 This is Section 27 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section 27, Territorial Enterprise, February 1866, part 2. Territorial Enterprise, February 1866. Funny. Chief Burke's Star Chamber Board of Police Commissioners is the funniest institution extant, and the way he conducts it is the funniest theatrical exhibition in San Francisco. Now, to see the chief fly around and snatch up accuser and accused before the commission when any policeman is charged with misconduct in the public prints, you would imagine that fearful commission was really going to raise the very devil, but it is all humbug, display, fuss, and feathers. The chief brings his policeman out as sinless as an angel, unless the testimony be heavy enough and strong enough almost to hang an ordinary culprit, in which case a penalty of four or five days' suspension is awarded. Wouldn't you call that legislature steeped in stupidity which appointed a father to try his own son for crimes against the state? Of course! And knowing that the father must share the disgrace if the son is found guilty, would you ever expect a conviction? Certainly not. And would you expect the father's blind partiality for his own offspring to weigh heavily against evidence given against that son? Assuredly you would. Well, this police commission is a milder form of that same principle. Chief Burke makes all these policemen, by appointment, bridge them, and feels something of apparent solicitude for them, and yet, if any charge is brought against them, he is the judge before whom they are tried. Isn't it perfectly absurd? I think so. It takes all three of those commissioners to convict—the verdict must be unanimous—therefore, since every conviction of one of the chief's offspring must in the nature of things be a sort of reflection upon himself, you cannot be surprised to know that police officers are very seldom convicted before the police commissioners. Though the man's sins were blacker than night, the chief can always prevent conviction by simply withholding his consent. And this extraordinary power works both ways, too. See how simple and easy a matter it was for the chief to say to a political obstruction in his path, You are dismissed, McMillan. I know of nothing to your discredit as an officer, but you are an aspirant of my position and I won't keep a stick to break my own back with. He simply said, Go! and he had to shove. If he had been one of the chief's pets, he might have committed a thousand rascalities, but the powerful commission would have shielded and saved him every time. It would have made a tremendous hubbub and a showy and noisy pretense of trying him and then brought him out blameless and shown him to be an abused and persecuted innocent and entitled to the public commiseration. Why, the other day, in one of the commission trials, where a newspaper editor was summoned as a prosecutor, they detailed a substitute for the real delinquent and tried him. There may be more joke than anything else about that statement, but I heard it told anyhow, and then it is plausible. It is just characteristic of star-chamber tactics. You ought to see how it makes the chief wince for anyone to say a word against a policeman. They are his offspring, and he feels all a father's sensitiveness to remarks affecting their good name. It is natural that he should, and it is wrong to do violence to this purely human trait by making him swear that he will impartially try them for their crimes when the thing is perfectly impossible. He cannot be impartial. Is it human nature to judge with strict impartiality his own friends, his own dependent, his own offspring? But what I mean to speak of, if I ever get through with these preliminary remarks, is the fact that the flag yesterday said one thing severe about the police, and right away the reporter was summoned to stand before that terrible tribunal, the police commissioners, and prove his charges. Poor, innocent, why, he never can prove anything. They will come, Iowa justice on him, and he will swear he saw the prisoner do so and so, and the chief will say, Captain Baker, send up thirty-five policemen to swear that they didn't see this thing done. They always managed to have the bulk of testimony on their side anyhow. If Punch's pilot was on the police, he could crucify the savior again with perfect impunity. But he would have to let Barabbas and that other policeman alone, who were crucified along with him formally. There is a bill in the hands of a San Francisco legislator which proposes to put the police appointing power in the hands of the mayor, the district attorney, and the city and county attorney, and the trial of policemen and power to punish or dismiss them in the hands of the county and police court prosecuting attorney. This would leave Chief Burke nothing to do but attend to his own legitimate business of keeping the police department up to their work all the time, and is just the kind of bill that ought to pass. It would reduce the chief from Autocrat of San Francisco, with absolute power, to the simple rank of chief of police, with no power to meddle in outside affairs or do anything but mind his own particular business. He told me, not more than a week ago, that such an arrangement would exactly suit him. Now we shall see if it suits him. Don't you dare send any log-rolling wire-pulling squads of policemen to Sacramento, Mr. Burke? Territorial Enterprise, February 1866 Spiritual Insanity I, together with the Bulletin, have watched with deep concern the distress being wrought in our midst by spiritualism during the past week or two. I, like the Bulletin, have done all I could to crush out the destroyer. I have published full reports of the seances of the so-called Friends of Progress, and the Bulletin has left out three columns of printed paragraphs pasted together by its New York correspondent to make room for a report of the spiritualist Laura Cuppey's lecture, and I have followed in the Bulletin's wake and shouted every few days, another victim of the wretched delusion called spiritualism, and like that paper have stated the number of persons it took to hold him and where his mother resided. In some instances, which have come under my notice, these symptoms are particularly sad. How touching it was on Monday evening in the Board of Supervisors, a body which should be a concentration of the wisdom and intellect of the city, to see Supervisor McCoppen, bereft of his accustomed sprightliness, and subdued, subjugated by spiritualism, rise in his place, and with bowed head and stooping body, and frightened eyes peering from under overhanging brows, ejaculate in sepulchral tones, FEE! FOR! FUM! Great heavens to hear him say that, and then sit down with the air of a man who has settled a mooted question for ever, and done the work in a solid, substantial manner. And it touched me to the very heart to see the mayor of the city, a man of commanding presence and solemn demeanor, get up and repeat the following as if it were part of a litany. Three blind mice! See how they run! The farmer's wife! She cut off their tails with the carving-knife! See how they run! He then sat down and leaned his face in his hands, and Dr. Raul got up and said, SPIRITUAL DEPARTMENT! PAID SPIRITUAL DEPARTMENT! When I was a Republican I poisoned rebels, now I am a Democrat! I poison Republicans! Woe, woe, woe unto the traducers of the new light! Woe, woe, woe to the enemies of the new light! Woe, woe, woe unto them that hear the cuppy and the foy and the ministering spirits that fan us with invisible wings as they sweep by and whisper eternal truths in our ears! Woe, woe, woe! Woe, ha! Woe, ha! Woe, ha! Buck you, Duke!" said Mr. Ashbury impressively. Mr. McCoppen, counting on his fingers, one airy, oh airy, ickery, Anne, Phyllisie, Phallalassie, Nicholas John, Quivy, Quavy, English Navy, Stinklem, Stanklem, Buck, alas my poor, poor country! Mr. Schrader said, with deep feeling but without gesticulation or straining after effect, Let dogs delight to bark and bite for it is their nature thus, your little hands were never made to tear out each other's eyes with— My eyes filled with tears to see this body of really able men driveling in this foolish way, and as I walked sadly out I said, This is more spiritualism. The Bulletin and I will soon have to record the departure of the Board of Supervisors for Stockton. Poor creatures, to have kept out of the asylum on one pretext or another so long, and then to fall at last through so weak a thing as spiritualism. Reprinted in the Golden Era, February 18, 1866. Territorial Enterprise, February 1866. The Signal Corps. Saw something the other night which surprised me more than my late investigation of spiritualism. It was some examples of the methods of the United States Signal Corps to telegraph information from point to point on the battlefields of the rebellion. The Signal Corps mediums were Colonel Wicker of the Russian Telegraph Expedition and Mr. Jerome, Secretary of Mr. Conway of the same, both of whom were distinguished officers of the Signal Corps throughout the war. Besides these two gentlemen, there were only two other members of the Corps on the coast. In the late war a Signal Party was always stationed on the highest available point on the battlefield, and by waving flags they could telegraph any desired messages, word for word, to other Signal Stations ten miles off. At night, when torches were used, these messages have been read forty miles away with a powerful glass. The flag or torch is waved right, left, up and down, and each movement represents a letter of the alphabet, I suppose, in as much as any villainous combination of letters and syllables you can get up can be readily telegraphed in this way with a good deal of expedition. These gentlemen I speak of sent messages the other night with walking sticks, with their hands, their fingers, their eyes, and even their mustaches. It is a