 This is Section 18 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section 18, Territorial Enterprise, May 1864. Territorial Enterprise, May 1st through May 15th, 1864. Washoo! Information Wanted! Springfield, Missouri, April 12th. Dear Sir, my object in writing to you is to have you give me a full history of Nevada. What is the character of its climate? What are the productions of the earth? Is it healthy? What diseases do they die of mostly? Do you think it would be advisable for a man who can make a living in Missouri to emigrate to that part of the country? There are several of us who would emigrate there in the spring if we could ascertain to a certainty that it is a much better country than this. I suppose you know Joel H. Smith. He used to live here. He lives in Nevada now. They say he owns considerable in a mine there. Hoping to hear from you soon, etc. I remain yours, truly, William Blank. Dearest William! Pardon my familiarity, but that name touchingly reminds me of the loved and lost whose name was similar. I have taken the contract to answer your letter, and although we are now strangers, I feel we shall cease to be so, if we ever become acquainted with each other. The thought is worthy of attention, William. I will now respond to your several propositions in the order in which you have fulminated them. Your object in writing is to have me give you a full history of Nevada. The flattering confidence you repose in me, William, is only equal by the modesty of your request. I could detail the history of Nevada in five hundred pages, octavo, but as you have never done me any harm I will spare you, though it will be apparent to everybody that I would be justified in taking advantage of you if I were a mind to do it. However, I will condense. Nevada was discovered many years ago by the Mormons, and was called Carson County. It only became Nevada in 1861 by act of Congress. There is a popular tradition that God Almighty created it, but when you come to see it, William, you will think differently. Do not let that discourage you, though. The country looks something like a singed cat, owing to the scarcity of shrubbery, and also resembles that animal in the respect that it has more merits than its personal appearance would seem to indicate. The Grosh Brothers found the first silver lead here in 1857. They also founded Silver City, I believe—observed the subtle joke, William—but the history of Nevada which you demand properly begins with the discovery of the Comstock load which event happened nearly five years ago. The opinion now prevailing in the East that the Comstock is on the Gould and Curry is erroneous. On the contrary, the Gould and Curry is on the Comstock. Please make the correction, William. Signify to your friends also that all minds here do not pay dividends as yet. You may make this statement with the utmost unyielding inflexibility. It will not be contradicted from this quarter. The population of this territory is about 35,000, one half of which number reside in the United Cities of Virginia and Gold Hill. However, I will discontinue this history for the present, lest I get you too deeply interested in this distant land and cause you to neglect your family or your religion. But I will address you again upon the subject next year. In the meantime, allow me to answer your inquiry as to the character of our climate. It has no character to speak of, William, and, alas, in this respect it resembles many—ah, too many chambermaids in this wretched, wretched world. Sometimes we have the seasons in their regular order, and then again we have winter all the summer and summer all winter. Consequently we have never yet come across an almanac that would just exactly fit this latitude. It is mighty regular about not raining, though, William. It will start in here in November, and rain about four, and sometimes as much as seven days on a stretch. After that you may loan out your umbrella for twelve months, with the serene confidence which a Christian feels in four aces. Sometimes the winter begins in November and winds up in June, and sometimes there is a bare suspicion of winter in March and April, and summer all the balance of the year. But as a general thing, William, the climate is good—what there is of it. What are the productions of the earth? You mean in Nevada, of course. On our ranches here anything can be raised that can be produced on the fertile fields of Missouri, but ranches are very scattering—a scattering, perhaps, as lawyers in heaven. Nevada, for the most part, is a barren waste of sand, embellished with melancholy sagebrush, and fenced in with snow-clad mountains. But these ghastly features were the salvation of the land, William, for no rightly constituted American would have ever come here if the place had been easy of access, and none of our pioneers would have stayed after they got here if they had not felt satisfied that they could not find a smaller chance for making a living anywhere else, such as man, William, as he crops out in America. Is it healthy? Yes, I think it is as healthy here as it is in any part of the West, but never permit a question of that kind to vegetate in your brain, William, because as long as Providence has an eye on you, you will not be likely to die until your time comes. What diseases do they die of mostly? Well, they used to die of conical balls and coal-steel mostly, but here, lately, Erisipolis and the intoxicating bowl have got the bulge on those things, as was very justly remarked by Mr. Rising last Sunday. I will observe, for your information, William, that Mr. Rising is our Episcopal Minister, and has done as much as any man among us to redeem this community from its pristine state of semi-barbarism. We are afflicted with all the diseases incident to the same latitude in the States, I believe, with one or two added and a half dozen subtracted on account of our superior altitude. However, the doctors are about as successful here, both in killing and curing, as they are anywhere. Now, as to whether it would be advisable for a man who can make a living in Missouri to emigrate to Nevada, I confess I am somewhat mixed. If you are not content in your present condition, it naturally follows that you would be entirely satisfied if you could make either more or less than a living. The result in the cheerful exhilaration all was produced by a change. Well, you can find your opportunity here, where, if you retain your health and are sober and industrious, you will inevitably make more than a living, and if you don't, you won't. You can rely upon this statement, William. It contemplates any line of business except the selling of tracts. You cannot sell tracts here, William. The people take no interest in tracts. The very best efforts in the tract line, even with pictures on them, have met with no encouragement here. Besides, the newspapers have been interfering. A man gets his regular text or so from the scriptures in his paper, along with the stock sales and the war news, every day now. If you are in the tract business, William, take no chances on Washoo. But you can succeed at anything else here. I suppose you know Joel H. Smith. Well, the fact is, I believe I don't. Now, isn't that singular? Isn't it very singular? And he owns considerable in a mine here, too. Happy man! Actually owns in a mine here in Nevada Territory. And I never even heard of him. Strange. Strange, you know, William. It is the strangest thing that ever happened to me. And then he not only owns in a mine, but owns considerable. That is the strangest part about it. How a man could own considerable in a mine in Washoo and I not know anything about it. He is a lucky dog, though. But I strongly suspect that you have made a mistake in the name. I am confident you have. You mean John Smith. I know you do. I know it from the fact that he owns considerable in a mine here, because I sold him the property at a ruinous sacrifice on the very day he arrived here from over the plains. That man will be rich one of these days. I am just as well satisfied of it as I am of any precisely similar instance of the kind that has come under my notice. I said as much to him yesterday, and he said he was satisfied of it also. But he did not say it with that air of triumphant exaltation which a heart like mine so delights to behold in one to whom I have endeavored to be a benefactor in a small way. He looked pensive a while, but finally says he— Do you