 This is Section 25 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section 25, Territorial Enterprise, January 1866. Territorial Enterprise, January 1866. New Year's Day. There was a good deal of visiting done here on New Year's Day. The air was balmy and spring-like, and the day was in every way suited to that sort of business. I say business, because it is more like business than pleasure when you call at a house where all are strangers, and the majority of one's New Year calls are necessarily of that description. You soon run through the list of your personal friends, and that part of the day's performances affords you genuine satisfaction, and then Smith comes along and puts you through your paces before a hundred people who treat you kindly, but whom you dare not joke with. You can be as easy and comfortable as a mud-turtle astral of a soire, but you must observe some show of decorum. You must behave yourself. It is irksome to me to behave myself. Before I had rather call on people who know me and will kindly leave me entirely unrestrained, and simply employ themselves in looking out for the spoons. When I started out visiting at noon, the atmosphere was laden with a sweet perfume, a grateful incense that told of flowers and green fields, and breezy forests far away. But this was only soda-water sentiment, for I soon discovered that these were the odours of the barbershop, and came from the heads of small squads of carefully dressed young men who were out paying their annual calls. I took wine at one house, and some fruit at another, and after that I began to yearn for some breakfast. It took me two hours to get it. A lady had just given me the freedom of her table when a crowd of gentlemen arrived, and my sense of propriety compelled me to destroy nothing more than a cup of excellent coffee. At the next house I got no further than coffee again, being similarly interrupted. At the next point of attack there were too many strange young ladies present, and at the next and the next something always happened to interfere with my arrangements. I do not know, but perhaps it would be better to defer one's New Year's calls until after breakfast. I did finally corral that meal, and in the house of a stranger, a stranger too, who was so pleasant that I was almost tempted to create a famine in her house. It used to be customary for people to drink too much in the course of their annual visits, but few offended in this way on this occasion. I saw one well-dressed gentleman sitting on the curb-stone, propping his head between his knees, and clasping his shins with his hands. But he was the only caller I saw so much discouraged during the whole day. He said he had started out most too early, and I suppose he was right. Wisdom teaches us that none but birds should go out early, and that not even birds should do it, unless they are out of worms. Some of the ladies dressed in character on New Year's. I found faith, hope, and charity in one house, dealing out claret punch and kisses to the annual pilgrims. They had two kinds of kisses, those which you bite and chaw and swallow, and those which you simply taste, and then lick your chops and feel streaky. The only defect there was in the arrangement was that you were not permitted to take your choice. Two other ladies personated Mary, Queen of Scots, and Queen Elizabeth. I also found a Cleopatra, and a Hebe, and a Semiramis, and a Maria Antoinette. Also a beauty and a beast. A young lady, formerly of Carson, was the beauty, and took the character well. And I suppose Beecher was the beast, but he was not calculated for the part. I think those are very neat compliments for both parties. When it came to visiting among strangers, at last I soon grew tired and quit. You enter with your friend and are introduced formally to some formal-looking ladies. You bow painfully and wish the party a happy New Year. You then learn that the party desire that a like good fortune may fall to your lot. You were invited to sit down, and you do so. At this time the doorbell rings, and Jones, Brown, and Murphy bluster in and bring the familiar fragrance of the barbershop with them. They are acquainted, they inquire cordially after the absent members of the family and the distant relatives of the same, and relate laughable adventures of the morning that haven't got anything funny about them. Then they cast up accounts and determine how many calls they have made, and how many they have got to inflict yet. The ladies respond by exhibiting a balance sheet of their own New Year's Day transactions. Yourself and your friend are then conducted with funeral solemnity into the back parlor where you sip some wine with imposing ceremony. If your human instincts get the upper hand of you and you explode a joke, an awful sensation creeps over you, such as a man experiences when he catches himself whistling at a funeral. It is time for you to go, then. New Year's was pretty generally enjoyed here, upstairs and down. At one place, where I called, a servant-girl was needed for something, and the bell was rung for her several times without effect. Madame went below to see what the matter was, and found Bridget keeping open house, and entertaining thirteen muscular callers in one batch. Years there had been only eleven calls received all told. One chambermaid notified her mistress that extra help must be procured for New Year's Day, as she and the cook had made arrangements to keep open house in the kitchen, and they desired that their visitors should not be discommoted by interruptions emanating from above stairs. I am told that nearly all the bitties in town kept open house. Some of them set finer tables than their mistresses. The reason was, because the latter did not consider anything more than tea and coffee and cakes necessary for their tables, being church members, but the former seized upon wines, brandies, and all the hidden luxuries the closets afforded. Some people effect to think servant-girls won't take liberties with people's things, but I suppose it is a mistake. Reprinted in the Golden Era, January 14, 1866. Royal Enterprise, January 1866, dated January 8, 1866. White Man, Mighty on Sarton. Nigger never spoke true a word. White Man is Mighty on Sarton. An instance of it is to be found in the ingenious manipulation of a certain recent speculation here by a white man whom I have in my mind's eye at present. A small swimming-bath was constructed out yonder at North Beach as a sort of novel experiment, and everybody was surprised to see what a rush was made to it and what a thriving speculation it at once became. Many a smart man wished the idea had occurred to him, and then thought no more about it. Others pondered over it and thought the experiment might bear repetition, but then there was an uncomfortable possibility of the reverse proving the case. Mr. Alec Badlam, late a member of the California Legislature, but latterly acting in the double capacity of Nephew and business agent to Mr. Samuel Brannan, belonged to the latter class, but was rather more hopeful, more energetic, and more fertile in expedience than the rest. He went to work and got up a joint stock association, composed of men with good bank accounts, and announced in the public prints that this association would immediately commence the construction of a colossal swimming-bath with all manner of admirable conveniences and accommodations, away out in Third Street opposite South Park. Many people went on swimming in the Pioneer Bath and many others in the Bay, and both parties said the new speculation would prove a disastrous failure, and that they were sorry for the projectors of it, etc., and then bothered no more about it. In a day or two the local reporters fell ears to a refreshing sensation and were made happy. A genuine shark was harpooned in the Bay of San Francisco. It was brought to town, and was visited by crowds of timid citizens while it lay in state in the marketplace. Mr. Badlam went at once to the various newspaper offices and told the reporters and was greeted with the ancient formula. That's bully! There's pen and ink! Write it up for a fellow, can't you? You know, if you walk a mile to accommodate one of these thieves with an item he will always impose upon you with infernal effrontery the labor of writing it up for him, if you will stand it. Mr. Badlam wrote up the shark item. A few days elapsed, the sensation was cooling down, and beginning to be forgotten, when another shark was harpooned in the Bay and exposed to view in the market. People shuddered again. Mr. Badlam went and told the reporters. The reporters got him to write it up. In the course of three days another shark was harpooned in the Bay and placed on exhibition. People began to show signs of uneasiness. Mr. Badlam told the reporters and wrote it up. The new swimming-bath was being rushed forward to completion with all possible dispatch. From this time on, for the next six weeks, a shark cached in his tracks every twenty-four hours in the Bay of San Francisco. Mr. Badlam discontinued the ceremony of telling the reporters, but he always came at one o'clock in the afternoon with several slips of manuscript, laid one down on the reporter's table, said, Shark item, and departed toward the next newspaper office on his regular beat. People began to say, Why, blame these sharks! The Bay's