little too deep for me. One sat on one side of a large room, and the other at the opposite side. I wrote a long sentence and gave it to Jerome. He made a few rapid passes with his right arm like a crazy orchestra leader, and Colonel Wicker called off the sentence word for word. I confess that I suspected there was collusion there, so I whispered my next telegram to Jerome. The passes were made as before, and Colonel Wicker read them without a bulk. I selected from a book a sentence which was full of uncommon, unpronounceable foreign words, pointed it out to Colonel Wicker, and he telegraphed it across to Jerome without a blunder. Then I gave Jerome another telegram. He placed two fingers on his knees and raised up one and then the other for a while, and the Colonel read the message. I furnished the latter with the following written telegram. General Jackson was wounded at first fire. He went through with a series of elaborate winks with his eyes, and that other signal sharp repeated the sentence correctly. I wrote, thirteen additional cases of cholera reported this morning. The accomplished Colonel telegraphed it to his confederate by simply stroking his mustache. There must be a horrible imposition about this thing somewhere, but I cannot get at it. They say that when they are in lecture rooms and parlors, once they are not close enough to speak to each other, they telegraph their comment on the company with their fingers on their mustaches, or by gently refreshing themselves with a fan. The Signal Corps was one of the most important arms of the military service in the late war. It saved many a battle to the Union that must otherwise have been lost. Yet many of the officers of the Army did not believe in its efficiency, regarded it as an ornamental innovation, and bore it strong ill-will. At the Battle of Winchester, the officer in command after General Shields was wounded, had pressing need of reinforcements. The reserve were in full view six miles away. The acting general asked the signal officer if he could order up a brigade. He said he could. Then do it, said the general. But, said he, to make everything sure, I will dispatch an orderly for the reinforcements. The signal officer set his flags waving and telegraphed, send up a brigade on the double quick. Before the orderly was a hundred yards off, the anxious general gazing through his field-glass saw a brigade wheel into the plane, peel their coats and knapsacks off and throw them down, and come swooping across on the double quick. By God! Here they come! Send back the orderly, said the general. But I didn't think it could be done. Reprinted in the Golden Era, February 18, 1866. Territorial Enterprise, February 25 through 28, 1866. This column has been partially reconstructed from the sketches that were later reprinted in the first edition of the celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County and other sketches. From our resident correspondent, San Francisco, February 23. Voyage of the Ajax. The steamer Ajax returned from her pioneer trip to Honolulu yesterday about noon, bringing forty or fifty passengers and a large quantity of freight. She was fourteen days and four hours going down, and between eleven and twelve days coming back. Her crowd of invited guests had a delightful time at Honolulu visiting citizens and planters, dining out, driving here and there, attending parties and prospecting all localities of interest. The people neglected no opportunity of making the visit an agreeable one to their guests, and even His Majesty the King gave them a royal feast. I was talking to one of the voyagers a while ago, and he said that in most respects, in nearly all respects in fact, the trip was a remarkably pleasant one. But, said he, and here he slowly shook his head and sighed as one who recalls a sorrowful reminiscence, I copper the downed trip. From what I can learn of the experiences of that stormy passage, I am satisfied that they all copper that portion of the excursion. The ship left San Francisco in the rain, and for twelve days the excursionists heaved and tossed in the midst of a terrific tempest. The first news that came back here said that the passengers on the Ajax had spent most of the downed trip on their knees in prayer. Today their friends greeted them with a hearty handshake, and then felt their knees to see if they were calloused. I refer only to the gentlemen-travelers, of course. The storm tore her light spars and rigging all to shreds and splinters, upset all furniture that could be upset, and spilled passengers around and knocked them hither and thither with a perfect looseness. For forty-eight hours no table could be set, and everybody had to eat as best they might under the circumstances. Most of the party went hungry, though, and attended to their praying. But there was one set of seven-up players who nailed a card-table to the floor and stuck to their game through thick and thin. Captain Fritz, of the Bank of California, a man of great coolness and presence of mind, was of this party. One night the storm suddenly culminated in a climax of unparalleled fury. The vessel went down on her beam ends, and everything let go with a crash. Passengers, tables, cards, bottles—everything came clattering to the floor in a chaos of disorder and confusion. In a moment fifty sore distressed and pleading voices ejaculated. Oh, God! Help us in our extremity! And one voice rang out clear and sharp above the plainth of chorus, and said, Remember, boys, I played the tray for lo! It was one of the gentlemen I have mentioned who spoke, and the remark showed good presence of mind and an eye to business. Louis Leland, of the Occidental, was a passenger. There were some savage grizzly bears chained in cages on deck. One night in the midst of a hurricane, which was accompanied by rain and thunder and lightning, Mr. Leland came up on his way to bed, just as he stepped into the pitchy darkness of the deck and reeled to the still more pitchy motion of the vessel—bad! The captain sang out hoarsely through his speaking trumpet, Bear a hand aft there! The words were sadly marred and jumbled by the roaring wind. Mr. Leland thought the captain said, The bears are after your there! And he let go all halts and went down into his boots. Then murmured, I knew how it was going to be. I just knew it from the start. I said all along that those bears would get loose some time, and now I'll be the first man that they'll snatch. Captain! Captain! Can't hear me, stormroars! So, oh, God, what a fate! I have avoided wild beasts all my life, and now to be eaten by a grizzly bear in the middle of the ocean a thousand miles from land. Captain! Oh, Captain! Bless my soul, there's one of them. I've got to cut and run. And he did cut and run, and smashed through the first stateroom he came to. A gentleman and his wife were in it. The gentleman exclaimed, Who's that? The refugee gasped out, Oh, great Scotland! Those bears are loose, and just raising merry hell all over the ship! And sank down, exhausted. The gentleman sprang out of bed and locked the door and prepared for a siege. After a while no assault being made, a reconnaissance was made from the window, and a vivid flash of lightning revealed a clear deck. Mr. Leyland then made a dart for his own stateroom, gained it, locked himself in, and felt that his body's salvation was accomplished, and by little less than a miracle. The next day the subject of this memoir, though still very feeble and nervous, had the hardy-hood to make a joke upon his adventure. He said that when he found himself in so tight a place, as he thought, he didn't bear it with much fortitude, and when he found himself safe at last in his stateroom, he regarded it as the barest escape he had ever had in his life. He then went to bed, and did not get up again for nine days. This unquestionably bad joke cast a gloom over the whole ship's company, and no effort was sufficient to restore their wanted cheerfulness until the vessel reached her port, and other scenes erased it from their memories. The Ajax is advertised to sail for Honolulu again on the 1st of March. PLEASING INCIDENT The splendid band of the old U.S. Second Artillery, so long under the late General Darussi, when he was at the head of the Engineer Corps of the United States, and stationed at Fortress Monroe, kindly cherishing the memory of their beloved old commander, went out to South Park last night, after the ceremonies and festivities of Washington's birthday were over, and serenaded Mrs. Darussi and her family. It was a graceful and touching tribute, and showed how well the lads esteemed the old soldier who was always so proud of them. No music could have been imbued with more tender expression than they breathed into their first piece. Should all acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind, there is moving pathos in speech, and eloquence sways the feelings with a mighty power, but music goes straight to the heart after all. The first thing the Second Artillery did when they landed here from the east a month or two before the old general died was to come out here with their band and serenade him. He was intolerable health, then, and sat up in his parlor in uniform and listened to their martial music, the proudest man in San Francisco. Such marks of regard from his boys always touched him and gratified him. OFF FOR THE SNOWBELT Colonel Conway and his junior officers and assistants leave today in the steamer active to resume operations in British Columbia on his division of the Russian telegraph expedition. He will take a vast amount of wire and telegraph traps of various kinds. Remainder of this passage is missing. A NEW BIOGRAPHY OF WASHINGTON This day, many years ago precisely, George Washington was born. How full of significance the thought, especially to those among us who have had a similar experience, though subsequently, and still more especially to the young who should