know? I think I'd been a rich man long ago if they'd ever found the—ledge. That was my idea about it. I always thought and I still think that if they ever do find that ledge his chances will be better than they are now. I guess Smith will be all right one of these centuries if he keeps up his assessments. He is a young man yet. Now, William, I have taken a liking to you, and I would like to sell you considerable in a mine in Washu. I think I could get you a commanding interest in the Union, Gold Hill, on easy terms. It is just the same as the Yellow Jacket, which is one of the richest mines in the territory. The title was in dispute between the two companies some two years ago, but that is all settled now. Let me hear from you on the subject. Greenbacks at Parr is as good a thing as I want. But seriously, William, don't you ever invest in a mining-stock which you don't know anything about? Beware of John Smith's experience. Very good. I shall also hope to hear from you soon about that little matter above referred to. Now, William, ponder this epistle well. Never mind the sarcasm here and there and the nonsense, but reflect upon the plain facts set forth, because they are facts and are meant to be so understood and believed. Remember me affectionately to your friends and relations, and especially to your venerable grandmother, with whom I have not the pleasure to be acquainted, but that is of no consequence, you know. I have been in your town many a time, and all the towns of the neighboring counties, the hotel-keepers, will recollect me vividly. Remember me to them. I bear them no animosity. Yours affectionately, Mark Twain. Territorial Enterprise, May 24, 1864. Personal Correspondence. 1. Enterprise Office, Saturday, May 21, 1864. James Laird Esquire. Sir, in your paper of the present date appeared two anonymous articles in which a series of insults were leveled at the writer of an editorial in Thursday's Enterprise, headed How Is It? How It Is. I wrote that editorial. Sometimes since it was stated in the Virginia Union that its proprietors were alone responsible for all articles published in its columns. You being the proper person, by seniority, to apply to in cases of this kind, I demand of you a public retraction of the insulting articles I have mentioned or satisfaction. I require an immediate answer to this note. The bearer of this, Mr. Stephen Gillis, will receive any communication you may see fit to make. 2. Office of the Virginia Daily Union, Virginia, May 21, 1864. Samuel Clemens Esquire. Mr. James Laird has just handed me your note of this date. Permit me to say that I am the author of the article appearing in this morning's Union. I am responsible for it. I have nothing to retract. Respectfully, J. W. Wilmington. 3. Enterprise Office, Saturday evening May 21, 1864. James Laird Esquire. Sir. I wrote you a note this afternoon demanding a published retraction of insults that appeared in two articles in the Union of this morning, or satisfaction. I have since received what purports to be a reply, written by a person who signs himself, J. W. Wilmington, in which he assumes the authorship and responsibility of one of said infamous articles. Mr. Wilmington is a person entirely unknown to me in the matter, and has nothing to do with it. In the columns of your paper you have declared your own responsibility for all articles appearing in it, and any farther attempt to make a cat's paw of any other individual, and thus shirk a responsibility that you had previously assumed, will show that you are a cowardly sneak. I now peremptorily demand of you the satisfaction due to a gentleman, without alternative. 4. Office of the Virginia Daily Union, Virginia, Saturday evening May 21, 1864. Samuel Clemens Esquire. Your note of this evening is received. To the first portion of it I will briefly reply that Mr. J. W. Wilmington, the avowed author of the article to which you object, is a gentleman now in the employ of the Union office. He formerly was one of the proprietors of the Cincinnati Inquirer. He was captain of a company in the Sixth Ohio Regiment, and fought at Shiloh. His responsibility and character can be vouched for to your abundant satisfaction. For all editorials appearing in the Union, the proprietors are personally responsible. For communications they hold themselves ready when properly called upon, either to give the name and address of the author, or failing that to be themselves responsible. The editorial in the Enterprise headed, How Is It, out of which this controversy grew, was an attack made upon the printers of the Union. It was replied to by a Union printer, and a representative of the printers, who in a communication denounced the writer of the article as a liar, a paltrune, and a puppy. You announce yourself as the writer of the article which provoked this communication, and demand satisfaction. Which satisfaction the writer informs you over his own signature he is quite ready to afford. I have no right under the rulings of the code you have invoked to step in and assume Mr. Wilmington's position, nor would he allow me to do so. You demand of me, in your last letter, the satisfaction due to a gentleman, and couple the demand with offensive remarks. When you have earned the right to the title, by complying with the usual custom, I shall be most happy to afford you any satisfaction you desire at any time and in any place. In short, Mr. Wilmington has a prior claim upon your attention. When he is through with you, I shall be at your service. If you decline to meet him after challenging him, you will prove yourself to be what he has charged you with being, a liar, a paltrune, and a puppy. And as such cannot, of course, be entitled to the consideration of a gentleman. Respectfully, James L. Laird. A. 21st, 1864, 9 o'clock p.m. James L. Laird, Esquire. Sir, your reply to my last note in which I peremptorily demanded satisfaction of you, without alternative, is just received, and to my utter astonishment you still endeavored a shield your craven carcass behind the person of an individual who, in spite of your introduction, is entirely unknown to me, and upon whose shoulders you cannot throw the whole responsibility. You acknowledge and reaffirm in this note that, for all editorials appearing in the union, the proprietors are personally responsible. Now, sir, had there appeared no editorial on the subject endorsing and reiterating the slanderous and disgraceful insults heaped upon me in the communication, I would have simply called upon you and demanded the name of its author, and upon your answer would have depended my father's action. But the editorial, alluded to, was equally vile and slanderous as the communication, and being an editorial would naturally have more weight in the minds of readers. It was the following undignified and abominably insulting slander appearing in your editorial headed the How Is It? issue that occasioned my sending you first an alternative and then a peremptory challenge. Never before, in a long period of newspaper intercourse, never before in any contact with a contemporary, however unprincipled he might have been, have we found an opponent in statement or in discussion, who had no gentlemanly sense of professional propriety, who conveyed in every word and in every purpose of all his words such a groveling disregard for truth, decency, and courtesy, as to seem to court the distinction, only of being understood as a vulgar liar. Meeting one who prefers falsehood, whose instincts are all toward falsehood, whose thought is falsification, whose aim is vilification through insincere professions of honesty, one whose only merit is thus described, and who evidently desires to be thus known, obstacles presented are entirely insurmountable, and whoever would touch them fully should expect to be abominably defiled. Union May XXI. I note simply avowed authorship of a certain communication that appeared simultaneously with your libelous editorial, and states that its author had nothing to retract. For your gratification, however, I will remark that Mr. Wilmington's case will be attended to in due time by a distant acquaintance of his who is not willing to see him suffer in obscurity. In the meantime, if you do not wish yourself posted as a coward, you will at once accept my peremptory challenge which I now reiterate. Sam L. Clemens. VI. Office of Territorial Enterprise, Virginia. May 21st, 1864. J. W. Wilmington. Sir, you are