abused old Nestor's wardrobe and said he wore a poisoned shirt. Now why couldn't he confine himself to living convention-packers and let dead foreigners alone? That's it. We are down on that kind of thing, you know. Cries, Hannah! Hannah! Gentlemen, wait a moment. I call for the adoption of the report before we have any speaking. However, Mr. Hannah came forward and said that, as had been remarked by both gentlemen who have preceded me, and then went on and made both gentlemen's speeches over again in such a pleasant way and with such vehemence of manner that the people, that mighty lever being present and filling very nearly three-fourths of the house, the people applauded each familiar argument as it fell upon their ears and felt really comfortable over it. He touched us very agreeably by speaking of us as those intelligent reporters who officiated at the late Constitutional Convention. The word intelligent is our own. We had an idea it would make the sentence read better. Toward the last Mr. Hannah soared into originality and touched upon a multitude of subjects on his own hook. Notwithstanding its apparent originality, however, we shall always be haunted by the dreadful suspicion that the fag end of Tom Hannah's speech was gobbled out of the babes in the wood. Mr. Brosnan moved that a committee of five be appointed to draft resolutions. Mr. Pepper suggested that there was already a question before the house. A voice, sit down! The chairman remarked that there was a question before the house and proceeded to state it as being on the adoption of the report of the committee on nominations. The house refused to entertain the report in its entirety and demanded, in great confusion, that the candidates should be voted for separately, which was done, and the following gentlemen elected. Mr. Geiger, Dole, Lynch, White, Black, Hannah, Warnock, Ash, Phillips, G. H. Sigg, J. Y. Paul, Doak, Frissel, Burke, Knox, Brickett. Mrs. Loria and Meagher were voted for and rejected, and confusion grew worse confounded in the meantime. Mr. Warnock moved the appointment of a nominating committee of ten to present names to the next mass meeting as candidates for legislators, judges, etc., carried. The committee on resolutions was appointed as follows. Mrs. Brosnan, Frissel, Hannah, Corson, Bond. The committee created by Mr. Warnock's resolution was then nominated and elected as follows. Mrs. Warnock, James Campbell, Hannah, Jacob Young, Manning, Lackey, Dimmock, Cary, Van Vliet, and Flood. Mr. Corson moved to add five to the committee and take them from Gold Hill and Flowery, carried. The following gentlemen were nominated and elected. Mrs. Phillips, La Flower, and Bishop. Here great trouble arose about a suggestion that the convention might possibly be electing people who were opposed to them. It was a wise and bully idea. Mr. James Campbell called at our office after the convention adjourned and requested us to remove his name from the nominating committee. After which, with remarkable unanimity, the convention struck off the names of the Gold Hill members from the nominating committee and left it to the President to fill up with other Gold Hill men. Mr. Frissel submitted the following names, which he said had been selected by a mass meeting in Gold Hill, William C. Darrell, E. R. Burke, Ed C. Morse, Sam Doak, and J. W. Phillips. They were unanimously elected. Charles H. Knox of Flowery was added to the committee. The committee on resolutions then reported as follows. Resolved, that as subjects of a government yet free we rejoice at the inestimable right and privilege to publicly assemble and approve or condemn when the general good requires it, the manner in which our representatives may have discharged the duties as signed them by the suffragists of the people. Two, as the sense of this large assemblage of citizens which may justly be denominated a spontaneous uprising of an outraged and insulted constituency, that the action of the county nominating convention held in Virginia on the twenty-eighth day of December instant has been unjust, unfair, arbitrary, and without precedent in the history of conventional legislation. Three, that the resolutions adopted and the other proceedings had by the said convention failed to express the true sentiments of the people of this county and only proclaimed the sentiments of a few interested individuals. Regarding them as such we unanimously repudiate them and declare that those resolutions and proceedings ought not to have and have not any binding force upon the political action of the free, independent, and union loving electors of Story County. Four, that copies of the proceedings of this meeting be transmitted to the members of the ensuing state nominating convention from other counties, accompanied with a respectful request that they will do justice to the great majority of the people of Story County, and rebuke the odious and unjust system of packing conventions by admitting the nominees of this meeting to seat soon the convention as the true delegates and representatives of the people of Story. The resolutions were unanimously adopted. A county central committee was elected as follows J. L. Black, Charles Knox, James Fielin, E. R. Burke, Samuel Doak, T. R. P. Dimmick, Thomas Barkley, Dytan Corson, W. D. Sick, Warnock, Jacob Young. Motion that the delegates elected be instructed to go to Carson tomorrow, Wednesday, and that no proxies be allowed except in extreme cases and that such extreme cases be attended to by the delegates themselves carried. A motion that the central committee meet in the district courtroom tomorrow, Wednesday evening, prevailed. Also a motion that the convention adjourn until next Monday evening to meet then at the district courtroom. The meeting broke up with cheers for the convention, the union, the old flag, and groans for Stuart and Baldwin. It was a dusty, a very dusty convention, and as has been previously remarked in America, we are a great people. CARD EDITORS ENTERPRISE The gentleman who reported the proceedings of the union mass meeting