take him for a model and faithfully try to be like him, undeterred by the frequency with which the same thing has been attempted by American youths before them and not satisfactorily accomplished. George Washington was the youngest of nine children, eight of whom were the offspring of his uncle and his aunt. As a boy, he gave no promise of the greatness he was one day to achieve. He was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie. But then he never had any of those precious advantages, which are within the reach of the humblest of the boys of the present day. Any boy can lie now. I could lie before I could stand. Yet this sort of sprightliness was so uncommon in our family that little notice was taken of it. Young George appears to have had no sagacity whatever. It is related of him that he once chopped down his father's favorite cherry-tree, and then didn't know enough to keep dark about it. He came near going to sea once, as a midshipman, but when his mother represented to him that he must necessarily be absent when he was away from home and that this must continue to be the case until he got back, the sad truth struck him so forcibly that he ordered his trunk ashore and quietly but firmly refused to serve in the navy and fight the battles of his king so long as the effect of it would be to discommode his mother. The great rule of his life was that procrastination was the thief of time and that we should always do unto others. This is the golden rule. Therefore he would never discommode his mother. Young George Washington was actuated in all things by the highest and purest principles of morality, justice, and right. He was a model in every way worthy of the emulation of youth. Young George was always prompt and faithful in the discharge of every duty. It has been said of him, by the historian, that he was always on hand, like a thousand of brick, and well deserved was this noble compliment. The aggregate of the building material specified might have been largely increased, might have been doubled even, without doing full justice to these high qualities in the subject of this sketch. Indeed, it would hardly be possible to express in bricks the exceeding promptness and fidelity of Young George Washington. He was a soul whose manifold excellencies were beyond the ken and computation of mathematics, and bricks are, at the least, but an inadequate vehicle for the conveyance of a comprehension of the moral sublimity of a nature so pure as his. Young George W. was a surveyor in early life, a surveyor of an inland port, a sort of county surveyor, and under a commission from Governor Dinwiddy. He set out to survey his way four hundred miles through a trackless forest infested with Indians to procure the liberation of some English prisoners. The historian says the Indians were the most depraved of their species and did nothing but lay for white men whom they killed for the sake of robbing them. Considering that white men only travelled through their country at the rate of one a year, they were probably unable to do what might be termed a land office business in their line. They did not rob Young G.W. when Savage made the attempt but failed. He fired at the subject of this sketch from behind a tree, but the subject of this sketch immediately snaked him out from behind the tree and took him prisoner. The long journey failed of success. The French would not give up the prisoners, and Wash went sadly back home again. A regiment was raised to go and make a rescue, and he took command of it. He caught the French out in the rain and tackled them with great intrepidity. He defeated them in ten minutes, and their commander handed in his checks. This was the battle of great meadows. After this, a good while, George Washington became commander-in-chief of the American armies and had an exceedingly dusty time of it all through the Revolution. But every now and then he turned a jack from the bottom and surprised the enemy. He kept up his lick for seven long years and hazed the British from Harrisburg to Halifax, and America was free. He served two terms as president and would have been president yet if he had lived. Even so did the people honour the father of his country. Let the youth of America take his incomparable character for a model and try it one jolt anyhow. Success is possible, let them remember that. Success is possible, though there are chances against it. I could continue this biography with profit to the rising generation, but I shall have to drop the subject at present because of other matters which must be attended to. Territorial Enterprise, February 1866. Letter from Sacramento. Possibly written or published on February 25th, 1866. I arrived in the city of Saloons this morning at three o'clock, in company with several other disreputable characters, on board the good steamer Antelope, Captain Poole, Commander. I know I am departing from usage in calling Sacramento the city of Saloons instead of the city of the Plains, but I have my justification. I have not found any Plains here yet, but I have been in most of the Saloons, and there are a good many of them. You can shut your eyes and march into the first door you come to and call for a drink, and the chances are that you will get it. And in a good many instances, after you have assuaged your thirst, you can lay down a twenty and remark that you copper the ace, and you will find that facilities for coppering the ace are right there in the back room. In addition to the Saloons, there are quite a number of mercantile houses and private dwellings. They have already got one capital here, and will have another when they get it done. They will have fine dedicatory ceremonies when they get it done, but you will have time to prepare for that. You needn't rush down here right away by express. You can come as slow freight and arrive in time to get a good seat. The high-grade improvement. The houses in the principal thoroughfares here are set down about eight feet below the street level. This system has its advantages. First, it is unique. Secondly, it secures to the citizen a firm, dry street in high water, whereon to run his errands and do her shopping, and thus does away with the expensive and perilous canoe. Thirdly, it makes the first floors shady, very shady, and this is a great thing in a warm climate. Fourthly, it enables the inquiring stranger to rest his elbows on the second-story windowsill and look in and criticize the bedroom arrangements of the citizens. Fifthly, it benefits the plebeian's second floor borders at the expense of the bloated aristocracy of the first, that is to say, it brings the plebeians down to the first floor and degrades the aristocrats to the cellar. Lastly, some persons call it a priceless blessing, because children who fall out of second-story windows now cannot break their necks as they formerly did, but that this can strictly be regarded in the light of a blessing is, of course, open to grave argument. But joking aside, the energy and the enterprise, the sacramentans have shown in making this expensive-grade improvement and raising their houses up to its level is in every way credible to them, and is a sufficient refutation of the slander so often leveled at them that they are discouraged by the floods, lack confidence in their ability to make their town a success and are without energy. A lazy and hopeless population would hardly enter upon such costly experiments as these when there is so much high ground in the state which they could fly to if they chose. Brief Climate Paragraph This is the mildest, bulmiest, pleasantest climate one can imagine. The evenings are especially delightful, neither too warm nor too cold. I wonder if it is always so. The Lullaby of the Rain I got more sleep this morning than I needed. When I got tired, very tired, walking around and went to bed in room number 121, Orleans Hotel, about sunrise, I asked the clerk to have me called at a quarter past nine o'clock. The request was complied with punctually. As I was about to roll out of bed I heard it raining. I said to myself, I cannot knock around town in this kind of weather and so I may as well lie here and enjoy the rain. I am like everybody else in that I love to lie a bed and listen to the soothing sound of pattering raindrops and muse upon old times and old scenes of bygone days. While I was a happy, careless schoolboy again, in imagination, I dropped off to sleep. After a while I woke up, still raining. I said to myself, it will stop directly. I will dream again. There is time enough. Just as, in memory, I was caught by my mother clandestinely putting up some quints, preserves and a rag to take to my little sweetheart at school, I dropped off to sleep again, to the soft music of the pattering rain. I woke up again after a while. Still raining, I said. This will never do. I shall be so late I shall get nothing done. I could dream no more. I was getting too impatient for that. I lay there and fidgeted for an hour and a half, listening with nervous anxiety to detect the least evidence of a disposition to let up on the part of the rain. But it was of no use. It rained on steadily, just the same. So finally I said, I can't stand this. I will go to the window and see if the clouds are breaking at any rate. I looked up and the sun was blazing overhead. I looked down, and then I gritted my teeth and said, Oh! damned, damned landlord that would keep a damned fountain in his back yard. After mature and unimpassioned deliberation I am still of the opinion that that profanity was justifiable under the circumstances. I tried to out-sass the landlord and fail. I got downstairs at ten minutes past twelve and went up to the landlord with a large, fine-looking man with a chest on him, which must have made him a most powerful man before it slid down and said, Is breakfast ready? Is breakfast ready? said he. Yes, is breakfast ready? Not quite, he says, with the utmost