perhaps far from those who are want to advise and care for you else you would see the policy of minding your own business and letting that of other people alone. Under these circumstances therefore I take the liberty of suggesting that you are getting out of your sphere. A contemptible ass and coward like yourself should only meddle in the affairs of gentlemen when called upon to do so. I approve and endorse the course of my principle in this matter, and if your sensitive disposition is aroused by any proceeding of his, I have only to say that I can be found at the Enterprise Office and always at your service. S. E. Gillis. To the above Mr. Wilmington gave a verbal reply to Mr. Millard, the gentleman through whom the note was conveyed to him, stating that he had no quarrel with Mr. Gillis, that he had written his communication only in defence of the craft, and did not desire a quarrel with a member of that craft. He showed Mr. G's note to Mr. Millard, who read it, but made no comments upon it. 7. Office of the Virginia Daily Union Monday Morning, May 23, 1864 Samuel Clemens Esquire In reply to your lengthy communication I have only to say that in your note opening this correspondence you demanded satisfaction for a communication in the union which branded the writer of an article in the Enterprise as a liar, a paltrune, and a puppy. You declare yourself to be the writer of the Enterprise article, and the vowed author of the union communication stands ready to afford satisfaction. Any attempt to evade a meeting with him, and force one upon me, will utterly fail, as I have no right under the rulings of the code, to meet or hold any communication with you in this connection. The threat of being posted as a coward cannot have the slightest effect upon the position I have assumed in the matter. If you think this correspondence reflects credit upon you, I advise you by all means to publish it. In the meantime you must excuse me from receiving any more long epistles from you. James L. Laird I denounce Mr. Laird as an unmitigated liar, because he says I published an editorial in which I attacked the printers employed on the union, whereas there is nothing in that editorial which can be so construed. Moreover, he is a liar on general principles, and from natural instinct. I denounce him as an abject coward, because it has been stated in his paper that its proprietors are responsible for all articles appearing in its columns, yet he backs down from that position, because he acknowledges the code, but will not live up to it. Because he says himself that he is responsible for all editorials, and then backs down from that also, and because he insults me in his note marked Four, and yet refuses to fight me. Finally, he is a fool, because he cannot understand that a publisher is bound to stand responsible for any and all articles printed by him, whether he wants to do it or not. Sam L. Clemens Territorial Enterprise May 24, 1864 Miscegenation We published a rumor the other day that the monies collected at the Carson Fancy Dress Ball were to be diverted from the Sanitary Fund and sent forward to aid a miscegenation or some other sort of society in the East. We also stated that the rumor was a hoax, and it was, we were perfectly right. However, four ladies are offended. We cannot quarrel with ladies. The very thought of such a thing is repulsive. Neither can we consent to offend them even unwittingly, without being sorry for the misfortune, and seeking their forgiveness, which is a kindness we hope they will not refuse. We intended no harm, as they would understand easily enough if they knew the history of this offense of ours, but we must suppress that history, since it would rather be amusing than otherwise, and the amusement would be at our expense. We have no love for that kind of amusement, and the same trait belongs to human nature generally. One lady complained that we should at least have answered the note they sent us. It is true. There is small excuse for our neglect of a common politeness like that, yet we venture to apologize for it, and will still hope for pardon just the same. We have noticed one thing in this whole business, and also in many an instance which has gone before it, and that is that we resemble the majority of our species in the respect that we are very apt to get entirely in the wrong, even when there is no seeming necessity for it. But, to offset this vice, we claim one of the virtues of our species, which is that we are ready to repair such wrongs when we discover them. This is section 19 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. Territorial Enterprise, June 1864 Territorial Enterprise, June 17th through 23rd, 1864. Mark Twain in the Metropolis. To a Christian who has toiled months and months in Washoo, whose hair bristles from a bed of sand, and whose soul is caked with a cement of alkali dust, whose nostrils know no perfume but the rank odor of sagebrush, and whose eyes know no landscape, but barren mountains and desolate plains, where the winds blow and the sun blisters, and the broken spirit of the contrite heart finds joy and peace only in Limburger cheese and Lager beer, unto such a Christian verily the Occidental Hotel is heaven on the half-shell. He may even secretly consider it to be heaven on the entire shell, but his religion teaches a sound Washoo Christian that it would be sacrilege to say it. Here you are expected to breakfast on salmon, fried oysters, and other substantial from six till half-past twelve. You are required to lunch on cold fowl and so forth from half-past twelve until three. You are obliged to skirmish through a dinner comprising such edibles as the world produces, and keep it up from three until half-past seven. You are then compelled to lay siege to the tea-table from half-past seven until nine o'clock, at which hour, if you refuse to move upon the supper-works and destroy oysters gotten up in all kinds of seductive styles until twelve o'clock, the landlord will certainly be offended, and you might as well move your trunk to some other establishment. It is a pleasure to me to observe, incidentally, that I am on good terms with the landlord yet. Why don't you send down, down into the Gould and Curry mine, to see whether it has petered out or not, and if so, when it will be likely to peter in again. The extraordinary decline of that stock has given rise to the wildest surmises in the way of accounting for it, but among the lot there is harm in but one, which is the express belief on the part of a few, that the bottom has fallen out of the mine. Gould and Curry is climbing again, however. It has been many a day since San Francisco has seen livelier times in her theatrical department than at present. Large audiences are to be found nightly at the Opera House, the Metropolitan, the Academy of Music, the American, the New Idea, and even the Museum, which is not as good a one as Barnum's. The circus company also played a lucrative engagement, but they are gone on their travels now. The graceful, charming, clipper-built Ella Zoyara was very popular. Miss Caroline Richings has played during the past fortnight at McGuire's Opera House to large and fashionable audiences, and has delighted them beyond measure with her sweet singing. It sounds improbable perhaps, but the statement is true nevertheless. You will hear of the Metropolitan now from every visitor to Washoe. It opened under the management of the new Lessees, Miss Annette Insie and Julia Dean Hain, with a company who are as nearly all stars as it was possible to make it. For instance, Annette Insie, Emily Jordan, Mrs. Judah, Julia Dean Hain, James H. Taylor, Frank Lawlor, Harry Cortain, and Fred Franks—my favorite Washoe Tragedian whose name they have put in small letters in the program when it deserves to be in capitals—because whatever part they give him to play, don't he always play it well? Well, and does he not possess the first virtue of a comedian which is to do humorous things with grave decorum and without seeming to know that they are funny? The birds and the flowers and the China men and the winds and the sunshine and all things that go to make life happy are present in San Francisco today just as they are all days in the year. Therefore one would expect to hear these things spoken of and gratefully and disagreeable matters of little consequence allowed to pass without comment. I say one would suppose that, but don't you deceive