last evening for the enterprise unintentionally misquotes. He says Mr. Brosnan slandered the defunct nester. Not so, Mr. B. made no allusion to that harebrained crazy old fool nester, nor to his wardrobe. But Mr. B. did mention that other jealous and wicked cuss nessus and his historical villainous shirt. Now, if that facetious sinner, Blunderer and sagebrush painter Mark Twain had thus libeled me, I could forgive him. But to be thus misrepresented, though undesignedly, by the intelligent reporter of the enterprise is, as Mrs. Partington would say, absolutely inseparable. Virginia, December 30th, C. M. Brosnan. Territorial Enterprise December 30th, 1863. A gorgeous swindle. Dr. May of the International Hotel has put into our hands the following documents which will afford an idea of how infinitely mean some people can become when they get a chance. This firm of Reed and Company, Bankers, 42 South 3rd Street, Philadelphia, will do to travel, but not in Washoo. If we understand the peculiar notions of this people, the accompanying letter, circular, and certificate of stock were sent by Reed and Company to Dr. May's nephew, Theodore E. Clapp Esquire, Postmaster at White Pigeon, Michigan. Through the Dr. Mr. Clapp had learned a good deal about Washoo, and saw at a glance, of course, that a swindle was on foot, which would not only cheat multitudes of the poorest classes of men in the States, but would go far toward destroying confidence in our minds and our citizens if permitted to succeed. He lost no time, therefore, in forwarding the villainous papers to Dr. May, and we are sure the people of the Territory are right heartily thankful to him for doing so. The certificate of stock is a curiosity in the way of unblushing rascality. It does not state how many shares there are in the Company, or what a share is represented by. It is a comprehensive arrangement, the Company proposed to mine all over Nevada Territory adjoining California. They are not partial to any particular mining district. They are going to carry on a general gold and silver mining business. The un-technical leather-headed thieves. The Company is to be organized at some indefinite period in the future, probably in time for the resurrection. The Company is to be incorporated for the purpose of purchasing machinery. They only organize a Company in order to purchase machinery. The inference is that they calculate to steal the mine, and only to think a man has only got to pedal forty or fifty of these certificates of stock for Mr. Reed and Company in order to become fearfully and wonderfully wealthy. Or, as they eloquently put it, by taking hold now and assisting to raise the capital stock of this Company you have it within your grasp to place yourself in a way to receive a large income annually without spending one cent. Oh! who wouldn't take hold now? Breeze there a man with soul so led that he wouldn't take hold under such seductive circumstances? Scarcely! Reed and Company want to get money. Rather than miss, they will even grab at a paltry two-and-a-half piece, thus you can send in two dollars and fifty cents at a time. Two-and-a-half at a time to buy shares in another gould and curry. But the coolest, the soothingest, the most refreshingest paragraph, to speak strongly, is that one which is stuck in at the bottom of the circular with an air about it which mutely says, it's of no consequence and scarcely worth mentioning, but then it will do to fill out the page with. The paragraph reads as follows. NB. Subscribers can receive their dividends as they fall due at missers Reed and Company's Banking House No. 42 South Third Street, Philadelphia, or have them forwarded by Express, of which all will be regularly notified. We imagine we can see a denison of some obscure western town walking with stately mean to the Express office to get his regular monthly dividend. We imagine less fortunate people making way for him and whispering together, there goes old Thompson owns ten shares in the people's gold and silver mining company. Lord, but he's rich. He's going after his dividends now. And we imagine we see old Thompson and his regular dividends fail to connect. And finally we imagine we see the envy Thompson jeered at by his same old neighbors as the old fool who got taken in by the most palpable humbug of the century. Who is William Hefley Esquire of San Francisco? Who knows it all, and who has calmly waited for three years without once swerving from his purpose of starting a mining company as soon as he could become satisfied that court's mining was a permanent thing. Cautious scoundrel. He couldn't fool him into going into a highway robbery like the people's gold and silver mining company until he was certain he could make the thing look plausible. But if he wrote those circulars and things, he was never a week in Washu in his life because we don't talk about cap rock in this country. That's a Pike's Peak phrase. And when we talk about cab rock, we never say it pays twenty-four dollars to the ton or any other price. We don't crush wall rock as a general thing. There is no Washu mining district in this territory, and the president of the people's company did a bully-good thing when he reserved the right to change the location of operations whenever he pleased. Mr. Hefley's knowledge of the prices of leading stocks here borders on the marvelous. He says gold and curry is worth five thousand dollars per share. A share is three inches, but gold and curry don't sell at twenty thousand dollars a foot. He puts offer at two thousand four hundred dollars per share. Now a share of offer is one inch. All the other prices mentioned by Mr. Hefley are wrong, and never were right at any time, perhaps. In the items written by Mr. Hefley and pretended to be clipped from the bulletin and the standard, he uses mining technicalities never uttered, either by miners or newspaper men in this part of America. The only true statement in these documents is the one which reads, Therefore, in subscribing to the capital stock of this company, you are acting on