urbanity. Not quite. You have arisen too early, my son, by a matter of eighteen hours as near as I can come at it. I said to myself, These people go slow up here. It is a wonder to me that they ever get up at all. Ah, well, said I. It don't matter. It don't matter. But perhaps you designed to have lunch this week sometime. Yes, he says, I have designed all along to have lunch this week and by a most happy coincidence you have arrived on the very day. Walk into the dining-room. As I walked forward I cast a glance of chagrin over my shoulder and observed old Smarty from Mud Springs I apprehend, and he murmured, Young Lunar Caustic from San Francisco, no doubt. Well, let it pass. If I didn't make anything off that old man in the way of Sass, I cleaned out his lunch-table anyhow, I calculated to get ahead of him some way. And yet I don't know, but the old scallywag came out pretty fair after all, because I only stayed in his hotel twenty-four hours and ate one meal, and he charged me five dollars for it. If I were not just ready to start back to the bay now, I believe I would go and tackle him once more. If I only had a fair chance that old man is not any smarter than I am. I will risk something that it makes him squirm every time I call him that old man in this letter. People who voted for General Washington don't like to be reminded that they are old. But I like the old man, and I like his hotel too, barring the damn fountain, I should say. Mr. John Paul's Baggage As I was saying, I took lunch and then hurried out to attend to business. That is to say, I hurried out to look after Mr. John Paul's Baggage. Mr. John Paul is the San Francisco correspondent of the Sacramento Union, and goes fixed. I was down at the wharf when the antelope was about to leave San Francisco, and Captain Poole came to me and said Mr. Paul was going up with him, and he knew by the way he talked that he was going to travel with a good deal of baggage, and it would be quite a favour if I would go along and help look after a portion of it. The captain then requested Mr. Asa Nudd and Lieutenant Ells and Mr. Bill Stevenson, Treasurer of McGuire's Opera House, to keep an eye on portions of Mr. Paul's baggage also. They cheerfully assented, and by and by Mr. Paul made his appearance and brought his baggage with him on a couple of drays, and it consisted of nothing in the world but a toy carpet sack like a woman's reticule and had a pair of socks and a toothbrush in it. We saw in a moment that all that talk of Mr. Paul's had been merely for effect, and that there was really no use for all of us going to Sacramento to look after his baggage, but in as much as we had already shipped for the voyage, we concluded to go on. We liked Mr. Paul, and it was a pleasure to us to humour his harmless vanity about his little baggage. Therefore, when he said to the Chief-Mate, will you please to send some men to get that baggage aboard? We proceeded to superintend the transportation with becoming ceremony. It was as gratifying to us as it was to Mr. Paul himself when the Second-Mate afterward reported that the boat was down by the head so that she wouldn't steer, and the Captain said, It's that baggage, I suppose! Move it aft! We had a very pleasant trip of it to Sacramento and said nothing to disabuse the passengers' minds when we found that Paul had disseminated the impression that he had three or four tons of baggage aboard. After we landed at Sacramento, there was the infernalist rumbling and thundering of trunks on the main deck for two hours that can be imagined. Finally, a passenger who could not sleep for the jarring and the noise hailed Mr. Bill Stevenson and said he wondered what all the racket was about. Mr. Stevenson said, It'll be over pretty soon now! They've been getting that there John Paul's baggage ashore! I have made this letter so long that I shall have to chop it in two at this point and send you the remainder of it tomorrow. End of Section 27 This is Section 28 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This lever-box recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain Section 28 Territorial Enterprise October 30th or 31st, 1866 Territorial Enterprise October 30th or 31st, 1866 Territorial Enterprise October 30th or 31st, 1866 Enterprise Staff Report on Upcoming Twain Lecture Tomorrow night our citizens will be afforded an opportunity to gratify their curiosity and offer a fitting testimonial to their fellow townsman, Mark Twain, who will do up the Sandwich Islands at the Opera House on that occasion. The enthusiasm with which his lecture was everywhere greeted was still ringing throughout California. And now that his foot is in his native heath, we expect to see the very mountains shake with a tempest of applause. Our state can justly claim Mark Twain as its own peculiar production. It was while a resident here and associated with the Enterprise that he assumed the name of Mark Twain and developed that rich and inexhaustible vein of humor which has made the title famous. True, he has since warmed his fancy and tropical climbs and expanded his thought by ocean pilgrimage and heated his eloquence in volcanic fires, but all these rest upon their solid foundation which was originally laid in our native alkali and sage brush. From present appearances he will receive an ovation seldom if ever equaled in our city and it is pleasing to know that such an event will be gratifying to the audience and speaker. Territorial Enterprise November 1st or 2nd, 1866 Enterprise staff report on Mark Twain's lecture. One of the largest and most fashionable audiences that ever graced the Opera House was in attendance last evening on the occasion of Mark Twain's lecture on the Sandwich Islands. The entire dress circle and the greater portion of the parquet while all the available space for extra seats and standing-room was occupied. It was a magnificent tribute to the lecturer from his old friends. Of the lecture itself we can only speak in general terms, as its points are too numerous and varied to admit a special mention. Combining the most valuable statistical and general information with passages of drollist humor all delivered in the peculiar and inimitable style of the author in the lecture it constitutes an entertainment of rare excellence and intelligence. The lecture will be delivered in the principal towns throughout the state, but we are unable at present to mention definitely any time or place. In a day or two the entire program will be arranged. Meanwhile our neighboring towns can well afford to wait patiently in anticipation of a rare treat. Territorial Enterprise November 4th, 1866 Card from Mark Twain The following characteristic card from Mark Twain is in reply to a general invitation of the residents of Carson extended to him to visit the state capital and deliver his lecture on the Sandwich Islands. Card, Virginia, November 1st His Excellency H. G. Blaisdell Governor, and messers A. Helms O. A. F. Gilbert H. F. Rice and others Gentlemen, your kind and cordial invitation to lecture before my old friends in Carson has reached me, and I hasten to thank you gratefully for this generous recognition, this generous toleration, I should say, of one who has shamefully deserted the high office of the mayor of the third house of Nevada and gone into the missionary business, thus leaving you to the mercy of scheming politicians, an act which, but for your forgiving disposition, must have stamped my name with infamy. I take a natural pride in being welcomed home by so long a list of old personal friends, and shall do my level best to please them, hoping, at the moment, that they will be more indulgent toward my shortcomings than they would feel called upon to be toward those of a stranger. Kindly thanking you again, gentlemen, I gladly accept your invitation, and shall appear on the stage of the Carson Theatre on Saturday evening, November 3, and disgorge a few lines, and as much truth as I can pump out without damaging my ex-governor, third house, and late independent missionary to the Sandwich Islands. P.S. I would have answered yesterday, but I was on the sick list, and I thought I had better wait a day and see whether I was going to get well or not. M.T. Territorial Enterprise Sunday, November 11, 1866 written after Twain was a victim of a practical joke robbery. Last night I lectured in Gold Hill on the Sandwich Islands. At ten o'clock I started on foot to Virginia to meet a lot of personal friends who were going to set up all night with me and start me off in good shape for San Francisco in the morning. This social program proved my downfall, but for it I would have remained in Gold Hill, as we raised the Hill and straightened up on the divide, a man just ahead of us Mac, my agent and myself blew an ordinary policeman's whistle and Mac said, Thunder, this is an improvement. They didn't use to keep policemen on the divide. I coincided. The infernal whistle was only a signal to you road agents. About half a minute afterwards a small man emerged from some embouscade or other and crowded close up to me. I was smoking and supposed he wanted a light, but this humorist, instead of asking for a light, thrust a horrible six-shooter in my face and simply said, stand and deliver. I said, my son, your arguments are powerful. Take what I have, but uncock that infamous pistol. The young man uncocked the pistol, but he requested three other men present theirs at my head and then he took all the money I had, twenty or twenty-five dollars, and my watch. Then he said to one of his party, Beauregard, go through that man, meaning Mac, and the distinguished rebel did go through Mac. Then the little captain said, Stonewall Jackson, seat these men by the roadside and hide yourself. If they move within five minutes Stonewall said, all right, sire. Then the party, six in number, started toward Virginia and disappeared. Now, I want to say to you road agents as follows. My