 This is Section 37 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 1864, Part 1. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 2, 1864. Sombra Festivities. All day yesterday the cars were carrying colored people of all shades and tints, of all sizes and both sexes, out to Hayes Park, to celebrate the anniversary of the emancipation of their race in England's West Indian possessions years ago. They rode the fiery untamed steeds that are kept for equestrian duty in the grounds. They practiced pistol-shooting, but abstained from destroying the targets. They swung. They promenaded among the shrubbery. They filled themselves up with beer and sandwiches, all just as the thing is done there by white folks, and they assayed to dance. But the effort was not a brilliant success. It was interesting to look at, though, for languid, slow-moving, pretentious, impressive, solemn, and excessively high-toned and aristocratic dancing commend us to the disenthralled North American Negro when there is no restraint upon his natural propensity to put on airs. White folks of the upper stratum of society pretend to walk through quadrils in a stately way, but these saddle-colored young ladies can discount them in the slow movement evidence of high gentility. They don't know much about dancing, but they let on magnificently, as if the mazes of a quadril were their native element. And they move serenely through it and tangle it hopelessly and inextricably, with an unctuous satisfaction that is surpassingly pleasant to witness. By the middle of the afternoon about two hundred darkies were assembled at the park, or rather, to be precise, there was not much darky about it, either, for if the prevailing lightness of tint was worth anything as evidence, the noble miscegenationist had been skirmishing considerably among them in days gone by, it was expected that the colored race would come out strong in the matter of numbers, and otherwise, in the evening when a grand ball was to be given and last all night. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 2, 1864. Enlisted for the war. If ever you want to find Ellen Quinn, or Gentle Julia, or Mary Holt, or Hady Leonard, or Annie Berry, please call at the county jail upstairs. Mary Holt has spent most of her time there for the past fourteen years, it is said, and the most inexperienced of this company of choice spirits, Gin, has sojourned there chiefly for the last three years. Mary Holt has just enlisted again for the county jail for fifty days, and next time she comes out she will probably enlist for the war. Following is the record of service of these old soldiers for the past twelve months. Out of the three hundred and sixty-five days, Ellen Quinn spent two hundred and forty in the county jail, Gentle Julia two hundred and ten in the station house and county jail together, Mary Holt a hundred and ninety in the county jail alone. Hady Leonard a hundred and six in the county jail, Annie Berry a hundred and eleven in the county jail. The balance of the year these fellows have spent in the station house for the most part, for they suffer arrest and confinement there three times, with about two days imprisonment for each arrest, before they can pass muster and get into the county jail. The veteran Mary Holt commenced fighting the prisons in eighteen forty-nine or fifty. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call August 2nd, eighteen sixty-four, refused green-backs. Last Saturday eleven inspectors in the barge office of the Custom House received a call from the poll tax collector, and they tendered their indebtedness in the kind of money their salaries are paid in, green-backs. The collector said he was not allowed to take anything but coin, and the inspector said they would suffer imprisonment before they would pay in anything but green-backs. The soundness of this position will be appreciated when you come to reflect that they only get four dollars a day, anyhow, and when that sum is mashed into green-backs at present rates it only amounts to about a dollar and a half a day. Now estimating their actual living expenses at a dollar and forty-five cents a day, and it cannot fall below that while they continue to eat anything, how long would it take one of those inspectors to pay this oppressive poll tax in coin out of the clear profits of his labor? Why, it would take two months and three weeks, as nearly as you could come at it, as the amount of the tax is four dollars. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call August 3rd, eighteen sixty-four, attempted suicide. At night a young man by the name of John Ferguson went to the drugstore of Mr. Riley on the corner of Mission and Second Streets and asked for Stricknein, as he said, to kill a dog. He got ten grains. He went into Mission Street, took the poison, and was soon met by a friend to whom he said that he was sick, had taken poison, and was dying. A doctor was called at once, who administered mustard and warm water, which caused nausea and vomiting, which relieved him by freeing the stomach of the poison. Hopes are entertained of his recovery. The cause of this attempt upon his own life is said to be depression from loss of employment and pecuniary difficulties. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call August 3rd, eighteen sixty-four, a movement in Buckeye. How stocks this morning! Movement in Buckeye! This little characteristic salutation, a few days since, prefaced a breach of the peace on Montgomery Street thus. Mr. Greene, who is learned in the matter of stocks, was authorized to purchase fifty shares of Buckeye at four dollars and a half. Mr. Jezynski, also talented in the same line, had a quantity for sale at five dollars, the same having previously been purchased by his principal at twenty-one dollars, showing conclusively that stocks are sometimes up, and at other times very much down. Mr. G., the author of the second remark in the above brief dialogue, said he would see whether his principal would give five dollars, and departed for that purpose. Mr. J. waited expectantly for a long time, say a matter of several hours, but in the interval saw G. a number of times, and was by him informed that the person who wanted the stock was for the time being distinctly invisible to the naked eye. During this invisibility Buckeye depreciates, and the seller becoming impatient at last insists that Mr. Greene should take the stock at five dollars himself, without reference to his principal, laying down the proposition that the latter gentleman had inaugurated the transaction in the character of principal himself, and that he held him for it. Mr. Greene took issue on this point, and declared that there had been no purchase. Mr. J. said there had. Mr. G. said there hadn't. The mutual contradiction grew positive, with expletives and profane adjectives amounting to a mutual impeachment of veracity, upon which Mr. Greene smoked the countenance of the other broker, thereby breaking up the negotiations and breaking the peace at the same time. A blow at sea may be a breeze, a gale or a tempest, but a blow on land is very likely to be an assault and battery. Of this latter kind was the blow given by Mr. Greene, and in consequence thereof he was yesterday ordered by Judge Shepard to appear this morning for sentence. San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 3, 1864. More stage robbers and their confederates captured. Under Sheriff Hall, of Santa Clara County, and Messers Hume and Van Eaten, under and deputy sheriffs of El Dorado County, arrived from San Jose by the cars yesterday evening with the following splendid hall of Placerville stage robbers captured by them in the vicinity of San Jose early yesterday morning. Henry Jarbo, George Cross, J. A. Robinson, Wallace Klendenning, Joseph Gamble, Joseph Jordan, Thomas Freer, James Freer, John Ingram, Gately and Hodges, 11. Sheriff Hall also brought down another of the robber gang named Wilson, whom he caught a week ago. He has been upon the track of all these men, and has been spotting them for the past three months. The confession of young Glasby confirmed his suspicions concerning them. The prisoners are farmers for the most part, and resided round about San Jose. They are all constitutional Democrats. They are not all charged with having taken part in the stage robbery, but some of them did, and the others were members of the robber organization and accessories to the robbery before and after the fact. The organization dates back to the first of May, and the process of forming it was under way a good while before that. Its object was to raise men for the Confederate service, and they were to furnish themselves with equipments and supplies by guerrilla practice on the highway. Its ramifications are supposed to be very extensive, and they are known to have received aid and comfort from many prominent citizens. Some of the men arrested are well-to-do farmers. We are told by a resident of Santa Clara County that the prisoner Robinson is a brother-in-law of the editor of the Stockton Democratic Organ, the Beacon. It is not known whether the men recruited for the Confederate service were to do duty only in this state or elsewhere. The headquarters of the gang were at the house of a man named Hodges, who lives in the mountains east of San Jose. The six who robbed Wells Fargo and Company Stage started from Hodges. Under Sheriff Hall arrested this man at the Willows, near San Jose, early yesterday morning, where he had unsuspectingly come on business. Two of the prisoners in this new hall are believed to have taken a hand in the late robbery of Langton's express. Grant, Baker and Captain Ingram of the gang have escaped and left for parts unknown. Baker and Ingram were kept in hiding for a day or two by one green duff at his house near San Jose, and the latter furnished Baker a horse to escape on. Mr. Hall arrested a man at Duff's house yesterday morning. The man is a good constitutional Democrat. The rumor prevalent here yesterday that there was a terrific fight in San Jose the night before with the stage robbers was groundless. There was no fight. Colonel Jackson telegraphed for one thousand rounds of ball cartridge yesterday morning in order to be prepared for an emergency, perhaps, in case one should arise, and the militia of San Jose were called together the night before and provided with a signal for the same purpose. They went further than was required and lay on their arms in anticipation of trouble. Out of these ominous circumstances the rumor we have spoken of probably grew. Sheriff Hall also brought up with him last night three state prisoners, these Henry Hoffman, Charles Buford, and Antonio Leyva, all sentenced for one year for grand larceny. He will take them to San Quentin today, and the El Dorado officers will depart with the sassash stage robbers on the Sacramento boat this evening. No blood was spilled in arresting the robber gang. One posse of men under Sheriff Hall and another under officers Hume and Van Eaton left San Jose before daylight yesterday morning and traveled in different directions. The former made six of the arrests, the latter five. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 3, 1864. Democratic meeting at Hayes Park. The Democratic indignation meeting at Hayes Park last evening amounted to a very short row of small potatoes, with few in the hill. The whole number present certainly did not exceed four hundred, of whom at least one half were union men, or supporters of the administration, drawn thither by curiosity and the cars. The meeting was called order by Colonel Phelps. Bosphorus calls for Berea Brown brought him to the platform, and he delivered himself of a few remarks substantially as follows. Gentlemen, we have assembled here tonight as American citizens. Great noise in the hall here and the speaker's voice was inaudible for several moments. We meet here to offer no opposition to the government, but we meet here to discuss the question of our rights as citizens. We ask for no rights, but what each individual is entitled to, to do as we would be done by, under all circumstances, at the same time we do not propose to surrender our rights as American citizens. Applauds. This I understand is the object of the meeting. The first business, gentlemen, is to hear the report of the committee appointed to draft resolutions. The following resolutions were then handed Mr. Brown, who had previously been appointed chairman of the meeting, which were as follows. We admit giving the preamble at length, as it all amounted simply to a renewal of fidelity to the constitutions of the State and the United States, and a declaration of the intention to maintain the laws and yield a willing support to all just and legally constituted authorities in the administration thereof, etc., and to the best of our ability to support whatever good citizens may rightfully do, to maintain domestic peace and promote general welfare. That they demand nothing but a uniform and faithful administration of the laws, and no privilege but what is clearly and indisputably guaranteed by the constitutions of our government. It also declared that, where there is no law, there is no freedom, and contained the usual declaiming against the abridgment of the freedom of speech and the press. Resolved that we regard with alarm all exercise of power by the United States government or its agents, not specifically delegated to that government, and in derogation of the reserved rights of states and in abridgment of the constitutional guarantees to the people as tending to central despotism and the subjugation of popular liberty. Resolved that, whenever through fear of spies or informers, or the power of military commanders to arrest and imprison American citizens, they shall be deterred from peaceably assembling together and freely expressing their approval or disapproval of measures of public policy, the point is reached beyond which submission merges the free man into a slave. Resolved that the spotless reputation of Bishop Kavanaugh and the well-known patriotism and devotion of Charles L. Weller to the Constitution and the Union justify the belief that the arrest of these gentlemen was procured by the perjury of mercenary spies and informers, or by persons actuated solely by personal malice, and we can but express the sentiments of all honorable men in denouncing the employment of those degraded wretches, an offense to civilization, and a disgrace to humanity. After the passage of the resolutions the band discourse a national air. Dr. Wozencraft was then introduced by the chairman, his speech was simply a rehash of all the whinings and hypocrisy of copperheads since the conflict began. He had much to say about the imminence of our danger of becoming involved in scenes such as are now being witnessed in the southern states from a determination on the part of large numbers to resist with force the arbitrary and unconstitutional measures that were being inaugurated in our midst. The record of the Democratic Party is but a record of the nation's power and glory, while that of the Abolition Party is a record of her shame and disintegration. He said there are but two parties, the Democratic Party whose mission is to sustain the Union, and the Abolition Party which is seeking to destroy it. There is no hope for Union, peace and prosperity, only through a conservative Democratic administration. The North was unanimous in their opposition to the idea of secession, to the support of the government in suppressing the rebellion, there was not a dissenting voice until the war was made one of subjugation, abolition, and confiscation. Democrats were law abiding and constitutional people, and the present supporters of the administration are the secessionists. Jefferson Davis and his followers are simply their allies in the work of destroying the government. The speaker predicted that so soon as we get control of the federal government, which by the help of God we hope to do at the coming election, they, the Republicans, will declare that the Pacific states will withdraw and form themselves into a separate republic. Here he ran an extract from a speech of Mr. and continued for about twenty minutes in the usual strain of his ilk. At the close of his speech the band made more music, after which Zachary Montgomery of Marysville appeared on the stand. He commenced by saying that he would speak from the record, thereby meaning that he would read his speech from a manuscript which he did. They had assembled there to consider how they should preserve the liberties of the people of California and avert the horrors of civil war. Then followed the inevitable tirade against the measures of the administration and its appointed agents for suppressing treason and taking seditious persons into custody. He said that there is no use to try to disguise the fact that there is danger of civil war in this state and intimated that a certain party, chafing under the discipline of Abraham Lincoln, was on the verge of outbreak, and the smothered volcano might burst out at any moment, and that we were nearer the scenes which our brethren in the older states were now witnessing than many might imagine. There were but two roads before us, the one leads to civil war, the other to peace. He declared in so many words that the administration were determinately pursuing the former road. Its acts were all in direct violation of the Constitution, and every blow struck at that instrument only drove us deeper into the danger of civil war and its attendant horrors. He spoke, as did Wozencraft, like a man who was in the secret of an organization existing in our midst, with a sole object of resisting by force and arms, all disciplinary, police or administrative measures which, in their estimation, might be deemed unconstitutional or oppressive, and they are to be the judges. Like the other speakers, he also referred to them in terms which might, without much distortion, be construed into an approval of their patriotic purpose. The speaker dwelt at great length on this danger hidden from unprivileged eyes and ready to create a storm, a general disruption in our very midst, ere we were aware of the least danger. In a word, if General McDowell arrests any more noisy and treasonable babblers or insidious enemies to the government, why, we may look out for guns and a fight. Mr. Montgomery's enunciation was very impassioned, and he seemed extremely fearful that the infatuation of the administration would yet inevitably, and at no distant period, transfer to our own California all the horrors of the Eastern battlefields. In conclusion he conjured all, both Republicans and Democrats, to respect and obey the Constitution and the laws under it, as the only means of averting the terrible catastrophe to the brink of which we have been brought. The only pacificator of that secret element that is now only resting in a temporary lull while preparing for the great and sudden effort, which is to follow the next persistent attempt of the administrative authorities to enforce an arbitrary measure. After a little music to soften down the lion which Montgomery had roused within himself, Todd Robinson was presented, and with all the blandishments of an adept at honey-fuebling he proceeded to tell the people of the wrongs they were suffering at the hands of the present administration. He also knows something of their hidden danger, this secret steel trap which is to catch all infernal abolitionists and send them to perdition without benefit of clergy. He prefaced his speech by stating the fact that he was born under the behests of freedom, and held no right nor privilege by the tenure of any man's will. A recapitulation of his speech would fall on the ear much like the repetition for the thousandth time of an old thread-bear story. Every Californian knows Todd Robinson by heart, and nobody believes anything he says. We left while he was speaking, in company with a good Democrat who said he wasn't going to listen to such a damned, rascal as Todd Robinson, though he rather favored some of the other speakers. He couldn't go, Todd Robinson, so we all departed, and the meeting shortly after broke up, with the close of Robinson's speech. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 4, 1864. Recovered. The young man, John Ferguson, whose attempt to poison himself by strict nine we recorded in yesterday morning's call, is beyond danger. This gratifying result is due to the exertions of Dr. Decastro, who was summoned after the first-called physician had abandoned the case and declared recovery impossible. The doctor remained with the patient until the effects of the poison had been completely subdued. Ferguson, we understand, is a molder by trade, and was lately in the employ of Ira P. Rankin. He lost his situation through no fault of his own, but simply because, with others of his craft, he asked an advance of fifty cents per day on his wages to meet increased expenses of living. For this presumption he was thrown out of employment, and had weighed upon his spirits to the extent of suicide. With some money-getters fifty cents have more importance than many lives. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 4, 1864. Fruit Swindling. Last Saturday morning a man named Cheeseman, proprietor of a fruit store at the corner of Market and Second Streets, purchased quantities of fruit from different dealers, and in the afternoon, after taking an inventory of his wares, sold out his whole establishment for one thousand dollars. In order to avert suspicion, he paid a month's advance on his room rent on Friday, and conducted himself in all respects as if he had made up his mind to remain in San Francisco a century. However, notwithstanding his subtle diplomacy, his creditors began to suspect him of an intention to defraud them, and when the places which knew him once got to knowing him no more, shortly they grew alarmed and fell to searching for him. They sought him from Saturday night until Tuesday, and finally found him. He began to play himself for an honest man at once, and declared his willingness to pay his debts. They took him to Justice Cornwall's office, and made him to scourge the money he had with him, seven hundred and fifty dollars, after which, by authority of a writ served for that purpose, they submitted him to a rigid examination. The seven hundred and fifty dollars was deposited in court. He went there yesterday morning with his lawyer, and tried to substitute greenbacks for the amount, but the judge refused to permit it, and said it must remain as it was for distribution among the creditors. Suits have been commenced against cheesemen by those who loved him and trusted him, and got burnt at it. They do not love him so much now. He owes about twelve hundred dollars for fruit, and six hundred dollars borrowed money. His indebtedness for fruit is distributed among a large number of dealers, in bills ranging from three dollars up to two hundred and thirty dollars. San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 4, 1864. OTEM COM DIGNITATE Secretary Chase's private offices at Washington are fitted with ax-minster carpets, gilded ceilings, velvet furniture, and other luxurious surroundings which go to hedge about a cabinet minister with a dignity quite appalling to the unaccustomed outsider. Five minutes after a Custom House clerk had read this item, and with the recollection of it still upon him, he was paid his monthly salary in greenbacks, and the consequence was he lost his temper, and became profane to a degree approaching lunacy. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 5, 1864. Soldier murdered by a monomaniac. Escape and subsequent arrest of the murderer. Just before three o'clock yesterday morning a soldier named Simon Kennedy while under the influence of a temporary hallucination killed a fellow soldier named Fitzgerald, who was confined in the guard-house with him, at Black Point, by stabbing the unfortunate man twelve or fifteen times with a bayonet. The shrieks of the struggling victim attracted the attention of the sentinel, who opened the door when the murderer rushed out and escaped in the darkness, followed by three or four terrified prisoners. Captain Winder turned out his whole force to pursue Kennedy, but they found neither him nor any trace of him. Save a bloody towel under the bank near the Benzley Water Works, where he had evidently washed the blood from his clothing. About seven o'clock a soldier arrived here with a message from Captain Winder to Chief Burke announcing the murder, and the latter left at once for Black Point after giving orders for half a dozen members of the police force to mount and follow him. He also requested Captain Van Voost of the Provost Department to detail an equal number of mounted men to aid in the search for Kennedy, which request was promptly complied with. Arrived at Black Point the Chief procured a description of Kennedy and acquainted himself with his habits and antecedents. He was told that the man was a lunatic, and from the fact of his having with enough about him to guard against detection by washing himself it was evident that he was not stupidly mad at any rate. Further inquiries elicited the information that Kennedy had requested several times lately to be taken to Father Cotter in Vallejo Street, and had once been there a day or two ago in charge of a soldier. The Chief thought it possible that he might have gone there after his escape and sent officers Clark and Hoyt to ascertain if such were the case. The surmise proved correct, and Father Cotter was at once relieved of his dangerous guest, and dangerous enough he was too as he still had his bayonet with him, bloody and bent by the murderous thrusts inflicted with it upon the body of Fitzgerald. The best information concerning this tragedy goes to show that Kennedy is a sane man upon all subjects except one, that of hanging. He is quiet and sensible enough until halters and scaffolds are mentioned, and then he becomes a madman. Some of the causes of this are recent, and some date far back in the past. He is an extraordinary swimmer, and it is said he once swam the Mississippi at a point where it was more than a mile and a half wide, and his bare head being exposed so long to the burning rays of the sun, the strength and vigor of his brain were impaired by it, and at intervals since then he has seemed a little flighty. He enlisted in Davis Street here, and was sent with his company to Alcatraz, where they remained some time, and were finally transferred to Black Point. While at Alcatraz, Kennedy was swimming in the bay with a comrade upon one occasion, when the latter was seized with cramps and was drowned. The men used to tell Kennedy he murdered his comrade, and that he would be hanged for it. They kept it up until finally the poor wretch got to brooding over the fate predicted for him until he began to suspect his brother's soldiers of an intention to hang him. He went twice to his captain for protection against them. A day or two ago at Black Point the soldiers pestered him again about his chances of being hanged, and he says the captain put him in the guard-house for safe keeping. The supposition is that during the night the horrors came upon him that his fellow prisoners were going to hang him, and he seized the bayonet and fought desperately to save himself. Kennedy told us what he knew about the murder, but his statements were confused, and he said he did not recollect much about it. He only knew that three or four men came in the guard-house to hang him, and said they were going to do it at once. One of them seized and tried to choke him, and he snatched the bayonet from the wall, where it was hanging above a dark-colored cap, and struck out wildly with it in self-defense. He was not certain whether he hid anybody, but he thought he did. Afterward he said it was likely he took the bayonet away from the man who was trying to choke him, and then he showed wounds on his hands as if he had a vague notion that they were evidence of how he came into possession of the weapon. His person and his clothing were as black as a coal heavers. He said he changed his clothes on his way to town and left his uniform lying in the road. If he did, the latter was not found. When speaking of the murder, Kennedy gazes upon the visitor with a fixed, vacant stare, and looks like a man who is absorbed in trying to recollect something. The body of Fitzgerald lay at the coroner's office yesterday. The breast, shoulders, stomach, hip, and arms were covered with little triangular red spots where the bayonet had entered. The inquest will be held today, so we were informed. The murderer and his victim were both members of Company D, Third Artillery. Fitzgerald was a married man. His widow resides in this city. Since the above was written, a soldier in the regular army has informed us how the bayonet happened to be in the guard-house within reach of a prisoner popularly considered to be insane. He says Captain Mears makes his prisoners do guard duty, and after they are relieved their instructions are to take their muskets to the guard-room and clean them during confinement. He further says the members of Fitzgerald Company are incensed at this conduct of permitting deadly weapons to be carried within reach of the lunatic imprisoned with their comrade. He says that when a prisoner does guard duty, it is usual for a non-commissioned officer to go with him and see that he cleans his musket at the quarters and leaves it there, and then takes him back to be locked into the guard-house unarmed. The soldier says Kennedy first attacked a man named McDonald with the bayonet, and then assaulted Fitzgerald, who was asleep at the time. When he attacked McDonald he first put his hand on his breast and asked him if he had a heart and where it was situated, and then, without waiting for the desired information, made a stab at him. It was a wretched piece of business to let a deadly weapon be taken into a guard-room where a man in Kennedy's condition was confined, and unmilitary people yesterday were wondering that weapons should be placed within reach of prisoners under any circumstances. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 6, 1864. Another obscene picture-nave captured. He solicits the custom of school girls. A scoundrel named George R. Powers has been detected in the obscene book-trade and captured. He has been carrying on the trade after a fashion of his own. Over the signature of Mrs. Amelia Barstow he writes chatty, familiar letters to young girls in the California seminaries soliciting patronage for his infamous books and pictures. He made a mistake, though, when he addressed the following epistle to a school girl of fourteen years of age, for her home teachings had not been of a character to enable her to appreciate it, and she sent it at once to her father. From him it passed to Judge Coon, who handed it to Chief Burke to be disposed of. The Chief took a lively enough interest in the matter to take Officer Hess from his regular duties in the police court and keep him on the track of Mrs. Barstow for a week and a half with Officer Pike to a system. We suppress the name of the young lady, and that of the school she belongs to, of course. San Francisco, July 21, 1864. Miss Blank. I have just received from New York a large number of the most delightful books you can imagine. To refined young ladies of an amorous temperament they are just the thing. For five dollars sent to me through the Post Office in two separate enclosures of two dollars and a half each, I will forward you two different volumes, each containing five tinted engravings. Accompanying the package will also be a beautiful life photograph entitled Blank. The strictest secrecy will be observed, which may be heightened by your transmitting a fictitious address, in case you reply to Mrs. Amelia Barstow. We suppress the title of dear Amelia's life photograph as being somewhat too suggestive, reporter. Officer Hess suggested the policy of writing an answer to Amelia's note and getting it sent through the Post Office to her as coming from the young girl she had addressed. He framed the following note, putting in punctuation marks with great liberality where they did not belong, and leaving them out where they did, and mimicking school girl's simplicity of phraseology and proneness to tautology with great ingenuity. The Chief, having approved of it, a lady copied it in the microscopic chirography of Suite XIV, and it was ready for mailing as set forth here below. We suppress the girl's name and that of the Post Office. Blank, July 27, 1864 Mrs. Amelia Barstow. Dear Madam. I received your letter which you sent on the twenty-first of this month, and I am glad, for I have been wishing for something nice to read for a long time. Father has not given me much money this month, and I cannot send this time the amount you say, but if you will send me one book by sending two dollars and a half, please write and tell me so, and by return mail I will send it. A number of the girls in my class wants some books also, and if you will send one book for two dollars and a half some four or five others will send for some also. Please direct to Charles Harris, for if directed to a Miss or Misses some of the teachers may get the letter. Yours truly, Blank. The letter was put into the hands of Postmaster Perkins, who at once entered into the work of entrapping the miserable Mrs. Barstow with as much alacrity and earnestness as if the insulted girl had been his own child. He enclosed the decoy letter in a department envelope to the Postmaster of Blank with instructions to postmark and send it back through the mail to Mrs. Amelia Barstow at once. He also instructed the Post Office clerks to give Officer Hess and his assistant every facility for corraling the masculine miscreant who was doubtless passing himself for a woman in his nefarious correspondence. No female had ever applied for letters under the name of Mrs. Amelia Barstow. The decoy letter came back in due time and was taken out by Mr. Powers while Mr. Hess was absent at lunch. But the clerk who officiates in the ladies' department at the Post Office took such a minute mental photograph of him that the officer had no difficulty in following after and detecting his man in the street from the description given of him. After walking around town for some time, Powers finally opened the letter, read it, and replaced it in his pocket. Hess entered into conversation with him, and in answer to certain questions the fellow said he had no appointment to meet Mrs. Barstow at any particular place expected to stumble on her in the street. Said he had no particular occupation, was in the habit of taking her letters from the Post Office for her. It took him but a short time to discover that he was in the hands of an officer, and then his replies became decidedly noncommittal. Hess asked him if he wrote the letter assigned Mrs. Amelia Barstow. Powers said, If I were to say I did, what would be done with me? What could you make out of it? When asked if Mrs. Barstow would come and clear him of suspicion if she knew he was about to suffer for an offense committed by her, he caught at the idea and said she would. The thoughtless numbskull even eagerly wrote her a note which the officer was to deliver to her after accomplishing the hopeless task of finding her. That act furnished the officer all the information he lacked, and enabled him to rest his case. But it ruined the unthinking powers. For, behold, the first words of the note, Mrs. Amelia Barstow, were a perfect facsimile of the name signed to the letter to the schoolgirl, and fully convicted him of being the writer of it. Powers will be tried this morning for offering to salibseen pictures, and perhaps for opening other people's letters, and the chances are that he will be severely dealt with. He deserves it, for any one acquainted with the impressible nature of young girls, shut out from the world and doomed to irksome and monotonous school life, knows the heightened charm and excitement they find in amusements that are contraband and have to be secured by risky evasions of the rules, and is also aware that a whole school might be corrupted by the circulation among them of a single volume of the lecherous trash dealt in by Mr. Powers. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 6, 1864, The Fitzgerald Inquest. Last evening, in the absence of Coroner Sheldon, Justice Tobin held an inquest at the office of the Coroner to inquire into the facts connected with the death of James Fitzgerald, private in Company D, Third Artillery, who was killed by a fellow soldier named Kennedy, at Black Point, early on the morning of Thursday, the third instant. Three witnesses were examined who were on the spot at the time. The facts were substantially as stated in yesterday's call, except that not so much was said about his insanity. A simple statement of the facts adduced on the inquest would be about as follows. About half past one o'clock on Thursday morning Fitzgerald was placed in the guard-house, Kennedy having been there for some time previous. Fitzgerald being without his blankets, Kennedy told him to come and share his. Deceased, however, went and laid down on the floor. The room was almost perfectly dark. About two o'clock in the morning Fitzgerald got up and went to where one Michael Condole, also under guard, was lying, and whispered in his ear telling him to turn over, he wanted to feel him. At the same time he drew his hand across Condole's throat. Condole told him to go to his own bunk. Kennedy then placed his hand on Condole's breast and raised something over him which in the darkness Condole took to be a dagger. He seized it and discovered that it was a bayonet. A struggle commenced in which Kennedy succeeded in planting a thrust into Condole's arm. He cried out that he was stabbed and called for a light, but the inmates of the room had become panic-stricken and crowded off to the corners. In the struggle with Kennedy, Condole kicked him, forcing him over towards the wall. He fell on Fitzgerald, deceased, and commenced stabbing him. Deceased cried out, I murdered! The corporal outside hearing the noise rushed to the guard room, and as he opened the door, Kennedy and two other prisoners forced their way out, throwing him down on the ground. He went in with a light and saw a deceased lying on the floor in a dying condition. He had twelve wounds on the body and four on the head. Of four of those on the body, penetrating the heart, lungs, liver, stomach, and large and small intestines, either one would have produced death. The rest were flesh wounds. One of the fatal wounds was made on the thigh severing the femoral artery. Kennedy was generally considered a sensible and harmless man, though he seemed rather disposed to shun his comrades. On one occasion, about a month since, while at Alcatraz, he expressed an apprehension that he was going to be hanged. On one or two other occasions he made curious remarks. The day prior to the killing, he broke out of the guard house and ran down to Captain Winder's quarters. He said he wanted to see a clergyman, and must go to town. He was not generally considered insane, though he had curious ways, and the corporal said he did not think he was altogether right. It was about half-past three o'clock in the morning when Fitzgerald died. Deceased was a native of Limerick, Ireland, and aged about thirty-six years. The jury returned a verdict in accordance with the facts. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 7, 1864. How among the doctors? There is a nice little breeze between the practitioners who were called on in the case of Ferguson, said to have taken Strychnia lately, to end his life, but was prevented by Dr. D'Castro. Dr. Elliot, as a cloud of witnesses state, was first called and gave up the case, saying, He, the patient, was a dead boy. In other words, recovery was hopeless. D'Castro was then called, and as the same witness's state found the unhappy Ferguson in the throes of death. He emeticized, purged, and pumped him, till the poison had no show, and felt a little justifiable pride at his success. Now Dr. Elliot says he was not poisoned at all, that the drugist, when the patient applied for the noxious drug to kill a dog, suspected his design, and gave him some comparatively harmless preparation, piperine, or something of that sort, and that D'Castro was humbugged. He furnishes an analysis from chemist Dickie of the drug said to be furnished by the apothecary in proof. D'Castro thinks the fact that the man was swollen fearfully, and almost lifeless when he saw him, and also the drugist Riley's statement that he did furnish the deadly article and marked at Strychnia poison ten grains, proof more convincing on his side. Thus the matter stands. Who can decide when doctors disagree? The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 7th, 1864. ATEMPTED SUICIDE Yesterday at eleven o'clock in the four noon, Emanuel Lopes, Barber, of room No. 23, Meade House, wrote to the idol of his soul that he loved her better than all else beside, that unto him the day was dark, the sun seemed swas in shadows when she was not by, that he was going to take the life that God had given him, and enclosed she would please find one lock of hair the same being his. He then took a teaspoon full of loudenum in a gallon of gin and lay down to die. That is one version of it. Another is that he really took an honest dose of loudenum and was really anxious to put his light out, so much so indeed that after Dr. Murphy had come resolved to pump the poison from his stomach or pump his heart out in the attempt, and after he had comfortably succeeded in the first mentioned proposition, this desperate French barber rose up and tried to whip the surgeon for saving his life and defeating his fearful purpose and wasting his loudenum. Another version is that he went to his friend Julian in the barbershop under the Meade House, and told him to smash into his drunk after he had breathed his last and shed his immortal soul, and take from it his professional soap and his lather brush and his razors, and keep them forever to remember him by, for he was going this time without reserve. This was a touching allusion to his repeated assertions made at diverse and sundry times during the past few years that he was going off immediately and commit suicide. Julian paid no attention to him, thinking he was only drunk, as usual, and that his better judgment would prompt him to substitute his regular gin at the last moment instead of the deadlier poison. But on going to No. 23 an hour afterwards, he found the wretched lopus in a heavy stupor, and all unconscious of the things of earth, and the junk-bottle and the loudenum file on the bureau. We have endeavored to move the sympathy of the public in behalf of this poor lopus, and we have done it from no selfish motive and in no hope of reward, but only out of the commiseration we feel for one who has been suffering in solitude while the careless world around him was absorbed in the pursuit of wife's foolish pleasures heedless whether he lived or died. If we have succeeded, if we have caused one sympathetic tear to flow from the tender eye of pity, we desire no richer recompense. They took lopus to the station-house yesterday afternoon, and from thence he was transferred to the French hospital. We learn that he is getting along first rate now. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 7, 1864. SHOPLIFTING Lucy Adler was arrested and locked up in the city prison last night for petty larceny, stealing shoes, ribbons, and small traps of all kinds exposed for sale in shops. She brought her weeping boy with her, a lad of nine years perhaps, and they were followed by a large concourse of men and boys whose curiosity was excited to the highest pitch to know what was up with the old woman, as they expressed it. The officers and also the merchants say this woman will travel through a dozen small stores during the afternoon and go home and clean up a perfect junk shop as a result of her labours. She cabbages every light article of merchandise she can get her claws on. She always has her small boy with her, and if she is caught in a theft, the boy comes the sympathy-dodge, and pumps tears and jerks sobs until the pity of the shopman is moved and his parent released. The boy is always on hand, and if an officer snatches the woman, she pulls the metaphorical string that turns on the boy's sympathetic shower-bath, and he is all tears and lamentations in a moment. At any rate, this is what they say of the cunning pair. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 9, 1864. Mysterious! If you have got a house, keep your eye on it these times, for there is no knowing what moment it will go tramping around town. We meet these dissatisfied shanties every day, marching boldly through the public streets on stilts and rollers, or standing thoughtfully in front of gin-shops, or halting in quiet alleys and peering round corners with a human curiosity, out of one eye, or one window, if you please, upon the dizzy whirl and roar of commerce in the thoroughfare beyond. The houses have been taking something lately that is moving them a good deal. It is very mysterious and past accounting for, but it cannot be helped. We have just been informed that an unknown house, two stories with a kitchen, has stopped before Shark Alley in Merchant Street, and seems to be calculating the chances of being able to scrounge through it into Washington Street, and thus save the trouble of going around. We hardly think she can, and we had rather she would not try it. We should be sorry to see her get herself fast in that crevice, which is the newspaper reporter's shortest cut to the station house and the courts. Without wishing to be meddlesome or officious, we would like to suggest that she would find it very comfortable and nice going around by Montgomery Street and plenty of room. Besides, there is nothing to be seen in Shark Alley, if she is only on a little pleasure excursion. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 9, 1864. Assault by a house. The vagrant house we have elsewhere alluded to as prowling around Merchant Street near Shark Alley—we mean Dunbar Alley—finally started to go around by Montgomery Street, but at the first move fell over and mashed in some windows and broke down a new awning attached to the house adjoining the ivy-green saloon. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 9, 1864. Escaped! Mr. Powers, who was arrested the other day for writing to young girls in the seminaries over the signature of Mrs. Amelia Barstow and soliciting their custom in the obscene picture-line, has escaped and gone into hiding. He went in charge of Officer Bowen to confer with his attorney, or his confederate, and while closeted with that individual, jumped out of a second-story window, so much so that when Bowen went after him to take him back he was nowhere visible to the naked eye. Mr. Powers tried the same game on Officer Hess when he was first arrested, but it failed. Hess preferred that all private interviews should be held in his presence. Playing the extreme confidence game with officers is very old and very well understood by most of them. Count Bowen, among the latter class hereafter. The aforesaid counsel will be arrested today for complicity in the escape of the prisoner. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 10, 1864. Collision A runaway buggy, at any rate the horse attached to it was running away and the buggy was taking a good deal of interest in it, came into collision with a dre yesterday in Montgomery Street, and the dre was not damaged any to speak of. The buggy was, the hub was mashed clear out of one wheel, and another wheel was turned inside out, so that it dished the wrong way. The cripple was entirely new and belonged to Duff and Covert, California Street. In meeting a dre, or a heavy truck wagon, buggies should always turn out to one side, being safer than to go between it. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 10, 1864. The Murderer Kennedy, a question of jurisdiction. Judge Shepard said yesterday, with reference to the case of Kennedy, the soldier who killed a fellow soldier at Black Point on Thursday last, that he would hold over the examination for three days to give the military authorities an opportunity of making a formal demand of the prisoner to be tried by a court-martial, a claim to the exclusive jurisdiction over the case having been heretofore signified by them. We are assured, however, that the military authorities do not desire to take the case out of the hands of the civil authorities, and besides, two serious obstacles might be interposed as against such a jurisdiction. In the first place, the prisoner is evidently insane, and was so at the time the murder was committed, Fitzgerald being, it is reported, the third victim to his terrible fits. And there is no provision of our laws authorizing a military court to act as a commission to inquirendo. And in the next place there is a question about the title of the United States government to the property at Black Point, the title to which is now being litigated, which fact might so effected as a military reservation as to throw a strong shade of doubt over the supremacy of the military law within those particular limits. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 10, 1864. Our U.S. Branch Mint. When the branch mint was established in this city it was upon the calculation that its annual coinage would amount to about five millions. Upon that supposition its organization as to number of officials, accommodation, and the pay of the employees was fixed. Although the coinage has about quadrupled what was calculated upon, neither accommodations, employees, nor compensation have been increased. On the contrary the pay is now in greenbacks instead of gold and the payment often delayed as at present for four months through inefficiency on the part of someone in Washington. However Congress made an appropriation at its last session for a new mint here and we hope that something may come of it different from the present miserable kennel called a mint and that something may also be done for the relief of the unpaid men and women who perform the labor of the institution. Herewith we give a synopsis of the business done by the branch mint in this city for the last 12 months. It will be seen that instead of five the coinage has been nearly twenty millions. Fiscal Year 1863-4. Gold. Nineteen million sixty-eight thousand four hundred dollars. Silver. Four hundred and sixty-eight thousand four hundred and nine dollars. Total. Nineteen million five hundred and thirty-six thousand eight hundred and nine dollars. Fiscal Year 1862-3. Gold. Seventeen million five hundred and ten thousand nine hundred and sixty dollars. Silver. One million forty thousand six hundred and thirty-eight dollars and sixty-eight cents. Total. Eighteen million five hundred and fifty-one thousand five hundred and ninety-eight dollars and sixty-eight cents. Gain of 1863-4. Over 1862-3. Nine hundred and eighty-five thousand two hundred and ten dollars and thirty-two cents. Loss of Silver. Five hundred and seventy-two thousand two hundred and twenty-nine dollars and sixty-eight cents. Gain of Gold. One million five hundred and fifty-seven thousand four hundred and forty dollars. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call August 10th, 1864. Intelligence Office, Rao. The names of those concerned in it are suppressed, and it is a matter of no consequence anyhow, but the foundation of the fight is of interest to some as showing how the business of intelligence offices is sometimes conducted in evasion of the law, but not in violation of it. The statute says that the keeper of the office must in return for the money received from his customer give him a receipt in which the nature of the service rendered must be specified. This is done in this wise. Received of John Doe, two dollars and fifty cents for services rendered in procuring him a situation as stable boy. That is according to law, and if John Doe goes to the stable and has refused the situation he can make the intelligence man refund his money. But the latter takes no such chances. To the receipt he adds the following post-script, which blocks the game on the stable boy in spite of the statute. If you are denied the situation your money will be refunded upon the presentation here of a written statement of the fact of the refusal by the parties so refusing. The parties will not trouble themselves with writing communications for stable boys and servant girls to intelligence office keepers, and without the ceremonious written statement the noble dealer in occupations will not disgorge. He sticks to his contract. The result of this practice is that every day the district attorney is besieged by frantic chambermaids and blasphemous cooks and woodchoppers seeking redress for the wrongs they have suffered at the hands of the intelligence office keepers. But they go away without it. The law is a wonderful machine, and few there be that understand it. They say it does not cover the case we have spoken of at all. This having been ascertained by a victim yesterday he went back to his chuckling spoiler and wailed him. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call August 11, 1864. An accumulation of copperheads, conservative democracy and secession affiliations, the same old talk of tyranny and resistance. Last evening some fifty persons, perhaps, chiefly of the copperhead persuasion, assembled in the democratic club room, on the corner of Stockton and Filbert Streets, for the purpose of effervescing a little. Conservative democratic imaginations pictured at a grand rally of persecuted and hunted down patriots. A rational person saw nothing there but aberrated beings, hugging the bugbear of martyrdom and iterating the formula laid down by the secret agents of Jefferson Davis's government. We do not propose to give a detailed report of their proceedings. It wouldn't pay. One speech is a type of the whole. It is only secession and treason, modified in expression according to the rational caution and shrewdness of the speaker. Mr. Brown, the inevitable Berea, was there, of course, and, of course, he spoke. But as he holds the leading string of conservatism in this vicinity, the practice of extreme caution has at length almost perfected the faculty of couching treason in loyal phrases, or at least evading, with consummate tact, the danger of curmination. Mr. Brown's speech. Mr. Brown said he did not feel able to make at that time an effort proportioned to the importance of the occasion, for all his energies were spent in fighting their battles. He didn't go there to make a speech, but to look into their copperhead faces to receive the assurance that democracy was not dead, upon which equivocal announcement of the party's vitality there was a stamping of feet by several indiscreet persons. Discriminating one saw therein a confession that copperheads were sickly hereabouts, and looked sad like mourners at a funeral. The speaker proceeded, with faultless attitude and gesticulation, and accountants beaming with a light that is supposed to foreshadow posthumous glories of the immolated hero, to state that he couldn't argue with his opponents in the present conflict there was no issue. If there was he couldn't see it, didn't know how to frame an argument. Doubtless Alcatraz, frowning just in sight of his position, bothered his powers of composition. Syntax gives botheration when the soul of the rhetoric is to be something that must not be expressed for fear of disastrous consequences. All the old issues, he went on to say, were gone, the conditions that formerly divided the parties and kept up the bonfires of party strife, and there was now but a single question, one which admitted of no argument, a question of brute force, whether we had a government or were the subjects of despotism. Then came in the inevitable stereotyped hobby of inalienable rights, referring specifically to a number of the propositions of the Declaration of Independence. He pointed the conservative element to their melancholy state of discomfiture, and told them there was but one thing left for them to do, that was to adhere to their principles, associate, organize, and protest. They could do nothing more, there was no argument. Then Berea put a strong case. He asked them, what if they should get up some morning and find one of their number mysteriously missing, one whom they loved, and to whom they had been used to looking for counsel, and the next morning another should be gone in like manner, and another, and another, and so on indefinitely without warning, and no one knew whither or what hand they were taken away. They would feel badly, they would gather in groups, with pallor in their countenances and baited breath, and bite their lips with vexation. They would want to know what had become of those loved ones. It would arouse the feelings and impulses of every copperhead in the community. At this juncture Mr. Lincoln suffered at Berea's hands a comparison which we have not room to give in full, said many things savoring strongly of what opened the gates of Alcatraz, and meekly observed that what he was then uttering might deprive him of his liberties, verifying the old adage of a guilty conscience, etc. He said that the administration asked them to surrender their liberties for a time to preserve the government. He wanted to know what a government was worth without liberty. Applauds. And more the same sort. The people of the United States were then damagingly compared to Turks. Mr. Brown warned them to beware of surrendering their liberties. Liberties, once surrendered, could only be recovered at a bloody sacrifice. The price of liberty won, from tyranny, is the blood of the patriot! As for his part he didn't propose to surrender. Their liberties should only be surrendered with their lives. Berea entertained his small but appreciative audience for about thirty minutes, in which he adroitly exhibited the virtues of resistance to the arbitrary measures of the administration, all of whose measures were arbitrary, and yielded the floor. A resolution was then adopted by the meeting, which, as adopted, proposed to instruct the delegates from the Second District to the county committee to take steps to have our citizens protected from military arrests to apply to the Governor to give us the protection of the civil law of the state. A second set of resolutions were then presented which were somewhat rich. They conjured all good Democrats to withdraw their support and patronage from all newspapers that were inimical to their policy, and to exert their influence against the influence of such papers generally. The morning call, Alta and Bulletin specifically. They followed a resolution holding up Mr.'s town and bacon to the scorn and contempt of all good copperheads, and advising them to steer clear of their printing establishment as adverse to democratic money, because they, the said town and bacon, had prescribed good union-loving Democrats. We were in hopes that the resolutions would have passed in that shape, but the glare of inconsistency hurt Mr. Brown's eyes, and he hoped the adoption of those resolutions would be deferred until the phraseology could be altered so as to preserve the spirit and intent, but have the appearance of inconsistency hid in more subtle verbiage. The idea did not at first penetrate the copper-coated intellects of the club, but Berea must be right, so they assented, and the hypocrisy is to be added to inconsistency for their stomachs to receive. The president of the club then observed that some people had denied that there were any speakers among them, thereby intimating that so far the assertion had not been negatived, which made Berea think that copperheads were unappreciative and stupid, for hadn't he just sat down? And to prove the contrary, he called upon a man named Kirtland to give them a little more of the same he had favoured them with before. After a little hesitation, Kirtland stepped forth, and there was a secessionist edifying the club with the same he had told them before. We did intend to report his speech, and took some notes, but before proceeding far he openly avowed himself a southerner with southern feelings and entertaining a southern view of the question, and we paused. His speech was rampant, unmeaning, superficial, rant, not even worthy the name of sophistry. Had it emanated from a northern man, who had any influence to fear, it would have consigned its author to Alcatraz. But, as it was only the impotent ravings of one who knew where a display of heroism would be safe, neither the speech nor the speaker challenge attention. This man was followed by a Mr. Farrell, whom we did not remain to hear. This is section 38 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 1864, Part 2. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 12, 1864. What a skyrocket did! Right before last, a stick six or seven feet long, attached to an exploded rocket of large size, came crashing down through the zinc roof of a tenement in Milton Place, Bush Street, between DuPont and Kearney, passed through a cloth ceiling, and fetched up on the floor alongside a gentleman's bed with a smash like the disruption of a china shop. We have been told by a person with whom we are not acquainted, and of whose reliability we have now no opportunity of satisfying ourselves as he has gone to his residence, which is situated on the San Jose Road at some distance from the city, that when the rocket tore up the splinters around the bed, the gentleman got up. The person also said that he went out, adding after some deliberation and with the air of a man who has made up his mind that what he is about to say can be substantiated if necessary, that he went out quick. This person also said that after the gentleman went out quick he ran, and then, with a great show of disinterestedness, he ventured upon the conjecture that he was running yet. He hastened to modify this rash conjecture, however, by observing that he had no particular reason for suspecting that the gentleman was running yet, it was only a notion of his and just flashed on him like. He then hitched up his team, which he observed parenthetically that he wished they belonged to him, but they didn't, and immediately drove away in the direction of his country seat. The tenement is there yet, though, with the hole through the zinc roof. The tenement is the property of ex-supervisor Hinckley, and some of the best educated men in the city consider that the hole is also, because it is on his premises. It is a very good hole. If it could be taken from the roof just in the shape it is now, it would be a nice thing to show at the Mechanics Fair. Any man who would make a pun under circumstances like these, and suggest that it be turned over to the Christian Commission Fair on account of its holy nature, might think himself smart, but would the people, the plodding, thinking, intelligent masses, would these respect him? Far be it! Doubtless! What shadows we are! And what shadows we pursue! The foregoing facts are written to prepare the reader for the announcement that the stick, with the same exploded rocket attached, may be seen at the hall of the board of supervisors. It has remained there to this day. The man who set it off, and hung on to it, and went up with it, has not come down yet. The people who live in Milton Place are expecting him all the time. They have moved their families, and got out of the way, so as to give him a good show when he drops. They have said, but without insisting on it, that if it would be all the same to him, they would rather he fall in the alley. This would mash him up a good deal, likely, and scatter him around some, but they think they could scrape him up, and hold an inquest on him, and inform his parents. The board of supervisors will probably pass in ordinance directing that missiles of the dangerous nature of rockets shall henceforth be fired in the direction of the bay, so as to guard against accidents to life and property. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 13, 1864, Sundries. A pile of miscellaneous articles was found heaped up at a late hour last night away down somewhere in Harrison Street, which attracted the notice of numbers of passers-by, and diverse attempts were made to analyze the same without effect, for the reason that no one could tell where to begin, or which was on top. Two special policemen dropped in just then and solved the difficulty, showing a clean inventory of one horse, one buggy, two men, and an indefinite amount of liquor. The liquor couldn't be got at to be gauged, consequently the proof of it couldn't be told. The men, though, were good proof that the liquor was there, for they were as drunk as Bacchus and his brother. A fight had been on hand somewhere, and one of the men had been close to it, for his face was painted up in various hues, sky blue and crimson being prominent. The order of the buggy was inverted, and the horse beyond a realizing sense of his condition. The men went with some noise to the station house, and the animal, with attachments being set to rights, ambled off to a livery stable on Kearney Street. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call August 13, 1864. Won't you walk into my parlor? A whole bevy of those funny-looking animals that totter through the street labeled Chinese Women had been invited to call upon Judge Shepard yesterday morning when they would hear something to their disadvantage. These Thai pings were charged with tapings, and as they didn't appear, the judge charged them for it, and much bail was forfeited. There were about a dozen cases. The offence is simply a conventional sign of invitation to person's passing to walk in and grows out of the characteristic hospitality of that class of persons. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call August 16, 1864. An ill-advised prosecution. Yesterday morning, Rufus Temple was examined before Judge Shepard on a charge of obtaining money under false pretenses, and acquitted. We are disposed to make a specific and more extended reference to this matter than its importance would seem to demand from the fact that Mr. Temple is said to be an honest, industrious young man who has been placed in an unfavorable light before the public by being arraigned in a court of justice on a criminal charge. The testimony, which signally failed to sustain the charge, went simply to show that the defendant, who follows the trade of a clocker, had been employed by Mr. Vice, the prosecuting witness, to do some extra work on the steamer Nina Tilden. That Temple presented a bill of $30 to Mr. V for his work, which was, for some reason, refused, upon which the bill was presented to Mr. Tilden, the owner, or one of the owners of the vessel, who remarked, in substance, that he was not the proper person to pay such bills, but, as he did not wish any claims to stand against the vessel, he would pay it, which he did, taking Mr. Temple's receipt therefor. Upon learning the fact of the payment, Mr. Vice saw the city prosecutor, and a verified complaint was made, embodying the averment that Temple had represented to Mr. Tilden, that he was sent to him, Tilden, with a verbal order from an affiant for the payment of the bill. Mr. Tilden, who was a witness for the prosecution, denied, on his oath, that Temple had made any such representation, and that fact being the gist of the offence, the prosecution was at once abandoned. We cannot but speak in terms of the strongest condemnation of the reprehensible manner in which parties very frequently come into the police court, under the sanction of the prosecuting attorney. With all of perjury except the technical animus, they seek to wield this tribunal as a mollifier of their personal feelings, as if it were instituted as a general dispenser of the Lex Talionis. It is indeed a fortunate thing for the community that we have just such a man as Judge Shepard on the bench, where discrimination and decision are so much required. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 17th, 1864, School Director Pope and the Call. At the meeting of the Board of Education last evening, Mr. Pope complained that he had been misrepresented by the reporter for the call, as well as by the Secretary of the Board in his minutes in the statements of his resolution introduced at the last meeting on the subject of the participation by the pupils of the different schools in the exercises of the Freedmen's Concert. Mr. Pope says that his resolution was not to require the grammar class that had declined to participate on that occasion to do so against their will, but to inform the members of that class that if they did so decline, they would be required to continue their usual daily exercises in school. If this was Mr. Pope's statement, he may have the benefit of it, though the fact that both the reporter and the Secretary of the Board, who are both presumed to be, and really are close listeners to the proceedings of the body, should understand the Director exactly alike and fall into the same identical error is, to say the least, a very extraordinary coincidence. Whatever may have been the exact phraseology of the gentleman's motion, the evident intention of the measure and the disposition of more than one member of the Board was certainly expressed in our report and the Secretary's minutes. However, as we entertain no feelings of hostility toward any member of the Board, we, in our own individual reputorial capacity, will concede, retract, or admit anything in the world, for the sake of the argument, and to keep peace in the family, but understand we don't mean at all, nor near it. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 16, 1864. Man Run Over. A man fell off his own dray, or rather it was a large truck-wagon, in Davis Street yesterday, and the four wheels passed over his body. A bystander stopped the horses and they backed the same wheels over the man's body a second time, after which he crawled out, jumped on the wagon, muttered something about being tired of such damn foolishness, and drove off before a surgeon could arrive to amputate him. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 18, 1864. Daring attempt to assassinate a pawnbroker in broad daylight, the wounds probably fatal. Eight thousand dollars worth of diamonds and watches stolen. Yesterday afternoon, about half past two o'clock, a pawnbroker named Meyer, whose establishment is in Commercial Street, below Kearney, went out and left his son Henry, a youth of eighteen or twenty perhaps, to attend to the business during his absence. Upon returning, half an hour later, he found pools of blood here and there, a knife, and double-barreled shotgun on the floor. The latter weapon parted from its stock. Several trays of watches, diamonds, and various kinds of jewelry gone. The doors of the safe open, its drawers pulled out and despoiled of their contents. Disorder visible everywhere, but his son nowhere to be seen. Hearing a faint groan, he ran into the back room, and there in the gloom he discerned his boy, lying on the floor, and weltering in blood. Now, after reading the above, the public will know exactly as much about this ghastly mystery as the police know, as anybody knows, except the murderer himself. So far as heard from, nobody was seen to enter the store during Mr. Meyer's absence, and nobody was seen to leave. The assassin did his work between half-past two and three o'clock in the afternoon, in the busiest portion of one of the busiest thoroughfares of the city, and departed unseen, and left no sign by which his identity may, hereafter, be established. Up to the present writing, the boy has only groaned in pain and is speechless. We reached the spot a few minutes after the tragedy was discovered, and found the street in front, blockaded by a crowd of men staring at the premises in blank fascination, and entering, found another crowd composed of policemen, doctors, detectives, and reporters, engaged as such people are usually engaged upon such occasions. The boy's body and his bunk were deluged in blood, and efforts were being made to relieve his sufferings. There was apparently but one wound upon him, and that had been inflicted on the back of his head behind his right ear. The skull was indented as if by a slung shot. Probably neither the knife nor the gun found upon the floor were used in the assault. Near one of the windows in the front office, closely curtained against observation from the street, was a pool of gouted blood, as large as a chair seat, and the blow was given there no doubt, for from that spot a roadway was marked in the dust of the floor to the extreme end of the back room where the body was found, showing that after he was knocked senseless the robbers must have dragged him to that spot to guard against his attracting attention by making an outcry. Mr. Meyer says the valuables carried off by the daring perpetrators of the outrage are worth about eight thousand dollars. A man came in while we were present, and told Captain Lees that about the time he saw the crowd running toward Commercial Street he met a man in Kearney Street, running as if destruction were at his heels. That he broke frantically through a blockade of wagons, carriages, and a funeral procession, sped on his way, and was out of sight in a moment, that he was thick-set, about five feet seven or eight inches in stature, wore dark clothing, a black slouch hat, and had a sort of narrow goatee, that he had improvised a sack out of an old calico dress, the neck of which sack he grasped in his hand, and had the surplus calico wrapped round his arm. The appearance of the said sack was as if it might have a hat full of eggs in it, two dozen or thereabouts, you might say. Five minutes after the conclusion of the narrative we observed the man who saw all this speeding uptown in a buggy with a detective. At the chief's office, fifteen minutes after the discovery of the bloody catastrophe, Mr. Burke's campaign commenced, and he was dictating orders to a small army of policemen. With a decision and rapidity commensurate with the urgency of the occasion. You and you and you go to the Stockton and Sacramento boats, and arrest every Chinaman and every suspicious white man that tries to go on board. You and you go to the San Jose Railroad, same order. You go to the stable and order two fleet horses to be saddled and sent here instantly. You and you and you go to the heads of the Chinese companies, and tell them to detain every suspicious Chinaman they see and send me word. I'll be responsible. And so on and so forth, until squads of policemen were scattering abroad through every portion of the city, and closing every prominent avenue of escape from it. An affair like this makes hurrying times in the police department. After all, the wonder is that an enterprise like this robbery and attempted assassination has not previously been essayed in Mr. Myers and other pawn-broken establishments. They are not frequented by customers in the daytime, and the glass doors and windows are rendered untransparent by thick coats of paint, and also by curtains that are always closed, so that nothing that transpires within can be seen from the street. One or two active men could enter such a place at night, gag the occupants, turn the gas nearly out, and take their own time about robbing the concern, for customers would not be apt to molest an establishment through whose shaded windows no light appeared. Up to eleven o'clock last night Young Meyer was still irrational, although he had spoken incoherently several times of matters foreign to the misfortune that had befallen him. We have this from Dr. Murphy, his physician, who saw him at that hour. The doctor says the wound was evidently inflicted with a slung-shot. Its form is an egg-shaped indentation at the base of the brain. There are also the distinct marks of four fingers and a thumb on the throat, made by the left hand of the man who assaulted him. Whose left hand among ye will fit those marks? The patient can only swallow with great difficulty on account of the fearful choking he received, and the consequent swelling and soreness of the glands of the throat. He suffers chiefly, however, from the pressing of the indented skull upon the brain. His condition improves a little all the time, and although the chances are nearly all against his recovery, still that result is regarded as comfortably within the margin of possibility. Unless he comes to his senses it will be next to impossible ever to establish the guilt of any man suspected of this crime. An ordinary deed of blood excites only a passing interest in San Francisco, but to show how much a little mystery enhances the importance of such an occurrence, we will mention that at no time, from three o'clock in the afternoon yesterday, until midnight, was there a moment when there was not a crowd in front of Mayer's store, gazing at its darkened windows and closed and guarded doors. During the afternoon and night several white men were arrested about town on suspicion, and seventy-two Chinamen were detained from leaving on the boats until after the hour for sailing. The right man is doubtless at large yet, however. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 19th, 1864. The New Chinese Temple. Today the Ning-Yong Company will finish furnishing and decorating the new Josh House, or Place of Worship, built by them in Broadway, between DuPont and Kearney Streets, and tomorrow they will begin their un-Christian devotions in it. The building is a handsome brick edifice, two stories high on Broadway, and three on the alley in the rear. Both fronts are of pressed brick. A small army of workmen were busily engaged yesterday in putting on the finishing touches of the embellishments. The throne of the immortal Josh is at the head of the hall in the third story, within a sort of alcove of elaborately carved and gilded woodwork, representing human figures and birds and beasts of all degrees of hideousness. Josh himself is as ugly a monster as can be found outside of China. He is in a sitting posture, is about middle stature, but excessively fat. His garments are flowing and ample, garnished with a few small circlets of looking-glass to represent jewels, and streaked and striped, dobbed from head to foot with paints of the liveliest colors. A long strand of black horsehair sprouts from each corner of his upper lip, another from the center of his chin, and one from just forward of each ear. He wears an openwork crown, which gleams with gold leaf. His rotund face is painted a glaring red, and the general expression of this fat and happy god is as if he had eaten too much rice and rats for dinner, and would like his belt loosened if he only had the energy to do it. In front of the throne hangs a chandelier of Chinese manufacture, with a wilderness of glass drops and curved candle supports about it. But it is not as elegant and graceful as the American article. Under it, in a heavy framework, a big church bell is hung, also of Chinese workmanship. It is carved and dobbed with many-colored paint all over. In front of the bell three long tables are arranged, the fronts of two of which display a perfect maze-work of carving. The principal one shows, behind a glass front, several hundred splendidly gilded figures of kings on thrones, and bowing and smirking attendants and horses on the rampage. The figures in this huge carved picture stand out in bold relief from background, but they are not stuck on. The whole concern is worked out of a single broad slab of timber, and only the cunning hand of a Chinaman could have wrought it. Over the forward table is suspended a sort of shield of indescribable shape, whose face is marked in compartments like a coat of arms, and in each of these is another nightmare of burnished and distorted human figures. The ceiling of this room and both sides of it are adorned with great signboards. They look like that to a content Christian at any rate, bearing immense Chinese letters or characters, sometimes raised from the surface of the wood and sometimes cut into it, and sometimes these letters being painted a bright red or green, and the grand expanse of signboard blazing with gold leaf or vice versa. These signs are presents to the church from other companies, and they bear the names of those corporations, and possibly some extravagant Chinese moral or other, though if the latter was the case we failed to prove it by Ah Wei, our Urbain and intelligent interpreter. Up and down the room on both sides are ranged alternate chairs and tables, made of the same hard, close-grained black wood used in the carved tables above mentioned. Devout pagans lean their elbows on these little side tables and swill tea while they worship Josh. Now, humble and unpretending Christian as we are, there was something infinitely comfortable in touching to us in this gentle mingling together of piety and breakfast. They have a large painted drum and a pig or two in this temple. How would it strike you now to stand at one end of this room with ranks of repentant Chinamen extending down either side before you, sipping purifying tea, and all about and above them a gorgeous cloud of glaring colors, and dazzling gold and tinsel with the bell tolling, and the drums thundering, and the gongs clanging, and portly blushing old Josh in the distance, smiling upon it all in his imbecile way, from out his splendid canopy. Nice, perhaps? In the second story there are more painted emblems and symbols than we could describe in a week. In the first story are six long white slats, in a sort of vault, split into one hundred and fifty divisions, each like the keys of a piano, and this affair is the death register of the Ning Yang Company. When a man dies, his name, age, his native place in China, and the place of his death in this country are inscribed on one of these keys, and the record is always preserved. Ah Wei tells us that the Ning Yang Company numbers eighteen or twenty thousand persons on this coast now, and has numbered as high as twenty-eight thousand. Ah Wei speaks good English, and is the outside businessman of the tribe, that is, he transacts matters with us barbarians. He will occupy rooms and offices in the temple, as will also the great Wei Ga, the ineffable high priest of the temple, and Sing Song, or president of the Ning Yang Company. The names of the temple inscribed over its doors are Ning Yang Chu O, and Ning Yang Wei Kuang. Both mean the same thing, but one is more refined and elegant, and is suited to a higher and more cultivated class of Chinese than the other, though to our notion they appear pretty much the same thing, as far as facility of comprehending them is concerned. Tomorrow the temple will be opened, and all save Chinese will be excluded from it until about the fifth of September, when white folks will be free to visit it, due notice having first been given in the newspapers, and a general invitation extended to the public. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 19, 1864. What goes with the money? Since the recent extraordinary expose of the concerns of the Grass Silver Mining Valley Company, by which stockholders discovered to their grief and dismay that figures could lie as to what became of some of their assessments, and could also be ominously reticent as to what went with the balance. People have begun to discuss the possibility of inventing a plan by which they may be advised, from time to time, of the manner in which their money is being expended by officers of mining companies, to the end that they may seasonably check any tendency towards undue extravagance or dishonest expenditures that may manifest itself, instead of being compelled to wait a year or two in ignorance and suspense, to find at last that they have been bankrupt to no purpose. And it is time their creative talents were at work in this direction. The longer they sleep the dread sleep of the Grass Valley, the more terrible will be the awakening from it. Money is being squandered with a recklessness that knows no limit, that had a beginning but seemingly hath no end, save a beggarly minority of dividend-paying companies, and after these years of expectation and this waste of capital, what account of stewardship has been rendered unto the flayed stockholder? What does he know about the disposition that has been made of his money? What brighter promise has he now than in any bygone time, that he is not to go on hopelessly paying assessments and wondering what becomes of them until Gabriel sounds his trumpet? The Hale and Norcross officers decide to sink a shaft. They levy $40,000. Next month they have a mighty good notion to go lower, and they levy a $20,000 assessment. Next month the novelty of sinking the shaft has about worn off, and they think it would be nice to drift awhile $20,000. The following month it occurs to them it would be so funny to pump a little, and they buy a $40,000 pump. Thus it goes on for months and months. But the Hale and Norcross sends us no bullion, though most of the time there is an encouraging rumour afloat that they are right in the casing. Take the Choller Company, for instance. It seems easy on its children just now, but who does not remember its regular old monotonous assessment anthem? $60 a foot! $60 a foot! $60 a foot! Month in and month out, till the persecuted stockholder howled again. The same way with the Best and Belcher, and the same way with three-fourths of the mines on the main lead from Cedar Hill to Silver City. We could scarcely name them all in a single article, but we have given a specimen or so by which the balance may be measured. And what has gone with the money? We pause a year or two for a reply. Now, in some of the States, all banks are compelled to publish a monthly statement of their affairs. Why not make the big mining companies do the same thing? It would make some of them fearfully sick at first, but they would feel all the better for it in the long run. The legislature is not in session, and a law to this effect cannot now be passed. But if one company dare voluntarily to set the example, the balance would follow by pressure of circumstances. But that first bold company does not exist, perhaps. If it does, a grateful community will be glad to hear from it. Where is it? Let it come forward and offer itself as the sacrificial scapegoat to bear the sins of its fellows into the wilderness. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call August 20, 1864. This accomplished old gin barrel came out of the county jail early in the morning three days ago, and was promptly in the station house drunk as a loon before the middle of the day. She got out the next day, but was in again before night. She got out the following morning, but yesterday noon she was back again, with her noble heart preserved in spirits as usual. Having a full cargo aboard by this time she will probably clear for her native land in the county jail today. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call August 20, 1864. More abuse of sailors. Yesterday afternoon a commission was engaged in the United States District Courtroom, taking testimony in the criminal proceedings instituted against Luther Hopkins, master of the American ship Carlyle, for brutally treating Andrew Anderson, one of the ship's crew. The affidavit of the prosecuting witness states that on the 2nd April, 1864, Captain Hopkins cruelly beat him with a belaying pin, while he was sick, inflicting serious injuries on him. And also on the 27th April, Anderson being still sick, Hopkins, the defendant, beat him on the head with a belaying pin, and again on the 27th June. Still being an invalid, he was beaten with a heavy knotted rope, more than twenty blows, by the captain of the vessel, who also caused him to be bitten by a dog. Poor Jack seeks redress and protection in the United States Court. When the Captain marshals his subordinates from First Officer down to 49th Cook, all dependent on him for the tenure of their dignities, they will with one voice where they never saw the Captain do any such thing, blind as bats, while the poor victim felt it sensibly, and his quaking comrades in the folksal saw it distinctly enough. It would be a hard thing, should a Captain be punished for merely killing a sailor or two as a matter of past time. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 21, 1864 THE CHINESE TEMPLE The new Chinese temple in Broadway, the Ning-Yong Wei Kuang of the Ning-Yong Company, was dedicated to the mighty Josh night before last, with a general looseness in the way of beating of drums, clanging of gongs, and burning of yellow paper, commensurate with the high importance of the occasion. In the presence of the great idol the other day, our cultivated friend Ah Wei informed us that the old original Josh, of whom the image was only an imitation, a substitute vested with power to act for the absent God, and blessed China men, or damn them, according to the best of his judgment, lived in ancient times on the mountain of Wang Chu, was seventeen feet high, and wielded a club that weighed two tons, that he died two thousand five hundred years ago, but that he is all right yet in the celestial kingdom, and can come on earth, or appear anywhere he pleases, at a moment's notice, and that he could come down here and cave our head in with his club if he wanted to. We hope he don't want to. Ah Wei told us all that, and we deliver it to the public just as we got it, advising all to receive it with caution, and not bet on its truthfulness until after mature reflection and deliberation. As far as we are concerned, we don't believe it. For all it sounds, so plausible. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 21st, 1864 It is the Daniel Webster Mining Company's Accounts The morning call of yesterday has a lively article on mining companies, suggesting that mining trustees should publish quarterly statements of expenditures and receipts, concluding with, the legislature is not in session and a law to this effect cannot now be passed. But if one company dare voluntarily to set the example, the balance would follow by pressure of circumstances. But that first bold company does not exist, perhaps. If it does, a grateful community will be glad to hear from it. Where is it? Let it come forward and offer itself as the sacrificial scapegoat to bear the sins of its fellows in the wilderness. In answer to this, the officers of the Daniel Webster Mining Company, located in Devil's Gate District, Nevada Territory, have requested us to inform the shareholders and others who have purchased stock in this company at high prices, that a complete exhibit of the company's affairs will be made public in the Argus on Saturday next. This company, in consequence of a couple of shareholders in Nevada Territory, legal gentlemen at that, paying their previous assessments in greenbacks, has been the first to levy an assessment payable in currency. We believe, however, they will be the first who dare to make public their accounts. We hope the costo will be the next to follow suit, as a correspondent of ours in Sacramento, whose letter appears under the appropriate heading, seems anxious to learn what has become of the forty-three thousand two hundred dollars collected by this company for assessments the last year. SF Argus Saturday. So there are company officers who are bold enough, fair enough, true enough to the interests entrusted to their keeping, to let stockholders, as well as all who may chance to become so, know the character of their stewardship, and whose records are white enough to bear inspection. We had not believed it, and we are glad that a mining company worthy of the name of Daniel Webster existed to save to us the remnant of our faith in the uprightness of these dumb and inscrutable institutions. We have nothing to fear now—all that was wanting was someone to take the lead. Other companies will see that this monthly or quarterly exhibit of their affairs is nothing but a simple act of justice to their stockholders and to others who may desire to become so. They will also see that it is policy to let the public know where invested money will be judiciously used and strictly accounted for. And, our word for it, companies that dare to show their books, will soon fall into line and adopt the system of published periodical statements. In time it will become a custom, and custom is more binding, more impregnable and more exacting than any law that was ever framed. In that day the Casso will be heard from, and so will companies in Virginia, which sport vast and gorgeously painted shaft and machinery houses with costly and beautiful green chicken cocks on the roof, which are able to tell how the wind blows, yet are savagely ignorant concerning dividends. So will other companies come out and say what it cost to build their duckponds. So will still others tell their stockholders why they paid sixty thousand dollars for machinery worth about half the money. Another that we have in our eye will show what they did with an expensive lot of timbers, when they haven't got enough in their mind to shingle a chicken coop with, and yet others will let us know if they are still in the casing, and why they levy a forty thousand dollar assessment every six weeks to run adrift with. Secretaries, superintendents, and boards of trustees that don't like the prospect, and better resign. The public have got precious little confidence in the present lot, and the public will back this assertion we are making in its name. Stockholders are very tired of being at the mercy of omnipotent and invisible officers, and are ripe for the inauguration of a safer and more sensible state of things. And when it is inaugurated, mining property will thrive again, and not before. Confidence is the mainstay of every class of commercial enterprise. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 23, 1864. No earthquake. In consequence of the warm, close atmosphere which smothered the city at two o'clock yesterday afternoon, everybody expected to be shaken out of their boots by an earthquake before night. But up to the hour of our going to press, the supernatural bootjack had not arrived yet. That is just what makes it so unhealthy. The earthquakes are getting so irregular. When a community get used to a thing, they suffer when they have to go without it. However, the trouble cannot be remedied. We know of nothing that will answer as a substitute for one of those convulsions to an unmarried man. The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, August 23, 1864. Rain. One of those singular freaks of nature which, by reference to the dictionary, we find described as, the water, or the descent of water that falls in drops from the clouds. Shower. Occurred here yesterday, and kept the community in a state of pleasant astonishment for the space of several hours. They would not have been astonished at an earthquake, though. Thus it will be observed that nothing accustomed one to a thing so readily as getting used to it. You will always notice that, in America. We were thinking this refreshing rain would make everybody happy. Not so the cows. An agricultural sharp informs us that yesterday's rain was a misfortune to California, that it will kill the dry grass upon which the cattle now subsist, and also the young grass upon which they were calculating to subsist hereafter. We know nothing whatever about the matter, but we do know that if what this gentleman says is strictly true, the inevitable deduction is that the cattle are out of luck. We stand to that.