full of them! It ain't hardly as healthy to swim there as it used to was! And they stopped swimming there. Reporters got to depending on the customary shark item pretty much as a matter of course, and the printers got to making these items fat by keeping them standing and making such unimportant alterations in them as the variations in the localities of the shark-killing demanded. The fact of the business was that Mr. Badlam, that on-sart and white man, had imported the old original shark from the coast of Mexico and paid some Italian fisherman to take him out in the Bay and harpoon him, and then fetch him ashore and exhibit him in the marketplace. It was all in the way of business. He wanted to discourage bathing in the Bay, and pave the way for the success of his great bath-house scheme at a later day. It is but just to say that he did make bathing in the Bay exceedingly unpopular. He imported all his sharks, and he kept a detachment of shark-killers under regular pay. Sharks come pretty high. Sharks are very expensive, and he economized occasionally by having the same old shark harpooned and exhibited over and over again, as long as he would hang together. And when he had to bring on a fresh one, he would vary the interest in the thing by having the fish captured alive and towed ashore and exposed to public view in all his native ferocity. And once he got a number of young pigs killed and scraped clean, towed a shark out in the Bay, fed the pigs to him, towed him back again, and landed him at the head of the long bridge, where there were about two thousand people promenading on it, got a multitude collected around the spot, killed and cut the shark open, took several chunks of the delicate white young pork out of its stomach, and then hid his face in his handkerchief and said with manifest emotion, Oh, God! this fellow's been eating a child! Ah! how sad! how sad! This culminating stroke of genius crowned Mr. Badlam's patient long-continued efforts with a splendid success. No man has bathed in the bay since Mr. B. wrote that item up and traveled his regular newspaper route with it. His labours were over, the bath-house was nearly finished, and he had nothing but easy sailing before him from that time forward. In a few days his monstrous tank was completed and the water turned on, and the very first day he opened business with a hundred and fifty swimmers an hour on an average, and a hundred and fifty more standing around in Menken costumes waiting for a chance. There is nothing like trying, you know, and all experience teaches us that the best way to ascertain a thing is to find it. But when it comes to believing all the shark-items as sagacious strategists favours you with in the papers, it is well to remember that the wise nigger saith, White man might he unsart'n the mint defaltation. The altar of this morning publishes a correct statement of the embezzlement by young Macy of thirty-nine thousand dollars from the mint, and you can copy it. But there are some little matters in the background which always come within a correspondence province in cases of this kind, but which are usually omitted from the accounts in the local press, and these I will talk about. Mr. Cheesman is a U.S. sub-treasurer and ex-officio-treasurer of the mint. Macy, his brother-in-law, was his paying clerk, his cashier. He is a green, gawky young fellow about twenty-four or five years old, and by a glance at his gate, and the shape of his head, and his general appearance, an experienced businessman would judge his capacity to be about equal to the earning of, say, fifty dollars a month. But he was the sub-treasurer's brother-in-law. He was a barnacle, and had to be provided with a place in the circumlocution office, whether he knew enough to come in out of the rain or not. So he was made paying clerk, at a salary of two thousand five hundred dollars a year, and placed in a position where twenty millions in gold-corn and oceans of green-backs passed through his hands in the course of a year. Mr. Swain, the superintendent of the mint, did not fancy this appointment, but it was out of his jurisdiction. Mr. Cheeseman has the appointing of his own clerks, although all their reports must be made finally to the superintendent, and all their acts come under his supervision. Naturally, there was nothing bad about young Macy, but it is believed, well, I might go so far as to say it was known, that some mining speculators got around him and persuaded him to put mint funds in stocks, promising to stand behind him. He did so, and they stood behind him until the cash in stocks warned them to stand somewhere else, and then they dropped him, having made what they could out of him, no doubt. He had been speculating on the mint's money six months before he was found out, the workmen occasionally going without their wages in the meantime, because of the lack of supplies. Mr. Swain's suspicions were first aroused by seeing him so frequently in company with speculators, and hearing so often on the streets of his transactions in heavy stocks. But Macy's books came out right every month, and nothing could be shown against him. One of his thefts was a bold one. The coiners sent him three melts at different times, three batches of gold coin, two of a hundred thousand dollars each and one of a hundred and twenty thousand. Each had the usual tag describing the amount contained. Macy removed and tore up the one hundred and twenty thousand dollar tag, and sent to the coiner a message that he had lost the tag from one of the one hundred thousand dollar batches, a thing which sometimes occurs. The coiner sent him the necessary substitute, and he altered the date and placed the new tag on the one hundred and twenty thousand dollar melt, but he carried off the extra twenty thousand dollars first. At the last quarterly examination the money and the books were all right. But Macy displayed such distress and trepidation during the examination that he excited the suspicions of more than one of the mint officials. He had been shinning around the streets all day long, too, and it was thought that he had been getting a temporary loan to make his account straight with. Such a rigid surveillance was commenced then, and so many informal examinations instituted that Macy finally packed and ran off. This was in December. The facts of this embezzlement have only just come to light, and its full extent only just now finally ferreted out and made known to the public, but the department at Washington has been kept posted upon the subject by telegraph from time to time during the last two or three weeks. THE OPENING NIGHT Saw two or three dozen invited guests in the new bath and a free champagne blow-out served up for them in an ante-room. The water was seven feet deep, and there was three hundred thousand gallons of it, heated to a pleasant temperature, barring the cold streaks here and there. Each man has a little stateroom to himself and a couple of towels. The price of the baths is one for twenty-five cents or three for a dollar, and you can swim an hour. The Nash's swimming pupils pay ten dollars a month or twenty dollars for three months, and bathe whenever they please. There are springboards, parallel bars, rings, flying trapeze, ladders, a complete gymnasium, suspended over the water. Among the swimmers were—but as these individuals are represented in the panoramic sign on the front of the bath-house, I will merely talk of their portraits and say nothing of their swimming. It is my duty to explain that sign, because many people imagine it is a fancy sketch, and are distressed to think any artist would be so depraved as to paint such impossible figures and faces, and elevate the devilish libel in full view without a word of apology. The Portraits In the bath-house sign are very correct likenesses of the chief stockholders, and are as follows—the fleshy, smiling, bald-headed man hanging to the middle of the little life-boat is Mr. O. P. Sutton in the banking interest. The bald-headed man hanging on near the stern of the boat is Mr. Alec Badlam, the shark fancier. The man on the left, who is just starting on the springboard, is Colonel Monstery, the fencing master. The inverted young man on the bow of the boat, who is performing some kind of extraordinary gymnastic feat, and appears to have got it a little mixed, is Captain McComb. The central figure, swinging on the trapeze, is Mr. Edward Smith of the banking interest. The half-submerged figure, diving head foremost at the right of the central fountain, is Mr. A. J. Snyder, the carpenter and builder, and is a very correct portrait as far as it goes. The handsome fat man facing you from the stateroom door on the extreme left is Mr. Louis Cohn, and is considered a masterpiece of portrait painting. I cannot recognize the stockholder immediately under the springboard on the left on account of his truly extraordinary position. It may be Fitz Smyth. The gentleman who is splashing himself behind the figure in the swing, and has upon his countenance an expression of lively enjoyment, is Professor Nash. The figure in the swing is most too many for me. It may be Menken, or it may be Jeff Davis, or it may be some other man or some other woman. It is the very picture that so exasperates the South Parkers. It has got baggy breasts like a squaw, and the hips have the ample