 This is section 95 of newspaper articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper articles by Mark Twain, section 95, Alta, California, January 28, 1868. Mark Twain in Washington, special correspondent of the Alta, California. Stealing a march on Congress. Who was he? How state secrets leak out? General Parker's little difficulty. Hawaiian Harris. Washington December 17. More Mysteries. A week or two ago Congress was surprised and incensed as well, to wake up one morning and find that the President's message was being read in every newspaper in the land, from Rhode Island to California, long before the official document had had an opportunity to reach the clerical desk of the Capitol. Every speeches were made in both houses. Members aired their opinions very freely about this breach of confidence, breach of decorum, contempt of Congress, or whatever it might be, and talked of arraigning the reporters and correspondents, talked of punishing the wretch who had forestalled the national legislature, talked vaguely of presidential leakiness, and lack of decorum in the matter. Washington, connected with the Associated Press, came out in newspaper cards, and explained that whatever connection they had had with the affair was fair and honourable, but did not tell how they got hold of the document. Individual correspondents published cards in which they denied being guilty. Conventions of correspondence framed similar cards, and all signed and sent them to the Speaker of the House. But still the one guilty man could not be found. He failed to come forward. Everybody knew what he got for the message and who he sold it to, but there all knowledge ceased. Who he was remained a dark and bloody mystery. A printer was suspected, then a chambermaid of the White House, then a cook, and each of these individuals in turn was a lion in a small way, a mysterious lion that nobody saw but everybody believed in. But it turned out that the chambermaid had left town two weeks before the crime was committed. The printer was in the hospital, deaf, dumb, blind, and an idiot, and the cook was dead, been dead a year. At any rate he had been dead some time. These were exciting days, but every sign failed, every suspicion proved at fault. The culprit could not be discovered, and so, reluctantly, the search was discontinued, and the wonder passed from the public mind. But behold, only a few days ago, when the people knew that a message from the President was to go to the Senate to be acted upon in secret session, a message concerning Mr. Stanton's removal, and everybody, senators and all, were full of curiosity as to what its character would be, outbursts and elaborate synopsis of the document in the newspapers. And not only that, but on the day appointed for the session, and before any senator had had a chance to hear the official message read, the document in full made its appearance in the public press. Congress was puzzled more than ever. The people were surprised almost as much as they were gratified. Now how can such things be, and overcome us, like a summer's dream, without our special wonder? There is mystery all about us. There are dreadful leaks somewhere in the old ship of state. Dozens of people know—they don't tell how—who is to be appointed to an office, days before the appointment is made, weeks before it is sent to the Senate for action. Synopsis of evidence in great secret inquests are published long before the government is ready to make them public. Intentions of the heads of the government that will affect the gold market are known in Wall Street long enough before those intentions are done into deeds to enable the brokers to buy gold or sell it, as the case shall demand. Now, who is the man? That is the question. Speaking of these things reminds me of an incident of old-time newspaper enterprise. It will dovetail into this theme very well. It is true in every particular. I get it from excellent authority. How a mystery was solved! During Mr. Madison's administration the President and the Cabinet were periodically astonished to find all their little secret state affairs faithfully reported in a certain New York paper, two or three days after they had transpired. This was in the old times when stagecoaches were used, you will remember. If a line of policy was determined on in secret counsel, the facts appeared in that paper without fail. If a foreign minister's conduct was criticized, if somebody was to be turned out of office, if the conduct of Congress was overhauled, if the most private and important matters affecting foreign relations were discussed, no matter it was all fish for that New York newspaper's net, and somehow it all found its way there. And what was particularly surprising was the accuracy and attention to minute details displayed in these mysterious reports. At first prying servants were suspected, but when it was remembered that even long conversations had been reported, word for word, and at a time when no servant was present, that idea was cast away as absurd. The upshot of it was that a coolness ensued in the Cabinet. The President began to suspect his great advisers, and they began to suspect him. Things came to such a pass that these gentlemen sat coldly at the Cabinet meetings, with important public matters distressing their minds, yet not daring to speak out freely and honestly, lest some Judas in the party should print his words in that haunting friend of a newspaper. Matters could not go on in this way. Neither human nature nor governmental nature could bear it. At last, one fortunate day, in the midst of one of these dreary silences of the Cabinet, the mystery was revealed. A suppressed sneeze was heard beyond a door that was there present, a door that had been unused and triple-locked for years. Every man sprang to his feet, an armorer was summoned to unfasten the door, and when it swung open, low, a well-known stenographer named Davis was exposed, wedged into a recess in the wall, taking notes. The wall was very thick, and the recess in it had a door opening into the Cabinet Council room, and another opening into an unused anti-room. These doors had been locked for several years, everybody supposed. Davis had procured a key, and, by feeing a servant, had gained admission to the recess from the anti-room. For a long time he had been in the habit of getting himself locked into this place early in the morning, and remaining there until the Cabinet business was finished. Terrible threats were made, and there was talk of making an example of him. But Davis tranquilly invited them to show wherein he had been guilty of misdemeanor, manslaughter, or any other grave offence against the law, and they let him go. It was all they could do. He had the weather-gauge of them. Singular Colonel Eli Parker, of General Grant's staff, was to have married an accomplished young lady of distinguished family in this city yesterday morning, but the wedding did not come off, owing to the mysterious disappearance of the bridegroom on Saturday night. It is feared that he has met with foul play. Here was a favorite with General Grant, and was with him all through the war. Great preparations had been made for the wedding, cards were issued for it, cards were also issued for receptions here and in New York. An extensive bridal tour had been mapped out. General Grant was to have given away the bride in the presence of a large and select company. The company was duly assembled at the appointed time. The General was ready, everybody waited, waited, waited. The slow minutes dragged heavily along. The guests wondered, the bridegroom distressed. Still the bridegroom did not come. The party broke up at last, and went home. Up to this time, more than three days, Colonel Parker has not been found or heard of. The last that was seen of him he went to General Grant's house on Saturday night to borrow a military scarf to add to his wedding outfit. Mrs. Grant brought three downstairs. He selected one and went away, and has not since been seen. Colonel Parker was an educated, cultivated gentleman, a thorough gentleman, and therefore no one suspects him of carelessness or criminal intent in this matter. His name is perhaps familiar to your readers—it has long been a noted one. He was an Indian and a chief, and by the same token a lineal descendant of old Red Jacket, the friend of Washington. A sketch of his own career, and that of his great ancestor, was published in Harper's Monthly two or three years ago. He was with Grant, and in his confidence, all through the war, and made a brave record for himself. Colonel Parker subsequently turned up, and the marriage was duly consummated. Harris. Harris is here yet. Harris is Lord High Minister of Finance to the King of the Sandwich Islands, when he is at home, and it don't rain. But he is his Royal Hawaiian Majesty's envoy to the United States now, and no man is sorryer than I am that his wages are stopped for the present. I met him, and conversed with him at the house of a mutual friend a night or two ago. And that is how I happen to know how to spell his title all the way through without breaking my neck over any of the corduroy syllables. I never saw Harris so pleasant and companionable before. He is really very passable company, until he tries to be funny, and then Harris is ghastly. He smiles as if he had his foot in a steel trap, and did not want anybody to know it. I can forgive that person anything but his jokes. But those never. While Harris continues to joke, there will be a malignant animosity between us that no power can mollify. Harris's business here is to get our government to remove our Man of War from the Sandwich Island waters. To give this enterprising devil his due, he has done everything he possibly could to accomplish his mission, and it was ungraceful in the King to stop his salary. He could not accomplish it, and I suppose nobody could. It is a good place out there for a Man of War. She is not doing any harm. She is not going to do any harm, and until a fair, reasonable reason is given for banishing her, she will remain. In placing her there, no offence whatever was meant to the King or the country, any more than we mean to offend the Sultan when we anchor a frigate in the harbor of Smyrna. I have missed Harris during the last day or two. I wonder what has become of him. I grieve to see a man fail in an honest endeavor, and now that his King has turned against him, I even wish that Harris could succeed in his mission. Personal Governor Currie of Oregon is here at Willards. General Kearnan, recently United States consul to some port in China, called a day or two ago. He spoke of his intention of delivering an address before the New York and Boston Chamber of Commerce concerning the great and growing importance of our trade with China. I hear that he wishes to be Minister of Mexico. His ambition ought to be realized. Those people down there are of a kind to keep a man moving around pretty lively, and General Kearnan is accustomed to traveling. I suppose he has learned how to pack his trunk and dictate his will at the same time. If he went to Mexico, though, I should think it would be a good idea to go flying light, put his will on record and travel without any baggage at all. Senator Stewart's family sailed for France last week. I was at a dinner in the early part of the