 This is Section 107 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section 107, The Chicago Republican, February 19, 1868. Mark Twain's Letter. Final Defeat of the Impeachment Project in the House. How to Describe a Fashionable Party? Some New Terms. Mark's Valentine's. Comforts of Too Much Popularity. How Miss Vinnie Reem got into the Capitol and won't be turned out. Special Correspondents of the Chicago Republican. Washington, February 14. Died. In the city, February 13, at his lodgings in the Chamber of the House Reconstruction Committee, our beloved brother, Impeachment. The malady of deceased was general debility. A short time ago his health had improved so much that a bright hope cheered the land that he would soon walk forth healthful and strong. But alas, we know not what a day may bring forth. A great fear came upon his physicians in the crisis of his disease. The weariness of watching overpowered the nurses so that they fell asleep and neglected him. And lo! a relapse. Then came the physicians to his bedside again, with a new confidence that had been born to them of late, and said, Behold! We have other samples. That be of greater worth. We will give these unto our brother, and he shall be healed. And even as they had said, so also went they about to do. And it came to pass that about the third hour certain of the nurses that watched him, even Mrs. Farnsworth, and also Mrs. Boutwell, and also Mrs. Stevens, the same that is called Thad, spoke unto the other nurses, saying, Harken unto us ye that watch with us, even Mrs. Bingham, and also Mrs. Bayman, and also Mrs. Payne, and also Mrs. Holbert, and also Mrs. Brooks, and likewise Mrs. Beck. The physicians and the people have faith that the new medicines wherewith they have provided us can heal him that suffereth before us here. Let us make haste to do with them as they have bidden us. But straightway Mrs. Bingham, being sore afraid, cried with a loud voice, saying, Mind not the people, O ye of little new! The doctors desire not that he shall live, for they be troubled in spirit and tormented day and night with a mighty fear. Are not we servants of the doctors, who have set this work for us to do? And is it not meat that we should do their will? Stay the hand, set thou the medicine upon the table, and let him die. And so these six that were Mrs. Bingham, being stronger than they that were with Mrs. Stevens, called Thad, suffered not the medicine to pass the lips of him that lay sick, and in the self-same hour he died. So endeth the second farce. The ancient schoolboy phrase best describes the position of the congressional bodies in this matter. One's afraid, and tethered, derent. Senator Chandler's Party. The event of the week in the social circle was the entertainment at Senator Chandler's residence to celebrate the coming out of his daughter, Miss Chandler. It was very brilliant. I am not easily overcome by pure gorgeousness, because I am too much accustomed to it in my own palace. I feel deeply it is true, yet I inflexibly crush those emotions and refrain from gushing even in times when it would be the greatest relief to me to gush. But when I find another man expressing exactly what I felt and exactly what I would have expressed if I had yielded to the impulse to gush, I always borrow what that man says, and thank him kindly for saying it, and give to his paper due and proper credit with the compliments of the undersigned. This paragraph is from the Chronicle. The senator's large and elegant parlours, newly furnished, and in exquisite taste, with rare old paintings on the walls, were highly decorated with exotics of chaste and highly original designs, the brilliant scarlet leaves of the Mexican poinsettia, with its golden centre, the pure white pink and variegated camellias, the fragrant heliotrope and the modest violet, the gentle primrose and the drooping and graceful fern were grouped together and arranged in vases and rustic baskets, while the niches in the walls of the staircase were tastefully decorated with camellia trees in full bloom, presenting, with their pure colours and the green and waxen leaves, a most agreeable contrast with the blazing light from the numerous jets of gas that illuminated a scene of wondrous splendour. That is all correctly stated, and with a spirit which the subject was in every way entitled to. I do not find fault with exotics of highly original design, because I know that the deity designed them, and that to call attention in an influential daily newspaper to the happy originality of the conception, was a compliment which was as well deserved as it was well meant and gracefully put. I add the following paragraph, because the ladies of the West must surely take a particular interest in knowing how their representatives dress at the capital of the country, and because I know so well that they take a thrilling general interest in the fashions that obtain in this or any other city in the land. The technicalities that bloom so bewilderingly in these lines are altogether too obtruse for me, but I have no doubt at all that they are accurately set down. Nobody could dash off the curious phraseology of millenary science in that kind of style, but a person who was master of his subject even in its nicest details. Mrs. Chandler was gracefully arrayed in a dress of the finest taste. A heavy rep pearl-coloured silk, empress waist, short sleeves, and low corsage, trimmed with a narrow piping of white satin, bordered with deep fringes composed of crystal beads. Her extensive train was trimmed à la passe monterie, with folds of the same material of the dress, cut in points and trimmed with pure white satin, with fold edging, the voluminous skirt arranged in the same manner. She wore a handsome set of pearls, her hair dressed with fusettes in front, rolled off her forehead with French twist and numerous plaited coils, and surmounting a diadem of may roses, with long pendants of buds and green leaves. Mrs. Chandler, a fair brunette with gold and locks, which were slightly powdered with silver, wore a chignon over which depended a small bunch of curls, and the only ornament connected therewith was a narrow band of gold and a small piece of black lace worn on the top of the head. She wore gold jewellery with a heavy short necklace with charm attached, a style that is rapidly coming into vogue. Her dress was a tunic of bright rose-colored silk, empress waist, short sleeves trimmed with a rich deep fringe of a similar shade, looped up on either side over a skirt of white silk of the most elegant description, and, of course, an elaborate train. A fair brunette with gold and locks is a combination which is as rare as it is necessarily striking and picturesque. I never saw a fair brunette in my life, and I never saw a brunette with gold and locks either. I think there must be some mistake about this. If so, no doubt it was owing to the hurry of writing up the entertainment for the morning paper. One has not time to be very particular under such circumstances. I know a good deal about that from experience. For the last sixty years I have never seen this day approach without emotion. It was generally too deep for utterance, too. The day always brings me an armful of dainty notes from young women whom I have stricken with my destructive eye. Eyes would have been more proper. I generally bring down a couple at a time. Strabismus enables me to do that. I usually receive notes with pictures in them. Pictures of deformed shoemakers, pictures of distorted blacksmiths, pictures of cadaverous undertakers, pictures of reporters taking items at a fire and stealing clothes, and oftenest pictures of asses, with ears longer than necessary, writing letters to newspapers. These letters are usually directed in an execrable, masculine hand. The pictures and the handwriting are both intended to conceal the real passion that is consuming the young women who send them, but they fail. I have not lived three-quarters of a century for nothing. I counted on a renewal of these little attentions today, and suffered no disappointment. Twenty-seven valentines are to hand thus far, but none of them have pictures in them. They are all of a new design and very peculiar. Some of the more cautious young women have appended masculine names in place of their own. It may be well enough to offer a specimen or two since their fashion is new. Sir, our metallic burial cases have taken the premium at six state fairs in this country and also at the Great Paris Exposition. Parties who have used them have been in every instance charmed with them. Not one has yet entered a complaint. Our walnut and mahogany coffins are the delight of the people. A large stock kept constantly on hand and orders promptly filled with pleasure. Families supplied at reduced rates. Articles in our line may be exchanged if not satisfactory. We would be glad to secure your custom, and shall be greatly pleased to hear from you. Box and Plant Undertakers I hope these parties will manage somehow to wait till they do hear from me. I always did hate to be in a hurry in matters of business. But, really, some girl's lacerated heart is hidden under that deftly worded Valentine. Here is another. Sir, our patent cancer eradicator arouses the admiration of all whose happy fortune it has been to be in a condition to use it. Nothing can withstand its enchanting influence. Exgressances of all kinds upon the body disappear before it as by magic. If you have warts, if you have cancers, if you have a when, come and be healed. We fervently hope to receive your custom. Blister and carve, patentees. I fervently hope you won't. So far I have no artificial attractions such as wends, cancers, and warts, and am satisfied to remain homely. But that whole Valentine is nothing but the transparent covering to some girl's breaking heart. Let it break. Mine has been broken often enough. It don't hurt me. Once more. Sir, we beg to recommend to you our patent double-back action chronometer balance in combustible wooden legs. You will find them superior to anything in the market. The dismantled soldiers of our beloved country are extravagant in their praises of them. Give them a trial. You cannot regret it. Be pleased to forward us your measure at once and let us furnish you with an outfit. Leg and hoop, proprietors. It pains me to decline, but I shall have to do it. I don't want any outfit. If it were a patent head we could trade, but as it is, you had better go after Weston. But what is it that those mysterious wooden legs so ingeniously conceal in reality? Blighted affection. It is hardly worthwhile for this young woman to try to deceive me with her poor, fraudulent wooden legs. I see through the flimsy ruse. Blighted affection is behind it. The remainder of the twenty-seven offer tinware and stationery and baker's bread and gravestones and chewing-gum and patent varnish and real estate and railroad literature, dry-goods, harness, spaldings-glue, ready-made clothing, plantation bitters, and a dozen other commodities. All so many veils were with to hide the fatal admiration that burns in the bosoms of the young women who have sent them. They must perish. Others have gone before. Let them travel the same old road. They cannot lose the way. They will find it pretty well blazed. But this last one, which has just come in, I feel is fraught with a world of happiness for me. It—it says— Sir, you better pay for your washing. Bridget. These washer-women have no sentiment. I scorn valentines from washer-women. Curious legislation. Retrenchment breeds strange legislation. Or