a certainty and taking no risk whatever. That is eminently so. You are acting on a certainty of being swindled, and so far from there being any risk about that result it is the deadest open and shut thing in the world. Now this swindle ought to be well ventilated by the newspapers. Not that sound businessmen will ever be swindled by it, but the unsuspected multitude, who yearned to grow suddenly rich, will assuredly have their slender purses drained by it. End of Section 12 This is Section 13 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. Section 13. Territorial Enterprise January 1864 Territorial Enterprise January 1864. Letter from Mark Twain January 10, 1864. Politics Editors Enterprise Well, how are you and the news and the bulletin making out for the Constitution and story? I suppose it will be voted down here. I said so to a Virginia man yesterday. Well, says he, that reminds me of a circumstance. A good old practical Dutchman once contributed liberally toward the building of a church. By and by they wanted a lightning rod for it, and they came to the Dutchman again. Not a damn cent, says he, not a damn cent! I helped to build a house for to Lord, and if he chose to dunder on it and knock it down, he must do it at his own risk. Now, in the Constitution we have placed the capital here for several years. Carson has always fared well at our hands in the legislature, and finally we have tacitly consented to say nothing more about the mint being built in this inconvenient locality. This is the house that has been built for Carson, and now if she chooses to go and dunder on it and knock it down, by the Lord she'll have to take the consequences. The fact is all our bullion is silver, and we don't want the country flooded with silver coin, therefore we can save the government a heavy expense and do the territory a real kindness by showing the authorities that we don't need a mint, and don't want one, and, as to that capital, we'll move it up to story, where it belongs. So spake the Virginian. I listened as one having no taxable property, and never likely to have, as one being out of office and willing to stay out, as one having no tangible right to take an interest in the Constitution, and consequently not carrying a straw, whether it carried or not. The man spoke words of wisdom, though. I am aware that the capital could have been removed last session, and from the complexion of the new territorial assembly, I suppose it can be done this year. Notwithstanding these things, though, and notwithstanding I am a free, white male citizen of Story County, I conjecture that I have a right to my private opinion that Carson is the proper place for the seat of government, and it ought to remain here so long as I don't try to make capital out of that opinion. Nobody has a right to arrest me for being disorderly on such ground as that. Baggage. Dan, will you send my baggage down here, or have I got to go on borrowing clothes from Pete Hopkins through all eternity? Young Gillespie. Young Gillespie is down here in my employ. On a small salary I have got him figuring with the legislators for extra compensation for the reporters. The legislature. The territorial legislature will meet here next Tuesday at noon. The rooms used last year in the county buildings have been let by the county commissioners, for the use of the two houses, at $500 for the session of forty days, payable in greenbacks. The halls are now being fitted up, and will be ready at the proper time. Housewarming. All Carson went out to warm Theodore Winter's new house in Washoo Valley on Friday evening, and had a pleasant time of it. The house, and its furniture together, cost $50,000. Warren Engine Company. The Warren Boys brought out their superb machine for practice yesterday. She threw a heavy stream entirely over the tall flagstaff in the plaza. Religious. Religious matters are booming along in Carson. Mrs. Wiley, who is an unusually talented vocalist, has been requested to give a concert for the benefit of my old regular chronic brick church, and will probably do so shortly. The Squares Trial. A jury has finally been impaneled in this murder case, or manslaughter case, or justifiable homicide, or whatever it is, and the trial is set for tomorrow. Marsh Children. Concerning the Marsh Troop, R. G. Marsh sends the following note to Major Dallam of the Independent. Please insert enclosed corrected advertisement, and make such flourish an announcement as your local feeling will admit of, consistent with a clear conscience. Yours till we meet and drink. The company will appear at the Carson Theatre on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings of the present week. Billy O'Neill comes along too. Artemis. I received a letter from Artemis Ward today, dated Austin, January 1. It has been sloshing around between Virginia and Carson for a while. I hope there is no impropriety in publishing extracts from a private letter, if there be. I ought not to copy the following paragraph of his. I arrived here yesterday morning at two o'clock. It is a wild, untameable place, but full of lion-hearted boys. I speak to-night. See small bills. I hope some time to see you and Kettlebelly Brown in New York. My grandmother—my sweet grandmother—she, thank God, is too far advanced in life to be affected by your hellish wiles. My aunt—she might fall—but didn't Warren fall at Bunker Hill? The old woman's safe, and so is the old girl for that matter. Do not, sir. Do not, sir. Do not flatter yourself that you are the only chastely humorous writer onto the Pacific slopes. I shall always remember Virginia as a bright spot in my existence, and all others must or rather cannot be, as it were. I am glad that old basket-covered jug holds out. I don't know that it does, but I have an impression that way. At least I can't make anything out of that last sentence. But I wish him well, and a safe journey, drunk or sober, Mark Twain. Territorial Enterprise January 12, 13, 1864 Legislative Proceedings, House of Representatives Carson, 11 a.m., January 12, 1864 The