and rounded swell which belong to the female shape, but the head is masculine. That figure has worried the ladies of South Park a good deal, and it worries me just as much. I shall have to let this personage swing on undisturbed, and leave it to a wiser head to determine the sex, and discover the name that belongs to it. It would be very uncomfortable now, if it should turn out that I have been mistaken, and this remarkable picture should never have been intended for a collection of portraits after all. In which case I beg pardon. I have seen some of the beautiful opals they find in Calaveras County near McCollumny Hill. Some of them are very handsome. A day or two ago I was shown an Idaho diamond. It was very pure and brilliant, and was said to be a genuine diamond, and of the first water. I compared it with a couple of splendid twenty-five hundred dollar Brazilian diamonds in Tucker's window, which have been dazzling people's eyes and attracting considerable attention for a few days past, and I could not swear to any difference. That amounts to something, although I am not an expert where it comes to estimating the value and fineness of diamonds, and now they are finding superb moss agates and other precious stones on the riverbank right up here at Martinez. This reminds me that there is a hillside down the gulch below Aurora Esmeralda, which is covered with round, hard, knotty-surfaced little boulders which display the most beautiful agates when broken open. Might not the Esmeralda people find it profitable to send a bushel or two of those things to the eastern markets? Nobody cared anything about them when I was there three years ago. Royal Enterprise, January 1866, dated January 11th, 1866. Gorgeous New Romance by Fritz Smythe The usual quiet of our city was rudely broken in upon this morning by the appearance in the altar of one of those terrible solemn column romances about the hair-breath escapes and prodigies of detective sagacity of the San Francisco police, written by the felicitous novelist Fritz Smythe. It is put up in regular chapters with subheadings, as is Fritz Smythe's custom, when he fulminates a stunning sensation. Chapter 1 is headed The Coinikers, dark and mysterious. Chapter 2 is headed A New Coiniker in the Field. The plot thickens. Then comes Chapter 4, the police after him, exciting times. Chapter 5 The Decoy Duck, more mystery. Chapter 6 The New Decoy. The red hand of crime begins to show, somewhere. Chapter 7 The Arrest. Startling situation, thunder and lightning, blue lights burning. Chapter 8 The Queer Obtained. Chapter 9 The Conviction. Closing in, closing in, the wicked are about to be punished, and the good rewarded. Chapter 10 Conclusion. The scattered threads are drawn together into one wolf. The bad characters are sent to prison, to go from vents to hell. Detective Lees marries Detective Ellis. Chief Burke elevates his eyes and hands over the two kneeling figures, and says untruously, God bless you, my children, God bless you. All the good characters are happy, even down to fit Smythe and his horse. The former, in a chance to go through a Chinese funeral dinner, and the latter, in the opportunity of eating up a tank of warm asphaltum, while the workmen are gone to dinner. Oh, but this is a lovely romance. And only think of the subject, the police. Think of a man going among the police for the hero of a novel, unless he wanted a highway man or something of that kind. The romance is gotten up with several objects in view. One is to show how mean a thing it is to call for investigations of police affairs as Dr. Rowell is doing. Another is to try and bolster up the grand jury's recent vindication of the police department, the other day, a vindication which the public did not accept with as much confidence as they would if it had come from heaven. Another is to show that the stool-pigeon Ned Wellington, Indian Ned, who was appointed a special officer by Burke, is no more of a thief or a rascal than many another man on the force, and I think that is unjust to Wellington. And another object, an eternal one with fit Smythe, is to glorify his God the police. The latter is a disease with him. It breaks out all over the altar every day, and it phases Smythe worse than the smallpox. Even his horse has become infected by the distemper and will not bite a policeman. The unfiligreed facts in Smythe's column romance, or at least the facts in the case from which the romance was drawn, may be summed up in a few words by leaving out the customary adulation of the inspired detectives. A counterfeiter named Farrell came here from the east. The police got after him in their bungling style and seared him away. He went to Virginia, and took ten thousand dollars counterfeit money with him, and buried it under a house, where your police discovered and captured it. He returned here, and a decoy duck was put on his track, and appointed a special policeman, Ned Wellington, or Smith as fit Smythe, with characteristic delicacy calls him in the romance, though why he should is not very plain, since Wellington is more notorious than fit Smythe himself. Smith was cunning and trapped Farrell, though of course Smythe gives all the credit to Lees and Ellis, but now comes more trouble. Smith can show a commission, show that reposing a special confidence in the honesty, integrity, etc., etc. One of the police commissioners, one of whom was the police judge, had appointed him to a responsible position in the service of the city, and yet his character is so bad that it will not do to bring him on the stand to testify. More evidence must be had. Another stool pigeon is put to work with Smith, one Roger G. Crawford, the assumed name of a private clerk of Chief Burke, as Smythe says. This man's real name was T. B. Fargo, alias Fogo, alias Howard, alias Crawford, and he was a grand rascal of considerable note, notwithstanding he was Chief Burke's confidential clerk. The two pigeons worked the case through to a successful conclusion. Farrell's counterfeit money was captured, and Farrell himself sent to the penitentiary. As is entirely proper, fit Smythe gives the credit to Detective Lees and glorifies him to the skies. There is the romance, all there is of it worth knowing or printing. Yet it is turned into a novel of ten distinct chapters, and occupies more room and flames out with a grander sublimity in the altar, than did the capture of Richmond and the Southern armies as published in the same paper. How marvellous are thy ways, O Lord! Another romance. Why shouldn't I print a romance? Why shouldn't I lionize Smythe, Ned Wellington, and Crawford, T. B. Fargo? Wouldn't they do for specimens of our police? I should think so, especially since the grand jury so triumphantly vindicated Wellington a few days ago. The following romance is from the pen of ex-special policeman L. W. Noyes. Ned Wellington, alias Indian Ned, is a stool pigeon for Captain Lees of the police, and has a commission from the police commissioners as a secret detective, notwithstanding they all knew of his having been arrested frequently for various offenses. Ned, with one T. B. Fargo, worked on the case of William Farrell, alias Minnie Price, the counterfeiter, who was arrested last January. During Farrell's trial in the county court, Ned was a witness. While on the stand on the 11th March he testified that he had a commission, as above stated, and that Captain Lees recommended him. Thus the commission was retained to give him authority to carry a pistol for his own defense. On the 24th December 1864 Ned, being at the time convivious, shot at a man on Pike Street. He ran down Commercial Street, and Officer Blitz arrested him in Con Mooney's corner of Commercial and Kearney Streets. He had thrown the pistol away behind some barrels, went with Blitz, and found it. He was taken to the station house, where he was charged with assault with a deadly weapon. Bale forfitted. The call of December 27 says the bail was fixed at $500. I wonder if it was found. Ned has said that he intended to kill the man, and if he had he could have got out of it. I think he could. On the 11th of March the facts of Ned having a commission having come out in court naturally worries some of the police. The grand jury have been overhauling some of them. Next day, the 12th of March, Ned was arrested for being implicated in a robbery. Was liberated that night. Next day, the 13th, he left for New York on the steamer, no doubt fearing that he might be put upon the stand in the grand jury rooms. Ned is very shrewd, and he keeps his commission as a sort of fender to put in upon occasions. His co-worker in the Farrell case, T. B. Fargo, alias T. B. Faga, alias I. B. Howard, is another of the same stripe. In the winter of 1864-65 he was an agent for Wells Fargo and Company in some of the western states where he was a defaulter. He has respectable connections east. His brother settled the matter for him and started him for California, where he arrived in June. On the passage he gambled with one winter's and baker and lost seven hundred dollars in greenbacks. From June until October he peddled grant pictures. On the 1st of October, with thirty-seven others, he donned the police uniform, where he remained as the chief's confidential clerk until December 15, at which time the supervisors ordered the dismissal. But Fargo was