rather, the weak things that are done in its name, breed it. They could not impeach the President, because as Mr. Stephen says, they were afraid. But what of it? They have triumphed anyhow. They have won a dazzling victory. For they have taken away his private secretaries. It was wonderful strategy. He cannot write any more long letters to General Grant now. He cannot spin out any more interminable messages to Congress. He will not find the time. He will have to cut everything down to the scriptural yes-yes and nay-nay. This measure was certainly undignified. It does not become a Congress that has been battling with the colossal artillery of impeachment to descend to throwing mud. Such conduct is neither royal, republican, nor democratic. It is simply boys' play. It isn't worthwhile to say that the reduction of the President's clerical force was made in the virtuous interest of retrenchment, for the stupidest of us all know better than that. This moving spring was an unworthy and ungraceful little spite. They might as well have estimated the capabilities of the Chief Magistrate's kitchen-force and discharged a cook or two. There is not any wisdom in this kind of warfare. The people cannot applaud it. Everybody is willing to see a fair stand-up fight between the President and his Congressional Master, but nobody is willing to see either of them descend to scratching and hair-pulling. These parties stand for the United States. They represent the American nation, and it is not a nation that fights in that way. Vinnie Reem. This is the shrewdest politician of them all, with a mild talent for sculpture, but with hardly as much claim upon the patronage of the government as had even the poorest of the artists that have canvassed and frescoed our beautiful capital with their curious nightmares at a liberal so much an acre—they painted by the acre likely—she has procured from Congress an interminable contract to build a bronze statue of President Lincoln for ten thousand dollars. That is well enough, for she can build statues as well as those other parties can swab frescoes—a remark which cannot by any possibility be tortured into the semblance of a compliment. But that she should succeed in getting hold of and hanging on to a choice chamber in the crowded capital wherein to build Mr. Lincoln when a tract of ground, four or five times as large as England, together with its tax-paying population of two hundred thousand souls, is trying to get into that capital, are perfectly aware that they ought to be allowed to enter there and yet cannot succeed, is a very, very, very, very interesting mystery to the subscriber. Really, does it not look a little singular that nine accredited delegates of nine great territories should be obliged to stand out in the cold, month after month, in order that pretty and talkative, and winning little Miss Vinny Reem may have a sumptuously furnished chamber in the capital to build her Mr. Lincoln in? I ask this in no spirit of indicitiveness, for I surely bear Miss Vinny Reem no malice. I just simply ask it as a man and a brother. I said she was the shrewdest politician of them all, and verily she is. The government never gave her permission to bring her mud and her naked, scandalous plaster models, and set up her little shop in the Temple of Liberty, and go to building Mr. Lincoln there. No, she just talked pretty, girlish talk to some of those impotent iron clad old politicians—Congressman, of course—and got out her mud and made busts of some of the others, and she kept on in this fashion until she over-mastered them all with her charming little ways, and they told her to go, take a room in the capital, build Mr. Lincoln, and be happy. She took a room. It had defects that interfered with the proper building of Mr. Lincoln, and she laid siege to those congressmen again. In the goodness of their hearts and the general feebleness of their firmness they compassed a certain house committee round about and delivered them into the hands of Vinny Reem. She took their fine committee room, and they went elsewhere. But here, lately, those nine delegates from the territories have talked so plainly of the discourtesy that is being shown them in having allowed no resting place in the capital, that at last the congressmen have felt obliged to look around and see what could be done in their behalf. What could they do? Manifestly, since every solitary room in the building was already occupied in a legitimate manner, except the one occupied by Miss Reem, there was nothing left to do but go after that. They little knew their antagonist. They went, and found on the door this notice just pasted up. Miss Reem is absent from the city for two weeks, by which time the storm will have blown over, the congressmen will have forgotten it, and the nine delegates become reconciled to the open air, and hopeless of ever getting that storm awakened again. It would take but little to turn my sympathies in favor of the artful dodger. That studio is hers yet, and, I think, maybe, it will so remain, and her little one-legged broken-armed, battered-nose mud-gods and crippled plaster-angels will remain there also, and likewise the awful apparition of Mr. Lincoln, naked as mud, could make him, which she has built up in the corner behind a screen, will remain there, too, to gaze reproachfully upon its swollen and mutilated hand, and frighten away discontented territorial delegates, for evermore. Mark Twain. He attends the Illinois Association Reception. An agreeable gathering. The Skeleton of the Feast. Mark's view of the impeachment proceedings. A lion aroused. Gideon on the war-path. Make way for wells and the marines. Flame, fire, and flame. Fury by Telegraph. Washington, February XXI. A State Reception. The Illinois State Association. I refer to the reception given by the Illinois State Association yesterday evening, or rather it was more a reunion, with considerable at-home in it, than the funerial high comedy they call a reception in Washington. Colonel Chester and his fair daughters, former citizens of Chicago, conducted the honors, and performed the owner's task with a skill and address that placed even different strangers at their ease, in so much that I shortly became a contented Illinoisan, without knowing just how or where the change took place. The invitation I had received was couched in such mysterious terms that I gathered from it a vague notion that I was going there to report a sort of state agricultural society. And it was a very agreeable surprise to find a large party of gentlemen present who were not talking about steam plows and corn-shellars, and a brilliant company of ladies who were taking no thought of prize turnips and miraculous cabbages. I like agriculture well enough, but not agricultural mass meetings. There is nothing about them that fires the blood. At some of the receptions here the people move in solemn procession up and down the drawing-rooms, bearing an imaginary arc of the Covenant, and looking as if they knew they had to wander forty years in the wilderness yet. But there was nothing of this kind last night, no processions, no solemnity, no frozen ceremony. The throng shifted constantly and talked incessantly. Nothing could be less stately or more agreeable. It was a very sociable company for a stranger to fall among. Finally, I found a petite young lady—I don't know what petite means, but it is a good word—right from my own side of the river, and then I felt more at home than ever, if possible. She was from Dubuque, which is on the California side of the Mississippi River, and so, of course, we were, in a manner, neighbors. A constructive old acquaintance-ship like this is wonderfully fortifying and reassuring when one is in the midst of a foreign element, even though that element is disposed to be a generous and friendly one. A Cheerful Guest I only met one icicle in the whole party. He shook hands without cordiality, and bowed with altogether too much condescension. I said, with a vivacity that considerably oversized the importance of the remark, It has been a very fine day, sir. Then this monument, this undertaker, this galvanized grave-digger said, Sir, what the weather may be, or what the weather may not be—concerns not me, when my country is in danger. Well, I am sorry I made such a thoughtless remark. I meant no harm. I did not notice what I was saying. People cannot be too careful what they say when the country is in danger. But the weather, you know, sir, what signify the vagaries of the weather, when revolution stares us in the face, when the muttered thunders of coming disaster startle the ear, when dark forebodings visit our thoughts by day, and wrathful carnage crimsons our visions of the night. True! I had not looked at it in that light. I slipped up on the carnage, so to speak. Under circumstances like these I know, as well as any man knows, that it is little less than treason to speak of the weather, treason. Treason is feeding at the very vitals of the land. Its stalks unrebuke through the corridors of the nation's capital. It sits in the high places of the Commonwealth. It flings its gaunt shadow athwarp the very threshold of the feign of liberty. Sir, prophetic voices sound in my ears, and lo! They chant the requiem of the great republic. Its doom is sealed. Well, I know you will pardon me, sir. I didn't know it was as bad as that, or I swear I never would have mentioned the weather. Moralizing. I think this old sepulcher was a member of Congress, but I did not catch his name distinctly. But why do such people go to social gatherings, and practice their execrable speeches on unoffending strangers? Why do they go around saving the country all the time, and snubbing the weather? Why do they do like Garrett Davis, and persecute Congress, which is paid to be persecuted? These harmless lunatics only distress the guests at an evening party without absolutely scaring them. I would be ashamed to act so poor a part as that. If I had to be a lunatic, I do think I would have self-respect enough to be a dangerous one. I hate that solemn visaged body-snatcher now, and if he is a congressman, I shall always try to find out all the mean things I can that other people do, and put them in print and attribute them to him. I think that will make him wince. The idea of a congressman bowing condescendingly to one of the people, we cannot put up with that. I long to report one of that man's speeches, and garble it so that his constituents will think he has forsaken his political principles, and gone over to the enemy. I have digressed somewhat, and now return to the subject, only to say that this Illinoisan reunion was lively, void of restraint, and eminently pleasant. This is the most agreeable way in which senators and representatives can meet their fitting constituents, and the idea is well worthy of adoption by the representatives of other states here. Americans are not by nature, inclination, or home teaching courtly enough to enjoy the formal humbuggery of an orthodox reception. I have made the above notes the present time, because it was most convenient to do it now. The remainder of this letter will be written a week hence. I had a list of all the Illinoisans present at the party, but I cannot furnish it now. The degraded black-hearted chambermaid has kindled the fire with it, of course. If there is on earth a race of miscreants, I hate with an undying hatred, it is chambermaids. If there is any dissipation I enjoy with all my heart, it is to attend their funerals. Impeachment Lazarus, impeachment, come