Constitution pot boils. Gentlemen from the different sections of the Territory, visiting brethren of the Legislature, agree in the opinion that the Constitution will carry by a very respectable vote on the 19th. This will have its effect upon Ormsby County, which, strangely enough, considering the advantages she would derive from having the capital permanently located at Carson, a mint built here and the number of resident officials increased, has here to fore been opposed to the establishment of a state government. And speaking of the mint, I have an item of news relating to that subject. Mr. Lockhart, the Indian agent, has just received a letter from Commissioner Bennett, in which he says he has been informed by Secretary Chase that no further steps will be taken toward building a mint in this region until our state representatives arrive in Washington. This is in consequence of efforts now being made by Mr. Conniss to have the mint located at Virginia. The authorities want advice from representatives direct from the people. As I said before, the people of Ormsby will oppose the Constitution. Oh, certainly they will. They will if they are sick or sentimental or consumptive or don't know their own interests or can't see when God Almighty smiles upon them and don't care anyhow. Now, if Ormsby votes against the Constitution, let us clothe ourselves in sackcloth and put ashes on our heads, for in that hour religious liberty will be at an end here. Her next step will be to vote against her eternal salvation. However, the anti-constitutional sentiment here is growing weak in the knees. Most of the members have arrived, and the wheels of government will begin to churn at 12 M. Mark Twain. Territorial Enterprise January 1864 Legislative Proceedings Carson City January 13, 1864 Before the legislature begins its labors, I will just mention that the Marsh Troop will perform in Virginia tomorrow night, Thursday, at the Opera House, of course, for the benefit of Engine Company No. 2. They played here last night. Toodles, you know. Young George Marsh, whose theatrical costumes are ungainly enough, but not funny, took the part of Toodles and performed it well, performed it as only cultivated talent, or genius, or which you please, or both, could enable him to do it. Little Jenny Arnott, she with the hideous, I mean, affected voice, appeared as Mrs. Toodles. Jenny is pretty, very pretty, but by the usual sign, common to all those of her sex similarly gifted, I perceive she knows it. Therefore, let us not speak of it. Jenny is smart, but she knows that, too. And I grant you, it is natural that she should. And behold you, when she does forget herself and make use of her own natural voice and drop her borrowed one, it is the pleasantest thing in life to see her play. The other ladies, however, I neglected to preserve a theatre-bill, and I do not know what characters they personified. However, one was a handsome sailor boy, and the other was a lovely confiding girl with auburn hair, the same being stuck after each other. Alexander was gotten up in considerable taste as a ratio gentleman, the father of one of the stuck, the auburn one, I think. Beehie was one of those dear reformed pirates who comes in at the finale with a bandaged head and a broken heart, and leans up against the side scenes and slobbers over his past sins, and is so interesting. Billy O'Neill was so successful in keeping the house in a roar as the limerick boy, and especially as the Irish schoolmaster, that he was frequently driven from his own masterly gravity. After the performance was over, he said, Those girls on the front seat knew where the laugh came in, didn't they? I said they did. I further observed that, if there was any place where the laugh didn't come in, those girls on the front seats didn't know it. Wherefore, if so, he had them there. My head was level. I think I am not transcending the limits of truth, when I assert that my head was eminently level. I would not flatter Billy O'Neill, yet I cannot help thinking that as Barney the Baron, night before last, he was the drunkest white man that ever crossed the mountains. George Bullden, assisted by Mr. Alexander, sang, When this cruel war is over, as it were, and was thrice encored. A circumstance happened to an acquaintance of mine this week, which I promised to say nothing about. A young man from one of the neighboring counties took a good deal of silk dress with a moderate amount of girl in it, home from the theatre, and on his way back to his constituents he jammed his leg into a suburban post-hole, and remained anchored out there in the dark until considerably after midnight. He wept, and he prayed, and he cussed. He continued to cuss. He cussed himself and the Board of Aldermen, and the county commissioners. He even cussed his own relations, and more particularly his grandmother, which was innocent. It seemed a good deal mixed as to whether he was ever going to get loose or not. But the coyotes got to skirmishing around him and grabbing at his independent leg, and made him uncommon lively. Whereat he put on his strength, and tugged, and cussed, and kicked at the coyotes, and cussed again, and tugged, and finally out he came. But he pulled the post-hole up by the roots in doing of it. It was funny, exceedingly funny. However, I don't mind. I slept all the same, and just as well. I have received that carpet sack of mine at last. It contained two shirts and six empty champagne-bottles. Also one garotte collar, with a note from Dan written on it in pencil, accounting for the bottles under the plea that, voluminous baggage maketh a man to be respected. It was an airy and graceful thought, and a credit to his great mind. The shirts were marked, respectively, R. M. Daggett and Sandy Baldwin, from which I perceive that Dan has been foraging again. We organized yesterday. We is the house of representatives, you understand. Simmons will make a good speaker, and besides, I shall be nearby to volunteer a little of my third house experience occasionally. The Council did not expend half an hour