kept around until Farrell was taken, and I think under pay. All this time he was living with one Hattie Shaw, a prostitute, at the corner of Washington and Pike Street. He used to wait upon her to the New York restaurant for meals, where she paid the bills. Sometimes he carried her meals to her room. He borrowed some three hundred dollars from Hattie, telling her that he had a draft on Wells Fargo and Company for two thousand dollars which he would get cashed and pay her. Ed Wellington here comes in and tells Hattie that he has seen the draft and that Fargo is a gentleman, etc. But the draft never came, and Hattie had to go home with him in order to get coin. After leaving the police force he, through Captain Lee's influence, got a place with Donahue and Booth. Fargo represented to them that he was actually starving, and borrowed twenty dollars. Next day he was out riding with Hattie and got discharged, being there but a week or so. He then got into Wells Fargo and Company's during Mr. McClain's sickness, but was discharged as soon as he recovered. During all this time the police were well aware of what kind of a man Fargo was, and there was no reason why the chief and commissioners should not know. Mr. William McCaffrey, who is well known in this city, took pains to tell them of his doings. On the thirteenth of June Fargo went east on the opposition steamer. He bought tickets in the name of T. B. Howard and Mrs. Howard for himself and Hattie. On the steamer he went by the name of Fargo, and claimed to be the brother of Fargo, of Wells Fargo and Company, so you see thieves have the inside track with Burke and Company. I think that last remark of my historian noise is rather severe, but let it pass. I want Fitz Smythe to republish another flaming chapter in the history of the San Francisco police, and add the above chapter to it, and glorify the chief's confidential clerk Mr. Fargo, not Crawford, Fitz Smythe, and Indian Ned Wellington, not Smith, Fitz Smythe, and also Buckingham, whom you scarcely deign to notice while he was on trial for gobbling up the widow's jewellery. I don't want all the glory fastened on the captains and chiefs and regulars and the deeds of the specials, and the scallywags who really do all the work, left unsung. Tune up another column of praise of them, and blast away, idolatrous Fitz Smythe. Territorial Enterprise January 16th through 18th, 1866. Portion of San Francisco letter. Fitz Smythe's Horse Yesterday, as I was coming along through a back alley, I glanced over a fence, and there was Fitz Smythe's Horse. I can easily understand now why that horse always looks so dejected and indifferent to the things of this world. They feed him on old newspapers. I had often seen Smythe carrying dead loads of old exchanges uptown, but I never suspected that they were to put to such a use as this. A boy came up while I stood there and said, "'That horse belongs to Mr. Fitz Smythe, and the old man—that's my father, you know—the old man's going to kill him.'" "'Who, Fitz Smythe?' "'No, the horse, because he ate up a litter of pups that the old man wouldn't be taking forty dollars.' "'Who, Fitz Smythe?' "'No, the horse, and he eats fences and everything. Took our gate off, and carried it home, and ate up every damn splinter of it. You wait till he gets done with them old altars and bulletins he's a-chawing on now, and you'll see him branch out and tackle any thing he can shit his mouth on. Why, he nipped a little boy, Sunday, which was going home from Sunday school. Well, the boy got loose, you know, but that old horse got his Bible and some tracts, and them's as good a thing as he wants, being so used to papers, you see. You put anything to eat anywhere, and that old horse'll shit out and get it. And he'll eat anything he can bite, and he don't care a damn. He'd climb a tree, he would, if you was to put anything up there for him. Cats, for instance, he likes cats. He's ate up every cat there was here in four blocks. He'll take more chances. Why, he'll bust in anywheres for one of them fellers. I see him snake a old Tom cat out of that there flower pot over yonder, where she was a sonning of herself, and take her down. And she hanging on and grabbling for a halt on something, and you could hear her yowl and kick up and tear around after she was inside of him. You see, Mr. Fitzsmyth don't give him nothing to eat but them old newspapers, and sometimes a basket of shavings. And so, you know, he's got to prospect or starve. And a horse ain't going to starve, it ain't likely, on account of not wanting to be rough on cats and such things. Not that horse, anyway, you bet you. Because he don't care a damn. You turn him loose once on this town, and don't you know he'd eat up more good boxes and fences and clothing store things and animals and all them kinds of valuables. Oh, you bet he would. Because that's his style, you know, and he don't care a damn. But you ought to see Mr. Fitzsmyth ride him around prospecting for them items. You ought to see him with his soldier coat on and his mustaches sticking out strong like a catfish's horns, and them long legs of his and standing out so, like them two prongs they prop up a stepladder with, and a jolting down street at four mile a week. Oh, what a guy. Sets up stiff like a clothespin, you know, and thinks he looks like old General McDowell. But the old man's going to horn his swagger, that horse on account of his goblin' up them pups. Oh, you bet your life the old man's down on him. Yes, sir, coming!" And the entertaining boy departed to see what the old man was calling him for. But I am glad that I met the boy, and I'm glad I saw the horse taking his literary breakfast. Because I know now why the animal looks so discouraged when I see Fitzsmyth rambling down Montgomery Street on him. He has altogether too rough a time getting a living to be cheerful and frivolous or, anyways, frisky. What have the police been doing? Ain't they virtuous? Don't they take good care of the city? Is not their constant vigilance and efficiency shown in the fact that roughs and rowdies here are awed into good conduct? Isn't it shown in the fact that ladies, even on the back streets, are safe from insult in the daytime when they are under the protection of a regiment of soldiers? Isn't it shown in the fact that although many offenders of importance go unpunished, they infallibly snaffle every Chinese chicken thief that attempts to drive his trade, and are duly glorified by name in the papers for it? Isn't it shown in the fact that they are always on the lookout and keep out of the way and never get run over by wagons and things? And ain't they spry? Ain't they energetic? Ain't they frisky? Don't they parade up and down the sidewalk at the rate of a block an hour and make everybody nervous and dizzy with their frightful velocity? Don't they keep their clothes nice? And ain't their hands soft? And don't they work? Don't they work like horses? Don't they now? Don't they smile sweetly on the women? And when they are fatigued with their exertions, don't they back up against a lamppost and go on smiling till they break plumb down? But ain't they nice? That's it, you know. Ain't they nice? They don't sweat. You never see one of those fellows sweat. Why, if you were to see a policeman sweating, you would say, Oh, here this poor man is going to die, because this sort of thing is unnatural, you know. Oh, no, you never see one of those fellows sweat. And ain't they easy and comfortable and happy, always leaning up against a lamppost in the sun and scratching one shin with the other foot and enjoying themselves? Serene? I reckon not. I don't know anything the matter with the department, but maybe Dr. Rowell does. Now when Zela broke that poor wretched skull the other night for stealing six bits worth of flower-sacks and had him taken to the station house by a policeman and jammed into one of the cells in the most humorous way, do you think there was anything wrong there? I don't. Why should they arrest Zela and say, Oh, come now, you say you found this stranger stealing on your premises and we know you knocked him on the head with your club, but then you better go in the cell, too, till we see whether there's going to be any other account of the thing, any account that might n' jibe with yours altogether, you know. You go in there for confessed assault and battery, you know. Why should they do that? Well, nobody ever said they did. And why shouldn't they shove that half-senseless wounded man into a cell without getting a doctor to examine and see how badly he was hurt, and consider that next day would be time enough, if he chanced to live that long? And why shouldn't the jailer let him alone when he found him in a dead stupor two hours later? Let him alone because he couldn't wake him, couldn't wake a man who was sleeping and with that calm serenity which is peculiar to men whose heads have been caved in with a club, couldn't wake such a subject, but never suspected that there was anything unusual in the circumstance? Why shouldn't the jailer do so? Why certainly, why shouldn't he? The man was an infernal stranger. He had no vote. Besides, had not a gentleman just said he stole some flower-sacks? Ah! And if he stole flower-sacks, did he not deliberately put himself outside the pale of humanity and Christian sympathy by that hellish