forth. The past few days have been filled with startling interest. On Friday the nation was electrified by the President's last and boldest effort to dislodge Mr. Stanton. The wild excitement that pervaded the capital that night has not had its parallel here since the murder of Mr. Lincoln. The air was thick with rumours of dreadful import. Every tranquil brain, thrown from its balance by the colossal surprise magnified the creations of its crazed fancy into the phantoms of anarchy, rebellion, and bloody revolution. Assassinations were prophesied. Murders, robberies, and conflagrations. Cannon were to thunder, drums to beat, and the pavements to echo to the tread of armed men. The Senate sat at night, and the unusual spectacle of the illuminated capital attracted every eye, and impressed every mind with something like an assurance that its botings and prophecies were well-founded. And out of the midst of the political gloom, impeachment, that dead corpse, rose up and walked forth again. The twenty-second of February. The next morning that one word, impeachment, was upon every tongue. There was no simpleton but knew that this memorable twenty-second of February was likely to be one of those tremendous days that stand up out of the level of a nation's history like a mountain in a desert, a mark toward which all roads converge on the one side, and from which they all radiate on the other, a mark which catches the eye first from all directions and all distances and holds it longest. Instead of resting from its labors in reverent regard for the memory of Washington, as has been the honored custom for three score years upon this natal day, the Congress had resolved to sit and, for business, before nine o'clock in the morning, a multitude was assembled in the capital grounds, and from all points of the compass the clans were still gathering. Fifteen minutes after the doors were opened the broad lobbies were crowded with men and women, and every seat in the ample galleries was occupied. Seen in the capital. A strong interest was depicted in every countenance even in the countenances of the members of the floor, in as much as these latter earnestly conversed in groups and couples instead of looking listless and writing private letters, as is their custom. The multitude of strangers were waiting for impeachment. They did not know what impeachment was, exactly, but they had a general idea that it would come in the form of an avalanche or a thunderclap, or that maybe the roof would fall in. By and by a member rose up solemnly, and every soul prepared to stand from under. But it was a vain delusion. He only had a speech to make about a degraded cooking-stove patent. The people were justly incensed. An hour of irksome suspense rolled away, and then the one man the audience found out they must look for entered—Thaddeus Stevens. All the faces were full of interest again in a moment. The emaciated old man stood up and addressed the speaker. The speaker commanded the audience to beware of manifesting either satisfaction or dissent on pain of instant expulsion, but to maintain strict and respectful silence, and when he finished the profoundest stillness reigned in the house. Then the one man upon whom all interest centered read the resolutions, the multitude so long to hear, and when he came to where it was resolved that the President of the United States be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors—the prodigious words had something so solemn and so awe-inspiring about them that the people seemed inclined to think that the expected thunderclap was about to crash above the pictured ceiling. The strong lights and shadows, augmenting distances and creating deceitful perspectives, the ghostly figure of the reader, the eager interest that marked the sea of faces, the impressive silence that pervaded the place, and the historic grandeur of the occasion conspired to render the scene one of the most striking and dramatic that has ever been witnessed in the capital. The closing debate. Then the speech-making began, and the resurrected Lazarus of impeachment soon gave token of a strength and a vigor it had never possessed in its former life. The crowds remained in the capital till nearly midnight. Tuesday, February 25. All day yesterday the place was densely thronged, the people wished to hear the all-important vote taken. It was not to transpire till nearly nightfall, and they knew it, but they came to times in the morning and brought their luncheon with them, resolved to sit it out, and they did. They heard strong speeches from the Republicans, and angry protests from the Democrats, but these latter were not confident in tone. The Democrats had said themselves that the President had made an ill-advised move, and they felt that they were fighting for a lost cause. The eye-votes, in nearly all cases, came in a clear voice, but many of the nays were inaudible in the reporter's gallery. The spirit appeared to be chiefly on one side. The resolution passed, and that was a momentous event. But Saturday was still the great day after all. It was the day most to be remembered. Its pictures were the most striking to the eye, and its events the most sensational, because of their novelty. The hunted chief in his castle. That the President would be arraigned before the bar of the Senate there seemed to be no possible question. Yesterday was reception night at the White House, and several of us went there at ten o'clock. I confess that I went out of a thoughtless curiosity to see how the chief magistrate bore himself under these untoward circumstances, but I did not enjoy the visit. I stood at a little distance, and watched him receive and dismiss his visitors. He looked so like a plain, simple, good-natured old farmer, that it was hard to conceive that this was the imperious tyrant whose deeds had been stirring the sluggish blood of thirty millions of people. He was uneasy and restless. The smile that came and went upon his face had distress in it. When he shook hands with a guest, he looked wistfully into the person's face, as if he sought a friendly interest there, and yet hardly hoped to find it. He seemed humbled. The expression of his countenance could be made to signify nothing else. When he ceased to smile for a moment, the shadow of a secret anxiety fell upon his features, and then, if ever a man looked weary and worn, and needful of rest and forgetfulness, it was this envied president of the United States. I never saw a man who seemed as friendless and forsaken, and I never felt for any man so much. They said that earlier in the evening he bore himself as serenely as if his fortunes were at their fairest. But he admired the brave spirit that so mastered its corroding cares that they gave no sign, so mastered, then, that in the countenance that should have told of a world of trouble within, only a sunny cheerfulness was visible. But he had stood in that one place for hours now, undergoing that toilsome monotony of handshaking, and fatigue had conquered him at last. Not any man that lives could occupy the president's place today and be tranquil and content. A sleeping lion aroused. Gideon Rampant. February 26. The ball is in motion. The Philadelphians send encouraging dispatches to the president. Chicago mass meetings tell Illinois representatives to impeach. New York City threatens blood and slaughter in behalf of the president. Governor Geary promises another uprising for Congress. And last Mr. Gideon Wells is standing by with his redoubtable four hundred marines to rush to the chief magistrate's protection. It is time to tremble when Gideon's band is hitching up its Tausers, shifting its quids to Starbird, and preparing to repel borders. But Congress is in earnest, and maybe the old salts will see service shortly. General Logan says that if Congress quails this time he wants an appropriation made to iron plate the members so that the nation can kick them from the Capitol to the White House without its wearing them out. Sound the toxin! Don't know what a toxin is, but I want it sounded all the same. Telegraphic, Thunder, and Lightning. Gideon is not to be alone. Telegrams offering support and encouragement to the president are still arriving constantly. My position as private secretary add interim to the chief magistrate gives me peculiar facilities for easily learning their contents. Maysville, February 25th. Will one regiment of Irish be of any service to you? Answer. There is a thousand anyhow. The case looks healthier. Philadelphia, February 25th. I can raise one thousand men to sustain you from my second district of New Jersey, if necessary—not signed—from the Camden and Amboy Railway Company, doubtless. They own the second district of New Jersey, and the other districts also, I believe. However, it is a thousand more in any event. This is cheering. New York City, February 25th. Go on! All the decent men in the metropolis will back you. Well, that makes another thousand. We are all right now. Wheatland, Pennsylvania, February 25th. Proceed with caution, but proceed. Garrison, Fort Sumter. But do not provision it yet. Be cautious. Do not act with too much decision about things. Wait! Pub. Funk. I thought the old lady was dead, but she only sleepeth. Someone must wake her up and tell her Sumter is battered down. Chicago, February 23rd. Keep steadily on. Oglesby has made himself ridiculous. He knew, when he sent that dispatch, that it was impossible to fill the bill. When you want either men or money, more than half of the able-bodied men in the state will promptly respond to your call. Good! Ningyang, California, February 24th. Melican man, welly good. You sabby Chinaman? No, have got. How can catch? Chinaman, welly good man, John. Send you nine hundred Chinaman. Heaps smash'em, Congress. Hong wo si yup. I know Chinaman too well. They are a nation of pub-funks. They are not partisan enough in character. They would come here with their tubs, and take in washing from both sides. St. Louis, February 25th. The people here are with you, and ready almost to a man, to sustain you in whatever way may be necessary in upholding the Constitution and resisting congressional usurpation. Good again! Cincinnati, February 24th. This foreign-population from Cincinnati is mit you in this clofius grisus. Speal your hand for all what it is vort. Make what you shall do what you is. Hold up your head, and just go right along the same as never was. You shall have Limburg, und Lager, und Pretzels, everythings what you want. At the lowest price, green bags. This is the principles what I goes in for. Grisus is the dings what makes drobbles for damn radicals. Hans von Kraut. We gates, Hans. I don't know what we gates is, but I suppose it is the neat thing to fire the German heart with in times of grisus. Richmond, February 25th. We are with you, heart and soul. There are plenty of railroads leading from the south to Washington, and in your far-sighted sagacity you long ago put them all into my hands and under my supreme control. Blessings on the singular policy which has given the north only one railway route to Washington. Count on us. Men, money, and transportation are at your service. Beauregard. This is victory itself. Alaska, February 25th. Thermometer at seventy-eight degrees below zero. But democratic patriotism at a hundred and sixty above. We are with you. Glorious mass meeting yesterday. Forwarded full proceedings. Beaure ate the messenger. Ate the proceedings also, since died, but proceedings and messengers so mixed up in stomach shall have to send all in a box. Sea-green