yourself. Anyone who supposes anything of the kind supposes an absurdity. The multitude of pleasant things by which the people of San Francisco are surrounded are not talked of at all. No. They dam the wind, and they dam the dust, and they give all their attention to damming them well and to all eternity. The blasted winds and the infernal dust, these alone form the eternal topics of conversation and a mighty absurd topic it seems to one just out of Washoe. There isn't enough wind here to keep breath in my body, or dust enough to keep sand in my craw. But it is human nature to find fault, to overlook that which is pleasant to the eye, and seek after that which is distasteful to it. You can take a stranger into the bank exchange and show him the magnificent picture of Samson and Delilah, and what is the first object he notices? Samson's fine face and flaming eye? Or the noble beauty of his form? Or the lovely half-nude Delilah? Or the muscular Philistine behind Samson, who is furtively admiring her charms? Or the perfectly counterfeited folds of the rich drapery below her knees? Or the symmetry and truth to nature of Samson's left foot? No, sir. The first thing that catches his eye is the scissors on the floor at Delilah's feet, and the first thing he says? Them scissors is too modern! There weren't no scissors like that in them days! By a damn sight! Territory Enterprise June 27th through 30th, 1865. Just one more unfortunate. Immorality is not decreasing in San Francisco. I saw a girl in the city prison last night who looked as much out of place there as I did myself, possibly more so. She was petite and diffident, and only sixteen years and one month old. To judge by her looks one would say she was as sinless as a child. But such was not the case. She had been living with a strapping young nigger for six months. She told her story as artlessly as a schoolgirl, and it did not occur to her for a moment that she had been doing anything unbecoming. And I never listened to a narrative which seemed more simple and straightforward, or more free from ostentation and vain glory. She told her name and her age to a day. She said she was born in Holburn, City of London, father living, but gone back to England. She was not married to the negro, but she was left without anyone to take care of her, and he had taken charge of that department and had conducted it since she was fifteen and a half years old very satisfactorily. All listeners pitted her and said feelingly, poor Haffer, poor devil, and said she was an ignorant, airing child and had not done wrong willfully and knowingly, and they hoped she would pass her examination for the industrial school and be removed from the temptation and the opportunity to sin. Tears! And it was a credit to their manliness and their good feeling. Tears stood in the eyes of some of those stern policemen. Oh, woman, thy name is humbug! Afterwards, while I sat taking some notes and not in sight from the women's cell, some of the old blisters fell to gossiping, and lo! young simplicity chipped in and clattered away as lively as the vilest of them. It came out in the conversation that she was hail fellow well met with all the old female rapscallions in the city, and had had business relations with their several establishments for a long time past. She spoke affectionately of some of them, and the reverse of others, and dwelt with a toothsome relish upon numberless reminiscences of her social and commercial intercourse with them. She knew all manner of men, too, men with quaint and suggestive names, for the most part, and liked Oyster-eyed Bill, and Bloody Mike, and The Screamer, but cherished a spirit of animosity toward Foxy MacDonald for cutting her with a bowie-knife at a strumpet-ball one night. She a poor, innocent kitten. Oh! She was a scallywag, whom it would be base flattery to call a prostitute. She a candidate for the industrial school. Bless you. She has graduated long ago. She is competent to take charge of a university of vice. In the ordinary branches, she is equal to the best, and in the higher ones, such as ornamental swearing and fancy embroidered filigree slang, she is a shade-supporting. An inferior to any artist I ever listened to. Territorial Enterprise July 7 through 19th, 1865. Portion of letter from San Francisco describing black marchers in Fourth of July celebration. Mark Twain on The Colored Man. At the fag end of the procession was a long double file of the proudest, happiest scoundrels I saw yesterday, niggers. Or perhaps I should say them damned niggers, which is the other name they go by now. They did all it was in their power to do, poor devils, to modify the prominence of the contrast between black and white faces, which seems so hateful to their white fellow-creatures, by putting their lightest-colored darkies in the front rank, then glooming down by some unaggravating and nicely graduated shades of darkness to the fell and dismal blackness of undefiled and unalloyed niggerdom in the remote extremities. It was a fine stroke of strategy. The day was dusty, and no man could tell where the white folks left off and the niggers began. The damned niggers—this is another descriptive title which has been conferred upon them by a class of our fellow-citizens who persist, in the most short-sighted manner, in being on bad terms with them in the face of the fact that they have got to sing with them in heaven, or scorch with them in hell some day, in the most familiar and sociable way, and on a footing of most perfect equality. The damned niggers, I say, smiled one broad extravagant powerful smile of grateful thankfulness and profound and perfect happiness from the beginning of the march to the end, and through this vast black, drifting cloud of smiles their white teeth glimmered fitfully like heat-lightening on a summer's night. If a white man honoured them with a smile in return, they were utterly overcome, and fell to bowing like oriental devotees, and attempting the most extravagant and impossible smiles reckless of lock-jaw. They might as well have left their hats at home, for they never put them on. I was rather irritated at the idea of letting these fellows march in the procession myself, at first, but I would have scorned to harbour so small a thought, if I had known the privilege, was going to do them so much good. There seemed to be a religious benevolent society among them, with a banner—the only one in the coloured ranks, I believe—and all hands seemed to take boundless pride in it. The banner had a picture on it, but I could not exactly get the hang of its significance. It presented a very black and uncommonly sick-looking nigger in bed, attended by two other niggers—one reading the Bible to him, and the other one handing him a plate of oysters. But what the very mischief this blending of contraband dissolution, raw oysters and Christian consolation could possibly be symbolic of, was more than I could make out. Territorial Enterprise October 10th through 11th, 1865. Portion of letter from San Francisco. The Cruel Earthquake. Singular effects of the shock on the Reverend Mr. Stebbins. Now, the Reverend Mr. Stebbins acted like a sensible man—a man with his presence of mind about him. He did precisely what I thought of doing myself at the time of the earthquake, but had no opportunity. He came down out of his pulpit and embraced a woman. Some say it was his wife. Well, and so it might have been his wife. I'm not saying it wasn't, am I? I am not going to intimate anything of that kind, because how do I know—but it was his wife. I say it might have been his wife, and so it might. I was not there. And I do not consider that I have any right to say it was not his wife. In reality, I am satisfied it was his wife. But I am sorry, though, because it would have been so much better presence of mind to have embraced some other woman. I was in Third Street. I looked around for some woman to embrace, but there was none in sight. I could have expected no better fortune, though, so I said, Oh, certainly, just my luck! A singular illustration. When the earthquake arrived in Oakland, the commanding officer of the Congregational Sabbath School was reading these words by way of text, and the earth shook and trembled. In an instant the earthquake seized the text and preached a powerful sermon on it. I do not know whether the commanding officer resumed the subject again when the earthquake left off or not. But if he did, I am