week, given by Mr. Henry D. Cook to the Newspaper Correspondence Club of Washington, where Benjamin Pearly-Poor, a noted writer, said something which gave offence to General Boynton, late of the Army, but now of the press, and yesterday the party is quarreled in the ante-room of the House Reporters' Gallery. A duel was talked of all day, but I hear tonight that Mr. Poore has apologized. It is a great pity. I never have seen a dead reporter. A.D. Richardson is making a fortune out of his last book, The Mississippi and Beyond. He and Swinton, twelve decisive battles, have published the most saleable books, I believe, that have issued from the press this year. End of Section 95 This is Section 96 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section 96, Alta, California, February 5, 1868. Mark Twain in Washington, Special Correspondent of the Alta, California. The Great Dickens, An Honest Criticism, Political Gossip, Caning the President, Winter Festivities, Jump in Washington. Washington, January 11, Charles Dickens. I only heard him read once. It was in New York last week. I had a seat about the middle of Steinway Hall, and that was rather further away from the speaker than was pleasant or profitable. Only at 8 p.m. unannounced, and without waiting for any stamping or clapping of hands to call him out, a tall, spry, if I may say it, thin-legged old gentleman, gotten up regardless of expense, especially as to shirt front and diamonds, with a bright red flower in his buttonhole, gray beard and mustache, bald head, and with side hair brushed fiercely and tempestuously forward, as if its owner were sweeping down before a gale of wind, the very Dickens came. He did not emerge upon the stage. That is rather too deliberate a word. He strode. He strode in the most English way and exhibiting the most English general style and appearance straight across the broad stage, heedless of everything, unconscious of everybody, turning neither to the right nor the left, but striding eagerly straight ahead as if he had seen a girl he knew turn the next corner. He brought up handsomely in the center and faced the opera-glasses. His pictures are hardly handsome, and he, like everybody else, is less handsome than his pictures. That fashion he has of brushing his hair and goatee so resolutely forward gives him a comical, scotch-terrier look about the face, which is rather heightened than otherwise by his portentious dignity and gravity. But that queer old head took on a sort of beauty by and by, and a fascinating interest, as I thought of the wonderful mechanism within it, the complex but exquisitely adjusted machinery that could create men and women and put the breath of life into them, and alter all their ways and actions, elevate them, degrade them, murder them, marry them, conduct them through good and evil, through joy and sorrow on their long march from the cradle to the grave, and never lose its Godship over them, never make a mistake. I almost imagined I could see the wheels and pulleys work. This was Dickens. Dickens. There was no question about that, and yet it was not right easy to realize it. Somehow this puissant God seemed to be only a man, after all. How the great dude tumble from their high pedestals when we see them in common human flesh, and know that they eat pork and cabbage and act like other men! Dickens had a table to put his book on, and on it he had also a tumbler, a fancy decanter, and a small bouquet. Behind him he had a huge red screen, a bulkhead, a sounding board I took it to be, and overhead in front was suspended a long board with reflecting lights attached to it, which threw down a glory upon the gentleman, after the fashion and use in the picture galleries for bringing out the best effects of great paintings. Style. There is style about Dickens, and style about all his surroundings. He read David Copperfield. He is a bad reader in one sense, because he does not enunciate his words sharply and distinctly. He does not cut the syllables cleanly, and therefore many and many of them fell dead before they reached our part of the house. I say hour, because I am proud to observe that there was a beautiful young lady with me, a highly respectable young white woman. I was a good deal disappointed in Mr. Dickens' reading. I will go further and say, a great deal disappointed. The herald and tribune critics must have been carried away by their imaginations when they wrote their extravagant praises of it. Mr. Dickens' reading is rather monotonous as a general thing. His voice is husky. His pathos is only the beautiful pathos of his language. There is no heart, no feeling in it. It is glittering frostwork. His rich humor cannot fail to tickle an audience into ecstasies save when he reads to himself. And what a bright intelligent audience he had. He ought to have made them laugh, or cry, or shout at his own good will or pleasure. But he did not. They were very much tamer than they should have been. He pronounced steerforth, steolfuth. This will suggest to you that he is a little Englishy in his speech. One does not notice it much, however. I took two or three notes on a card. By reference to them I find that Pegatee's anger when he learned the circumstance of little Emily's disappearance was excellent acting full of spirit. Although that Pegatee's account of his search for Emily was bad, and that Mrs. McComber's inspired suggestions as to the negotiation of her husband's bills was good—I mean, of course, that the reading was—and that Dora, the child-wife and the storm at Yarmouth, where steerforth perished, were not as good as they might have been. Every passage Mr. D. read, with the exception of those I have noted, is rendered with a degree of ability far below what his reading reputation led us to expect. I have given first impressions. Possibly if I could hear Mr. Dickens read a few more times I might find a different style of impressions taking possession of me. But not knowing anything about that I cannot testify. Complementary. They import wines from Europe now into New York and sell them for California wines. That is complementary, isn't it? The California wines seem to be well liked in the East here, but they cannot compete in price with the bogus article from the old world. They told me in New York that once, lately, the market was so overstocked with the latter that a cargo of genuine California had to be shipped back. It was worth more in San Francisco than it would bring on this side. This Italian stuff can be sold wholesale in New York at twelve cents a gallon, after freight and duties are paid, a wine merchant tells me. It don't cost anything to call at California wine and it sells better, and so they christen it accordingly. Presidential Presence. All of a sudden the President has grown mightily in favor and everybody that can raise money enough buys a present for him and goes up to the White House and inflicts it on him. I believe he has received eleven different kinds of canes in the last three weeks. He got one from that same old inexhaustible Charter Oak day before yesterday. Do you suppose that that relic will ever give out? They have already taken more wood out of it than would build a couple of steamboats, but still it holds out. It all comes from the fact that the democracy are talking pretty freely of running the President for re-election. About six others are talked of, and so it mixes a man up a good deal as to who he ought to send canes to. Such as are able supply the whole gang, which is probably the safest thing to do. Mr. Johnson is willing to be re-elected. In fact he is working hard for the nomination. If you will notice the papers for a short time back you will observe that he is getting his consistency record up as well as possible. He is showing that the same political virtues that made him the people's choice for vice-president are still undimmed, and in sufficiently good repair to make a proper and righteous chief magistrate of him. Jumps Pictures Jump, the caricaturist of San Francisco, is here as artist for Frank Leslie's. He has made a water-color sketch of Pennsylvania Avenue, which is attracting a deal of attention. It hangs in the window of the principal bookstore and has a cluster of amused folks around it all the time. It has twenty or thirty portraits in it. This is just the city for jump, where the faces of the nation's distinguished men are so familiar. In this picture he has portraits of Seward, Wells, Banks, Spinner, Horace Greeley, General Butler, Charles Sumner, Grant, Sherman, Stanton, and others, whose features are well known everywhere. The execution is excellent, and the hits are good. Jump recently married a handsome young lady in New York. Festivities, etc. The receptions, weekly at the presidents, Mr. Cole Faxes, and others of the great officers of the government, are getting under full blast now, and are beginning to make this slow town look sociable. They had a grand eighth of January banquet at the Metropolitan Hotel night before last, a purely democratic celebration with the president of the United States at the head of it. It is said that a good many things were said there, but according to Riley, the best was the unstudied effort of a negro waiter. He said, They didn't talk about nothing but nigger. They abused a nigger all the time. But they didn't none of them give us a cent. The newspaper correspondence club will have its annual banquet this evening, and a royal affair it will be. The boys have been making great preparations for it for some time. They tell me I am expected to respond to the regular toast to woman. I don't care whether I am expected or not, I shall respond anyhow. It is my best hold. On all occasions, whenever a woman is mentioned, I am ready to make a statement. I delivered a lecture here, a night before last, a new lecture. It went off well. But it was only a happy accident that it did, for there was nobody to attend to business. The newspapers are all exceedingly kid and complementary, but one of them published a synopsis of the discourse. I was sorry for that, although it was so well meant, because one never feels comfortable afterward repeating a lecture that has been partly printed. And worse than that, people don't care about going to hear what they can buy in a newspaper for less money. I beg that the coast papers will not print any synopsis of my sermons they may find floating around. Mark Twain. The presidential question, the Hancock vote of thanks. Washington Message British Impudence The Prince of Wales Good Advice to a Senator Sundry Items Washington December 23, 1867 The President and Vice President Editors' Alta The high and growing consideration in which the Pacific States are held here is evidenced in the fact that both of the great political parties seem to have an idea that a candidate for president or vice president, in the next canvas, ought to be selected from that part of the country. The latest political gossip is to the effect that Senator Nye may chance to be the Republican nominee for vice president. Then on the Democratic side of the fence, Judge Field of California is talked of more and more every day in connection with the presidency of the United States. Indeed, there is no question that a movement in his favor has been going on quietly over a wide extent of the country, and that, without a mention in the newspapers