iceberg. Beaure steak, masticated messenger, and democratic resolutions ought to make a fair enough feast in these hungry times. Proceedings generally contain provisions, but this time the provisions contain the proceedings. The case is popular. St. Thomas, February 25th. Hurrah! Her! Excuse interruption. Great storm just swept away this portion of the town. Hurrah! Her! Excuse interruption again. Earthquake. Hurrah! Her! A perdition. Volcano let go under the house. Hurrah! In haste. John Smith. I suppose. Some new disaster must have interfered with him, and he could not finish his name. His part of the world has come to an end, maybe. However, with the help of Providence, he got his hurrah out anyhow. It is about all that the others have accomplished so far, although they took more words to say it in. Dublin, Ireland, February 25th. God and Liberty! Star-spangled banner! Aaron Goebra! Green Willikens! Star-spangled banner for White Men Tempest Fugit! Bow wow wow! Down with the revolutionists! Death to demagogues! No slinking! Let every true patriot show his earmarks, and be known by his voice. Wahey! Wahey! Wahey! George Francis Train. Now we are safe, since the great Fenian female suffrage ass is going to bray in our favour. But with running to Congress to see the impeachment fight, and to the hotels to hear public opinion about it, and to an occasional reception to endeavor to forget it all and start fresh again, and meanwhile trying to carry on two coals in the head at the same time, which it cannot be done, I have taken about a week to write this letter. I wish you would put in dates just wherever you please. Dates are cheap, and I wish to be liberal. There is nothing mean about me when it comes to dates. But was not that old cemetery almost prophetic in my first paragraph? Nobody suspected on the twentieth what the President was going to do next day. Mark Twain. End of Section 108. This is Section 109 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section 109. The Chicago Republican, May 19, 1868. Letter from Mark Twain. Mark's sea voyage to San Francisco. Pleasant traveling companions. Their beguilement in the boat. Some of the worst jokes ever heard. An original charade. Mark's lecturing tour. May Day Among the Mountains. Virginia, Nevada, May 1. At sea. Special correspondence of the Chicago Republican. I chartered one of the superb vessels of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company for a hundred and eighty thousand dollars, and invited several parties to go along with me, twelve hundred in all. I shall not take so many next time. The fewer people you take with you, the fewer there are to grumble. I did not suppose that any one could find anything to grumble at in so faultless a ship as ours, but I was mistaken. Very few of our twelve hundred had ever been so pleasantly circumstanced before, or had sailed with an abler captain, or a more obliging baggage-master, but yet they grumbled. Such is human nature. The man who drinks a beer at home always criticizes the champagne, and finds fault with the burgundy when he is invited out to dinner. However, we had fifteen people on board who never growled. From New York to Hatteras they complimented the bitter cold weather and the heavy seas, and said they were excellent for the health. When we sighted Cuba and Santo Domingo, and passed into a temperature that grew hourly hotter from there to the Ismus, till the pitch began to stew out of the spars, and ice to spoil and smell offensive, they got out their fans, and fancy summer suits, and said they had been perishing to have a taste of Christian heat again. When we took the railway train, and went steaming and sweating and scorching across the Ismus, through a gloomy wilderness of tropical vegetation, they ate their luncheon boisterously, and lied and smoked, and kept a sharp look out for monkeys and savages, and said it was splendid. When we went shopping for the ladies in the ancient city of Panama, and wandered through the narrow streets for weary hours, without finding any one thing we precisely wanted, they said it was fun. That is the kind of people to travel with. Both the ladies and gentlemen of that part he persistently refused to be distressed about anything whatsoever. They looked on the bright side of things, and made the best of their opportunities. Going out from Panama, they stayed on deck half the night, singing, swapping anecdotes, and going into ecstasies over the beauty of the vessels glittering wake, and the long, sinuous serpents of flashing fire that trailed after the sharks and porpoises frolicking about us. They went ashore, at Eventide, at that curious old Mexican town of Acapulco, and made themselves at home. They swung in the native hammocks, they supped at the native restaurant. They joined in a native fundango, and danced to the drumming of a guitar, and the soft warbling of an uncommonly greasy greaser and his sweetheart. They reverently entered the cathedral, and by reason of dimness of the altar candles mistook a ghastly, bleeding, and wounded image of the altar, in a great glass case, for a genuine human being newly murdered, and then they were hurrying out again with very irreverent haste when the deception was discovered. They bought long, ten-cent strings of fancy seashells, and tricked themselves out like Indian chiefs hanging the shells about their necks, rather for the sake of convenience in carrying them than for show, however. They warily avoided the bananas, pineapples, oranges, and such things, out of deference to the deadly Ythmian fevers, but they took kindly to a certain snow-white flower gifted with an entrancing fragrance and an unpronounceable name. They bore the clamorings of the dusky Mexican peddler girls in the small market place placidly, and when the ship's guns thundered a warning at night they paddled out well tired, and got aboard just about the same moment the anchor did. For a matter of fourteen to sixteen days of blistering weather during this voyage, part of the time without ice, these people smoked and read by day, and sang and romped by night, and never wasted a moment in useless complainings. While we had ice they said, Who cares how hot the weather gets? And when the ice gave out they said it was a lucky thing, because ice wasn't healthy in the tropics. We had one ball on the upper deck under the awnings by lantern-light. We did not have what you might call a multitude of dancers, but we had six hundred admiring spectators. When we reached cool weather again within about eight hundred miles of San Francisco, four hundred whist players assembled in the main saloon every night. We had music by the minstrel troupe occasionally, and religious services every Sunday. Bad Jokes We established a joker society and fined every member who furnished an unbearably bad joke. We tried one man for his life, the Raja of Borneo, for building a conundrum of unwarranted atrocity. Mr. Cohen disliked his trunk, and often spoke angrily of its small size, the conundrum touched upon this matter. Why is one of the passengers, or his trunk, like a certain geographical, algebraical, geometrical, technical term? Answer, because he is a truncated cone. Truncated cone. We hung him. At dinner one day in the steamship Sacramento, on this side, I said something to my roommate while he was carving a piece of veal. A member of the society said, Beware! Remember the sign in the pilot-house? No conversation with the man at the wheel! Veal. We hung him also. One night the first officer brought the tears to many eyes with a touching story of a shipmate of his whose leg was bitten off by a shark. A young lady said, Oh! How shocking! A member of the society said, Indeed it was! It was very shocking! He was publicly executed. A merchant from China told us a story of a tiger that ate up a Chinaman, and then ate up his bamboo cart. A member observed that it was the first time that he had ever heard of a tiger dining a la cart. He is no more. This nonsense reminds me of a circumstance. Once in Washington, during the winter, Riley, a fellow correspondent who stayed in the same house with me, rushed into my room, it was past midnight, and said, Great God! What can the matter be? What makes that awful smell? I said, Calm yourself, Mr. Riley, there is no occasion for alarm. You smell about as usual. But he said there was no joke about this matter. The house was full of smoke. He had heard dreadful screams. He recognized the odor of burning human flesh. We soon found out that he was right. A poor old Negro woman, a servant in the next house, had fallen on the stove and burned herself so badly that she soon died. It was a sad case, and at breakfast all spoke gloomily of the disaster, and felt low-spirited. The landlady even cried, and that depressed us still more. She said, Oh! To think of such a fate! She was so good and so kind and so faithful. She had worked hard and honestly in that family for twenty-eight long years, and now she is roasted to death, yes, roasted to crisp like so much beef. In a grave voice, and without even the show of a smile, Riley said, Well done, good and faithful servant! It sounded like a benediction, and the landlady never perceived the joke, but I never came so near choking in my life. Literary Debauch The night before the good ship Sacramento reached San Francisco the society had a grand reunion and a supper at eleven o'clock, and according to previous orders every member came forward and read a short poem, written especially for the occasion. Between every two readings a song was sung. Those poems were good, and I copied them for publication, but I have left them in San Francisco. However I find my own contribution in my notebook, and I will publish that, partly because I never wrote a poem before, and partly because I have a sort of an idea that this is about the best poem that ever was written. Chirade My first, my darling gave to me, when last we met and parted. Her only gift it was, and yet it left me brokenhearted. My second shot from out her eye when she, my first, conferred. Lord, how it flamed with irony, as flames the phoenix bird! My third receive at sundry times donations, like to mine, from fair and false sweet maidenhood, but duplicates decline, and each time swear with many an oath, and many an execration that when they next with love perplexed earn similar vexation, they hope some friend with hobnailed boot enclosing an almighty foot, like that of Grimm MacPherson. My fourth will launch with dire intent, and muscles firm and limb unbent straight at his august person. In the grand cathedral's aisle, where the sun's dimmed glories smile, down through pictured windows old, flashed with crimson blue and gold, where the clustering columns loom vague and massy through the gloom, where steeped in slumbers long and deep the mail-clad old crusaders sleep, my whole, the sorrowing sinner sees, and humbly seeks on bended knees. The boon is his, hath passed his lips, behold, by God's own grace the heart so cold, a sad and torn and blighted thing is swept as by an angel's wing, is healed, is cleansed from every stain, is filled with life and hope again. Answer, Sacré, mento, Spanish, the sacrament. Where is your Martin Farquhar Tupper now? Honor to whom, etc. My royal roommate, Captain Cox of the San Francisco Department of the Pacific Mail, was the life and soul of this voyage, and the state dinner the passengers gave him in San Francisco the night after our arrival was a deserved compliment. I do not like to mention names or pay compliments in print, and I seldom