act? I think so. The department thinks so. Therefore, when the stranger died at seven in the morning after four hours of refreshing slumber in that cell, with his skull actually split in twain from front to rear, like an apple, as was ascertained by post-mortem examination, what the very devil do you want to go and find fault with the prison officers for? You're always putting in your shovel. Can't you find somebody to pick on besides the police? It takes all my time to defend them from people's attacks. I know the police department is a kind, humane, and generous institution. Why, it was no longer a go than yesterday that I was reminded of that time Captain Lee's broke his leg. Didn't the free-handed noble department shine forth with a dazzling radiance then? Didn't the chief detail officer's shields, ward, and two others to watch over him, and nurse him, and look after all his wands with motherly solicitude? Four of them, you know. Four of the very biggest and ablest-bodied men on the force, when less generous people would have thought two nurses sufficient, had these four acrobats in active hospital service that way in the most liberal manner, at a cost to the city of San Francisco of only the trifling sum of five hundred dollars a month. The same being the salaries of four officers of the regular police force at one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month each. But don't you know there are people mean enough to say that Captain Lee's ought to have paid his own nurse bills, and that if he had had to do it maybe he would have managed to worry along on less than five hundred dollars a month of nursing a month? And don't you know that they say also that interest parties are always badgering the supervisors with petitions for an increase of the police force, and showing such increase to be a terrible necessity, and yet they have always got to be hunting up and creating new civil offices and births, and making details for a nurse service in order to find something for them to do after they get them appointed? And don't you know that they say that they wish to God the city would hire a detachment of nurses, and keep them where they will be handy in case of accident, so that property will not be left unprotected while policemen are absent on duty in sick-rooms? You can't think how it aggravates me to hear such harsh remarks about our virtuous police force. Ah, well, the police will have their reward hereafter, no doubt. Territorial Enterprise January 1866 The Kearney Street Ghost Story Disembodied spirits have been on the rampage now for more than a month passed in the house of one Albert Crum in Kearney Street, so much so that the family find it impossible to keep a servant forty-eight hours. The moment a new and unsuspecting servant maid gets fairly to bed and her light blown out, one of those dead and damned scallywags takes her by the hair and just hazes her, grabs her by the waterfall, and snakes her out of bed and bounces her on the floor two or three times. Other disorderly corpses, shy old boots at her head, and bootjacks and brittle chamber furniture, wash bowls, pitchers, hair oil, teeth brushes, hoop skirts, anything that comes handy those phantom seas and hurl at Bridget, and pay no more attention to her howling than if it were music. The spirits tramp, tramp, tramp about the house at dead of night, and when a light is struck the footsteps cease and the promenator is not visible, and just as soon as the light is out, that dead man goes waltzing around again. They are a bloody lot. The young lady of the house was lying in bed one night with the gas turned down low when a figure approached her through the gloom, whose ghastly aspect and solemn carriage chilled her to the heart. What do you suppose she did? Jumped up and seized the intruder, threw a slipper at him, laid him with a misquotation from scripture? No, none of these. But with admirable presence of mind she covered up her head and yelled. That is what she did. Few young women would have thought of doing that. The ghost came and stood by the bed and groaned. A deep, agonizing, heartbroken groan, and laid a bloody kitten on the pillow by the girl's head. And then it groaned again inside, oh, God, and must it be? And bent another bloody kitten. It groaned a third time in sorrow and tribulation, and went one kitten better, and thus the sorrowing spirit stood there, moaning in its anguish and unloading its mewing cargo, until it had stacked up a whole litter of nine little bloody kittens on the girl's pillow, and then, still moaning, moved away and vanished. When lights were brought there were the kittens with the finger marks of bloody hands upon their white fur, and the old mother cat that had come after them swelled her tail in mortal fear and refused to take hold of them. What do you think of that? What would you think of a ghost that came to your bedside at dead of night and had kittens? Reprinted in the Golden Era, January 28, 1866. Territorial Enterprise, January 1866, busted and gone abroad. The term busted applies to most people here. When a noted speculator breaks, you all hear of it. But when Smith and Jones and Brown go under, they make no stir. They are talked about among a small circle of gratified acquaintances, but they industriously keep up appearances, and the world at large go on thinking them as riches ever. The lists of rich stock-operators of two years ago have quickly sunk beneath the wave, and financially gone to the devil. Others, who owned a hundred and ninety-six feet in one of the big mines, and gave such costly parties, has sent his family to Europe. Blivins, who owned so much in another big mine, and kept such fast horses, has sent his family to Germany, for their health, where they can sport a princely magnificence on fifty dollars a month. Blogs, who was high ewe amuck of another great mine, has sent his family home to rusticate a while with his father-in-law. All the Nabobs of sixty-three are pretty much ruined, but they send their families foraging in foreign climes, and hide their poverty under a show of appearances. If a man's family start anywhere on the steamer now, the public say, there's the death-rattle again, another croce has gone in. These are sad, sad times. We are all busted, and our families are exiled in foreign lands. Territorial Enterprise January 1866 The Chapman Family The old gentleman and the old lady must be seventy-five years old now. They used to play with Dan Marble in New Orleans twenty-five years ago. Earlier they had a theatre built in a broad horn, and floated down the Ohio and Mississippi, clear to the Belize, tying up every night and knocking Richard the Third Endways for the delectation of any number of gray-backs that chose to come from a dozen to a thousand, and selling tickets for money when they could, and taking Salt Lake currency when they couldn't. They have played in Canada, and all over California and Washoo played everywhere in North America, I may say, and lo! I come to tell you that they still keep up their lick. I have been honoured with a letter from the old lady dated Helena Last Chance, Montana Territory, December 16th. She says that they are just five miles from the Missouri River. I suppose they will build a raft in the spring and float down the river, astonishing the Indians with Othello, Richard, Jack Shepherd, et cetera, and the next thing we hear of them they will be in New Orleans again. The old lady further says, We have a theater and company of Denverites and are doing well. It is so cold that the Quicksilver all froze, or I would tell you how many degrees below zero. Provisions high, salt, one dollar per pound, butter, two dollars and fifty cents, flour, thirty dollars, and it would not do for you to be here, for tobacco is six dollars a pound and scarce. So cold that fifty head of cattle and two men who were hurting them froze to death on the night of the fourteenth. Great deal of suffering among miners who were out prospecting. This is a lively town, adjoining camps deserted, everybody wintering here. I play the part of Richard the Third tonight. Next week I appear as Mazepa. We charge a dollar fifty for all seats. The idea of the jolly motherly old lady stripping to her shirt and riding a fiery untamed Montana jackass up flights of stairs and kicking and caverding around the stage on him with the Quicksilver frozen in the thermometers and the audience taking brandy punches out of their pockets and biting them, same as people eat peanuts in civilized lands. Why, there is no end to the old woman's energy. She'll go through with Mazepa with flying colors, even if she has to do it with icicles a yard long hanging to her jackass's tail. Territorial Enterprise, January 1866. Sabbath Reflections. This is the Sabbath today. This is the day set apart by a benignant creator for rest. For repose from the weering toils of the week, and for calm and serious—Brown's dog has commenced a howl again, I wonder why Brown persists in keeping that dog chained up—meditation upon those tremendous subjects pertaining to our future existence. How thankful we ought to be—there goes that rooster now—for this sweet respite. How fervently we ought to lift up our voices and—confound that old hen—lays an egg every forty minutes and then tackles until she lays the next one—testify our gratitude. How sadly, how soothingly, the music of that deep-toned bell floats up from the distant church. How gratefully we murmur—scat, that old gray tomcat is always bully-ragging that other one—got him down now, and digging the hair out of him by the handful—thanksgiving for these Sabbath blessings. How lovely the day is—buy a broom, buy a broom!