hardly as a candidate, he probably stands foremost in the lists of candidates today. The Democrats are aware that to run a race with general grant, with any hope of success, they must bring out a competitor that has sound and wind and limb. Flaws that were merely damaging in the days of Pierce and Polk would be damning now. They have decided that there is a bill to be filled, and that that bill must be utterly and completely filled, even to the last item. They must have a man whose record as a union man is unblemished, whose record as a war man is spotless, and one whose conservatism cannot be gained, say. Thus far Judge Field is the only man they have found who fills this bill. He was a war man and a union man. His decisions on the Test Oath and the Decrees of the Military Commissions are quoted in proof of his conservatism. The Test Oath decision untied the hands of the lawyers all over the South, and restored to them the privilege of earning a livelihood. This secures to him a friendship of unquestionable value. Ultra peacemen like Pendleton and Volandingham are no longer considered at all available by the democracy, in the peculiar language of democracy that cat won't fight. McClellan destroyed many Southern Democrats with bullets and cold steel, and embittered the lives and wore out the patience of many more with waiting for him to make up his mind to being, to commence to get ready, to make a start to ultimately do something at some dim, indefinite time or other. Therefore McClellan will not do. While Hancock fought, and more than this, he hung Mrs. Sarat. Hancock will hardly do. Naspy will not do. Naspy's democracy is too genuine, and too straightforward in these piping times of policy. At this present moment, not next week, but at this present moment, Judge Field stands fairest on the Democratic list of names for the presidency. Whether it will remain so to the end, or whether expediency shall displace him for another man conceived to be still more available, is a thing which modern prophecy may not hope to determine. The Presidents Last The President's last communication asking Congress to vote a compliment to General Hancock has provoked some comment, and not without reason. It glorifies a servant of the government, a subordinate of the glorifier, the supreme head of the nation's military forces for what? Simply for magnanimously conceding to citizens of New Orleans, rights which are guaranteed to every citizen of the United States by the Constitution. Has a faithful discharge of imperative duty become so rare a thing in the land that its occurrences matter for glorification? Is it so rare that it astonish the President of the United States, and makes him haste to call public attention to the wonder? Is a discharge of duty become so sublime an event that Congress and the President must celebrate it with a national hurrah? Truly it seems so. But the President loves to be known as the Defender of the Constitution. It is possible that this is the first time his defense of it has resulted in a success. The whole affair is funny when you come to look squarely at it. This has not yet voted the thanks the President requested for Hancock. There is a reason, but it has not leaked into print yet, I believe, nor yet into common conversation. But that reason is a potent one, and may possibly hold back the vote of thanks for all time. The facts, as they exist behind the scenes, are these. The message and the suggested thanks were intended to do duty as electioneering guns for General Hancock. The Republicans had no interest in their success in that capacity. So it transpired that two resolutions of thanks were drawn up and canvassed by the two political parties in the House. One of these resolutions killed the other before either ever came up for action. One resolution offered the thanks of Congress for the General's faithful discharge of his onerous duties in New Orleans. The other read, and be it further resolved, that the grateful acknowledgments of Congress are also tender to General Hancock for his able and efficient services in superintending the execution of Mrs. Surrutt. The Democrats concluded that the vote of thanks, which was to have been such a fine stroke of strategy on behalf of the President's candidate, had better perish unexpressed than go forth with this appalling compliment dangling to it. The Big Trees. Not the California legislature managed somehow to give to that variety of trees which we delight to call the Washingtonia a name which will stick, a name which the nations will receive, a name which even England will respect. Of all the cheek that ever I heard of, the information that England and through her Europe has abolished the title Washingtonia conferred upon the Big Trees by America and renamed them Wellingtonia, does strike me as the sublimest effrontery that has transpired recently. That is, English all over. After Dr. Cain, steadily and surely destroying his life in a search among polar icebergs for a lost Englishman, yet doing it earnestly and unselfishly came back a dying man, and showed the great English savance his map of the notable discoveries he had made in those mysterious solitudes of the North, they showed their gratitude for the suffering he had endured for the behest of an Englishman, and their appreciation of his great services in behalf of science and the enlargement of the world's knowledge, by scratching his American names from his discoveries and substituting the names of a gang of British bloods and princes. It was eminently English. Wherever they can stick a name so that it shall glorify anything pertaining to England, there they stick it. You never hear of an Englishman speak of the Hawaiian islands? No, he calls them the Sandwich Islands. Cook discovered them second hand by following a Spanish chart three hundred years old, which is still in the British Museum, and named them for some one-horse Earl of Sandwich that nobody had ever heard of before, and hasn't since. A man that probably never achieved any work that was really gorgeous during his earthly mission, accepting his invention for confining a slice of ham between two slices of bread in such a manner as to enable even the least gifted of our race to eat bread and meat at the same time, without being bewildered by too elaborate a conjunction of ideas. I suppose if the real truth were known some foreigner invented the sandwich, but England gave it a name in her usual cheerful fashion. They never even speak of the whale that swallowed Jonah merely as a whale, but as the prince of whales. They think it suggests that he was an English whale. If he was that, that is sufficient. That covers up any probable flaws in his character. It is nothing to them that he went about gobbling up the prophets wherever he found them. It is nothing that he interfered with their business. Nothing that he put them to infinite delay, discomfort and annoyance. It is nothing that he disgorged prophets in such a condition as to personal appearance that they might well feel a delicacy about preaching in a strange city. No. Being an English whale was sufficient to make this infamous conduct excusable, and, being English, they are willing to let the great fish pass for a whale. Notwithstanding a whale's throat is not large enough to let a man go down. But to come back to the original question, cannot the California bear make the British lion put down our bone? Or are the bears in our coat of arms too busy grabbing the potatoes the goddess of liberty is spilling out of her sack? Senatorial. I telegraphed you a morsel of Washington gossip today, to the effect that Mr. Casserly is not eligible to the U.S. Senate for the same reason that General Shields was not in his day, namely that he has not been an American long enough. Premising that this gossip may be without foundation, and that Mr. Casserly may yet take his seat in the Senate, I wish to give him some fatherly advice. These that he ought to come by the isthmus and collect mileage around the horn. He ought not to spend millions in the purchase of volcanoes and earthquakes and then retrench by cutting off the Senate's stationary supplies. He ought not to keep mean whisky at his rooms and tell his constituents it is forty years old. He ought not to draw a salary for his pet Newfoundland dog under the name and style of clerk of the Senate committee on so forth and so forth. He ought not to get the handsome girls' places in the Treasury Department and tell all the homely ones the places are full. He ought not to palm off old speeches from the Congressional Globe for 1832 as original, for, behold, old speeches are even a more shameless fraud than new whisky. He ought not to shirk important votes and then plead those threadbare, sick relatives in expiation and explanation. Something fresh must be tried. Sick relatives are regarded as wildcat now. He ought to write a signature that another man can read without direct inspiration from heaven. Then finally let him never make a speech until he has something to say. This last is about the hardest advice to follow that could be offered to a senator, perhaps. Miscellaneous AD Richardson is here, writing a biography of General Grant. Mary Harris, the young woman who shot her former lover, a Treasury clerk named Burroughs, eighteen months ago, was acquitted on the plea of insanity. The Insane Asylum Report, just published, establishes that she has been insane ever since. Once she got out of bed in the night and broke up all her furniture, and on another occasion she tried to stab a man and did succeed in cutting his clothes. She manifests a strong disposition to commit suicide, and she says she has no desire to live. John C. Fremont has brought suit for the restoration of stock in the Union Pacific Railway of six million dollars par value, which he alleges he put into Edward Leonard's hands with a stipulation that it should not be sold until the plaintiff was paid two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. He alleges that Leonard has violated the contract and sold the stock. By the report of the Superintendent of Colored Schools for the cities of Washington and Georgetown it appears that there are in all fifty-five free colored schools, fifty-seven teachers, two thousand seven hundred and forty-eight pupils, average attendance daily, two thousand five hundred. The following said to be from a western paper is going the rounds. Kippu, November the twenty-fourth, eighteen sixty-seven. Dear Zur, can you inform me whether nigger's suffrage was carried at the late election? If such ignorant people is to vote, I want to leave this God- forsaking state and go back to certain Illinois. Yours truly! Twain used this in Huckleberry Finn in the person of Huck's pap, who vowed, I'll never vote again. Edd. Miss Adelaide Phillips arrived here today. She is with Madame Lagrange's opera troupe. The Christian statesman, a Philadelphia religious paper, is lending all its energies to the solution of the question, Is alcohol food? The editor could save himself a deal of trouble by tarrying in Washington a spell. Mark Twain. End of section ninety-seven. This is section ninety-eight of newspaper articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper articles by Mark Twain, section ninety-eight, Alta California February fourteenth, eighteen-sixty-eight. Mark Twain in