do it, but whenever I think of that splendid old chief slaving night and day to make everybody else comfortable and happy and never once thinking of himself, when I remember him, in the goodness of his true sailor's heart, nursing the babies of sea-sick mothers, and doing all he honestly could to keep those babies right end up when he didn't know how to do it, whenever I remember him turning out of his bunk at unreasonable hours of the swallowing my smoke and coughing and barking and yet swearing all the time that tobacco smoke never inconvenienced him. When I remember the night I fell through on him and he climbed out to inquire with earnest solicitude was I hurt, when I recall his honest attempts to help the choir out on Sunday mornings with his stormy Bay of Biscay, which he sang with strict impartiality to all the church tunes which were ever started, when I remembered him in all the varied phases and circumstances of a long sea voyage and yet can call to mind no moment when he was not a generous and a willing helper of all in time of need and a gentleman in the best sense of the term, I feel half an inclination to cast my selfish newspaper policy to the winds and pay him a good hearty compliment in print. It was good to get back to San Francisco again with its generous climate and its clouded skies and, better than all, its cordial people who always shake you by the hand as if they were in solid earnest. When I had finished the business that brought me home, I lectured for the mutual benefit of the public and myself, it affords me great satisfaction to be able to say that there were 1,800 people present and that 1,605 of them paid a gold dollar each to get there. Such is the thirst for reliable information in California. It is pleasant to have greenbacks in the state, but somehow it seems pleasanter to handle only gold and silver. Since then I have been making a flying trip across the state and find myself here in one of my former homes ready to go back over the mountains again to-morrow. They treated me exceedingly well in Carson, as they always do, and made no attempt whatever to rob me. The people themselves treated me well here, but the owners of the theatre charged me four hundred dollars for the privilege of lecturing in their miserable barn. It was an act of Christian charity to pay it, however, for they hadn't made enough to pay their gas-bills for the previous six weeks. I love to go around doing good. Mayday, a contrast. I know exactly how this mayday looks in the Mississippi Valley. There are limpid brooks babbling through forests that are splendid with fresh green foliage. There are grassy nooks here and there, and mysterious avenues carpeted with wild flowers mottled with sunshine and shifting shadows, garlanded with vines that swing down from the trees and cross and recross, with many a graceful sweep, avenues that wind in and out among mossy rocks and hazel thickets till they are lost in the solemn depths of the forest. There are scampering squirrels and the music of birds. There is a blooming fragrance everywhere and the softest, dreamiest summer laziness in the atmosphere. And behold, the May parties are abroad in a glory of ribbons and fleecy costumes, and the beautiful queen of the May, mother, perspires and blushes, and smiles upon her noisy subjects, and is unspeakably proud and happy. Here, eight thousand feet above the sea, is Mayday too, and the wintry wind is howling, and it is snowing like all possessed. The feathery flakes fall so thickly that a hundred yards away I see what I know to be men, moving vaguely through the storm like shapeless blurs upon a fog. The houses are mere outlines, filled between with slanting rays of falling snow. I see no grass, no flowers, no trees, no vines. I hear no song of birds, I breathe no fragrant odours. There is no balmy softness in the air. There are only rocks and sand and sage-brush. A gray barrenness all about, compassed round with bleak mountains capped with snow and turbaned with eternal clouds. It is not paradise, and yet, to me, this was always a pleasant place to live in. You must not think we have no May parties here. I saw one this morning. A tribe of school-children dressed in their best and bearing a national flag had gone up the mountain side and perched upon a barren rock to crown their Queen of May and to inaugurate a summer that will not arrive alas, according to the almanac. But the biting winds drove them behind protecting rocky projections, and sported stormily with the girl's dresses and well nigh whipped their little flag to ribbons. The children shivered and blew their fingers to keep them warm, and had no breath to spare for music in honour of the day. They had chosen high ground with innocent vanity in order that the people might behold their festivities from the town. But in this the unschooled wisdom of youth was sadly at fault. For the world of rolling clouds that brooded upon the summit swung their vast hinged curtains down and hid the poor little picnic utterly from sight. Newspaper articles by Mark Twain, Section 110, The Chicago Republican, May 31st, 1868. Letter from Mark Twain. The silver minds of Nevada. Curious changes since 1863. A more healthy state of affairs. Labor versus speculation. How a superintendent made a fortune. A Nevada execution. Horrible nonchalance of the victim. The summit of the Sierras. From flowers to snowdrifts. Eight days from California to Chicago. Curious changes. Special correspondence of the Chicago Republican. Virginia, Nevada, May 2nd. I find some changes since I was here last. The little wildcat minds are abandoned and forgotten, and the happy millionaires as I fancy, I used to be one of them, have wandered penniless to other climes, or have returned to honest labor for degrading wages. But the majority of the great silver minds on the Comstock load are flourishing. True, the ophir that once ranked first and sold at nearly four thousand dollars a foot is not worth two hundred now. The ghoulden curry that next became chief and sold at six thousand three hundred dollars a foot is worth fifty less than six hundred now. The Danny that reached five hundred is worth seven dollars and fifty cents now. The savage, once worth about three thousand dollars a foot, is worth a hundred and fifty three today. The overman, which was worth five hundred once, sells at a hundred and thirty now. Alpha, once worth fourteen hundred, is worth eighty eight now. You will perceive that somebody has been losing money. But now we have the other side of the picture. Imperial, which I had the honor of selling at thirty dollars a share in the days when I was a wildcat millionaire, is worth two hundred and forty five now. Hale and Norcross, whereof I sold six feet at three hundred dollars a foot, is worth two thousand now, and was up to seven thousand during the winter. Yellowjacket, which I have seen sell at thirty dollars, is worth fourteen hundred today. Crown Point, which I had no option of, as a silver mine, in the old times, sells at twenty two hundred and fifty now. But where are the old familiar adverse claims? That used to range all the way from ten dollars to a thousand a foot in the glorious flush times of sixty three. Where is the Union? The Rovers, the White and Murphy, the Shamrock, the Bajazette and Golden Era, the East India, the Moscow, the Uncle Sam, the Branch Mint, the Ophegrade, the Zanzibar, the Masonic, the Marianne, the Black Hawk, the Dick's Sides, the Irving, which the spirits superintended for poor old wind, and spent twenty or thirty thousand dollars of his hard-earned restaurant money for him, and then left him out in the cold with a dollar. Where is the Cedar Hill, which desperados were employed to defend night and day with many rifles from behind rudely constructed forts and fortifications? Where is the famous Genesee, which United States Senator Stewart and Uncle Johnny Atchinson bought for so fabulous a sum? Where is the Mexican Mine, which ten thousand dollars a foot in gold coin could not buy in sixty three, and whose actual yield of silver was so enormous that common people looked upon the man who owned two-thirds of it as a sort of Prince of the House of Midas? What has become of that wonderful mine, whose name I cannot recollect, but which was so deftly salted, with imperfectly melted half dollars, for the special attraction and capture of McBean Buchanan, Tragedian, and with such brilliant success? Where is the Madison, whose day and night shift of cutthroats used to stand in the dark drifts and tunnels with baited breath and ears pressed to the damp walls, listening to the dull thump of pick and crowbar in the subterranean corridors of the Ofer, ready to receive the miners with murderous assault of knife and pistol whenever they should cleave through the narrow bulwark of quartz that separated them? Where are the Golden Gate and the Golden Age, those mysterious branches of the great Comstock so ingeniously traced to impossible localities by a wealthy gentleman now resident not very far from Chicago, and who will smile, maybe, and maybe wince, when his eye falls upon this paragraph? And finally, a where is the wonderful Echo? Echo, according to ancient usage, simply answers, where? Ah, me, not one of these mighty treasuries of virgin silver is ever heard of nowadays, and many and many a moon has waxed and waned since they were quoted in the Stockboard, except the Mexican mine. They were essentially and outrageously wildcat, every one of them. They were not worth the paper there pictured and beautiful stock was printed on. The Union is dissolved, the White and Murphy is dead, the Rogers is departed, the Shamrock is forgotten, the Bajaset is absorbed to East India, that astonishing mine which was found right in the middle of Seastreet, and which sold at great figures, while at the same time there was a tunnel running directly under that spot which had never a sign of a quartz ledge in it. Humbug, thy name is Legion! I don't know what Legion is, but it seems to be about the right word for a conjunction like this. The Moscow, which used to yield masses of pure silver as black as coal, and nests of silver wire, that was as beautiful as the cunningest jeweler could have wrought it, is swallowed up in the capacious maw of the Ofer. The branch Mint, the Ofer grade, and more than a thousand others I could mention, were never anything but barren, barren rocks and dirt, and like that curious production that some lunatic brought here from the East, the people's gold and silver mining company, are long ago abandoned and forgotten. In those old days when we reporters went dangling down a dark shaft at the end of a crazy rope with a candle in our teeth, to the depth of two or three hundred feet, we felt as if we were getting into the very bowels of the earth. We prowled uncomfortably through muddy, crumbling drifts and tunnels, and were happy no more until the man up at the bullet hole that showed us a far-off glimpse of blue sky, wound us up with his windlass, and set us in the cheerful light of the sun again. But now they send me whizzing down a compactly boarded well, thirteen hundred feet below the surface of the earth, and deliver me into the midst of a mighty cavern, timbered up and supported by a dim wilderness of logs and beams and braces, that cross and recross, and tower upward till they fade and vanish in the thick darkness far above my head. I know that I am buried alive down, down, down in the remote center of the earth, and feel the hot crust of hell beneath my feet. A short stay there is sufficient. I