watch was given to me by Judge Sandy Baldwin and Theodore Winters, and I value it above anything else I own. If you will send that to me, to the Enterprise Office, or to any prominent man in San Francisco, you may keep the money and welcome. You know you got all the money Mac had, and Mac is an orphan, and besides, the money he had belonged to me. Adieu, my romantic young friends. Mark Twain. End of Section Twenty-Eight. This is Section Twenty-Nine of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section Twenty-Nine of the Enterprise, December 1867. Territorial Enterprise December Twenty-Second, 1867. Mark Twain's letters from Washington, number one, Washington, December 4, 1867. Editors Enterprise. To write Ed's Enterprise seems a good deal like coming home again. A good deal like coming again. But in a dream wherein your hand takes hold of the same old gate and opens it in the same old way, and you enter and find the homestead as left it—flowers under window, shrubbery in the front yard, old bottles in the retirecy of the corners. But one never finds home just exactly as he saw it in a dream, and by the same token, although, as you will observe by the slashing way in which I have dashed off that Edd's enterprise, I open the gate as familiarly as ever. I suppose I won't be likely to find any of the other well-remembered ornaments about your front yard but the old bottles. That sounds unkind, maybe, but behold truth is stranger than fiction, and one should be just before he is generous. Scurrilous weather! I have been here a matter of ten days, but I do not know much about the place yet. There is too much weather. There is too much of it. And yet that is not the principal trouble. It is the quality, rather than the quantity of it that I complain of, and more than against its quantity and its quality combined am I embittered against its character. It is tricky. It is changeable. It is, to the last degree, unreliable. It has catered for a political atmosphere so long that it has come at last to be thoroughly imbued with the political nature. As politics go so goes the weather. It trims to suit every phase of sentiment and is always ready. Today it is a Democrat. Tomorrow a Radical. The next day neither one thing nor the other. If a Johnson man goes over to the other side it reigns. If a Radical deserts to the administration it snows. If New York goes Democratic it blows naturally enough. If Grant expresses an opinion between two whiffs of smoke it spits a little sleet uneasily. If all is quiet on the Potomac of politics one sees only the soft haze of Indian summer from the capital windows. If the President is quiet the sun comes out. If he touches the tender gold market it turns up cold and freezes out the speculators. If he hints at foreign troubles it hails. If he threatens Congress it thunders. If treason and impeachment are broached low there is an earthquake. If you are posted on politics you are posted on the weather. I cannot manage either. When I go out with an umbrella the sun shines. If I go out without it it rains. If I have my overcoat with me I am bound to roast. If I haven't I am bound to freeze. Some people like Washington weather. I don't. Some people admire mixed weather. I prefer to take mine straight. So I have hardly been anywhere. If you were to bet on a storm and copper an earthquake and lost and then bet on an earthquake and copper the storm and lost again you would let the next deal go by maybe. You would not want to back your judgment any more for the present. That is about the way I feel. I am waiting for my luck to change. The capital and Congress. I have been to the capital several times to look at it almost to worship it. For surely it must be the most exquisitely beautiful edifice that exists on earth today. True there are many buildings that are grander and statelier and half a dozen times as large but if there is one that is so symmetrical, so graceful, so fascinating to the eye—I have not heard of it, unquestionably I have not seen it—a man could no more get tired of looking at it than he could tire of sunset in the mountains or moonlight on the sea. I have been within, among the lawmakers also. They look well, both houses. I was here fourteen years ago and remember what I saw then perfectly well. I saw in the house Mr. Douglas and a few other great men. The mass of the remainder seemed to be a mob of empty-headed whippersnappers that had only come to Congress to make incessant motions propose eternal amendments and rise to everlasting points of order. They glances at the galleries oftener—sick—than they looked at the speaker. They put their feet on their desks as if they were in a beer mill. They made more racket than a rookery and let on to know more than any body of men ever did know or ever could know by any possibility whatsoever. But the house I find here now is composed chiefly of grave, dignified men beyond the middle age and look worthy of their high position. General Banks is the handsomest member, perhaps. General Butler is the homeliest. In his comeliness Banks has competitors. Some of the members embellish a desk with a book, occasionally, but not frequently. Many of them pay only questionable attention while the chaplain is on duty, but they never catch flies while he is praying. I noticed that, particularly, and was deeply touched by it. I was gratified more than tongue can tell. For the sake of my country, I was proud of it. The Senate is a fine body of men and averages well in the matter of brains. Strangely enough, the two Nevada senators are the handsomest men in the company—the handsomest men in Congress, indeed, for Governor Nye is handsomer than General Banks, and Stuart is handsomer than the balance of the tribe. A mining college proposed. Which reminds me that Stuart has just introduced a bill for the founding of a national mining school. If it carries, in its present shape, it will be a most excellent thing for the whole mining community from Pikes Peak to the Pacific, and from the northern gold fields clear down to Mexico. Because it ultimately entirely removes the government tax upon bullion. That tax puts up three hundred thousand dollars now—a hundred thousand dollars of it comes out of Nevada's pocket alone—and it must augment year by year. It is proposed to devote all of next year's tax to the buildings, etc., for the school. After that, say, four or five years, half the tax will be spent on the school and the other half invested in United States securities for the benefit of the school, until the fund shall be large enough to yield sufficient interest to carry on the institution without touching the principal. Then the government tax on bullion will be abolished altogether. The mining school will be free to all. Assays will be made for anybody at a cost of a few cents instead of dollars. The mining knowledge of all countries will be gathered together here, tested, classified, and diffused through our mining communities by means of inspections of the mines and free lectures to the miners by the faculty of the college, etc. The Secretary of the Treasury thinks the expense of mining will be materially lessened and the yield of bullion vastly increased by means of such a school as Mr. Stewart has proposed. It is suggested that the institution be located somewhere in your vicinity on the Truckee, on the line of the Pacific Railroad. Whether the measure will carry or not, no man can tell. That it should carry, every man on the coast will unquestionably desire. The first effects of the message. The President's message is making a howl among the Republicans. Serenity sits upon the brow of democracy. The Republican congressmen say it is insolent to Congress. The Democrats say it is a mild, sweet document, free from guile. But one thing is very sure. The message has weakened the President. Impeachment was dead, day before yesterday. It would rise up and make a strong fight today if it were pushed with energy intact. But it won't be done, I suppose. I foresee that the weather is going to throw some double-summersets now, right away. It will keep up with these convulsions in politics or wear out the elements trying. I must stand by with parasols, umbrellas and overcoats until the weather is reconstructed. Personal. S.T. Gage, of your Internal Revenue Service, is here on business connected with his office. He is a little off-colour as to his overcoat, but his pantaloons are up to regulation. He looks well, and is attending strictly to business and behaving himself. John Allman is here also, looking up business in the male contract line. I have seen your former congressman, Harry Worthington. He dresses mighty well for a white man in these universal suffrage times. His home is at Omaha, Omaha, the sublime. When New York and other great states went democratic, Omaha went handsomely Republican. They say it was because Harry was there. Burke is here now, attending to business. He has contracts for feeding a tribe of Indians out there on the plains. He has a great opportunity now to teach us what high, unselfish patriotism. And he knows it. He will do it. He will feed those Indians with his country's interest ever in his heart, and his worshipping eyes turned always towards her shrine. And when he gets done feeding them, behold, not a devil of a red skin in all his gang will be in a condition to go on the war-path in the spring. Harry Worthington is a first-rate fellow, and takes a joke kindly, and we all want to see him prosper. He is going to do well out of this thing. I feel certain of it. Of course, he don't want it mentioned outside of your own circle, but his main business here is to get one more tribe, because the way he is averaging the rations now, the tribe he has got won't be likely to hold out long. And of course he wants something to fall back on. He thinks he will be perfectly safe if he can get another tribe. There are plenty more Nevadians here. I will