Washington, special correspondent of the Alta California. Fernando Wood's speech and censure by the House. A California humbug abroad. General Grant receives his friends. Some of the notables. Political portents. Washington January sixteenth. The Woodcutters. I stepped into the reporter's gallery of the House of Representatives yesterday, just as Fernando Wood rose to begin a speech, which is famous all over the land, from here to the Pacific this morning. I thought, from the tone of his remarks, that he was nearing a precipice, and that he would say something directly, in all human probability, that would pitch him off it. But as usual the members of Congress all about the House were reading papers, or holding private conversations with each other. It is a favorite swindle of theirs, to pretend they are not listening, no matter who is speaking. And nobody seemed to be paying any attention to Mr. Wood. But they were paying attention, though, the strictest attention. As he proceeded, they began to start occasionally, and sometimes to wince, very perceptibly. They found it hard to keep up their counter-fitted indifference, and when at last that sentence fell from the speaker's lips that closed with the reckless words, the most infamous of the many infamous acts of this infamous Congress—about a hundred of those listless congressmen sprang suddenly to their feet—the speaker's gavel struck. It was a fine sensation. There were hundreds of people in the galleries, and they stretched their necks forward to see, while all that could, crowded down to the front seats. A score of voices shouted, Order! The body of members who had risen remained standing while Mr. Bingham of Ohio, who seemed to have been the first upon his feet, stated his point of order to wit that Mr. Wood's words were a gross insult to the house, et cetera. In accordance with the rule, the language objected was written down and sent to the clerk to be read. The chair ruled that such language was out of order. The final question was then put, Shall the member be allowed to proceed in order? Cries of No! No! from every part of the house, Mr. Wood still standing in his place, meanwhile. A vote immediately settled it that he could not proceed. It was moved that he be censured, and publicly reprimanded before the bar of the house. Kerr of Indiana moved to lay the motion on the table. Cries of No! No! Put it to a vote! Call the A's and the A's! The motion to table was lost. The motion to censure was carried, by one hundred and fourteen A's, to thirty-nine Na's, amid great excitement. At the command of the speaker, Mr. Wood then walked calmly down to the foot of the aisle, and while he was censured and reprimanded, no sound disturbed the stillness of the house but the speaker's voice. The culprit was ordered to his seat, and went back and took it as comfortably as if he had done his country some mighty service, and was entirely satisfied with his performance. He was told that the properest reparation he could now make would be to offer his explanation and a full apology to the house. He simply rose and said he had no explanation to make. Then sit down came from twenty voices, and he sat down. A suggestion was now made by some one that he be allowed to go on with his speech, but it was received with a storm of No's. I am perfectly satisfied that Mr. Wood had already said all he wanted to say, that he had come to the house all prepared to heave that bombshell into its midst, and never expecting to be allowed to go any further. It was a coup d'état, which had for its object to gain the applause of the democracy of the nation. It was a brilliant piece of strategy, a purposed martyrdom of himself for political capital, a bid for re-election, or for the vice-presidency, even the presidency itself, possibly, for what that presumptuous and unprincipled old political hack would not aim at is unknown to human knowledge. He played for what he considered would be a valuable notoriety. He cared nothing about the expense. I think his speech was finished. THE SECOND This serene old humbug still infests the eastern cities. A year ago he was looking very seedy, but laterly his lines have fallen in pleasanter places, and he crops out occasionally in his fullest San Francisco bloom, and displays his legs on the street corners for the admiration of the ladies. In Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington, and New York, he drives a brisk trade in the sale of his own photographs at twenty-five cents apiece, especially in New York, where nothing whatever is totally unsaleable, I think. Washington II had cheek enough before the Pacific Coast had yet come to mourn his loss, but he has more of it now. When it was proposed to tear down the old William Penn mansion in Philadelphia to make room for some modern improvements, he actually had the effrontery to carry around a petition praying the authorities to let it stand, or confer it on him during life, on account of his resemblance to Washington, Franklin, and two or three others of America's great men. He had his photograph taken standing pensively by Franklin's grave, with a bust of Franklin in his arms, and laurel wreaths encircling his own and the brows of the bust. The idea was not a bad one, for the pictures sell well. As Washington failed to get the Penn mansion, it is said that he proposed to ask Congress to give him the Washington Monument. Congress might as well do it, for the ungainly old chimney that goes by that name is of no earthly use to anybody else, and certainly is not in the least ornamental. It is just the general size and shape, and possesses about the dignity, of a sugar mill chimney. It may suit the departed George Washington, I don't know. He may think it is pretty. It may be a comfort to him to look at it out of the clouds. He may enjoy perching on it to look around upon the scene of his earthly greatness. But it is not likely. It is not likely that any spirit would be so taken with that lumbering thing as to want a roost there. It is an eyesore to the people. It ought to be either pulled down, or built up and finished, and if neither of these is to be done, it ought to be turned over to one or the other of our Washington's the second, these Uncle Freddy Coombs, or General Hancock, the former Washington's second by his own election, and the latter created the second Washington by Andrew Johnson in his curious Hancock message to Congress. Grants Reception We went there last night to see what these great receptions are like. A crowd of carriages was arriving, and a procession of gentlemen and ladies pouring in at the door. We found a good house within already, but evidently the reception had not begun. A band of uniformed Dutch men were playing brass instruments, and ladies were flitting about from parlor to parlor like the little busy bee that improves each shining hour. We removed overcoats, upstairs, where the gentlemen were corraled, and at the proper time followed down with the rest. Well and Mrs. Grants stood in one of the back parlors, and the people were filing past them and shaking hands. At intervals some lady or gentleman well known to them halted for a moment and spoke a few words, and occasionally some lout that did not know as much as a large dictionary stopped to say the dozen sentences he had gotten by heart for the occasion, and he always got pushed along by the crowd and never had a chance to finish them. Then he felt awkward and backed on to somebody's feet, and turned to apologize and lowly bowed his head into somebody's intervening back, and at the same moment stepped on somebody else's toes. And so, butting and crushing and apologizing, he would shortly be swallowed from sight in the crowd. I stood against the wall close by, and watched the reception ceremony for an hour, and I cannot tell when I enjoyed anything so much. Poor, modest, bored, unhappy Grant stood, smile-less, anxious, alert, with every faculty of his mind intensely bent upon the business before him, and nervously seized each hand as it came, and while he gave it a single shake, looked not upon its owner, but threw a quick look out for the next. And if for a moment his hand was left idle, his arm hung out from his body with a curve that was suggestive of being ready for business at a moment's notice. And so he seized each hand, passed it on, grabbed for the next, passed it, grabbed again, with his soul in his work, and that absorbed anxiety in his eye. And it reminded me irresistibly of a new hand catching bricks, a new hand that was full of misgivings, fearful that he might make a miss, but determined to catch every brick that came, or perish in the attempt. He is not a large man. He is a particularly plain-looking man. His hair is straight and lusterless. His head is large, square of front, and perpendicular in the rear, where the selfish organs of the head lie. He is less handsome than his pictures, and his face, at this time, at any rate, lacked the satisfied, self-possessed look one sees in them. He is broad of beam, and his uniform sat as awkwardly upon him, as if he had never been in it before. General Grant had all my sympathies, I had none for the visitors. The stylishly dressed old-stagers, who had been at receptions before, and knew all about them, moved complacently up, with many a smirk and stately abeasance, shook hands, laughed pleasantly, said a word, and swept on, composedly, perfectly well satisfied with themselves. But the towering boys from the interior, with a kind of human vegetable look about them, and a painful air of discomfort about their gloved hands and their unfamiliar Sunday clothes, were in a constant flutter of uneasiness. They seized the general's hand, gave it a ring, and dropped it suddenly, as if it had been hot. Then staggered, in a bewildered way, discovered Mrs. Grant, came to the scratch again, got tangled as to the etiquette of the business, thrust out a paw, drew it back, thrust it out again, snatched it back once more, bent down, far down, in a portentious salam, and then reeled away giddily and ground somebody's foot to pulp under their responsible number thirteen's. Every one of them came with his mind made up as to what he was going to do and say, and then forgot it all, fail to do it, or say it either. By and by the parlours were crowded, old dowagers were there with marketable daughters, little maids in the blushing diffidence of girlhood, imperious dames of the FFV in the imposing costumes of a former generation, chattering young ladies of fashion with elaborately painted faces and uncovered bosoms, general officers in uniform, foreign ministers with orders upon their breasts, gold-laced naval heroes, and half a dozen young masculine noodles in white kids, a size too small, scarf-pins that were dazzling, claw-hammers without dust or wrinkle, hair fearfully and wonderfully done up, and faces whereupon were written nothing. About half of the company had the old complaint they could not think of anything to say. They could not determine upon an attitude that was satisfactory to them. They did not know what on earth to do with their hands. They were an aimless, uneasy, unhappy lot, and deserved compassion. General Sheridan was there, a little bit of a round-headed, broad-breasted, short-legged young Irishman, with hair cropped down to plush on his large ungainly head, and with