see from whence those great frosted masses of silver bullion come that I look upon in the mills and assay offices every day, and then I am satisfied to be sent whizzing upward toward the earth again by ponderous steam machinery. I see many, many changes, but most noticeable is the change from the bootless, feverish, ruinous speculation in undeveloped minds to sober, remunerating labor on veins of great and lasting value. It is the change from mere speculation to regular, systematic business, and in it lies a firm future prosperity for Nevada. I hear the stamp mills thundering, and I see the carts laden with massive silver bricks, each aload for a man, and I feel that the silver land is safe, at last, beyond the reach of those disastrous panics that once threatened utterly to destroy her. Brief Mention of a Friend An acquaintance shook hands with me in such a patronizing manner yesterday that I am moved to make him the text of a paragraph that will serve to illustrate what one may term a state of things. When I first knew this man he hadn't assent. He did not put on airs, then. Now he is the superintendent of one of the great silver mines, and has grown rich. You may not believe that a superintendent can grow absolutely rich in four years on a salary of from ten to twenty thousand dollars a year, but such is really the case. Ordinary superintendents are content to covertly receive a present of a dollar or so from each ton of ore they sell to a mill-man, but my man's ambition soared higher than that. He took lumber belonging to the great corporation that employed him, and built a little mill of his own with it. He built that mill below the company's mill, too, which was wise. Then he took other of the company's lumber, and built a string of sluice boxes that reached clear from the company's mill to his own. After that he worked the company's rock in the company's mill, and got sixteen dollars a ton out of it, and turned the money over to the company, which didn't declare a dividend. Then he took the tailings from that same rock, carried them through his sluices to his little private mill, worked them over again, and out of every ton he got thirty dollars. Which money was his own, of course, and he never gave any of it to the company. Now you can understand how a man can get rich in four years on twelve thousand dollars a year when the company furnishes him a dwelling house and horses and carriages free, and this is the moral beggar that shakes hands patronizingly with a spotless and virtuous newspaper correspondent. The people used to say it was a shame that the company did not put an injunction on that little private mill and stop its confiscations, but the company did not. The company was too much accustomed to queer taxation by superintendents, perhaps, but at last an offended Providence put an injunction on that mill, sent it in the form of a flood that washed the mill away. Happily there is no appeal from an injunction when Providence puts it on. Nevadians will know who I am speaking of. Novel Entertainment. But I am tired talking about mines. I saw a man hang the other day, John Melanie of France. He was the first man ever hanged in this city, or country either, where the first twenty-six graves in the cemetery were those of men who died by shots and stabs. I never had witnessed an execution before and did not believe I could be present at this one without turning away my head at the last moment. But I did not know what fascination there was about the thing, then. I only went because I thought I ought to have a lesson, and because I believed that if ever it would be possible to see a man hanged and derive satisfaction from the spectacle, this was the time. For John Melanie was no common murderer, else he would have gone free. He was a heartless assassin. A year ago he secreted himself under the house of a woman of the town who lived alone, and in the dead watches of the night he entered her room, knocked her senseless with a billet of wood as she slept, and then strangled her with his fingers. He carried off all her money, her watches, and every article of her wearing apparel, and the next day with quiet effrontery put some crepe on his arm, and walked in her funeral procession. Afterward he secreted himself under the bed of another woman of the town, and in the middle of the night was crawling out with a slung shot in one hand and a butcher-knife in the other, when the woman discovered him, alarmed in the neighborhood with her screams, and he retreated from the house. Melanie sold dresses and jewellery here and there until some of the articles were identified as belonging to the murdered courtesan. He was arrested, and then his later intended victim recognized him. After he was tried and condemned to death he used to curse and swear at all who approached him, and he once grossly insulted some young sisters of charity who came to minister kindly to his wants. The morning of the execution he joked with the barber, and told him not to cut his throat. He wanted the distinction of being hanged. This is the man I wanted to see hung. I joined the appointed physicians, so that I might be admitted within the charmed circle and be close to Melanie. Now I never more shall be surprised at anything. That assassin got out of the closed carriage, and the first thing his eye fell upon was that awful gallows towering above a great sea of human heads, out yonder on the hillside, and his cheek never blanched, and never a muscle quivered. He strode firmly away, and skipped gaily up the steps of the gallows like a happy girl. He looked around upon the people calmly. He examined the gallows with a critical eye, and with the pleased curiosity of a man who sees for the first time a wonder he has often heard of. He swallowed frequently, but there was no evidence of trepidation about him, and not the slightest air of braggadocio whatever. He prayed with a priest, and then drew out an abusive manuscript and read from it in a clear, strong voice without a quaver in it. It was a broad, thin sheet of paper, and he held it apart in front of him as he stood. If ever his hand trembled in even the slightest degree had never quivered that paper. I watched him at that sickening moment when the sheriff was fitting the noose about his head and pushing the knot this way and that to get it nicely adjusted to the hollow under his ear, and if they had been measuring Melanie for a shirt he could not have been more perfectly serene. I never saw anything like that before. My own suspense was almost unbearable. My blood was leaping through my veins, and my thoughts were crowding and trampling upon each other. Twenty moments to live. Fifteen to live. Ten to live. Five. Three. Heaven and earth how the time galloped. And yet that man stood there unmoved, though he knew that the sheriff was reaching deliberately for the drop while the black cap descended over his quiet face. Then down through the hole in the scaffold a strap bound of figures shot like a dart. A dreadful shiver started at the shoulders, violently convulsed the whole body all the way down, and died away with a tense drawing of the toes downward, like a double fist, and all was over. I saw it all. I took exact note of every detail, even to Melanie's considerably helping to fix the leather strap that bound his legs together and his quiet removal of his slippers, and I never wish to see it again. I can see that stiff straight corpse hanging there yet, with its black pillow-cased head turned rigidly to one side, and the purple streaks creeping through the hands and driving the fleshy hue of life before them. Ugg. Up among the clouds. I rather dread the trip over the Sierra Nevada to-morrow. Now that you can come nearly all the way from Sacramento to this city by rail, one would have supposed that the journey is pleasant enough, but it is not. It is more irksome than it was before. More tiresome on account of your being obliged to shift from cars to stages and back again every now and then in the mountains. We used to rattle across all the way by stage, and never minded at all, save that we had to ride thirty hours without stopping. The other day we left the summer valleys of California in the morning, left grassy slopes and orchards of cherry, peach, and apple in full bloom, left strawberries and cream and vegetable gardens, and a mild atmosphere that was heavy with the perfume of flowers, and at noon we stood seven thousand feet above the sea, with snow banks more than a hundred feet deep almost within rifle shot of us. We were at Cisco, the summit of the Sierras, where for miles the railway trains rush along under tall wooden sheds built to protect them from snows and the milder sort of avalanches. We had been running alongside of perpendicular snow banks whose upper edges were much above the cars. At Cisco the snow was twenty or thirty feet deep. I said to an old friend who lives there, good deal of snow here. No! There ain't now, but we had considerable during the winter. Without meaning any offence, what might you call considerable? Sixty-eight feet on a dead level and more a fallen. Good morning. Good morning. Stay awhile. Excuse me, my time is limited. He spoke the truth, and yet he had the hardy hood to spend two years there. Leaving Cisco they sent us twenty-four miles in four-horse sleighs around and among the tremendous mountain peaks, grand with their regalia of storm clouds. We swept by the company's stables on a level with their roofs, so deep was the snow. Taking the advice of people I deemed wiser than myself, I had wrapped up myself in overcoats and put on overshoes. But here in the midst of these snowy wastes the sun flamed out as hot as August, and I had to take off everything I could. It was a perfect tropical day. I got badly sunburned and partly snow-blind, and I sweated more and growled more than I had in a year before. All this in a four-horse sleigh in the midst of snow full twenty feet deep. All I wish to say is that I do not despise to go sleigh riding in the summer time, and the next time I have to do such a thing I mean to have a fan and some ice-cream and a suit of summer linen along. The railroad is progressing rapidly. It is promised that those who take the Overland well along toward July shall go hence to Chicago in eight days. Amen! I came very near starting Overland to Chicago today, with the Nevada delegates to the convention, but I will wait till June. I beg to commend the California and Nevada delegates to your kind courtesies, however especially the Nevada one, whose heart is so large that it distends his body and deceives strangers into the notion that he is corpulent, and the noisy California one with the cordial manner and the enormous mustache. They be friends of mine. Mark Twain End of Section 110 This is Section 111 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain Section 111 The Chicago Republican August 23, 1868 Letter from Mark Twain Immense Immigration to California The Labor Exchange and What It Has Done Changes in the Manor of Life in California The Panama Railroad How Americans Get Up a Revolution on the Isthmus Hartford, Connecticut The Paradise of Insurance, Mon One or Two California Items Special Correspondence of the Chicago Republican New York, August 17, 1868 We had a pleasant voyage from California. The travel to and from has diminished considerably, for it has its regular seasons, and the season is over for the present. It will open again in a few months. The exodus of people from the Atlantic States to California within the past nine months has been