attend to them in my next. Mark Twain. End of Section 29. This is Section 30 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section 30, Territorial Enterprise, January 1868. Territorial Enterprise, January 7, 1868. Mark Twain's Letters from Washington, No. 2. Special Correspondence of the Enterprise, Washington, December 16, 1867. J. Ross Brown's Report. It is voluminous, and has remarks and statistics concerning all minds of any importance. Figures that will show at a glance what each has done, and what it is doing, and what it has cost and is costing to do it. What the profits are, what the losses are, etc. It contains as good information as could be got concerning new districts and their prospects. To get this varied information and these manifold statistics, Mr. Brown had to employ persons residing in the several mining localities to furnish them. These gentlemen have performed their duties pretty faithfully, but of course they have yielded to the natural mining instinct to glorify the leads of their part of the country with weighty adjectives. We were all prone to do that in our day and generation. Think of prodigious veins, and magnificent deposits, and wonderful richness, etc. And behold, their tongues are touched with inspiration, and they prophesy. They reveal the things that shall come to pass, with the easy confidence of Elisha's newly invested with the enchanted mantle. They trench upon the jurisdiction of the Almighty, and disclose the secrets and kingdom of heaven to Congress with a comfortable indifference to consequences that could originate nowhere on earth save in the placid breast of an honest miner. I understand this thing we all do, that have been miners. For all miners are, by nature and instinct, profits. We understand it, but Congress wouldn't. So it has been necessary to drive a pen straight through all these revelations of the things that come. The most shining prophecies are to be utterly extinguished. In truth, all the prophecies that are not manifestly authorized from on high will be pitilessly expunged. Mr. Brown wishes the report to be received with the utmost good faith by the world, and to bear upon its face the evidences that it is worthy of such a reception. Consequently, it will not do to bring suspicion upon it with prophecies in this age of skepticism. The rich deposits or adjectives that occur all through the sub-reports will be expunged also, and for the same reason that the words of prophecy are condemned. No puffs will be allowed to remain, lest they impair the confidence of the public in the truthfulness of the book. Therefore you can now understand that voluminous as the work is, it must all be rewritten and thoroughly weeded of its defects. This is a vast labour, and much time and patience will have to be devoted to it. The book will not be ready for the press for some time yet. The reports from all the great minds, I mean statistics of their yield of ores in tons, and the result of the same in bullion, etc., will be brought up to about the present time, and the book be thereby made as complete as possible. The moral of this long report, the verdict of it, may be summed up in a few sentences. Save in the great underground gravel channels, placer mining is finished, is dead. Nothing but deep mining, vein mining, will do now. The muscle mining of the pan and shovel must give place to critical science. Miners must adjourn from the exhausted hillsides to the chemist's laboratory and be educated to the higher grades of their profession. Therefore the proposed National School of Mines has become a necessity. Such is the verdict. Personal Hovey is here, General Hovey of Nevada. He is a member of the Senate, I think. I recollect that he ran for that position. Mr. Stowe is here also. Stowe of Carson City. Once sergeant at arms of the legislature. The nation gets along better now. There are other Nevadians in Washington. Thomas D. Julian of Humboldt. John S. Mayhew of Esmeralda in Maryland, just at present. George D. Terry of Austin. Robert M. Howland and wife are expected. Julian is looking after his Indian affairs. He has claims. His prospects promise well. S. T. Gage has gone to Ohio. He thinks of returning to Nevada over land. He desires that no mention shall be made of it. Judge McCorkle of your city is here and will sail for the Pacific in the course of a week or two. He has been visiting his home in Ohio. S. E. Hughes of Gold Hill is here also. He has been looking at lands in Virginia and Iowa with a view to investing. Likes Iowa best. He will return to Nevada very shortly to stay a while. J. M. Walker comes to Washington occasionally. He looks well and is prosperous. I hear that he is speculating in lands and one thing or another in Virginia and that he has bought Homestead at Binghamton, New York for which he paid $25,000. Pat Hickey of the city of Virginia and other places in Nevada was here the other night, so I am told. I'm sorry I failed to see him, but I hear that he is flourishing and, from what I can gather, he was feeling well. His toast was the same one. Be kind to your friends and he had fifty to drink it. That beat Beggs, that snowy night that Beggs and I got the school report especially for the Virginia Union, and somehow it appeared in the Enterprise, in the most mysterious manner the next morning, and failed to appear where it was intended to appear. But if it were the last act of my life I would affirm that it was through no connivance of mine. The scrub who had charged at the public school would not let me have the report for the Enterprise, because it had said he was an ass, which was true, and if he had been half a man he would have been flattered by it. But he would give it to Beggs, because he had nothing against the Union particularly. I found Beggs at eight o'clock in the evening. He had his little dark lantern. That looked badly, because whenever Beggs got out his lantern there was going to be trouble. We went down and got the report and, coming back through the driving snow, we met Pat Hickey, and went in and drank, be kind to your friends. It took forty minutes to do it properly, and then Beggs proposed himself to go to the Enterprise and leave a copy of the report, which was done. It was duly copied, and he took the original and started to go to the Union with it. At midnight, when we were going home, we passed McCluskies and heard a familiar voice. We went in and Beggs was standing on a table reading the manuscript school report by the light of his lantern to a crowd of mellow but singularly appreciative and enthusiastic Cornish men from the Ofer night shifts, who didn't understand a word of it, but seemed to like it all the better on that account. They cheered all the pauses with the strictest impartiality. John Church entered at the same moment we did, looking angry, Beggs stopped and smiled down upon Church his smile of naïve suavity, a smile that was gilded all over with honest pride, with conscious merit, with triumph, and said, I ain't—I ain't to be depended on when I carry my lantern, ain't I? By God! I've had this old report four hours! And so he had. That was why the Union was obliged to go to press without it. Beggs was a good fellow, and no one can say that I ever intentionally helped him to get into trouble. I wish I could have met—could have been Pat Hickey the other night. They say he had all Williard's hotel responding to his Be kind to your friends, till well along towards Daybreak. E.A. Protois, formerly of Virginia and Sacramento, is Senator Stewart's private secretary now. Coast Matters. Mr. Stewart made a speech in the Senate a day or two ago and replied to Garrett Davis of Kentucky. Davis's was a carefully prepared manuscript speech wherein he attempted to show that the tendency of legislation at present could have but one result if persisted in, the result of investing the Negro with the power to rule over white men and dictate the course they should pursue. Stewart's reply was extemporaneous and consequently had more fire in it perhaps than polish. The point it made was the manifestly strong one that one Negro cannot rule or dictate to ten white men, and that as long as the two colors are divided in that proportion in the country, the devil raised up in Mr. Davis' prophetic visions could never amount to much of a devil practically. There was nothing about one Negro that ten white men need to fear. The speech met with a flattering reception by the Senate. Senator Nye and Stewart have both just introduced bills of great importance to Nevada. Nye's is declaratory of the purpose of the Nevada Townsite Law passed by Congress early in 1867. Secretary Browning, although aware that that law was one which had been greatly desired by the citizens of Virginia, at least, did not feel at liberty to execute it while the law of 1864 remained unrepealed and must in some cases interfere with its operation. If passed Governor Nye's bill will straighten the matter out. Senator Stewart's bill gives Nevada the privilege of locating the public lands according to her wherever she pleases, on the sections along the railroad that alternate with those belonging to the railroad company if she chooses. It gives her the privilege of locating the lands donated to the Public Building Fund and issuing script upon them at once. It also makes the Salt Springs and Mines of Nevada the property of the state. If the bill should pass in its present shape it would bring some fifty thousand or sixty thousand dollars into the state treasury. The holidays are approaching. Congress will adjourn on Friday for a couple of weeks. Washington will be deserted the next day. I shall help desert it. I suppose, of course, I shall stay in New York till the national wisdom congregates again. If I hear anything while I am gone I will report it to you. Mark Twain. Territorial Enterprise January 11, 1868. Mark Twain's letters from Washington, No. 3. Special Correspondence of