—how wild and beautiful the golden era, and sun the mercury, too for a bit of peace! Sun smites upon the tranquil—ultimon and call, and merkin plague—city—potatoes—ten pounds for two bits—potatoes—ten pounds for a quarter of a dollar! However—never mind these Sunday reflections—there are too many distracting influences abroad. This people have forgotten that San Francisco is not a ranch, or rather that it ought not properly to be a ranch. It has got all the disagreeable features of a ranch, though. Every citizen keeps from ten to five hundred chickens, and these crow and cackle all day and all night. They stand watches, and the watch on duty makes a racket while the off watch sleeps. Let a stranger get outside of Montgomery and Curny from Pacific to Second, and close his eyes, and he can imagine himself on a well-stocked farm, without an effort. For his ears will be assailed by such a vile din of gobbling of turkeys, and crowing of horse-voiced roosters, and cackling of hens, and howling of cows, and winning of horses, and braing of jackasses, and yowling of cats, that he will be driven to frenzy, and may look to perform prodigies of blasphemy, such as he never knew himself capable of before. Sunday reflections a man might as well try to reflect in bedlam as in San Francisco, when her millions of livestock are in tune. Being calm now, I will call down no curse upon these dumb brutes, as they are called by courtesy. But I will go so far as to say I wish they may all die without issue, and that a sudden and violent death may overtake any person who afterwards attempts to reinstate the foul and brute nuisance. Territorial Enterprise, January 1866, dated January 24, 1866. More Outcroppings One. I find the following mysterious notice glaringly displayed in the advertising columns of the Bulletin. Outcroppings, the second volume, compiled by W, will be issued next week. Who is the publisher? There is no name mentioned, and I cannot conjecture. But that is of small consequence. What interests us more is to know who W is. Is it Wentworth? May Wentworth? Or is it Wash Right? Or is it Washington Second? Or is it Winamucka? Or is it the old original Wang Doodle? I shall have to inquire into this matter, unless W comes forward with the information himself very soon. If the volume were not promised next week, we might suppose it was the first of Bancroft's forthcoming nine volumes of California verse. But you know we are not to look for any portion of that work before July. This second volume of Outcroppings is a humbug of some kind or other, no doubt. Territorial Enterprise, January 30, 31, 1866. Portion of San Francisco Letter. January 28, 1866. Closeout. The fine restaurant between Clay and Commercial on Montgomery Street has been sold at auction. It was fitted up three months ago at a cost of $3,600 and brought only $1,400 yesterday under the hammer. At first it did a prosperous business, made money fast. Everybody was glad of it, for the proprietor was an estimable man, and was struggling to gather together by honest industry a small independence, so that he might go back to the fatherland of his daily dreams, and clasp once more to his breast, the wife who has waited and watched for him through weary years, kiss once more his little ones, and hear their innocent prattle, and their childish glee, and the music of their restless little feet. But about that time Fitzsmyth went there to board, and that let him out, you know, but such is human life. Here to-day and gone to-morrow, a dream, a shadow, a ripple on the water, a thing for invisible gods to sport with for a season, and then toss idly by, idly by. It is rough. Bearding the Fenian in his lair. Text partially reconstructed from the celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County and other sketches. Going to post myself on one of the most current topics of the day, I hunted up an old friend, Dennis McCarthy, who is editor of the new Fenian Journal in San Francisco, the Irish people. I found him sitting on a sumptuous candle-box in his shirt sleeves, solacing himself with a whiff of the national dudine, or cobbine, or whatever they call it, a clay pipe with no stem to speak of. I thought it might flatter him to address him in his native tongue, and so I bowed with considerable grace and said, Ara! And he said, Pitchabers! Oh, hon! said I. Bavurian diilish akushla khmashri, replied the McCarthy. Erin go bra! I continued with vivacity. Astor! responded the McCarthy. Taranyons, said I. Bedahusus fagarogumesh looms, said the bold Fenian. You have me there, be me soul! said I, for I am not up with a nice adhesive of the language you understand. I only know enough of it to enable me to keep a me end up in an ordinary conversation. Neodemode! What a comfort these reporters do take in that graveyard word! They stick it in at the end of an item, in all its native impenetrability, and then slash away cheerfully and finish the paragraph. It is too many for me, that word is, for all it is so handy. Sometimes they write up a fine item about the capture of a chicken thief, and head it Neodemode, or an exciting story of an infant with good clothes on and a strawberry on its little left arm, and a coat of arm stitched on its poor little shirt tail being left in a market basket on someones doorstep, and head it Neodemode, or an entertaining account of a crazy man going through his family and making it exceedingly warm for the same, and head it Neodemode, or an item about a large funeral, or a banquet, or a ball, or a wedding, or a prayer meeting, anything, no matter what, all the same. They head it Neodemode. It is the handiest heading I ever saw. It appears to fit any subject you pleased to tack it to. Why, here lately, they have even got to using it in items concerning the taking out of naturalization papers by foreigners. There is altogether too much Neodemy around to suit me. I would not mind it so much if it were not quite such an ugly word, and if I had a sort of general notion of what in the mischief it means. I would like to hear from one of the Neodemites. I've got to go now and report a sermon. I trust it will be pleasanter work than writing a letter on Sunday, while the dogs and cats and chickens are glorifying their maker, and raising the mischief. Territorial Enterprise February 4, 1866 Among the Spirits There was an audience of about four hundred ladies and gentlemen present, and plenty of newspaper people, neuters. I saw a good-looking, earnest-faced, pale, red-haired, neatly dressed young woman standing on a little stage, behind a small-deal table with slender legs and no drawers. The table understand me. I am writing in a hurry, but I do not desire to confound my description of the table with my description of the lady. The lady was Mrs. Foy. As I was coming uptown with the examiner reporter in the early part of the evening, he said he had seen a gambler named Gus Graham shot down in a town in Illinois years ago by a mob, and as probably he was the only person in San Francisco who knew of the circumstance, he thought he would give the Spirits Graham to Chaw on a while. Nothebene, this young creature is a Democrat, and speaks with the native strength and inelegance of his tribe. In the course of the show he wrote his old pal's name on a slip of paper, and folded it up tightly, and put it in a hat, which was passed around, and which already had about five hundred similar documents in it. The pile was dumped on the table, and the medium began to take them up one by one and lay them aside, asking, Is this spirit present? Or this? Or this? About one in fifty would wrap, and the person who sent up the name would rise in his place and question the defunct. At last a spirit seized the medium's hand and wrote, Thus Graham! Backwards! Then the medium went skirmishing through the papers for the corresponding name, and that old sport knew his card by the back. When the medium came to it, after picking up fifty others, he wrapped. A committee man unfolded the paper, and it was the right one. I sent for it, and got it. It was all right. However, I suppose all them Democrats are on sociable terms with the devil. The young man got up and asked, Did you die in fifty one, fifty two, fifty three, fifty four, ghost, wrap, wrap, wrap? Did you die of cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, dog bite, small pox, violent death, wrap, wrap, wrap? Were you hanged, drowned, stabbed, shot, wrap, wrap, wrap? Did you die in Mississippi, Kentucky, New York, Sandwich Islands, Texas, Illinois, wrap, wrap, wrap? In Adams County, Madison, Randolph, wrap, wrap, wrap? It was no use trying to catch the departed gambler. He knew his hand and played it like a major. I was surprised. I had a very dear friend who I had heard had gone to the spirit land, or perdition, or some of those places, and I desired to know something concerning him. There was something so awful, though, about talking with living, sinful lips, to the ghostly dead, that I could hardly bring myself to rise and