something surprising. The ships of the Pacific Mail Company carried 40,000 persons to San Francisco during that time. The ships of the Opposition Line must have carried about half as many. The former company dispatches four steamers a month, and the latter company two. The officers of the ship I came in from the Isthmus said the last was the lightest passenger trip outward from New York they had had for eight months, and yet they had upward of 800 persons on board. During more months than one, their passenger list reached about 5,000. When I went out in this vessel five months ago she had 1,200 souls on board, less 15. This grand rush to California of 60,000 people in nine months provokes little or no remark now, but was the rush of 49 greater? Several things contributed toward inaugurating this new flight of the people westward. California and Oregon suddenly sprang to a considerable importance as wheat-producing states, the brand of the former taking to itself the chief rank in the eastern markets and still holding it. Farms could be purchased at reasonable figures in both states. Both climates possessed inviting features. The opening of the great China mail line of steamers and the rapid advancement being made toward the completion of the Pacific Railroad suggested that broad new fields of labor, capital, and enterprise would be thrown open shortly on the western seaboard and continue to widen and augment in importance with every voyage of the steamers and every section added to the railway. There were contributors, but the chief contributors to the exodus were the untoward condition of things in the Atlantic States last year and the reduction of fares on the California steamers. Just in the midst of the sores distress of the winter when mills and factories were suspending work and thousands of men were being thrown out of employment just too late to enjoy the eight-hour system and the augmented wages they had fought so manfully for, the opposition line and the regular mail line of California steamers began a system of mutual throat-cutting in the matter of freight and fares, which has continued to the present time. First cabin fares suddenly came down from four hundred dollars or five hundred dollars to one hundred and fifty dollars, steerage fares even below fifty dollars often. It was cheaper to spend three weeks at sea between here and California than to stay at home. Swarms of men who were idle and who saw no prospect of employment in the States found California forced upon their attention all at once. There was a great demand there for working men of all descriptions. The wages were excellent. Transportation thither was cheap. Sixty thousand men seized up on this inviting opportunity to better their fortunes. The Pacific steamers still carry three thousand immigrants out of New York every month, and the prospect is good that the rush will begin again with the opening of the new season, say, about February. Has the Pacific Coast found employment for these people? Yes. For every one that asked it, it can find work for as many more, I think. It need not be supposed that all these immigrants have remained in California. On the contrary, probably half the number or more have spread themselves abroad over Oregon, Washington Territory, the British Possessions, Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, and Montana, and a few have straggled to Japan and China. San Francisco was bewildered for a while. She found herself besieged by a vast army of unexpected visitors, many of them without assent, and she did not know what to do with them. As St. Paul justly remarks in his Epistle to the Fenyans, necessity is the mother of invention. The businessmen of San Francisco invented the California Labor Exchange. It proved equal to the emergency. For the past six or seven months it has found labor and the customary wages for from fifteen hundred to two thousand immigrants a month, her full share of the immigration. The others scattered abroad, as I have said. The Labor Exchange not only found employment for fifty, sixty, or seventy men a day when I left San Francisco, the demand upon it for various classes of laborers and mechanics was greater than the supply. Every steamer day, incoming, its offices were crowded with immigrants. They were sent to work in mines, mills, factories, on railroads, and in shops. Yet still there were orders on the books that could not be filled, as I have just said. With the present light trips of the steamers, five hundred passengers, the Exchange finds its laborers exceedingly light no doubt. California is a very good state to go to. It is not so speculative a country, as it was, in matters of pure business. It has sobered down considerably and taken upon itself the steady going habits of legitimate trade and commerce. Formerly, to be a Californian, was to be a speculator. A man could not help it. One man tried to be otherwise, but he was only kicking against fate. While everybody was wild with a spirit of speculation and full of plans for making sudden fortunes, he said he would just farm along quietly and slowly gain a modest competency and so be happy. But his first crop of onions happened to be about the only onions produced that year. He sold it for a hundred thousand dollars and retired. People who buy San Francisco lots now cannot help being speculators any more than if they bought Chicago lots. But I mean that wild speculations in candles, rice, mining stocks, and such things are not nearly so much in order now as they were formerly. The same remark will apply to the sister state of Nevada. The bullion yield of the two states combined for the present year will reach fifty million dollars, possibly more. At present prices the California wheat crop for the present year would sell for about sixty million dollars greenbacks. California wheat is worth from forty to fifty cents more here than any other brand, if I read the market reports aright. I have been led to write this chapter from seeing several flings in the eastern papers at the absurdity of emigrating to the Pacific coast, in view of the fact that the emigrants were about as badly off here as they could well be, and yet were being furnished with work and good wages as fast as they landed in San Francisco. It seemed to me that the point of order of the eastern press was not well taken. As far as California politics are concerned I can only say that everything was promising that the state would go Republican at the presidential election. Mr. Colfax made himself very popular when he was out there a few years ago, and the fact that he has been so useful an odd fellow is something in his favor in a state where that order flourishes so luxuriously as it does in California. Besides, the election of Governor Haight was not strictly a Democratic victory. The Republican candidate was very unpopular, even with his own party, while Mr. Haight stood well with all. I wish to talk of this far-off land of California while yet I may. This is the last opportunity I shall have of speaking of it in that sense, for by next May, or at least by next July, it will have been hauled over all the mountains by the locomotives of the Pacific Railroad till it will be so near Chicago that you can see it with a good spy-glass on a clear day. And you can visit it in five days, then. A Railroad Mint. What the legend says. This item about railroads suggests that wonderful enterprise, the Panama Railroad. We took the train at Panama, clattered for two or three hours through a tangled wilderness of tropical vegetation, and discharged ourselves in Aspenwall. It is only forty-five miles. Going and coming, that little road has carried about one hundred thousand passengers for the California steamers during the past twelve months, and charged every soul of them twenty-five dollars fair. About seventy thousand of them paid twenty-five dollars a piece in gold. The thirty thousand paid twenty-five a piece, also, but whether it was in gold or greenbacks I cannot say. One could travel by rail from New York to Chicago, about one thousand one hundred miles, I think it is, for less money, when I went over the route last. The road charged them for extra baggage, too. It charges like smoke for freight, likewise. Ten cents a pound for ordinary freight, I am told. It does a heavy freight and passenger business for the French and English lines of steamers in addition. Its stock stands at a premium of two hundred and forty in the New York Board. It is probably the best railroad stock in the world. It was a hard road to build. The tropical fevers slaughtered the laborers by wholesale. It is a popular saying that every railroad tie from Panama to Aspenwall rests upon a corpse. It ought to be a substantial road, being so well provided with sleepers, eternal ones, and otherwise. It is claimed that this small railroad enterprise cost the lives of ten thousand men. It is possible. I have been told some things, which I will jot down here, not vouching for their truth. The Panama Railroad was an American project in the first place. Then the English got a commanding interest in it, and it became an English enterprise. They grew somewhat sick of it, and it began to swap back until it became American again. The Americans finished it. It proved a good investment, but the right-of-way granted by the Colombian states was limited to only a few years. The Americans tried to get the term extended, but they were not particularly popular with the governments of the Ismus and could not succeed. Delegations of heavy guns were sent down, but they could not prevail. They offered a few millions of dollars and government transportation free. President Mosquita declined. The English saw an opportunity now. They made an effort to secure to themselves the right-of-way whose term was so soon to expire. They were popular with the Ismian chiefs. They made the central governments some valuable presents—gunboats and such things. They were progressing handsomely. Things looked gloomy for Americans. Possibly you know that they have a revolution in Central America every time the moon changes. All you have to do is to get out in the street in Panama or Aspenwall and give a whoop, and a thing is done. Shout down with the administration and up with somebody else, and revolution follows. Nine-tenths of the people break for home, slam the doors behind them, and get under the bed. The other tenth go and overturn the government and banish the officials from president down to notary public. Then for the next thirty days they inquire anxiously of all comers what sort of a stir their little chivalry made in Europe and America. By that time the next revolution is ready to be touched off, and out they go. Very well. Two American gentlemen, who were well acquainted with the Ismus people and their ways, were commissioned by the Panama Railroad Company about the time of the opposition English effort to go down to the Ismus and make a final trial for an extension of the right-of-way franchise. Did they take treasure-boxes along? Did they take gun-boats? Did they take other royal persuaders of like description? Quite the contrary. They took down twelve hundred baskets of champagne and a ship-load of whiskey. In three days they had the entire population as drunk as lords, the president in jail, the National Congress crazy with delirium tremens, and a gorgeous revolution in full blast. In three or more they were at sea again with the document of an extension of the railroad franchise to ninety-nine years in their pockets, procured for and in consideration