satisfied that he has got a good deal of cheek. I do not consider that any modest man would try to improve on a topic that had already been treated by an earthquake. A model artist strikes an attitude. A young gentleman who lives in Sacramento Street rushed downstairs and appeared in public with no raiment on save a knit undershirt, which concealed his person about as much as its tin foil cap conceals a champagne bottle. He struck an attitude, such as a man assumes when he is looking up, expecting danger from above, and bends his arm and holds it aloft to ward off possible missiles, and standing thus he glared fiercely up at the firewall of a tall building opposite, from which a few bricks had fallen. Men shouted at him to go in the house. People seized him by the arm and tried to drag him away, even tender-hearted women. Oh, woman! Oh, ever noble, unselfish, angelic woman! Oh, woman! In our hours of ease, uncertain, coy, and hard to please, when anything happens to go wrong with our harness, a ministering angel thou! Women, I say, averting their faces, and nudging the paralyzed and impassable statue in the ribs with their elbows, beseeched him to take their aprons, to take their shawls, to take their hoop skirts, anything, anything, so that he would not stand there longer in such a plight and distract people's attention from the earthquake. But he wouldn't budge. He stood there in his naked majesty till the last tremor died away from the earth, and then looked around on the multitude, and stupidly enough too, until his dull eye fell upon himself. He went back upstairs then. He went up lively. What happened to a few Virginians? Charlie Bryan climbs a telegraph pole. But where's the use in dwelling on these incidents? There are enough of them to make a book. Joe Nokes of your city was playing billiards in the Cosmopolitan Hotel. He went through a window into the court, and then jumped over an iron gate, eighteen feet high, and took his billiard cue with him. Sam Wittgenstein took refuge in a church, probably the first time he was ever in one in his life. Judge Bryan climbed a telegraph pole. Pete Hopkins narrowly escaped injury. He was shaken abruptly from the summit of the telegraph hill, and fell on a three-story brick house ten feet below. I see that the morning papers, always ready to smooth over things, attribute the destruction of the house to the earthquake. That is newspaper magnanimity, but an earthquake has no friends. Extraordinary things happen to everybody except me. No one even spoke to me. At least only one man did, I believe, a man named Robinson from Salt Lake, I think, who asked me to take a drink. I refused. Territorial Enterprise October 21 through 24, 1865. Portion of letter from San Francisco, written October 19, 1865. Bob Roach's plan for circumventing a Democrat. Where did all these Democrats come from? They grow thicker and thicker and act more and more outrageously at each successive election. Now, yesterday they had the presumption to elect S.H. Dwinell to the judgeship of the 15th District Court, and, not content with this, they were depraved enough to elect four out of the six Justices of the Peace. Oh, Henry William, where is thy blush? Oh, Timothy Hooligan, where is thy shame? It's out. Democrats haven't got any. But Union men stayed away from the election. They either did that or else they came to the election and voted Democratic tickets. I think it was the latter, though the flag will doubtless say it was the former. But these Democrats didn't stay away. You never catch a Democrat staying away from an election. The grand end and aim of his life is to vote or be voted for, and he accommodates to circumstances and does one just as cheerfully as he does the other. The democracy of America left their native wilds in England and Connaught to come here and vote. And when a man, and especially a foreigner, who don't have any voting at home any more than an Arkansas man has ice cream for dinner, comes three or four thousand miles to luxuriate in occasional voting, he isn't going to stay away from an election any more than the Arkansas man will leave the hotel table in Orleans until he has destroyed most of the ice cream. The only man I ever knew who could counteract this passion on the part of Democrats for voting was Robert Roach, carpenter of the steamer Alex Scott, flying to and from St. Louis to New Orleans and back, as her advertisement sometimes read. The Democrats generally came up as deck passengers from New Orleans, and the yellow fever used to snatch them right and left, eight or nine a day for the first six or eight hundred miles. Consequently Roach would have a lot on hand to plant every time the boat landed to wood. Plant was Roach's word. One day, as Roach was super-intending a burial, the captain came up and said, God bless my soul, Roach. What do you mean by shoving a corpse into a hole in the hillside in this barbarous way, face down, and its feet sticking out? I always plant foreign Democrats in that manner, sir, because damn their souls, if you plant them any other way, they'll dig out and vote the first time there's an election. Look at that fellow now. You put them in head first and face down, and the more they dig, the deeper they'll go into the hill. In my opinion, if we do not get Roach to super-intend our cemeteries, enough Democrats will dig out at the next election to carry their entire ticket. It begins to look that way. Territorial Enterprise October 26 through 28, 1865 San Francisco Letter Written October 24, 1865 Some portions missing A love of a bonnet described Well, you ought to see the new style of bonnets and then die. Everybody has discarded ringlets and bunches of curls and taken to the clod of compact hair on the after-guard, which they call a waterfall, though why they name it so I cannot make out, for it looks no more like one's general notion of a waterfall than a cabbage looks like a cataract. Yes, they have thrown aside the bunches of curls which necessitated the wearing of a bonnet with a backdoor to it, or rather a bonnet without any back to it at all, so that the curls bulged out from under an overhanging spray of slender feathers, sprigs of grass, etc. You know the kind of bonnet I mean. It was as if a lady spread a diaper on her head, with two of the corners brought down over her ears, and the other trimmed with a bunch of graceful flummary and allowed to hang over her waterfall, fashions or mighty tanglesome things to write, but I am coming to it directly. The diaper was the only beautiful bonnet women have worn within my recollection, but as they have taken exclusively to the waterfalls now, they have thrown it aside and adopted, me, the infernalist, old-fashionist, ruralist atrocity in its stead you ever saw. It is perfectly plain and hasn't a ribbon or a flower or any ornament, whatever about it. It is severely shaped, like the half of a lady's thimble split in two lengthwise, or would be if that thimble had a perfectly square end instead of a rounded one. Just imagine it, glance at it in your mind's eye, and recollect no ribbons, no flowers, no filigree, only the plainest kind of plain straw or plain black stuff. It don't come forward as far as the hair, and it fits to the head as tightly as a thimble fits. Fold it in a square mass against the back of the head, and the square end of the bonnet half covers it, and fits a square and tightly against it, as if somebody had hit the woman in the back of the head with a tombstone or some other heavy and excessively flat projectile. And a woman looks as distressed in it as a cat with her head fast in a tea-cup. It is infamous. REOPENING OF THE PLAZA The plaza, or Portsmouth Square, is done at last, and by a resolution passed by the Board of Supervisors last night, is to be thrown open to the public henceforth at 7 o'clock a.m., and closed again at 7 o'clock p.m. every day. The same resolution prohibits the visits of dogs to this holy ground, and denies to the public the privilege of rolling on its grass. If I could bring myself to speak vulgarly, I should say that the latter clause is rough, very rough on the people. The force to idle in gravel walks, when there is soft green grass close at hand, is tantalizing. It is as uncomfortable as to lie disabled and thirsty in sight of a fountain, or to look at a feast without permission to participate in it when you are hungry, and almost as exasperating as to have to smack your chops over the