in getting very thoroughly and permanently organized. The regular joint committees were appointed to wait on the Governor, and that body will be produced in court this morning to testify concerning the conditions of the country. N. B. The several departments of the law-making power are called bodies. The Governor is one of them by law. Therefore it is disrespectful to speak of him otherwise than as a body, a jolly, unctuous, oleaginous old body. That's it. I do not consider that we are entirely organized yet either. You see, we are entitled to a chaplain. The Organic Act vouchsafes unto us the consolations of religion, payable in green backs at three dollars a day. We roped in the Reverend Mr. White yesterday, and gouged him out of a prayer for which, of course, we never intend to pay him. We go in for ministers looking to providence in little matters of this kind. Well, there is no harm in us, and we calculate to run this institution without a chaplain. In accordance with a motion of Mr. Nightingale, we dispensed with the services of chaplain in the Third House, and it is a matter of no little pride to me to observe that this aggregation of wisdom manifests a disposition, not only in this but in many other respects, to send Jefferson's manual and the Organic Act to the Dittenville, and take the published proceedings of that body as its parliamentary gospel, its guide to temporal glory and ultimate salvation. The House will proceed to business now in a few minutes. Mark Twain. Territorial Enterprise January 1864. Legislative Proceedings Carson January 14, 1864. House, Third Day. Say, you have got a compositor up there who is too rotten particular, it seems to me. When I spell devil, in my usual frank and open manner, he puts it in D-L. Now, Lord love his conceited and accommodating soul, if I choose to use the language of the vulgar, the low flung and the sinful, and such as will shock the ears of the highly civilized, I don't want him to appoint himself an editorial critic and proceed to tone me down and save me from the consequences of my conduct, that is, unless I pay him for it, which I won't. I expect I could spell devil before that fastidious cuss was born. Mark Twain. The Speaker called the House to Order at 10 a.m. Resolutions Mr. Hayton introduced a concurrent resolution that when the Legislative Assembly adjourned to-morrow it be to meet again on Wednesday 21st at 12 a.m. A motion to suspend the rules was put to a vote and carried. Eyes 15, nose, Mrs. Claggett, Curly, Gillespie, Gove, Hess, Hunter, Jones, and Trask. Mr. Gillespie moved to amend by making the hour 1 p.m. More skirmishing about parliamentary usage but the Chair is not in fault. Reporter Mr. Fisher offered an amendment to read The House of Representatives and Council Concurring. Mr. Fisher got his notion from, well, say, inspiration, for instance. Reporter Mr. Claggett finally got up and straightened the blasted resolution. The Speaker made a suggestion concerning the wording of the document. Half an hour more will get it all right, you know. The parliamentary skirmishing still goes on with unabated intelligence. This aggregation of wisdom can frame a concurrent resolution, but we must have time—we must have a reasonable length of time to do it in. I could have furnished all the amendments offered to this document and all the transmogrifications it has passed through, but then you don't want a column of that kind of information. I don't consider it important. Rep. The resolution, as infinitely amended and improved, was voted upon at last and carried. Eyes, 18. Nose, 5. Messers Claggett, Gillespie, Gove, Hunter, and Philips. I asked the clerk what the resolution proposed to do now, and he said he'd be—if he knew—rep. Mr. Claggett offered a resolution that the regular daily sessions of the House commence at 10 a.m. Mr. Fisher moved to insert except when otherwise ordered. On a division the motion was lost 14 to 6. The resolution was then adopted. Territorial Enterprise, January 1864. Legislative Proceedings, House, Fourth Day, Carson, January 15. The Committee on Rules for the Government of the House reported yesterday the good old fashioned and entirely proper rule that members and officers should keep their seats at adjournment until the speaker had declared the House adjourned and left the chair. Well, sir, the House debated it and voted it down. I can prove it by the clerk's journal. Now, considering that it was a harmless measure and a customary one, and a mark of respect to the chair, and considering that it is very seldom enforced, and also that it was a little disrespectful to the chair to vote it down, the action of the House and the matter seems somewhat strained. But I will interrupt you just here, if you please, and suggest to you that it is none of your business, and I want to know what you are putting in your lip about it for. I expect we can attend to our own affairs. And didn't they bully rag that concurrent resolution yesterday? I reckon not. I do not admire the taste of the lobby members, though, in letting on as if they knew so much more about it when the House is being rent with the mortal agonies of an effort to adjourn itself over for a week without adjourning the Council at the same time. The House did not wish to adjourn the Council without being asked to do so by that body, and if the House found it very nearly impossible to word the resolution so as not to adjourn the Council aforesaid, I do not conceive that it was dignified on the part of the lobby members to express by their countenance that they had their own opinions concerning the House. But didn't the House worry that concurrent resolution for a few hours or so? You bet you. However, we had better let parliamentary usage alone for the present, until our former knowledge on the naughty subject returns to our memories, because Providence is not going to put up with this sort of thing much longer, you know. I observe there is no lightning rod on these county buildings. Mark Twain. Territorial Enterprise January 1864 Legislative Proceedings House 