the Enterprise. Washington December 20, 1867. The Lost Chief Found. Colonel Eli Parker, Chief of the Six Nations and Staff Officer to General Grant, was to have been married last Tuesday morning to Miss Sackett, an accomplished girl of seventeen, highly connected and worthy of the best man in the country. General Grant was to have given away the bride, and the wedding ceremony was to have taken place in great state at the Church of the Epiphany, whose parlor has a monopoly of all the marriages that pay. Truly it has been said, ye know not when the bridegroom cometh, more particularly when the bridegroom don't come at all, and he didn't come in this instance, or as General Grant gravely expressed it, he failed to qualify. The five foolish virgins that had oil in their lamps were no better off than the two hundred and fifty foolish cues that hadn't. For lamps, however so well they may be supplied with oil, cannot discover a bridegroom that is not present, but, on the contrary, is far away with a conspiring and malignant Indian. The wedding party went swearing and sorrowing home, wondering what could have become of the grand sachem of the Six Nations? What could keep him away at such a time? What he could possibly mean by such conduct as these? They wondered for full twenty-four hours, and then the defendant came to light. The lost bridegroom was found. The prodigal son rose up and returned to his own precinct. He explained his absence. He said that after he had borrowed a shirt, I should say a scarf, from General Grant on Saturday evening, he saw some friends, and afterwards, an hour or two later, went off to take a walk alone. An Indian of his confederation met him and said he had important things to say to him. Walked with him to a convenient room, gave him a glass of wine, and opened the conversation. But almost immediately Colonel Parker felt strangely and lay down on the bed. He remembered nothing that occurred after that, save that he awoke out of a deep sleep, apparently in the middle of a dark night. He does not know which night it was. And by his bedside, never flitting, still was sitting, still was sitting, that ghastly, grim and ancient Indian from the night's plutonium shore, only he and nothing more. Quote the Indian, never more. Then this ebb and bird, beguiling the Colonel's sad soul into smiling, by the grave and stern decorum of the countenance at poor, bird or fiend, he cried, upstarting, wrathful to his heart's hot core. What's the time of night, I wonder? Tell me that, thou son of thunder from the night's plutonium shore. How long have I in dreams been soaring? How long been wheezing, gagging, snoring? How long in savage nightmares roaring since I lay down before? Quote the buck. An hour or more. You've been sick and may be sicker, because of late you've stopped your liquor, a thing you've never done before. Get some stuff the doctor sent ye, of your folly quick repent ye, take it, chief, and seek Nepenthe, remembering grief no more. Bird, the Colonel cried, upstarting, bird or fiend, he cried, upstarting, bird or fiend, as if his soul in that one phrase he did outpour, pass that stuff the doctor sent me, move the frame thy God hath lengthy, take thy form from off my door, take thy beak from out my jug, go on thy bust outside my door, quote the Choctaw, never more. Colonel Parker took the medicine, and immediately the fatal drowsiness came upon him again. He fell asleep and never woke again till Wednesday morning, a day after General Grant assembled himself at the church to assist at his nuptials. It may be all very funny, lightly considered, but seriously regarded it is sad enough. It has brought into unpleasant newspaper notoriety a soldier who has fought bravely and faithfully throughout the long war, and was honoured with the confidence and esteem of the first general of our day. And it has also given the same unhappy notoriety to a modest retiring young girl, and has caused her the extremest suffering. The bridegrooms is the easiest case, for whether he be blameless or not he is a man and a soldier, and can bear untoward fortune and the gossip of idle tongues with soldierly fortitude. Colonel Parker's friends are well satisfied that his community of Indians are at the bottom of the whole affair, that they are jealous of foreign marriage complications, that they wish him to wed with a woman of his own race, and that they conspired to stave off his marriage with the white girl, and break off the match if possible. The Indian who drugged him was gone when he awoke the last time, and has not been seen since. General Grant has taken the matter into his own hands, and will sift the mystery to the bottom. If it comes out straight, Colonel Parker will fare well. If it does not, it will be fare well to Colonel Parker. A Voluminous Telegram A telegram for the government, consisting of 6,480 words, was received here tonight from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. It is the full report of that body in favor of and urging the ratification of the Sandwich Islands Treaty. I think its strongest argument is that with such a treaty in force the government would have a fair pretext for resisting by military power the occupation of the islands by England or France. If we can't get the property, it is at least wise to see that they don't. We certainly cannot get it. The king will not sell. We shall not seize it, of course. Its free use is indispensable to our Pacific commerce. Hence we should take care that that free use shall be secured to us. The reciprocity treaty blocks the game on all obstacles to this. Nothing else can. I know of no objection to the treaty except that it will decrease our national revenue by $150,000 a year. But in as much as the Pacific Coast has but to pay that in the form of increased prices charged for sugar to cover the duties, perhaps the government had better tax the Coast people to that amount on something else and secure to itself the valuable freedom of the islands through the reciprocity treaty. Still it would be just like these solans here to forget all judgment in the desire to save that trifle of revenue. They give $100 million to the Pacific Railroad and $500,000 a year to the China mail, and now it would be exceedingly like them to forget the sandwich islands are just as much a necessary part of the Grand Highway they are creating between New York and China, as Damascus is a necessary part of the legitimate route from a sinful world to the devil. It would be like them. It would so accord with their policy of saving at the spigot while they lose at the bung. Yesterday the Senate shut off the stationary supplies of its members. That was the meanest thing, the smallest business, the cheapest fraud I ever heard of. I know nothing of it. I wrote an order for four reams of fancy fool's cap and got a blind lunatic to sign Charles Sumner's name to it. No man can counterfeit the genuine signature unless there is something awful to matter with him, and went up to the Senate and presented it. They said it would not do. I asked if they meant to insinuate anything against the soundness of the signature, and they said no. They could see by the general horribleness of it that some member of Congress wrote it, but that was not the idea. And then they told me of that poor little swindle of a retrenchment. It is nothing but a blind, nothing but a miserable little ten thousand dollar blind to deceive the people with. Those parties are generating something. They are sitting, silent, spreading themselves, hatching. Under cover of that little dab of retrenchment which they have thrown into the people's eyes they are getting ready to steal about four hundred millions of dollars, and then you will hear them cackle. I suppose I shall have to go back to writing letters on old blotting paper again shortly. The more I think of it, the more indignant I become. Here, some time ago, we bought an iceberg for seven million dollars, and lately we bought a volcano and an infernal nest of earthquakes for seventeen million dollars, and now we are shutting off a dray load of stationary and six bits worth of sugar revenues to get even again. Bother such retrenchment. California Senator. The news arrived today by telegraph that the California legislature has elected Eugene Casserly to be United States Senator to succeed Honorable John Connors. He will succeed one of the pleasantest men, socially, and one of the best hearted that exists, and by the same token a man that has worked hard for the coast, done his duty faithfully, and accomplished all that any man could have done. Do you know what particular stripe of democracy Mr. Casserly is variegated with? Had I better support him with the administration, or had I better hoist out my paint and get ready to go on the war-path? But perhaps you fail to catch my drift. What I mean is, is his democracy of the poetical stripe as set forth in bombastic platforms, or is it of the practical stripe that looks to the most goods to the greatest number? In plain English, how is Casserly on stationary? For behold, even as a man is on stationary, so shall he be concerning the greater things of the Covenant. Would it be agreeable to Casserly for me to collect his mileage for him, do you think? For President. Associate Justice Field of the Supreme Bench is widely talked of laterally as the Democratic candidate for President of the United States, an able man, a just one, and one whose judicial and political garments are clean, a man well fitted for the place. No man can tell what an hour may bring forth, especially if the politicians have leased that hour, but just at the present moment the presidential contest bids far to take a particularly sporting shape, for verily, is there not a field on one side and a chase on the other? Now, therefore, where is the fox that shall fly the chase, cross the field in safety, and gain the cover of the White House? Adjournment. Congress