hugging and kissing going on between a couple of sweethearts without any reasonable excuse for inserting your own metaphorical shovel. And yet there is one consolation about it on nature's eternal equity of compensation. No matter how degraded and worthless you may become here, you cannot go to grass in the plaza at any rate. The plaza is a different thing from what it used to be. It used to be a text from a desert. It was not large enough for a whole chapter, but now it is traversed here and there by walks of precise width, and which are graded to a degree of rigid accuracy which is constantly suggestive of the spirit level. And the grass plots are as strictly shaped as a dandy side whiskers, and their surfaces clipped and smoothed with the same mathematical exactness. In a word, the plaza looks like the intensely brown and green perspective-less diagram of stripes and patches which an architect furnishes to his client as a plan for a projected city garden or cemetery. And its glaring greenness in the midst of so much somberness is startling and yet piercingly pleasant to the eye. It reminds one of old John Deal's vegetable garden in Virginia which, after a rain, used to burn like a square of green fire in the midst of the dull gray desolation around it. More fashions exit waterfall. I am told that the Empress Eugenie is growing bald on the top of her head, and that to hide this defect she now combs her back hair forward in such a way as to make her look all right. I am also told that this mode of dressing the hair is already fashionable in all the great civilized cities of the world, and that it will shortly be adopted here. Therefore, let your ladies stand by and prepare to drum their ringlets to the front when I give the word. I shall keep a weather eye out for this fashion, for I am an uncompromising enemy of the popular waterfall, and I yearn to see it in disgrace. Just think of the disgusting shape and appearance of the thing. The hair is drawn to a slender neck at the back, and then commences a great, fat, oblong ball like a kidney covered with a net. And sometimes this net is so thickly bespangled with white beads that the ball looks soft and fuzzy and filmy and gray at a little distance, so that it vividly reminds you of those nauseating garden spiders in the States that go about dragging a pulpy, grayish bag full of young spiders slung to them behind. And when I look at these suggestive waterfalls, and remember how seasick it used to make me to mash one of those spider bags, I feel seasick again as a general thing. Its shape alone is enough to turn one's stomach. Let's have the back hair brought forward as soon as convenient. Not to bane. I shall feel much obliged to you if you can aid me in getting up this panic. I have no wife of my own, and therefore as long as I have to make the most of other peoples, it is a matter of vital importance to me that they should dress with some degree of taste. Territorial Enterprise October 15th through 31st, 1865. Portion of Letter from San Francisco. Popper defyeth ye earthquake. Where's Ajax now, with his boasted defiance of the lightning? Who is Ajax to Popper, and what is lightning to an earthquake? It is taking no chances to speak of, to defy the lightning, for it might pelt away at you for a year and miss you every time. But I don't care what corner you hide in, if the earthquake comes, it will shake you, and if you will build your house weak enough to give it a fair show, it will melt it down like butter. Therefore I exalt Popper above Ajax, for Popper defyeth the earthquake. The famous shake of the 8th of October snatched the front out of Popper's great four-story shell of a house on the corner of Third and Mission, as easily if it had been mere pastime. Yet I notice that the reckless Popper is rebuilding it again, just as thin as it was before, and using the same old bricks. Is this paying proper respect to earthquakes? I think not. If I were an earthquake, I would never stand for such insolence from Popper. I am confident that I would shake that shell down, even if it took my last shake. Territorial Enterprise, October 31 through November 2, 1865. Portion of San Francisco letter. Steamer departures. I feel savage this morning, and as usual when one wants to growl, it is almost impossible to find things to growl about with any degree of satisfaction. I cannot find anything in the steamer departures to get mad at. Only, I wonder who Jay Schmelzer is, and what does he have such an atrocious name for, and what business has he got in the States? Who is there in the States who cares whether Schmelzer comes or not? The conduct of this unknown Schmelzer is exasperating to the last degree, and off goes General Rosacran's, without ever doing anything to give a paper a chance to abuse him. He has behaved himself and kept quiet, and avoided scandalous meddling with the Oakland Seminaries, and paid his board in the most aggravating manner. Let him go. And Caness is gone. Oh, damn, Caness. End of Section 20. This is Section 21 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section 21, Territorial Enterprise, November 1865. Territorial Enterprise, November 1865. The Ballad Infliction. It is bound to come. There is no help for it. I smell it afar off. I see the signs in the air. Every day, and every hour of every day, I grow more and more nervous, for with every minute of waning time the dreadful infliction comes nearer and nearer in its inexorable march. In another week, maybe, all San Francisco will be singing, Waring of the Green. I know it. I have suffered before, and I know the symptoms. This holds off long, but it is partly that the calamity may gather irresistible worrying power, and partly because it is harder to learn than Chinese. But that is all the worse, for when the people do learn it, they will learn it bad, and terrible will be the distress it will bring upon the community. A year ago Johnny came marching home. That song was sung by everybody in every key, in every locality. At all hours the day and night, and always out of tune, it sent many unoffending persons to the Stockton Asylum. There was no stopping the epidemic, and so it had to be permitted to run its course and wear itself out. Short was our respite, and then a still more malignant distemper broke out in the midst of this harried and suffering community. It was, Never forget me, mother, mother, mother, mother, with an ever accumulating aggravation of expression upon each successive mother. The fireboys set up all night to sing it, and bands of sentimental stevedores and malicious soldiers patrolled the streets and howled its legubrious strains. A passion for serenading attacked the youth of the city, and they sang it under verandas in the back streets until the dogs and cats destroyed their voices in unavailing efforts to lay the devilish spirit that was driving happiness from their hearts. Finally there came a season of repose, and the community slowly recovered from the effects of the musical calamity. The respite was not long. In an unexpected moment they were attacked front and rear by a new enemy. When we were marching through Georgia, tongue cannot tell what we suffered while this frightful disaster was upon us. Young Mrs. sang it to the guitar and the piano. Young men sang it to the banjo and the fiddle. The unblood stained soldier yelled it with enthusiasm as he marched through the imaginary swamps and cotton plantations of the drill room. The firemen sang it as they trundled their engines home from conflagrations, and the hated serenader tortured it with his damned accordion. Some of us survived, and some have gone the old road to a haven of rest at Stockton, where the wicked cease from troubling and the popular songs are not allowed. For the space of four weeks the survivors have been happy, but as I have said before, it is bound to come. Aranapogue is breeding a song that will bedeck some mountain with new-made graves. In another week we shall be wearing the green, and in a fortnight some will be wearing of the black in consequence. Three repetitions of this song will produce lunacy, and five will kill. It is that much more virulent than its predecessors. People are finding it hard to learn, but when they get it learned they will find it potent for harm. It is Wheatley's song. He sings it in Aranapogue with a sprig of shamrock in his hat. Wheatley sings it with such aggravated solemnity as to make an audience long for