9th Day Carson January 20 Mr. Dean offered a resolution to employ a copying clerk. Mr. Gillespie offered an amendment requiring the engrossing and enrolling clerks to do this proposed officer's work. These two officers are strictly ornamental. Have been under wages since the first day of the session, haven't had anything to do, and won't for two weeks yet. And now, by the eternal, they want some more useless clerical jewelry to dangle to the legislature. If the House would discharge its extra scribblers and let the chief clerk hire assistance only when he wants it, it seems to me it would be better. Rep. Without considering the appointment of a new Jim Crack Ornament, and starting his pay six weeks before he goes to work—only thirteen dollars a day—the House adjourned. Territorial Enterprise January 1920 1864 Letter from Mark Twain Carson January 14 Miss Clap School By authority of an invitation from Hon. William M. Gillespie, member of the House Committee on Colleges and Common Schools, I accompanied that statesman on an unofficial visit to the excellent school of Miss Clap and Mrs. Cutler this afternoon. The air was soft and balmy. The sky was cloudless and serene. The odor of flowers floated upon the idle breeze. The glory of the sun descended like a benediction upon mountain and meadow and plain. The wind blew like the very devil, and the day was generally disagreeable. The school, however I will mention first that a charter for an educational institution to be called the Sierra Seminary, was granted to Miss Clap during the legislative session in 1861, and a bill will be introduced while the present assembly is in session asking an appropriation of twenty thousand dollars to aid the enterprise. Such a sum of money could not be more judiciously expended, and I doubt not the bill will pass. The present school is a credit both to the teachers and the town. It now numbers about forty pupils, I should think, and is well and systematically conducted. The exercises this afternoon were of a character not likely to be unfamiliar to the free American citizen who has a fair recollection of how he used to pass his Friday afternoons in the days of his youth. The tactics have undergone some changes, but these variations are not important. In former times a fellow took his place in the luminous spelling class in the full consciousness that if he spelled cat with a k, or indulged in any other little orthographical eccentricities of a similar nature, he would be degraded to the foot or sent to his seat, whereas he keeps his place in the ranks now, in such cases, and his punishment is simply to bout face. Johnny Eves stuck to his first position today, long after the balance of the class had rounded to, but he subsequently succumbed to the word nape, which he persisted in ravishing of its final vowel. There was nothing irregular about that. Your rightly constructed schoolboy will spell a multitude of hard words without hesitating once, and then lose his grip and misfire on the easiest one in the book. The fashion of reading selections of prose and poetry remains the same, and so does the youthful manner of doing that sort of thing. Some pupils read poetry with graceful ease and correct expression, and others place the rising and falling inflection at measured intervals, as if they had learned the lesson on a seesaw. But then they go undulating through a stanza with such an air of unctuous satisfaction that it is a comfort to be around when they are at it. The boy stewed dawn, the burning deck. When Saul but him had fled, the flames that shook, the battle, zreck, shone round him or the dead. That is the old-fashioned impressive style, stately, slow moving and solemn. It is in vogue yet among scholars of tender age. It always will be. Ever since Mrs. Hemmons wrote that verse, it has suited the pleasure of juveniles to emphasize the word him and lay atrocious stress upon that other word or whether she liked it or not, and I am prepared to believe that they will continue this practice until the end of time and with the same indifference to Mrs. Hemmons' opinions about it or anybody's else. They sing in school nowadays, which is an improvement upon the ancient regime, and they don't catch flies and throw spitballs at the teacher as they used to do in my time, which is another improvement in a general way. Neither do the boys and girls keep a sharp look out on each other's shortcomings and report the same at headquarters, as was a custom of bygone centuries. And this reminds me of Governor Nye's last anecdote, fulminated since the delivery of his message and consequently not to be found in that document. The company were swapping old school reminiscences, and in due season they got to talking about that extinct species of telltales that were once to be found in all minor educational establishments and who never failed to detect and impartially denounce every infraction of the rules that occurred among their mates. The Governor said that he threw a casual glance at a pretty girl on the next bench one day, and she complained to the teacher, which was entirely characteristic, you know. Says she, Mr. Jones, Warren Nye's looking at me, whereupon, without a suggestion from anybody, upjumped an infamous, lisping, toe-headed young miscreant, and says he, Yes, sir, I see him do it! I doubt if the old original boy got off that ejaculation with more gusto than the Governor throws into it. The compositions read today were as exactly like the compositions I used to hear read in our school, as one baby's nose is exactly like all other baby's noses. I mean, the old principal earmarks were all there, the cutting to the bone of the subject with a very first gash without any preliminary foolishness in the way of a gorgeous introductory. The inevitable and persevering tautology, the brief monosyllabic sentences beginning as a very general thing with the pronoun, I. The penchant for presenting rigid, uncompromising facts for the consideration of the hearer rather than ornamental fancies. The depending for the success of the composition