speak, but at last I got tremblingly up and said with low and reverent voice, Is the spirit of John Smith present? Wack, whack, whack! That blessed me. I believe all the dead and damned John Smith's between hell and San Francisco tackled that poor little table at once. I was considerably set back. Stunned, I may say. The audience urged me to go on, however, and I said, What did you die of? The Smith's answered to every disease and casualty that man can die of. Where did you die? They answered, Yes, to every locality I could name while my geography held out. Are you happy where you are? There was a vigorous and unanimous no from the late Smith's. Is it warm there? An educated Smith seized the medium's hand and wrote, It's no name for it. Did you leave any Smith's in that place when you came away? Dead loads of them! I fancied. I heard the shadowy Smith's chuckle at this feeble joke, the rare joke that there could be live loads of Smith's where all are dead. How many Smith's are present? Eighteen millions. The procession now reaches from here to the other side of China. Then there are many Smith's in the kingdom of the lost? The Prince Apoleon calls all newcomers Smith's on general principle and continues to do so until he is corrected if he chances to be mistaken. What do lost spirits call their dread abode? They call it the Smithsonian Institute. I got hold of the right Smith at last, the particular Smith I was after, my dear lost, lamented friend, and learned that he died a violent death, I feared as much. He said his wife talked him to death, poor wretch. But without any nonsense Mrs. Foy's séance was a very astonishing affair to me, and a very entertaining one. The examiner man's old pard, the gambler, was too many for me. He answered every question exactly right, and his disembodied spirit, invisible to mortal eyes, must have been prowling around that hall last night. That is, unless this pretended spiritualism is only that other black art called clairvoyance, after all. And yet the clairvoyant can only tell what is in your mind. But once or twice last night the spirits brought facts to the minds of their questioners, which the latter had forgotten before. Well, I cannot make anything out of it. I asked the examiner man what he thought of it, and he said in the democratic dialect, Well, I don't know. I don't know. But it's damn funny. He did not mean that it was laughable. He only meant that it was perplexing. But such is the language of democracy. Royal Enterprise, February 1866. More Outcroppings. Ward, the shirt man, has issued a pamphlet of poems, burlesques of some of the poems in Outcroppings, and purporting to be a second edition of that work, I suppose, as it bears the same title. It is simply an advertising affair, of course. It was written by Trem. The burlesque of James Linnon's I Feel I'm Growing Old is the most outlandish combination of untraceable scotch phraseology I ever saw. I think it is a pretty good take-off on the fashion some folks have of humbugging Americans with poetry that defies criticism because its extravagant scotchiness defies comprehension. We have come to think in our day and generation that every piece of scotch verse, which we cannot understand, is necessarily pure, sweet poetry, and that all prose, which is spelled atrociously, is necessarily humorous and intensely funny. Perhaps you can dig some meaning out of I Feel I'm Growing Murk, by Jean Lining. I Feel I'm Growing Murk, good wife, I Feel I'm Growing Murk, Unsicker gurns the greith and dup, and I, the stoned, is burk. I've fasht myself with crishy rocks, or joke and hallen braw, and now I'll stolens pit my duds and garsark white as snarl. I Feel I'm Growing Murk, good wife, I Feel I'm Growing Murk, and why and why the jigglet jinxed his weepid with my dirk. My clays are murk with howdy wangs, but still my heart is fair, though sconered yawics lop and blink. I'm nay so pure in gear. I Feel I'm Growing Murk, good wife, I Feel I'm Growing Murk, the howdy bicker skeeps my ean. Na mere the coup, foul shirk. I'll get a wards neat-fitting shirt, they'll glint with palky ean. There's sack-score wards-shirt sold, good wife, since I called in yesterine. Still Enterprise February 6th and 7th, 1866, portion of San Francisco Letter, written February 3rd, 1866. Take the stand, Fitz-Smyth. Fitz-Smyth, amigo of the Gold Hill News, is the champion of the police, and is always in a sweat, because I find fault with them. Now I don't find fault with them often, and when I do I sometimes do it honestly. Even Fitz-Smyth will not have cheek to say he expresses his honest opinions when he invariably and eternally slobbers them over with his slimy praise, and can never find them otherwise than pure and sinless in every case. No man is always blameless. Fitz-Smyth ought to recollect that and bestow his praise with more judgment. Fitz knows he would abuse them like pirates if they were all to die suddenly. I know it, because he always abuses dead people. He was a firm, unswerving friend of poor Barney Allwell, until the man was hanged and buried, and then look what hard names he called him in the last news. Fitz can ruin the reputation of any man with a paragraph or two of his praise. I don't say it in a spirit of anger, but I am telling it for a plain truth. I have only stirred the police up and irritated them a little with my cheerful abuse, but Fitz-Smyth has utterly ruined their character with his disastrous praise. I don't ask any man to take my evidence alone in this matter. I refer doubters to the police themselves. But for Fitz-Smyth's kindly meant but calamitous compliments, the police of San Francisco would stand as high today as any similar body of men in the world. But you know yourself that you soon cease to attach weight to the compliments of a man whose mouth is an eternally flowing fountain of flattery. Fitz-Smyth praises all alike, makes no distinction. There's that man Ansbrough. I don't know him, never saw him, that I know of. But I know, and so does Fitz-Smyth, that he does twice as much work as any other detective on the force. But does Fitz-Smyth praise him any more than he praises those pets who never do anything at all? Not he. He makes no discrimination. And chapel? But why argue the case? When those officers do anything, Fitz impartially rings in all the balance of the force to share the credit sometimes. Fitz, you won't do. I have told you so fifty times and I tell you again that you won't do. I can warm you up with ten sentences and make you dance like a hen on a hot griddle any time, Fitz-Smyth. I know your weak spot. I can touch you on the raw whenever I please, because you lose your temper and write the most spiteful, undignified things. You see, you will always be a little awkward with a pen, Fitz, because your head isn't sound, isn't well balanced. You have good points, you know, but they are kept down and crowded out by bad ones. You don't know that when a man is in a controversy he is at a great disadvantage when he loses his temper. It leaves him too open to ridicule, you know. And you can't stand ridicule, Fitz. It cuts you to the quick. It just makes you howl. I know that as well as you do, Fitz, and I am saying these things for your own good. You are young and you are apt to let the fire of youth drive you into exceedingly unhappy performances. I do not mean that you are so young in years, you know, but young in experience of the world. You ought to be modest. The same wisdom, which was so potent in Illinois and the wilds of Texas, does not overpower the people of a great city like it used to there, you know. Ah! No! They read you, attentively, because you write with a certain attractiveness, Fitz Smythe, but they say, oh, this prairie wisdom is too wide, too flat, and this swamp wisdoms too deep all together, and they don't attach any weight to your praise of the police. They say, oh, this fellow don't know, he ain't used to police. They don't have them in the wilds of Texas, where this ranger come from. But you are certainly the most interesting subject to write about, Fitzie. I never get hold of you, but I want to stay with you and hang on to you just as if you were a jug. I didn't intend to write two lines this time, Fitz. I only wanted to get you, as excuser and explainer in chief to the police, to go on the witness stand and inform me when it is possible for a man to lug a prisoner about a mile through the thickest, subtle portion of the city, clear to the station house, and never come cross a policeman. Read this communication from the morning call, Fitz, and it is a true version, and then go on and explain it, Fitz. Try it, you long leg rip. Where are the police? EDITORS MORNING CALL On Thursday night a terrible onslaught was made on the house of a peaceable citizen on Larkin Street by a band of soldiers. The man, awakened by this attempt to enter his dwelling, called on his neighbors for help. One came to his aid. The soldiers threatened to fire on the families, but, after a severe fight and long chase, the citizen and his neighbor captured two of the rascals near the Spring Valley Schoolhouse. They have been held over to appear before the county court. The citizen, with his prisoner, came from the Presidio Road, along Larkin, down Union, along Stockton, down Broadway, to Kearney Street, before he met an officer. The neighbor, with