the grave. It is doled out slowly, and every note settles deliberately to its place on one's heart like a solid iceberg. And by the time it is finished the temperature of the theatre has fallen to twenty degrees. Think what a dead cold winter we shall have here when this arctic funeral melody becomes popular. Think of its being performed at midnight in lonely places upon the spirit-depressing accordion. Think of being driven to blow your brains out under such circumstances and then dying to the graveyard cadences of wearing of the green. But it is bound to come, and we may as well bow our heads and submit with such degree of Christian resignation as we are able to command. The Californian, Saturday, November 11, 1865. Exit Bummer. As we have devoted but little space to an event which has filled our local contemporaries with as much sorrow, judging from the columns of lamentations it has called forth, as would the decease of the best biped in the city, we give Mark Twain's view of the occurrence as recorded in the Enterprise of the Eighth. Strangely enough, Mark, who can't stand ballad inflection, seems to think there has not been quite enough of bummer. The old, vagrant bummer is really dead at last, and although he was always more respected than his obsequious vassal, the dog Lazarus, his exit has not made half as much stir in the newspaper world as signalized the departure of the latter. I think it is because he died a natural death. Died with friends around him to smooth his pillow and wipe the death-damps from his brow and receive his last words of love and resignation, because he died full of years and honour and disease and fleas. He was permitted to die a natural death, as I have said, but poor Lazarus died with his boots on, which is to say he lost his life by violence. He gave up the ghost mysteriously, at dead of night, with none to cheer his last moments or soothe his dying pains. So the murdered dog was canonized in the newspapers, his shortcomings excused and his virtues heralded to the world, but his superior, parting with his life in the fullness of time and in the due course of nature, sinks as quietly as might the mangiest cur among us. Well, let him go. In earlier days he was courted and caressed, but laterally he has lost his comeliness. His dignity had given place to a want of self-respect, which allowed him to practice mean deception to regain for a moment that sympathy and notice which had become necessary to his very existence, and it was evident to all that the dog had had his day. His great popularity was gone forever. In fact, Bummer should have died sooner. There was a time when his death would have left a lasting legacy of fame to his name. Now, however, he will be forgotten in a few days. Bummer's skin is to be stuffed and placed with that of Lazarus. End of Section XXI. This is Section XXII of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section XXII, The San Francisco Daily Morning Call. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, July 31st, 1864. Another Lazarus. The lamented Lazarus departed this life about a year ago, and from that time until recently poor Bummer has mourned the loss of his faithful friend in solitude, scorning the sympathy and companionship of his race with that stately reserve and exclusiveness which has always distinguished him since he became a citizen of San Francisco. But for several weeks past we have observed a vagrant black puppy has taken up with him and attends him in his promenades, bums with him at the restaurants, and watches over his slumbers as unremittingly as did the sainted Lazarus of other days. Whether that puppy really feels an unselfish affection for Bummer, or whether he is actuated by unworthy motives and goes with him merely to ring in on the eating-houses through his popularity at such establishments, or whether he is one of those fawning psychopaths that fasten upon the world's heroes in order that they may be glorified by the reflected light of greatness, we cannot yet determine. We only know that he hangs around Bummer and snarls at intruders upon his repose and looks proud and happy when the old dog condescends to notice him. He ventures upon no puppyish levity in the presence of his prince and assays no unbecoming familiarity, but in all respects conducts himself with the respectful decorum which such a puppy so situated should display. Consequently, in time, he may grow into high favor. Pleasure excursion. We lunched then and shortly began to drink champagne by the basket. I saw the tremendous guns frowning from the fort. I saw San Francisco spread out over the sand-hills like a picture. I saw the huge fortress at Black Point looming hazily in the distance. I saw tall ships sweeping in from the sea through the Golden Gate. I saw that it was time to take another drink, and after that I saw no more. All hands fell to singing. When we were marching through Georgia, and the remainder of the trip was fought out on that line. We landed at the steamboat wharf at five o'clock, safe and sound. Those reporters I spoke of said we had been to Benicia, and the others said we had been to the Cliff House, but poor devils, they had been drinking, and they did not really know where we had been. I know, but I do not choose to tell. I enjoyed that trip first rate. I am rather fond of a trip on a fast boat with a jolly crowd. That was a jolly crowd. Sometimes they were all out forward standing on their heads, and then the boat would not steer because her rudder was sticking up in the air like a sail of a windmill. And sometimes they were all aft turning hand springs and playing mumble-peg, and then the boat would not steer because she stood so straight up in the water that her head caught all the wind that was blowing. And sometimes they were all on the starboard side eating and drinking and singing, and then she would not steer because she was listed worse than any soldier that ever listed since the war began. Still even under these trying circumstances the boat made fifteen miles an hour, and so I suppose that on an even keel she can make a hundred or thereabouts. I enjoyed that excursion. End of section 22 This is section 23 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, section 23, Territorial Enterprise, November 1865, Part 2. Territorial Enterprise, November 15th through 18th, 1865. Portion of Letter from San Francisco. Editorial Puffing. Let John Wickham Smith, Esquire, one of our pioneer merchants and one among our wealthiest and most respected citizens, leave in the steamer to revisit the home of his nativity, and one of these papers will give you half a column of sorrow and distress about it, and wind up with the Eternal, but we are happy to say that not many months will elapse ere he will be with us again. And forget to mention that a distinguished and war-bronst Major General went in the same steamer with the wealthy and successful Smith. The other paper would let John Wickham Smith go to the States or to the Devil, either a dozen times over and always maintain an insolent silence about it, but let Moich Mourouni or Tim Murphy or Judy O'Flaherty receive a present of rile Irish whiskey from the old country, and it will never let you hear the last of it. Territorial Enterprise, November 18, 1865. Portion of Letter from San Francisco. The Old Thing. As usual the Alta reporter fastens the mysterious What-Cheer robbery on the same horrible person who knocked young Myers in the head with a slungshot a year ago, and robbed his father's pawnbroker shop of some brass jewellery and crippled revolvers in broad daylight, and he laid that exploit on the horrible wretch who robbed the Mayor's clerk, who half-murdered Detective Officer Rose in a lonely spot below Santa Clara, and he proved that this same monster killed the lone woman in a secluded house up a dark alley with a carpenter's chisel months before. And he demonstrated by inspired argument that the same villain who chiseled the woman tomahawked a couple of defenseless women in the most mysterious manner up another dark alley a few months before that. Now the perpetrator of these veiled crimes has never been discovered, yet this wicked reporter has taken the whole batch and piled them coolly and relentlessly upon the shoulders of one imaginary scoundrel with a comfortable, here these are yours, and with an air that says plainly that no denial and no argument in the case will be entertained. And every time anything