nothing in him that is in his features save the bright spirit that is in his eye and the bravery that is in his lip. He is very homely, and Seward was present also with his splendid beak, and a scar and an ugly protuberance on his port cheek that come of the murderous attempt upon his life the night Mr. Lincoln was shot. The reception was still under headway, and Grant was still wearily shaking the old crowds and shaking hands with the new ones when we departed. His gloves that were so white and smooth at first were worn and soiled and greasy then. His exhausting watch was only half over. It was but little after nine o'clock. More Sensations. The most exciting one is the Senate's coup d'etat in the Stanton matter yesterday. Before the President could make a move to prevent it, General Grant had resigned the portfolio, and Stanton was in possession of the War Department. Ever since then the air has been thick with rumors of what the President was going to do, but nothing has yet transpired of a startling nature. The daughter of the Baltimore son, who speaks always by authority, he being the President's private secretary, has published a paragraph in his correspondence which would make it appear that Mr. Johnson thinks Grant took snap judgment on him. The suggestion is that the President had an explicit understanding with Grant that he was not to give up the War Office to Stanton without first consulting with the Chief Magistrate upon the subject. That about the first the President heard of the surrender of the portfolio was from Grant's official notification of the fact. General Grant's statement, published today, is to the effect that he has acted precisely as he told the President he would act, and has not acted in bad faith with him. There is talk among congressmen of bringing up impeachment again, if the President refuses to recognize Mr. Stanton as Secretary of War, it having been stated that the President meant to adopt such a course. General McClirland has published a card abusive of Badoe, Grant's biographer, and reflecting upon Grant himself, saying among other things that, through Grant's interference, he was lately prevented from getting an office under government. Grant denies these things also, and immediately McClirland's name is sent to the Senate for the Ministry to Mexico. It looks very like the President and General Grant would fall out next. It is considered by all that the country is at this moment struggling through the greatest crisis that has ever come upon her since her birth, and all men are troubled, sorely troubled, to know what fate is in store for her. For the past few days the strongly radical papers have been praising the rampant attitude of Congress, and urging it to continue in the same spirit till the victory is won. The milder Republican papers say that all this zeal and earnestness have come too late. The present attitude should have been assumed long ago. Congress is firm, however, and pays little attention to comments. The members say they are going to rule this country, and they will break down every barrier that is placed in the way of it. End of Section 98. This is Section 99 of newspaper articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper articles by Mark Twain, Section 99, Alta, California, February 19, 1868. Mark Twain in Washington. Special traveling correspondent of the Alta. The latest political sensation. The McCartle case. Congress and the Supreme Court. The newspaper correspondent symposium. How to Keep Ahead of Time. Crime in Washington. Washington, January 12, 1868. The last sensation. The chief sensation here at present is a political one entirely, but it is a lively one. It is exercising both parties a good deal. It is talked, talked, talked all the time. Crime saloons on the street, at hotel tables, pretty much everywhere and by pretty much everybody interested in politics, of whatsoever politics he may be. The shape of this sensation is as follows. The supremacy of the famous Reconstruction Acts is threatened. Of course the Democrats want them swept from existence, and of course the Republicans do not. The Democrats believe that if the Supreme Court should decide them unconstitutional, and thus kill Negro suffrage, they could carry the presidency at the next elections. The Republicans are perfectly satisfied that their own candidates will win if those acts are sustained by the court. A case is now before the Supreme Court, and will doubtless come up for trial very shortly, that will decide this important question. One McCartle, a ferocious Vicksburg editor, published certain articles in his paper some time ago, denouncing a convention which was to be held under the Reconstruction Laws and advising all white men to stay away from the polls and not vote. He was arrested and brought before a military commission, charged with printing articles calculated to obstruct the peaceable operation of the laws. He applies to the Supreme Court of the United States and claims that by the terms of the Constitution no military commission has a right to arrest and restrain him of his liberty in time of peace for expressing his opinions. If the court sustains his position and sets him free, the laws which created the military commission that arrested him fall to the ground, and Negro suffrage along with them. The case is far down on the calendar, but its advancement has been moved by Judge Black, and as it is one which affects the personal liberty of a citizen it takes precedence, so it will be heard from soon. It has been suggested that General Grant come forward and quash the whole proceedings and set the man free, but this is not favored, because it would be regarded as an evidence of fear on the part of the Republicans to submit the constitutionality of the Reconstruction Laws to attest, amounting even to a sort of virtual acknowledgment of that unconstitutionality. There are eight judges of the Supreme Court. The concurrence of five of them upon a case has always constituted the decision of the Court. Congress proposes now to make a law requiring that the concurrence of six judges shall be necessary to constitute a decision. The Democrats claim that the Republicans only feel sure of three of the judicial votes in sustaining the Reconstruction Acts, and that the object of the proposed new law, for its effect, would plainly be to make a decision of a minority of the Court overrule that of a majority. The Democrats also argue that the Supreme Court was created by the Constitution, not by Congress, that its old-time fashion of deciding by a majority vote is derived from the old common law, that Congress has no shade of power to make rules for the government of the Supreme Court, the Constitution having left it nothing whatever to do with the Court's affairs, save to specify the number of its members. They argue further that if Congress passed the proposed law, the Court would doubtless declare it unconstitutional and go on and try McCartle's case after its own fashion. That Grant will quash the proceedings is not believed. That the Supreme Court will permit the Congress to dictate rules for its government is not believed either by Democrats or Republicans. That there are votes enough among the judges to sustain the Reconstruction Acts is a thing that Democrats strongly doubt, and neither Republicans nor anybody else can really be sure of, of course. Hence all men are in a state of the liveliest anxiety to have that most important problem solved, and at the earliest possible moment. If McCartle loses his case, up goes Republican stock. If he wins it, it necessarily goes down. It is a splendid sensation and is most palatable food for newspaper correspondence. I have stated the bald facts in the case, and my duty in the matter is done. You can consult authorities, build stately edifices of opinion, and grind out portentious editorials until you are tired of it, until you hang McCartle and break up the Supreme Court, if it shall please you to do it. If I had your permission to suggest anything concerning this matter, it would be simply this. It is disgraceful in Congress, or anybody at all, to question the honor and virtue of the highest tribunal in our country. If we cannot believe in the utter and spotless purity of the judges of so sacred a tribunal, we ought at least to have the pride to keep such a belief unexpressed. I cannot conceive it possible that a man could occupy so royal a position as a supreme judge, and be base enough to let his decisions be tainted by any stain of his political predilections. I hate to hear people say this judge will vote so and so because he is a Democrat, and this one so and so because he is a Republican. It is shameful. The judges have the Constitution for their guidance. They have no right to any politics, save the politics of rigid right and justice, when they are sitting in judgment upon the great matters that come before them. If the Reconstruction acts are constitutional, we ought to believe they will sustain them. If they are not, we ought to hope that they will annul them. When we become capable of believing our supreme judges can so belittle themselves and their great office as to read the Constitution of the United States through blurring and distorting spectacles, it will be time for us to put on sackcloth and ashes. The Banquet. The annual Banquet of the Washington Correspondence Club last night was altogether the most brilliant affair of the kind I ever participated in. Everything connected with it was masterly. Everything moved as by clockwork. There were forty-six persons present, and yet there was no hurry, no bother, no getting things mixed up or wrong, and foremost no jealousies, no malapropo episodes. It was wonderfully well conducted. There were fifteen regular toasts, and every single one of them was ably responded to. Not a man made an excuse or said he was unprepared. Such a thing never occurred before. The great majority of the speeches were far above ordinary excellence. There were no invited guests present except such as had been newspaper correspondents, save only jump, the artist. They were nine in number. Senator Colfax, Senator Anthony, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Faxon, Congressmen Blaine, Robinson, Getz and Brooks, and Henry D. Cook, Banker, and the Marquis de Chambre. Riley of the Alta responded to the toast to the Press of the Pacific, and I to the toast to Woman. I did what I could to elevate her in the respect and esteem of the newspaper people. I think the women of San Francisco ought to send me a medal, or a donut, or something, because I had them chiefly in my mind in this eulogy. At twelve midnight it was announced from the chair that the Sabbath was come, and that a due regard for the Christian character of our country demanded that the festivities should now come to an abrupt termination. The regular toasts were not finished yet. The fun was at its zenith. Here was a scrape. How would you have gotten out of it? I will tell you how we managed it, and it will be worth your while to lay the information away for private use hereafter. It was gravely moved and as gravely seconded and carried that we do now discontinue the use of Washington time and adopt the time of San Francisco. And then we bowled along as serenely as ever. We gained about three hours and a half by the operation. How is