adjourned yesterday. I don't know whether they have done anything or not. I don't think they have. However, let us not forget that they have retrenched. They have passed the stationary resolution. They have eased up some on one thousand millions of debt. They have smitten the Goliath of gold with pebble. They have saved the country. God will bless them. Let the new David bring the head of the monster to the foot of the throne and go after more. I tremble to think they may abolish the franking privilege next. The Ark has rested on Ararat. The most of the animals have gone away to New York and elsewhere. But I believe the Pacific delegation proposed to remain here during the vacation and get ready for business, for stirring times are at hand. Mark Twain. Territorial Enterprise January 30, 1868. Mark Twain's letter from Washington No. 4. Washington January 10, 1868. Public Stealing. That is the polite term now. What are we coming to when language like that is freely launched at the great officers of the government. Not in the street alone and in private conversation, but in a barely modified form in the Senate Chamber of the United States. They almost speak in that way of the Secretary of the Treasury. The country seems to have become satisfied that his department is rotten with swindling and rascality that at last even the Senate has partly awakened to the importance of doing something or saying something. It is a slow body and timid. Andrew can scare it with a growl. All those Senators believe and have believed for weeks that through the improper and unlawful conduct of the Treasury officers the government has been swindled out of $200 million a year through whiskey and cotton-frauds. But they dared not say anything until their silence at last began to breed the impression among the people that Congress was in the ring too, along with the Treasury. That has stirred them up a little, and two or three Senators have lately made a sort of show of wanting to know something about these frauds. One charge against Mr. McCulloch is peculiar. Laws were passed in 1862, 63 and 64, providing for the sale of cotton and other confiscated property seized during the war, and establishing a court of claims for the examination of cases where it might be alleged that some of these seizures were unjust, a court with power to restore such property as might be proven to have been taken by mistake from staunch Union men, etc. Under these laws sales amounting to $36 million net were made. It is alleged now that $10 million of this sum has been restored to parties claiming to have been Union men and restored to on the individual responsibility of the Secretary of the Treasury without any adjudication, whatever, by the proper tribunal the court of claims. To prove this true would be to prove a curious thing surely. That the Secretary, a mere citizen, like anybody else, has the presumption to put himself above the Supreme of the land. He coolly overrides that law and serenely plans and executes as if there were no such law in existence. A feeble effort was made in the Senate three weeks ago to inquire into this matter, but many of the members hesitated to meddle with it, and Mr. Fessenden, with persistent solicitude, warred against the movement day after day. He argued that it was not worthwhile to trouble the court of claims with its own legitimate business when the Secretary of the Treasury had all the necessary information in his possession and could transact it himself, albeit there was no law authorizing him to so transact it. Ours is a funny government in some respects. A dark mystery still hangs over that two hundred million dollars per annum business. Also the Secretary's continual overestimates of expenses and vast underestimates of receipts, which have had the effect of inducing Congress to increase the burden of taxation enormously to meet the imaginary demands of his department, have exasperated the people exceedingly. The Secretary's contraction system at the time when the industrial interests of the country are not able to bear the increased pressure it entails, is regarded with high disfavor by all engaged in commerce and manufacturers. Mr. Stewart of Nevada went into this war against the Secretary of the Treasury yesterday with more vim and spirit than any other senator has yet ventured upon, and his speech is much commented upon in political circles and applauded. In the course of it he read a letter from a Detroit manufacturer which was ably written and bitingly statistical, a letter which showed by plain figures that a large amount of taxation now imposed upon our industrial interests could be easily removed and that its continuous is not warranted in any way by the necessities of the Treasury Department. The letter also says that a charge of falsification, in the matter of absurd and injurious estimates, could unquestionably be maintained against the Secretary, and further that, in any other country, if the head of the Treasury should be so outrageously incorrect, he would be compelled by a deceived people to resign. Stewart's speech was upon the bill to suspend further reductions of the currency, a bill which is considered to be of the nature of a vote of censure and want of confidence in the Secretary of the Treasury. During the debate Senator Nye also made a few remarks, and as they give the effect of the Secretary's operations in a nutshell, I copy them. I have a vague recollection of a law being passed authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury, as the compound interest notes became due to issue three percent certificates, or securities of some kind, to supply the deficiency thus created. I was told in New York, the other day, that during the two months preceding the election there were fifty-three million dollars of compound interest notes retired, together with eight million dollars of United States notes, making sixty-one million dollars, and at the same time a circular was issued to the banks to keep good their reserve. The banks that had been holding those fifty-three million dollars had to get in legal tenders to supply their places. The effect of this was to contract the currency some sixty-one million dollars at once, which raised profits of money in New York from five to eight percent, and in Chicago to as much as sixteen percent, and prevented the obtainment of the means for bringing forward the vast products of the West. That is what I was told. Before they get through with this bill of censure, it is likely that Congress will rouse up and shake off its sleepiness, and make a row that will discover to the world whether there is any riskality in the Treasury and, if so, about how much. The Wharoll sisters. We're still playing at the New York Theatre in New York when I was there spending the holidays the other day. I did not see them, but I heard the young men talk about them. The young men seem as if they are not going to get over the fascination those girls have inspired them with. Another Wharoll brigade is being found. If gossip is in order I will mention that Sophie wants to sail for Havana with her mother and a Mr. Lovell about ten days ago. Mr. Lovell is a bachelor, forty-five, and rich, but consumption has its grip upon him, and it is believed he cannot recover. His journey to Havana was undertaken for his health. He thinks the world of Sophie, and would like to marry her, but she will not consent, of course. Lovell has been kind to the family, however, and of service to them in every way that he could, and their appreciation of these has moved them to care for and assist him to their utmost upon this his last journey. It is said he has no heirs, and insists upon leaving his fortune to Sophie. Old Currie is here. Old Abe Currie. And he has gotten up regardless. He is the observed of all observers. I think Currie is the best dressed man in Washington. He has a plug hat with a bell crown to it. It is of the latest Paris style, and has a rim that is curled up at the sides. It is the shyest hat in Washington. And he wears black broadcloth pants with straps to them, while Marseille vest, and a blue claw hammer coat with a double row of brass buttons on it like a major general. His cravat is perfectly stunning. It looks like it might have come off the end of a rainbow. His mustache is turning out handsomely, and he swings a ratan stick and wears lemon-colored kid gloves. He also has a superb set of false teeth. But he has to carry them in his pocket most of the time, because he can't swear good when he has them in. He goes browsing around the presidents and the departments trying to talk French because he is playing himself for a foreign duke, you know. Note Bene. I may have exaggerated my old friend's costume and performances a little, but then this is the man that detained my baggage in Carson once, and gave me that infamous account of the Hopkins Massacre, and I can never, never forgive him for it. He says he is here to get seeds from the patent office for Treadway and Jim Sturdovant. A likely story. He wants to get another appropriation to put another layer of stone on that mint, I guess. I expect I had better find out what Currie is about, and keep an eye on him. He will be wanting to run this government next. Claggett has been here during the past few days on Montana and Nevada business, visiting relatives, etc. The Town Sight Bill. In the Senate on Thursday Mr. Stewart's bill concerning town sites in Nevada, which has for its object to afford a relief to Virginia and other Nevada towns, which Secretary Browning said he could not afford himself the way the old law stood—I have spoken of this bill in a former letter—was taken up, and so amended as to make the operation of the law general upon all the lands of the Union, and in this shape it was ordered to be engrossed and for a third reading. There is little question that it will become a law. Mark Twain. P.S. I lectured here last night.