happens that is unlawful and dreadful and has a spice of mystery about it, this reporter, without waiting to see if maybe somebody else didn't do it, goes off at once and jams it on top of the old pile as much as to say, here, here's some more of your work. Now, this isn't right, you know. It is all well enough for Mr. Smythe to divert suspicion from himself. Nobody objects to that. But it is not right for him to lay every solitary thing on this mysterious stranger who ever he is. It is not right, you know. He ought to give the poor devil a show—the idea of accusing the mysterious of the Wachir Regulary, considering who was the last border to bed and the first one up. Smythe is endeavouring to get on the detective police force. I think it will be wronging the community to give this man such a position as that. Now you know that yourself, don't you? He would settle down on some particular fellow, and every time there was a rape committed, or a steamship stolen, or an oyster-seller rifled, or a church burned down, or a family massacred, or a black-and-tan pup stolen, he would march off with portentious mean and snatch that fellow and say, here, you are at it again, you know, and snake him off to the station house. Territorial Enterprise, November 19th or 21st, 1865. The Pioneer's Ball. It was estimated that four hundred persons were present at the ball. The gentlemen wore the orthodox costume for such occasions, and the ladies were dressed the best they knew how. Not to be any, most of these ladies were pretty, and some of them absolutely beautiful. Four out of every five ladies present were pretty. The ratio at the Colfax Party was two out of every five. I always keep the run of these things. While upon this department of the subject I may as well tarry a moment and furnish you with descriptions of some of the most noticeable costumes. Mrs. W. M. was attired in an elegant pâté de foie gras made expressly for her, and was greatly admired. Miss S. had her hair done up. She was the center of attraction for the gentlemen, and the envy of all the ladies. Miss G. W. was tastefully dressed in a tout ensemble and was created with deafening applause wherever she went. Mrs. C. N. was superbly arrayed in white kid gloves. Her modest and engaging manner accorded well with the unpretending simplicity of her costume, and caused her to be regarded with absorbing interest by everyone. The charming Miss M. M. B. appeared in a thrilling waterfall whose exceeding grace and volume compelled the homage of pioneers and emigrants alike. How beautiful she was! The queenly Mrs. L. R. was attractively attired in her new and beautiful false teeth, and the bonjour effect they naturally produced was heightened by her enchanting and well-sustained smile. The manner of this lady is charmingly pensive and melancholy, and her troops of admirers desired no greater happiness than to get on the scent of her sedant sweetened sighs and track her through her sinuous course among the gay and restless multitude. Miss R. P., with that repugnance to ostentation and dress which is so peculiar to her, was attired in a simple white lace collar fastened with a neat pearl-button solitaire. The fine contrast between the sparkling vivacity of her natural optic and the steadfast attentiveness of her placid glass eye was the subject of general and enthusiastic remark. The radiant and silt-like Mrs. T., late of your state, wore hoops. She showed to good advantage and created a sensation wherever she appeared. She was the gayest of the gay. Miss C. L. B. had her fine nose elegantly enabled, and the easy grace with which she blew it from time to time marked her as a cultivated and accomplished woman of the world. Its exquisitely modulated tone excited the admiration of all who had the happiness to hear it. Being offended with Miss X, and our acquaintance having ceased permanently, I will take this opportunity of observing to her that it is of no use for her to be sloping off to every ball that takes place and flourishing around with a brass oyster-knife skewered through her waterfall and smiling her sickly smile through her decayed teeth with her dismal pug-nose in the air. There is no use in it. She don't fool anybody. Everybody knows she is old. Everybody knows she is repaired, you might almost say, built with artificial bones and hair and muscles and things from the ground up, put together scrap by scrap, and everybody knows also that all one would have to do would be to pull out her keypin, and she would go to pieces like a Chinese puzzle. There, now, my faded flower, take that paragraph home with you and amuse yourself with it, and if ever you turn your wart of a nose up at me again, I will sit down and write something that will just make you rise up and howl. Territorial Enterprise, November 28th through 30th, 1865 Uncle Lige I will now relate an affecting incident of my meeting with Uncle Lige as a companion novel to the one published by Dan the other day entitled Uncle Henry. A day or two since, before the late stormy weather, I was taking a quiet stroll in the western suburbs of the city. The day was sunny and pleasant. In front of a small but neat bit-house seated upon a bank, a worn and discarded farrow bank, I saw a man and a little girl. The sight was too much for me, and I burst into tears. Oh, God! I cried! This is too rough! After the violence of my emotion had in a manner spent itself, I ventured to look once more upon that touching picture, the left hand of the girl, how well I recollect which hand it was by the warts on it, a fair-haired, sweet-faced child of about eight years of age, rested upon the right shoulder, how perfectly I remember it was his right shoulder because his left shoulder had been sawed off in a sawmill, of the man by whose side she was seated. She was gazing toward the summit of Lone Mountain and prating of the gravestones on the top of it and of the sunshine and diggers resting on its tomb-clad slopes. The head of the man drooped forward till his face almost rested upon his breast, and he seemed intently listening. It was only a pleasing pretense, though, for there was nothing for him to hear save the rattling of the carriages on the gravel road beside him, and he could have straightened himself up and heard that easy enough, poor fellow. As I approached, the child observed me, not withstanding her extreme youth, and, ceasing to talk, smilingly looked at me, strange as it may seem. I stopped, again almost overpowered, but after a struggle I mastered my feeling sufficiently to proceed. I gave her a smile, or rather I swapped her one in return for the one I had just received, and she said, This is Uncle Lige, poor, blind, drunk Uncle Lige. This burst of confidence from an entire stranger and one so young withal, caused my subjugated emotions to surge up in my breast once more, but again, with a strong effort I controlled them. I looked at the wine-bread cauliflower on the poor man's nose and saw how it had all happened. Yes, said he, noticing by my eloquent countenance that I had seen how it had all happened, not withstanding nothing had been said yet about anything having happened. Yes, it happened in Riza River a year ago, since that time been living here with brother Robert Lilladdy. Oh, he's the best, Uncle, and tells me such stories, cried the little girl. That's all right, you know. That's all right! said the kind-hearted, gentle old man, spitting on his shirt bosom and slurring it off with hand. The child leaned quickly forward and kissed his poor, blossomy face. We beheld two great tears start from the man's sightless eyes, but when they saw what sort of country they had got to travel over, they went back again. Kissing the child again and again, and once more, and then several times, and afterwards repeating it, he said, Ha! Oop! Oop! Hoorah! for a mellicle eagle star-spangled baller! That's all right, you know. That's all right! and he stroked her sunny curls and spit on his shirt bosom again. This affecting scene was too much for my already overcharged feelings, and I burst into a flood of tears and hurried from the spot. Such is the touching story of the Lodge. It may not be quite as sick as Dan's, but there is every bit as much reasonable material in it for a big calf like either of us to cry over. Cannot you publish the two novelettes in book form and send them forth to destroy such of our fellow citizens as are spared by the cholera? End of section 23