that for ingenuity? It was easy sailing after that, when we had used up all the San Francisco time and got to crowding Sunday again. We took another vote and adopted Hong Kong time. I suppose we would have been going west yet, if the champagne had not given out. This reminds me of a remark of Johnson, blank, of San Francisco, who was a responsible hand at a spree. Somebody mentioned that a way up in Lapland their nights lasted six months sometimes. Johnson said feelingly, How nice it would be to go up there on a little bender and have a night of it with the boys! A hit was made by Mr. Adams of the World last night and a recent slashing piece of newspaper enterprise that was good. He said, When the gentleman on my left, the honorable Mr. Brooks, was Washington correspondent for a New York paper twenty-five years ago, he gained high applause for rushing the president's message through so far ahead of time as to get it out in New York twenty-four hours in advance of the other papers. But nowadays a correspondent is slow if he don't get the message published twenty-four hours before it is delivered to Congress. This speaks volumes for the progress the profession has made. Washington crime. There is plenty of it, but the two latest cases are peculiar. Right before last a Negro man collided with a white man in the street. The Negro apologized, but the white man would not be appeased and grew abusive and finally stabbed the Negro to the heart. Yesterday an open court, while Judge Olin was sentencing a man named Macaulay, the latter sprang at the principal witness, a boy twelve years old, and made a savage lunge at his breast with a knife. The judge remanded him at once, of course, to be cited before the grand jury. What is your general opinion of the morals of the Capitol now? When people get to attempting murder in the courts of law it is time to quit abusing Congress. Congress is bad enough, but it has not arrived at such depravity as this. This man who attempted the murder is not in any way connected with Congress. The fact is in every way creditable to that body. I do not deny that I am fond of abusing Congress, but when I get an opportunity like this to compliment them, I am only too happy to do it. More Washington Morals On New Year's morning, while Mr. George Worley's front door was standing open, a cow marched into the house, a cow that was out making her annual calls, I suppose, and before she was discovered she had eaten up everything on the New Year's table in the parlor. Mr. Worley was not acquainted with the cow, never saw her before, and is at a loss to account for the honor of her visit. What do you think of a town where cows make New Year's calls? It may be the correct thing, but it has not been so regarded in the circles in which I have been accustomed to move. Morals are at a low stage in Washington beyond question. Personal Colonel Poston, formerly in the Indian Affairs Department for Arizona, is a practicing lawyer here now. His partner is Judge Botts, formerly of California. Judge Bee went out there in 1848 before gold was discovered, and afterwards was very rich at one time, and owned a great deal of property in Stockton Street, San Francisco. He has held the office of State Printer in California, and has also been Judge of the Sacramento District. Mark Twain End of Section 99 This is Section 100 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section 100, Alta, California, March 3, 1868. Mark Twain on his travels. Special correspondent of the Alta, California. The new sensational play, A Glimpse of Hartford, Sundry Connecticut Sites, Charter Oak, Home Again. Washington, February 1. The White Fawn I have been to New York since I wrote last, and on the 21st of January, I went with some Newspaper men to see the new spectacle at Nibblos, The White Fawn, the splendid successor of the splendid Black Crook. Everybody agrees that it is much more magnificent than the crook. The fairy scenes are more wonderfully dazzling and beautiful, and the legs of the young women reach higher up. Whole armies of actors appear on the stage at once, and ninety carpenters and twenty gasmen are on duty all the time. The dresses of the actors and actresses are perfectly gorgeous, and when the very colored lights fall upon them from secret places behind the scenes, the effect is almost blinding. I think these hundreds of princely costumes are changed every fifteen minutes during half the night. Splendid pageants are filing about the stage constantly, yet one seems never to see the same dress twice. The final grand transformation scene is a vision of magnificence, such as no man could imagine, unless he had eaten a barrel of hashish. There are such distances, too. Such marvelous counterfeits of perspective. It is a luxuriant jungle of colossal flowers stretching ever so far away, a mass of riches coloring, burning, and flashing and blazing as with the glories of a hundred suns. And out of every flower crops a beautiful woman, apparently naked for the most part, and so ingeniously have these rascally angels been sized to perfect the perspective that the smaller one seems swimming high in air in the midst of a tinted mist in the distance. It is a vast wilderness, a tropic world of giant flowers and tangled vines and fairy-female forms sleeping in a flood of dazzling fires. The women seem apart and parcel of the flowers they repose among. Wherever you look closely you find one, or two, or a group. The curtain falls before you have hunted out a third of them. Russia has not seen anything before that can equal the white fawn. But the black crook gave birth to a state of things that may well be regarded as appalling. It debauched many a pure mind itself, and it has bred a species of infamous pictorial literature that will spread the same effect over a far wider field. Papers and pictures that would have been regarded as obscene and shunned, like a pestilence a few years ago, are displayed on every bookstand now and sell by tens and hundreds of thousands. Boys and girls can buy them when they please, and they do buy them, and so prepare to go as straight to the devil as they possibly can. I took the role of profit for one day only a year ago, and foreshadowed some of these results in a newspaper article. The best thing New York can do now, and the other cities and towns of America as well, will be to go to building, not warehouses and dwellings, but houses of ill-fame. Let them build thousands and tens of thousands of them, and the black crook, the white fawn, and the infernal literature they have bred will stock them all. Hartford I am in Hartford, Connecticut now, January 25th, but I am confident I shall get this letter finished yet, if I keep at it. I think this is the best-built and the handsomest town I have ever seen. They call New England the land of steady habits, and I see the evidence about me that it was not named a miss. As I came along the principal street today, smoking, of course, I noticed that of the two hundred men in sight at one time, only two were smoking beside myself. I had to walk three blocks to find a cigar store. I saw no drinking saloons at all in the street, but I was not looking for any. I hear no swearing here. I see no one chewing tobacco. I have found nobody drunk. What a singular country it is! At the hospitable mansion where I am a guest I have to smoke surreptitiously, when all are in bed, to save my reputation, and then draw suspicion upon the cat when the family detect the unfamiliar odor. I never was so absurdly proper in the broad light of day on my life, as I have been for the last day or two. So far I am safe. But I am sorry to say that the cat has lost caste. She has steadily decreased in popularity since I made my advent here. She has achieved a reputation for smoking, and may justly be regarded as degraded, a dishonored, a ruined cat. They have the broadest, straightest streets in Hartford that ever led us in or to destruction, and the dwelling-houses are the amptilist in size and the shapeliest, and have the most capacious ornamental grounds about them. But I would speak of other things. This is the center of Connecticut wealth. Hartford dollars have a place in half the great moneyed enterprises in the Union. All those Phoenix and Charter Oak insurance companies whose gorgeous chromolithographic show-cards it has been my delight to study in faraway cities are located here. The Sharps Rifle Factory is here. The great Silk Factory of this section is here. The heaviest subscription publication houses in the land are here. And the last, and greatest, the Colts Revolver Manufactory is a Hartford institution. Some friends went with me to see the revolver establishment. It comprises a great range of tall brick buildings, and on every floor is a dense wilderness of strange iron machines that stretches away into remote distances and confusing perspectives. A tangled forest of rods, bars, pulleys, wheels, and all the imaginable and unimaginable forms of mechanism. There are machines to cut all the various parts of a pistol, roughly, from the original steel. Machines to trim them down and polish them. Machines to brand and number them. Machines to bore the barrels out. Machines to rifle them. Machines that shave them down neatly to a proper size, as deftly as one would shave a candle in a lathe. Machines that do everything but shape the wooden stocks and trace the ornamental work upon the barrels. One can stumble over a bar of iron as he goes in at one end of the establishment and find it transformed into a burnished, symmetrical, deadly navy as he passes out at the other. It did not seem to me that in all that world of complex machinery there were two machines alike or designed to perform the same office. It must have required more brains to invent all those things than would serve to stock fifty senates, like ours. I took a living interest in that birthplace of six shooters, because I had seen so many graceful specimens of their performances in the deadfalls of Washu and California. They showed us the new battery gun on wheels, the gatling gun, or rather it is a cluster of six to ten savage tubes that carry great conical pellets of lead, with unerring accuracy, a distance of two and a half miles. It feeds itself with cartridges, and you work it with a crank like a hand organ. You can fire it faster than four men can count. When fired rapidly, the reports blend together like the clattering of a watchman's rattle. It can be discharged four hundred times in a minute. I liked it very much, and went on grinding it as long as they could afford cartridges for the amusement, which was not very long. The Charter Oak You may have heard of the Charter Oak. It used to stand in Hartford. The Charter of the State of Connecticut was once hidden in it at a time of great political tribulation, and this happy accident made it famous. Its memory is dearly cherished in this ancient town. Anything that is made of its wood is deeply venerated by the inhabitants, and is regarded as very precious. I went all about the town with a citizen whose ancestors came over with the pilgrims in the Quaker City—in the Mayflower, I should say—and he showed me all the historic relics of Hartford. He showed me a beautiful carved chair in the Senate chamber, where the bewigged and awfully homely old-time governors of the Commonwealth frown from