upon its general merits, without tackling artificial aids to the end of it in the shape of deductions or conclusions or claptrap climaxes, albeit their absence sometimes imparts to these essays the semblance of having come to an end before they were finished, of arriving at full speed at a jumping-off place and going suddenly overboard as it were, leaving a sensation such as one feels when he stumbles without previous warning upon that infernal to be continued in the midst of a thrilling magazine story. I know there are other styles of school compositions, but these are the characteristics of the style which I have in my eye at present. I do not know why this one has particularly suggested itself to my mind, unless the literary effort of one of the boys there to-day left with me an unusually vivid impression. It ran something in this wise. composition I like horses. Where we lived before we came here we used to have a cutter and horses. We used to ride in it. I like winter. I like snow. I used to have a pony all to myself, where I used to live before I came here. Once it drifted a good deal, very deep, and when it stopped I went out and got in it. That was all. There was no climax to it, except the spasmodic bow, which the tautological little student jerked at the school as he closed his labours. Two remarkably good compositions were read. Miss Pease was much the best of these, but aside from its marked literary excellence it possessed another merit which was peculiarly gratifying to my feelings just at that time, because it took the conceit out of young Gillespie as completely as perspiration takes the starch out of a shirt-collar. In his insufferable vanity that feeble member of the House of Representatives had been assuming imposing attitudes and beaming upon the pupils was an expression of benignant imbecility which was calculated to inspire them with the conviction that there was only one guest of any consequence in the House. Therefore it was an unspeakable relief to me to see him forced to shed his dignity, concerning the composition, however. After detailing the countless pleasures which had fallen to her lot during the holidays the author has finished with a proviso, in substance as follows. I have forgotten the precise language. But I have no cheerful reminiscences of Christmas. It was dreary, monotonous, and insipid to the last degree. Mr. Gillespie called early and remained the greater part of the day. You should have seen the blooming Gillespie wilt when that literary bombshell fell in his camp. The charm of the thing lay in the fact that that last naive sentence was the only suggestion offered in the way of accounting for the dismal character of the occasion. However, to my mind it was sufficient, entirely sufficient. Since writing the above I have seen the architectural plans and specifications for Miss Clap and Mrs. Cutler's proposed Sierra Seminary Building. It will be a handsome two-story edifice, one hundred feet square, and will accommodate forty borders and any number of pupils beside, who may board elsewhere. Constructed of wood, it will cost twelve thousand dollars, or of stone, eighteen thousand dollars. Miss Clap has devoted ten acres of ground to the use and benefit of the institution. I sat down intending to write a dozen pages of variegated news. I have about accomplished the task, all except the variegated. I have economized in the matter of current news of the day considerably more than I proposed to do, for every item of that nature remains stored away in my mind in a very unwritten state, and will afford unnecessarily ample material for another letter. It is useless material, though, I suspect, because in as much as I have failed to incorporate it into this, I fear me I shall not feel industrious enough to weave out of it another letter until it has become too stale to be interesting. Well, never mind. We must learn to take an absorbing delight in educational gossip. Nine-tenths of the revenues of the Territory go into the bottomless gullet of that ravenous school fund, you must bear in mind. Mark Twain. Territorial Enterprise, January 1864. Legislative Proceedings, House, Tenth Day, Carson, January 21. An Officer of the House, Charles Carter, messenger, is lying at the point of death this morning. He ruptured a blood vessel of the brain, night before last, previous to which time he was in robust health. He was a youth of great promise, and was respected and esteemed by all who knew him. He held the position of messenger of the House during the session of 1862, and his faithful attention to the duties of the office then was endorsed by his re-election to the present session. The chief portion of the population of Carson spent last night in feasting and dancing at the warm springs. Such of them as are out of bed at this hour declare the occasion to have been one of unmitigated felicity. The House met at ten a.m. Leave of Absence. Mr. Calder asked and obtained leave for one day for Mr. Claggett, who was engaged in drafting a bill. Question of Privilege. Mr. Stewart rose to a question of privilege, and said the Enterprise and Union reporters had been moving Ellen Redman's toll-bridge from its proper position on the Carson Slough to an illegal one on the Humboldt Slough. I did that. If Ellen Redman don't like it, I can move her little bridge back again, but under protest. I waited that Humboldt Slough once, and I have always had a hankering to see a bridge over it since. Mark. Mr. Phillips moved to amend Mr. Gillespie's resolution by striking out that portion which puts the enrolling and engrossing clerks under the sole control of the Chief Clerk. Lost. A warm debate sprung up on the subject. Mr. Gillespie manfully contended for the justness and expediency of adopting his resolution, and stated several propositions which were eminently correct to it that these subordinate officers ought to be under the control of the Chief Clerk, that they were under the pay of the House, and had been for some time, and yet had nothing to do. And finally, that copying being within