of the sum of three millions of dollars in coin and transportation of Ismus stores and soldiers over the road free of charge. How's that? That is the legend. That is, as one hears it in idle gossip with steamer employees about the ship's decks on lazy moonlit nights at sea. I don't know whether it is true or not. I don't care, either. I only know that the American company have got the franchise extended to ninety-nine years, and that all parties concerned are satisfied and agreeable. A Genuine Old Salt. Anchored in the harbour of Panama we found the opposition steamer America in command of Captain Ned Wakeman, Mariner, for forty years. I made a voyage with him once. It was very late at night, but we borrowed the captain's gig and boat's crew and went out and paid the old gentleman a visit. He was as tempestuous of exterior, as hearty of manner and as stormy of voice as ever, and just as good a man as exists anywhere. His legs and arms and back and breast were just as splendid as ever with grand red and blue anchors and ships and flags and goddesses of liberty done in the perfection of the tattooing art. A stranger would have thought his ship's crew must be at least a mile away when he shouted, Bear a hand, there, men! Stand by to take that painter! Assist the gentleman up! Glad to see you, glad to see you all, gentlemen! You are as welcome as the flowers of May! We sat down in his private cabin. You have been lying up here at anchor a good while, Captain Wakeman. You must be getting tired of it. Tired of it? It's no name for it, sir. No name for it. Been here six months, sir. Never was so tired of a ship before, since I made my first voyage, sir. Since I made my first voyage. I didn't know what ships was, then. I went down to New York City. Never been out of the interior of the state before. But I wanted to go to see, you know. I have been reading all sorts of cussed bosh about sailors and voyages and adventures, and I thought it was be beautiful, don't you see? Beautiful! Found some more boys there from different places, and they wanted to go to see. We cruised around the streets a while, and one day we see an old gentleman, a venerable, noble-looking old Daniel come to judgment he was, and when he backed his sails and ranged up alongside and gave us a friendly hail, I knowed that a man with that figure and that voice couldn't own less than seven churches. I knowed it, sir. He smiled a smile he did. That was as lovely as Barnagat, light in a storm. And he put his hand down gently on my head, so, and says as sweet as searing, Wouldn't you like to go on a beautiful voyage to see my son? Yes, sir, says I. We all would. Ah, noble boys, noble youths, what is your name, my little man? Edward, sir, Edward Wakeman. Ah, Edward, beautiful name. Had a dear brother once by the name of Edward. Dead now. Oh, God! Where do you come from, Edward? Come from the interior, sir. Ah, from the interior, is it? Lovely country, lovely! Had a cherished nephew born in the interior once. And what is your name, my little man? Johnny, sir, Johnny Barker. Ah, Johnny, touching name. One of the blessed apostles named Johnny. And where do you come from, Johnny? Connecticut, sir. Connecticut, did you say? Ah, happy climb. Glorious climb, how I have longed to visit that celestial spot. And what is your name, my little man? Augustus William Mayberry, sir. Augustus William. Stately name. Beautiful name. Had a beloved relative by the name of Augustus William. Tore up in a carting machine. Oh, God! And where do you come from, Augustus? New Hampshire, sir. Let me embrace you, noble state. Banner state of the world. Had a worshipped uncle hung there once unjustly. Unjustly! Well, now, Edward and Johnny, beautiful name. Name of blessed disciple and Augustus William. Get your little things ready, and take them aboard the Polly down at the slip, and get you some nice warm mittens and some nice warm socks to keep your little hands and feet warm when we're going round the horn. That's all you'll want, because when we get up in the Pacific it'll be all warm and delightful and beautiful, like a guarding of Eden. Clear up to realms of eternal summer, where the whales are that we are going after. I never felt so happy in my life, sir, never since I was born, sir. Love that hoary, venerable old angel, as if he was my father, sir. On board the ship, a going out of that harbor, he was a-feeding us boys on raisins and a beaming on us, and a Johnny-ing and Augustus Williaming us to that degree that we was intoxicated with happiness, as you might say. Clear up to the minute the pilot's painter was let go, sir. But the minute that pilot was gone and that pilot boat painted towards New York, and the Polly's a scutting for the equator, he was a different man. He catch the nigger steward by the top of the head and bounced him on the deck a couple of times and says, you miserable charcoal hound, wanted to quit the ship at the last minute because your family's sick, did ya? I'll learn you, you mangy lying thieving offspring of a tar barrel. Take that and see how you like it. And he bounced him again. Next he tackled a sailor and says, you sneaking worthless brute, you want to go shore and buy coffee to drink because the ship don't furnish it, do ya? I'll learn you, you hog. Smell that, and that, and that, you lubber. And he caved his head in on three sides with a belaying pin till it was the shape of a plug hat that's been through the wars. Then he made just three jumps aft as high as the yard arm and came down a belching fire and smoke and a shaking himself up and a sawing his arms around like he had a thunderstorm tearing him up inside and says, you Connecticut son of a thief, up to that main truck and a jiffy, you new Hampshire ash cat, shin up that mizzen nest, and going to stand around here and suck your thumbs all day. What I hire you for, you scum, you dirt, you vermin, you interior son of a skunk, aloft with you, I'll tar your legs off and brain you with them. Hell in furries, peers like a man can't be master in his own ship. And from that day out, the howling old Norwester never called us by no other name, but you Connecticut son of a thief, you New Hampshire ash cat, you interior son of a skunk, never been so tired of a ship since till they pull this America out of commission for six months, sir. Never, sir. Never in the whole world, sir. Take my bloody oath of it, sir. You hear Ned Wakeman, sir." The old gentleman told his remarkable dream, and about hanging the Negro in the Chincha Islands, and about his perilous cruise in a buggy, and about his voyage to the Monkey Islands, and the entertaining legend of the rats of Liverpool, and many other pleasant bits of history, and then we bad him good-bye at two or three o'clock in the morning and rode away again. Hartford. I have been about ten days in Hartford, and shall return there before very long. I think it must be the handsome of city in the Union in summer. It is the moneyed centre of the state, and one of its capitals also, for Connecticut is so law-abiding and so addicted to law, that there is not room enough in one city to manufacture all of the articles they need. Hartford is the place where the insurance companies all live. They use some of the houses for dwellings. The others are for insurance offices. So it is easy to see that there is quite a spirit of speculative enterprise there. Many of the inhabitants have retired from business, but the others labour along in the old customary way as presidents of insurance companies. It is said that a citizen went west from there once to be gone a week. He was gone three. A friend said, What kept you so long? You must have enjoyed yourself. Yes, I did enjoy myself, and that delayed me some, but that was not the worst of it. The people heard there was a Hartford man aboard the train, and so they stopped me at every station trying to get me to be president of an insurance company. But I suppose it was a lie. Personal. I shall be here only a week yet before I start out to Cleveland, Chicago, and St. Louis to collect my rents, but New York will be my headquarters all the time anyhow, and therefore I beg permission to say that all letters addressed to me at the Everett House, Union Square, will reach me. Mark Twain. End of section 111 This is section 112 of newspaper articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper articles by Mark Twain, section 112, The Galaxy. The Galaxy May 1870 The aged Professor Silliman took the homely-looking specimen of New Jersey Coal, and said he would make a test and determine its quality. The next day the owners of the grand discovery waited on him again, eager to hear the verdict which was to make, or mar, their fortunes. The Professor said with that impressive solemnity which always marked his manner, Gentlemen, I understand you to say that this property is situated upon a hilltop. Consequently the situation is prominent. It is valuable, immensely valuable, though as a coal mine I am obliged to observe that it is a failure. Fence it in, gentlemen, fence it in, and hold to it through good and evil fortune till the last day, for I am convinced that it will be the best point from which to view the sublime spectacle of the final conflagration. I feel satisfied that if any part of the earth shall remain un-injured after that awful fire, it will be this coal mine of yours. Just about the close of that long hard winter, said the Sunday school superintendent, as I was wending toward my duties one brilliant Sabbath morning, I glanced down toward the levee, and there lay the city of Hartford. No mistake about it there she was, puffing and panting after her long pilgrimage through the ice. A glad sight? Well, I should say so. And then came a pang, right away, because I should have to instruct empty benches, sure. The youngsters would all be off welcoming the first steamboat of the season. You can imagine how surprised I was when I opened the door and saw half the benches full. My gratitude was free, large, and sincere. I resolved that they should not find me unappreciative. I said, boys, you cannot think how proud it makes me to see you here, nor what renewed assurance it gives me of your affection. I confess that I said to myself, as I came along and saw that the city of Hartford was in, no, but is she though? And as quick as any flash of lightning, I stood in the presence of empty benches. I had brought them the news myself. A journal has at last been found which excuses the inhumanity of Captain Eyre. It is the Toronto Globe. It even says the Oneida ran into the Bombay, which she doubtless did, if she was on her way to America's stern foremost. There are some natures which never grow large enough to speak out and say a bad act is a bad act, until they have inquired into the politics, or the nationality of the man who did it. And they are not really scarce, either. Kane is branded a murderer so heartily and unanimously in America, only because he was neither a Democrat nor a Republican. The Fiji Islanders abuse of Kane ceased very suddenly when the white man mentioned casually that Kane was a Fiji Islander. The next remark of the savage, after an awkward pause, was, well, what did Abel come fooling around there for? It is stated with a show of authority that diamond engagement rings are rapidly going out of fashions and emeralds, opals, or pearls taking their place. It is an excellent move, and one which should meet with hearty sympathy. If the idea be followed up faithfully to its extremist capabilities, matrimony will be brought within the reach of all.