their canvas overhead. Made from Charter Oak, he said—I gazed upon it with inexpressible solicitude—he showed me another carved chair in the house. Charter Oak, he said—I gazed again with interest. Then we looked at the rusty, stained, and famous old Charter, and presently I turned to move away, but he solemnly drew me back and pointed to the frame. Charter Oak, said he—I worshipped. We went down to Watworth's Athenium, and I wanted to look at the pictures, but he conveyed me silently to a corner and pointed to a log, rudely shaped somewhat like a chair, and whispered—Charter Oak. I exhibited the accustomed reference. He showed me a walking-stick, a needle-case, a dog-collar, a three-legged stool, a boot-jack, a dinner-table, a ten-pen alley, a toothpick—uh, I interrupted him and said—never mind, we'll bunch the whole lumbar year and call it—Charter Oak, he said—well, I said, now let us go and see some Charter Oak for a change—I meant that for a joke, but how was he to know that, being a stranger? He took me around and showed me Charter Oak enough to build a plank road from here to Great Salt Lake City. It is a shame to confess it, but I did begin to get a little weary of Charter Oak, finally, and when he invited me to go home with him to tea it filled me with a blessed sense of relief. He introduced me to his wife, and they left me alone a moment to amuse myself with their little boy. I said, in a grave paternal way, My son, what is your name? And he said, Charter Oak Johnson. This was sufficient for a sensitive nature like mine. I departed out of that mansion without another word. I said to myself, let whatsoever shall come of this be laid to other souls than mine. I go hence, a vengeful and a desperate man. My mind is made up. I will return to, mm, farm again, and dam the reputation of that cat for ever. Hartford has a population of forty thousand souls, and the most of them ride in slays. That is a sign of prosperity and a knowledge of how to live, isn't it? Home again. I got back to Washington this morning, January 30th, after tarrying two or three days in New York. I find nothing going on here of particular import except that J. Ross Brown's nomination to the Chinese mission has been sent to the Senate by the President, and there is very little doubt that it will be confirmed. I cordially hope so, partly because he is a good man, and a talented one, a literary man, and consequently entitled to high honors, and also because he has kindly invited me to take a lucrative position on his staff in case he goes to China. And I have accepted, with that promptness which so distinguishes me when I see a chance to serve my country without damaging my health by working too hard. Present engagements will keep me in the East for five or six months yet, but no matter, I shall follow him out there as soon as I am free anyhow, if he is sent, and so none of you newspaper men need to go fighting for my secretarieship. I am the only man that can fill the bill. I am able to write a hand that will pass for Chinese and Peking or anywhere else in the world. Mark Twain. This is Section 101 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section 101, Alta, California, September 6, 1868. Letter from Mark Twain. Special Correspondence of the Alta, California. Artboard Amusements. At Panama without a Revolution. A Monkey Sharp. From Aspen Wall to New York. Some Personal Notes. A picture of Hartford, Connecticut. Evading the Blue Laws. Novel Views Concerning Mountains. A Central American Yarn. Hartford, Connecticut, August, recently, 1868. The Proper Time to Sail. Editors' Alta. I think the middle of summer must be the pleasantest season of the year to come east by sea. Going down to the Ismus in the Montana, in the very geographical center of July, we had smooth water and cool breezes all the time. We enjoyed life very well. We could not easily have done otherwise. There were 185 quiet, orderly passengers, and ten or fifteen who were willing to be cheerful. These latter were equally divided into a stag-party and a dorkess society. The stag-party held its court on the after-guard, and the dorkess society presided over by a gentleman, amused itself in the little social hall amidships. There was considerable talent on the after-guard, and some of our little private entertainments were exceedingly creditable. Read one of our programs, it speaks for itself. New Bill. New scenery. New cast. Powerful combination. Dazzling array of talent. The management take pleasure in informing the public that on this evening, July 10, will be presented, for the first time on any ship, the thrilling tragedy of the Country School Exhibition. Program. Dominee, Mr. J. L. Oration. You'd scarce expect one of my age, Mr. G. W. Recitation. The boy stood on the burning deck with his baggage checked for Troy, Mr. M. Duet. Give me three grains of corn, mother. Messers L and H. Composition. The cow. M. T. Declamation. Patrick Henry on war. Mr. R. R. Poem. Mary had a little lamb. Mr. O. G. Chorus. Old John Brown had one little engine. School. Instrumental Duet. Comb and Jews harp. Messers J.B. and J.T. Poem. Twinkle, twinkle, little star. Mr. H.M. T. Recitation. Not a leaf stirred. Mr. W. W. J. Any pupil detected in catching flies or throwing spitballs at the Dominee during the solemnities will be punished. The making of mud pies during school hours is strictly prohibited. Pop guns and potato quills are barred. No pupil will be allowed to go out unless he shall state what he wants to go out for. I have seen many theatrical exhibitions, but none that equal to above. If any of your see-going friends imagine it is barren of fun, let them get themselves up in boys' costume and try it on the quarter-deck some dull night when other amusements are worn out or in the way of private party performances in town. The hint is worth a good deal of money. We had a spelling, a reading, and a geography class, but their performances were too executable for complimentary mention. The spelling class spelled cow with a K, and the other two classes were not behind it much in ignorance. When the Pacific voyage drew to a close a large delegation of the passengers were sent with a spokesman to thank Captain Caverly with all due ceremony but very heartily for his watchful care of the comfort and well-being of the people on board, and likewise to thank his officers through him for their unfailing politeness, patience, and accommodating spirit toward the passengers when they did not get a cent more for it than if they had never gone beyond the strict line of their official duties to do kindnesses and favours to the strangers within their ship. Was not that a neater and a more graceful thing to do than it would have been to publish one of those tiresome stupid newspaper cards signed by unknown people and filled with cheap flattery of captain and officers for efficiency and attention to duty? We owe no officers a deluge of compliments for being efficient in minding their business. They are paid in cash for all that, and we expect it of them. But distinguished urbanity and gentlemanly conduct are rare and precious things on land and sea, and are not to be had for mere wages or estimated by any standard of dollars and cents, and these it is a pleasure to compliment. Only these can make a long sea voyage cheerful and comfortable, and these were the subject of our well-meant and well-received speechmaking on board the PMSS Montana at the time I have mentioned. Captain Ned Wakeman, Mariner. We found Panama in the same place. It has not changed perceptibly. They had no revolution while we were there. I do not know why, but it is true that there had not been a revolution for as much as two weeks. The very same president was at the head of the government, that was at the head of it a fortnight before. It was very curious. I suppose they have hanged him before this, however. While I was standing in the bar of the Grand Hotel, talking with a citizen about Admiral Shubry, who is one of the most enterprising Americans on the Ismus, and has had a steamer built in New York at a cost of $100,000 for the purpose of bringing livestock down from his ranch for the steamers, I heard a familiar voice holding forth in this wise. Monkeys, don't tell me nothing about monkeys, sir. I know all about them. Didn't I take the Marianne through the Monkey Islands? Snakes as big as ships' main mass, sir, and monkeys. God bless my soul, sir. Just that daylight she fetched up at a dead stand still, sir. What do you suppose it was, sir? It was monkeys, millions of them, sir, banked up as high as the cat's head, sir, trying to swim across the channel, sir, and crammed it full. I took my glass to see thirteen mile of monkeys, two mile wide and sixty-fathom deep, sir, counted ninety-seven million of them, and the mates set them down, sir, kept tally till his pencils was all used up and his arm was paralyzed, sir. Don't tell me nothing about monkeys, sir, because I've been there. I know all about them, sir. It is hardly possible, but still there may be people who are so ignorant as not to know that this voice belonged to Captain Ned Wakeman of the steamship America. Cheerful as ever, as big-hearted as ever, as splendid an old salt as walks the deck of any ship, this is Wakeman. But he is failing under the Panama Sun. They have had him lying up for months in charge of a spare ship, and it has been pretty severe on him. They ought to let him go to sea a while now, and recuperate. He says the sun gets so hot in Panama sometimes, it is as much as a man can do to tell the truth. Dissipation of Aspenwall Aspenwall looked the same as usual, the same combination of negroes, natives, sows, monkeys, parakeets, dirt, jiggers, and groceries in the small shops far uptown. The same clusters of steamships in the harbor, the same business stir about the steamship office, the same crowded sidewalk of the main street, and alas, the same dissipation prevalent. Why will these people persist in drinking? There is no enemy so insidious as intemperance, none that sooner robs us of the esteem of our friends or the respect of the world, none that leads so surely to the destruction of health, good name, and happiness. It is a pregnant subject. On this side we came up with Captain Gray, and had fine weather all the voyage except the first two days out. Very singularly all those people who did not get sick in the smooth Pacific, and who had ventured to say, toward the last, that they never did get seasick, got a very great deal in that condition during the first two days on this side. Somehow the best of people will lie about seasickness when they get a chance. Even our three gentlemen from China, Boyd, Dolan, and Captain Simmons, after crossing the entire Pacific, got dreadfully sick on the Atlantic, while God permitted mean men to escape entirely. However, all of us arrived in good condition in New York, and found the superb new steamer we ought to have come up in, the Alaska, just ready to go to sea on her first voyage. She is the largest ship that sails out of New York, and probably the finest also. Captain Gray commands. All the chancees officers are transferred to the Alaska. Personal Items One of the first things that fell under our notice was one of Lata's posters, which bore the information that she would begin a star engagement at Wallach's within a few days. It