the scope of their duties, they ought to be put at it and afforded an opportunity of rendering an equivalent for their salaries. Mr. Stewart, Dixon, and others were very fearful of discommoting the subordinate clerks, and very anxious to embellish the House with some more fellows calculated to swing a sinecure gracefully. The Chief Clerk stated that Mr. Powell, the enrolling clerk, had labored assiduously, from the first, in rendering any and all assistance asked at his hands, but nobody coming forward to say how much Captain Murphy had done, and nobody being supplied with a pile of estimates sufficient to portray how much he hadn't done, it became the general impression that Captain Murphy had been considerably more ornamental than useful to the House of Representatives. But I am here only during the courtesy of the House, on my good behavior, as it were, and I am a little afraid that if I say this aggregation of wisdom elected Captain Murphy more out of regard for his military services than respect for the nasty manner in which he can sling a pen, I shall get noticed to quit. Mark. Mr. Gillespie, on leave, amended his resolution by adding, provided said clerks shall not be interfered with in the discharge of their respective duties, and had the resolution not been furnished with this loophole if it had not been thus emasculated, it would not have passed. By a scratch it carried, though, and here are the voters' names. Eyes. Mr. Calder, Elliott, Gillespie, Gove, Hess, Hunter, McDonald, Nelson, Reckwa, Trask, Unger, Speaker. Twelve. Nose. Mr. Barkley, Kerler, Dean, Dixon, Fischer, Heaton, Jones, Phillips, Stewart, Tennant. Ten. Territorial Enterprise. January 1864. Legislative Proceedings. House. 16th Day. Carson City, January 27. General Orders. The House resolved itself into Committee of the Whole, Mr. Fischer and the Chair, upon the unfinished business of the General Orders, and occupied the remainder of the four-noon session in the consideration of the Act providing for the appointment of notaries public and defining their duties. This is a most important bill, and if passed will secure clearer and more comprehensible records hereafter. It will leave Story County twelve notaries in place of the fifteen hundred we have at present, and these twelve will have to be men of solid reputation, since they will have to give heavier bonds than all the fifteen hundred combined do at present. They must give bail in the sum of five thousand dollars each, sixty thousand dollars all together. Mr. Fischer said three would be sufficient for Douglas County. He didn't want all the property there tied up in notaries' bonds. Mr. Claggett said there was scarcely a valid deed on the Humboldt records, because the certificates attached to them by ignorant notaries were worthless, and he supposed property worth millions had already been jeopardized in the territory by this kind of officers. He said one really splendid ignoramus out there, who forwarded a bond in the sum of ten dollars, had it returned with a notification that it must be increased to five hundred dollars. He couldn't straddle the blind, and had to give up his commission. Besides, Mr. Claggett said, the passage of this act would oust from office some twenty five rabid secessionists in Humboldt County alone. Sensation! If you could just see the official bonds drawn up and sent to the office of the Secretary of the Territory by some of these mentally deaf, dumb, and blind notaries, you would wonder, as I do, what they have been and gone and done, that Heaven should be down on them so. They never use revenue stamps. They don't subscribe the oath. They—well, they don't do anything that could lay them liable to an accusation of knowing at all, or even any fraction of it. Mr. Tennant said some few secesses had been appointed in Lander, but not so many as in Humboldt. They found one secess in Lander last spring, and acting Governor Clemens captured him. I send you a copy of the bill, as they have just finished amending it in the Committee of the Whole, and suggest that you publish it. Mark. Territorial Enterprise January 1864 Legislative Proceedings Carson City January 28, 1864. House, 17th Day I delivered that message last night, but I didn't talk loud enough. People in the far end of the hall could not hear me. They said, Louder! Louder! Occasionally, but I thought that was a way they had, a joke, as it were. I had never talked to a crowd before, and knew none of the tactics of the public speaker. I suppose I spoke loud enough for some houses, but not for that district court room, which is about seventy-five feet from floor to roof, and has no ceiling. I hope the people will deal as mildly with me, however, as I did with the public officers in the annual message. Some folks heard the entire document, though. There is some comfort in that. Honourable Mr. Claggett, Speaker Simmons of the Inferior House, Honourable Hal Clayton, Speaker of the Third House, Judge Hayden, Dr. Albin, and others whose opinions are entitled to wait, said they would travel several miles to hear that message again. It affords me a good deal of satisfaction to mention it. It serves to show that if the audience could have heard me distinctly, they would have appreciated the wisdom thus conferred upon them. They seemed to appreciate what they did hear, though, pretty thoroughly. After the first quarter of an hour I ceased to whisper and became audible. One of these days when I get time I will correct, amend, and publish the message in accordance with a resolution of the Third House ordering three hundred thousand copies in the various languages spoken at the present day. P.S. Sandy Baldwin and Theodore Winters heard that message anyhow, and by thunder they appreciated it too. They have sent a hundred dollars a piece to San Francisco this morning to purchase a watch chain for his Excellency Governor Twain. I guess that is a pretty good result for an incipient oratorical slouch like me, isn't it? I don't know that anybody tendered the other Governor a testimonial of any kind. Mark Twain.