is wonderful what a firm hold that young girl has secured upon the goodwill of the people and the press of the metropolis, I might say, of the rest of the country also. But you know that that follows, of course. Critics speak guardedly of other actresses, but they praise her without stint. The Tribune and the other great dailies are her friends. She draws surprisingly. I see nothing and hear nothing of her enterprising father. Lata is to appear in a new play, The Firefly, written especially for her. After speaking of her former successes in New York, the Tribune says, She is aptly typical of that luminous and erratic insect glancing and gleaming in the night air of summer. The fact, the new drama in which she will appear comes from the practical pen of Mr. Edmund Falconer is a guarantee of its theatrical merit. The Firefly is the novelty of the week, moreover, in theatrical life, and public attention naturally centers upon it. Under Moss, the manager is understood to have got up the new play with uncommon care. Should it prove a success, it will undoubtedly run long till the close of the summer season. The seats are secured six days in advance. Mr. Hooper, Utah delegate to Congress, was in New York getting ready to start over the planes with Senator Stewart. Hooper's contestant, Mr. McGroarty, made a failure of his attempt to oust him from his seat. I remember the McGroarty War in Washington last winter, but did not suppose there was anything serious in that gentleman's pretensions. I thought he was, considered crazy at the time, a lunatic of the harmless kind. However, it seems that he was in earnest in claiming Hooper's seat. He failed, and left it in the possession of an able, honest and hard-working man. The best representative Utah has had yet. Mr. Stenhouse was in New York. While other distinguished salt-lakers are cruising around here in the East on business and pleasure combined, Jake Smith, formerly of Virginia City, laterally of Montana, is sojourning in New York for the present. Hartford, the Blue Laws. I have been here several days. Of all the beautiful towns it has been my fortune to see, this is the Chief. It is a city of forty thousand inhabitants, and seems to be composed almost entirely of dwelling-houses, not single-shaped affairs, stood on end and packed together like a deck of cards, but massive private hotels scattered along the broad, straight streets, from fifty all the way up to two hundred yards apart. Each house sits in the midst of about an acre of green grass, or flower beds, or ornamental shrubbery, guarded on all sides by the trimmest hedges of Arbor Vitae, and by files of huge forest trees that cast a shadow like a thundercloud. Some of these stately dwellings are almost buried from site in parks and forests of these noble trees. Everywhere the eye turns it is blessed with a vision of refreshing green. You do not know what beauty is if you have not been here. I am able to follow Main Street from the State House to Springgrove Cemetery and Asylum Street and Farmington Avenue from the railway depot to their terminations. I have learned that much of the city from constant and tireless practice in going over the ground. These streets answer the description of Hartford which I have given above. The large dwellings all stand far apart, each in the center of its great grass-plat and its forest trees. There is not a mean building or slovenly piece of ground to offend the eye in all the wide area I have traversed as above. To live in this style one must have his bank account, of course. Then where are the poor of Hartford? I confess I do not know. They are corraled doubtless, corraled in some unsanctified corner of this paradise whether my feet have not yet wandered, I suppose. The reason for this uniform grandeur is easily explained. The blue-law spirit is not utterly dead in Connecticut yet. The law prohibiting the harbouring of sinful playing-cards in dwelling-houses was annulled only something over a year ago. Up to that time, conscientious people whose instincts forbade them to break the law would no more think of keeping an entire pack of cards in their dwellings than they would have thought of driving for pleasure in these beautiful streets on the blessed Sabbath. Before they never entered into a friendly game of draw, old sledge, or anything of that kind, without first taking a couple of cards from the pack and destroying them, there was not a whole pack of cards in any house in Hartford. Thus was the majesty of the law upheld. Thus was its purity secured against taint. Another blue-law of the city preserves the beauty and uniformity of the streets and buildings. By its terms you must obtain permission from the city government before you build on your lot, before you construct an addition to your house, before you erect a stable. You cannot build a house just when you please, and you cannot build just any sort of house you please, either. If you propose to put up a plain brick dwelling, twenty-five by forty, on your ground, the lord of the palace next to you may complain to the alderman that your small enterprise will spoil the appearance of the street and diminish the value of his property. That finishes you. If you propose to build an addition to the rear of your house, your neighbor may complain that it will obstruct his view of the railway, or the church, or the river, or something, and thus bring down his gray hairs in sorrow to the grave, and thus closes out that proposition. If you decide to build a stable on your premises for your horses and your carriage, the party next door may affirm, with many holiday and lady terms, that the fragrance of a stable doth offend his nostrils unto death, and then you will find that you must build your blasphemous stable elsewhere. You must get permission of the authorities before you attempt to build, and that you cannot get permission to build an edifice that will detract from the comeliness of the street is a thing you may safely set in your mind beforehand. By this means hath Hartford become a most beautiful city. People accustomed to large liberties will call this an unjust, unrighteous law. Very well, they are entitled to their opinion, and I to mine. I don't care how unrighteous a thing is, so long as it is pleasant. I like this law. I exult in it every time I walk abroad in these delightful streets. I hope it will never be repealed. Morality and Huckleberries I never saw any place before where morality and Huckleberries flourished as they do here. I do not know which has the ascendancy, possibly the Huckleberries, in their season, but the morality holds out the longest. The Huckleberries are in season now. They are a new beverage to me. This is my first acquaintance with them, and certainly it is a pleasant one. They are excellent. I had always thought a Huckleberry was something like a turnip. On a contrary, they are no larger than buckshot. They are better than buckshot, though, and more digestible. The farmers, boys and girls, in the mountains near here, turn out in their full strength at this season of the year, and devote their whole talents to the gathering of Huckleberries. They bring them to town and sell them for fifteen cents a court. This is not a sudden and violent means of acquiring wealth. I spoke just now of the mountains near here, and if I had done it on my own responsibility I would apologize, but I get the term from the public. They call them mountains, and I think they do it with a deliberate intent to deceive. I think so because those mountains are not six hundred feet high. There is an amount of sin in this world that a man could hardly conceive of, who had never been in it. But the morality of this locality is something marvellous. I have only heard one man swear and seen only one man drunk in the ten days I have been here, and the same man that did the swearing was the man that contained the drunk. It was after midnight. Everybody else was in bed, otherwise they would have hanged him no doubt. This sample gives you the complexion of male morality in Hartford. Young ladies walk these streets along as late as ten o'clock at night, and are not insulted. That is a specimen of both male and female morality and of good order. I meet young ladies marching cheerfully along in the loneliest places, in the obscurity of the night, and the added darkness of the somber shadows of the trees, but I don't dare to speak to them. I should be scalped, sure. I see the whole female element of the community, apparently, hundreds and hundreds of pretty girls marching arm in arm turn out about eight o'clock in the evening, and swarm back and forth through Main Street, with a happy frontery that is in the last degree entertaining to a stranger. What would you think of respectable young girls marching back and forth at night, and unattended, from the head of Montgomery Street to the top of the hill, or from the wharves of the city front half way to the Mission Sandalores? It is said that ladies of the highest respectability go freely to lectures and concerts at night in this city of forty thousand souls without other escort than members of their own sex. We may expect the lion and the lamb to lie down together shortly in Connecticut, if it be constitutional for the millennium to come in small doses. To me, a sinner, the prospect is anything but inviting. Two or three of the churches here have massive steeples, or what were originally intended to be steeples, run up a few feet above the roof and then chopped square off. The natives call them stump-tails. These churches would be exceedingly attractive edifices if they were finished, but in their present condition they are the saddest looking affairs you can imagine. A departed Christian must feel absurd enough reporting himself in paradise from a stump-tail church. But I suppose the people go on the principle of not standing on small matters, so they get to paradise, getting there being the main thing. If such be the case, they are something like the minister of the navy of one of those one-horse central American republics, a republic with a hundred thousand inhabitants, grand officials enough for a hundred millions, an army of five hundred ragamuffins, and a navy consisting of one solitary sixty-ton schooner. In Panama I heard a legend. In this connection there was war in one of those little republics, the one I have been describing. The general-in-chief asked the president for three hundred men. The president ordered the minister of war to furnish them. The forces, just the number wanted, were down on the sea-coast somewhere. The minister of war requested the minister of the navy to place the navy of the republic at the disposal of the troops, so that they might have transportation to the seat of war. The minister of the navy, an official who had seen as little of ships and oceans as even Mr. Secretary Wells, sent a courier to where the schooner was, with the necessary order for the Lord High Admiral. The Lord High Admiral wrote back, Your Excellency, it is impossible. You must be aware that this is a sixty-ton schooner. There is not room for three hundred men in her. The stern old salt in the navy office wrote back, Impossible, nonsense! Make room! Heave the tons overboard and bring the sailors. Any way to get them there, so they got them there, was all this brave sea-horse cared for. Mark Twain.