his prisoner, came from the same place, down Union, to Powell, along that street to Washington, and down to the lower side of the plaza, before he met an officer. This was between three and four a.m. What I wished to know is, where were the police, and cannot we, in the remote parts, be protected by at least one officer? MORE CEMETERIAL GASTLINESS I spoke the other day of some singular proceedings of a firm of undertakers here, and now I come to converse about one or two more of the undertaker tribe. I begin to think this sort of people have no bowels, as the ancients would say, no heart, as we would express it. They appear to think only of business, business first, last, and all the time. They trade in the woes of men as coolly as other people trade in candles and mackerel. Their hearts are iron-clad, and they seem to have no sympathies in common with their fellow men. A prominent firm of undertakers here own largely in Lone Mountain Cemetery and also in the toll-road leading to it. Now if you or I owned that toll-road, we would be satisfied with the revenue from a long funeral procession and would throw in the corpse. We would let him pass free of toll. We would wink placently at the gatekeeper and say, Never mind this gentleman in the hearse, this fellow is a deadhead. But the firm I am speaking of never do that. If a corpse starts to paradise or perdition by their road, he has got to pay his toll or else switch off and take some other route. And it is rare to see the pride this firm takes in the popularity and respectability of their cemetery and the interest and even enthusiasm which they display in their business. A friend of mine was out at Lone Mountain the other day, and was moving sadly among the tombs thinking of departed comrades and recalling the once pleasant faces, now so cold, and the once familiar voices, now so still, and the once busy hands now idly crossed beneath the turf when he came upon Mr. Smith of the firm. Ah! Good morning! says Smith. Come out to see us at last, have you? Glad you have. Let me show you round, let me show you round. Pretty fine, ain't it? Looking in apple pie order, eh? Everybody says so. Everybody says mighty few graveyards go ahead of this. We are endorsed by the best people in San Francisco. We get them, sir, we get the pick and choice of the departed. Come, let me show you. Here's Major General Jones, distinguished man he was, very distinguished man. Heisted him up on that mound there where he's prominent. And here's McSpadden. Rich? Oh, my! And we've got Brigadier General Jollipsen here. There he is, over there. Keep him trimmed up and spruce as a fresh plant all the time. And we've got Swimly and Stiggers, the bankers, and Johnson and Swipe, the railroad men. And more admirals and them kind of people, slothers of them. And bless you we've got as much as a whole block planted in nothing but hundred thousand dollar fellows. And here Mr. Smith's face lighted up suddenly with a blaze of enthusiasm, and he rubbed his hands together and ducked his head to get a better view through the shrubbery of the distant toll-road, and then exclaimed, Ah! Is it another? Yes, I believe it is. Yes, it is. Third arrival to-day. Long procession. George, this is gay. Well, so long, Thompson. I must go and cash this party. And the happy undertaker skipped lightly away to offer the dismal hospitalities of his establishment to the unconscious visitor in the hearse. Territorial Enterprise, February 8th through 10th, 1866. Portion of San Francisco Letter, written on February 6th, 1866. Remarkable Dream. I dreamed last night that I was sitting in my room smoking my pipe and looking into the dying embers on the hearth, conjuring up old faces in their changing shapes and listening to old voices in the moaning winds outside. When there was a knock at the door and a man entered, bowed, walked deliberately forward and sat down opposite me. He was dressed in a queer old garb of, I don't know, how many centuries ago. He said, with a perceptible show of vanity, My name's ananias! May have heard of me, perhaps? I said reflectively, No. No, I think not, Mr. Ananias. Never heard of me? Bismillah! Aholoni! G'well! But you couldn't have read the scriptures. I rose to my feet in great surprise. Ah! Is it possible? I remember now. I remember your history. Yes, yes, yes, I remember you made a little statement that wouldn't wash, so to speak, and they took your life for it. They... They bounced a thunderbolt on your head or something of that sort, didn't they? Yes, but drop these matters, and let's to business. The thief sympathizes with the thief, the murderer with the murderer, the vagabond with the vagabond. I, too, feel for my kind. I want to do something for this. Fit smith! Give me your hand. This sentiment does you honour, sir, it does you honour. And this solicitude of the Prince of Liars for the humble disciple Fit smith is well merited. It is indeed. For although, sire, his efforts may not be brilliant, they make up for that defect in bulk and quantity. Such steady persistence as his, such unwearying devotion to his art, are deserving of the highest encomion. You know the man, I see that, and he is worthy of your admiration. As you say, his lies are not brilliant, but they never slack up. They are always on time. Some of them are awkward, very stupid and awkward, but that is to be expected, of course, where a man is at it so constantly and exhaustively as Fit smith, or as we call him in hell, brother smith. We all take the altar. But they are strong. They are awkward and stupid. But they are powerful, free from truth. You take his mildest lie. Take those he tells about Mark Twain, for instance, who is the only newspaper man I have ever come across who wouldn't lie and couldn't lie, shame to him. Take those lies. Take even the very mildest of them. And don't you know they'd let a man out mighty quick in my time? Why, there'd have been more thunder and lightning after him in two seconds. If Fit smith had lived in my time and told that little lie he told about you last, just that little one even, he'd have been knocked from Jericho to Jacksonville quick as winking. Lord bless you, but they were mighty particular in those days. Notice how they hazed me. So they did, sir, so they did. They snatched you very lively indeed, sir. But we'll come to business now. No man's productions are more admired in the regions of the damned than Fit smith's. We have watched his career with pride and satisfaction, and at a meeting held in perdition last night, a committee of the most distinguished liars the world has ever produced was appointed to visit the earth and confer upon our gifted disciples certain marks of distinction to which we consider him entitled. Orders of merit they are. Honours which he has laboriously earned. We wish to confer these compliments upon him through you, his bosom friend. Now therefore I, Ananias, chief of liars by seniority, do hereby create our worthy disciple Arman Leonidas Fit smith Amigo Stiggers, a knight of the grand order of the liars of St. Ananias, and confer upon him the freedom of hell, and the symbol of this order being a horse. I do hereby present him this noble animal which manifests its preference for falsehood over truth by devouring daily newspapers in preference to any other food. I looked at the horse, as he stood there chewing up my last bulletin, and recognized him as the beast Fit smith rides every day. Ananias now bade me good evening, and said his wife, another member of the committee, would now call upon me. The door opened, and the ancient Saphira, who was stricken with death for telling a lie ages ago, stood before me. She said, I have heard my husband. He has spoken well. It is sufficient. I do thereby create Arman Leonidas Fit smith Amigo Stiggers, a knight of the order of the liars of St. Saphira, and clothe him with regalia pertaining to the same, this pair of grey pantaloons, a sign and symbol of the matrimonial supremacy which I have enjoyed in my household from time immemorial. As she left the grey pantaloons and departed, saying the next member of the committee who would appear would be the most noble, the Baron de Munchausen, the door opened, and the world-famed liar entered. I come to do honour to my son, the inspired Armand Leonidas Fit smith Amigo Stiggers. It ill be smith the father to boast at length of his own offspring, wherefore I shall say no more in that respect but proceed to create him a knight of the noble order of the liars of St. Munchausen, and invest him with the regalia pertaining to the same, this grey frock coat, which has been a symbol of depravity in all ages of the world. And the great Baron shed a few tears of paternal pride and murmured, ''Kiss him for his father!'' and went away. As he disappeared he remarked that the next and last member of the committee would now wait upon me in the person of Thomas Pepper, and in a moment the renowned Tom Pepper, who was such a preposterous liar that he couldn't get to heaven and they wouldn't have him in hell, was present. He said, ''I have watched the great Armand Leonidas Fit smith Amigo Stiggers with extraordinary interest. So we all have. But how heedless we are! Those who were with you within this hour praised him without stint, and mentioned his excellencies. Yet not one of them has discovered his crowning-grace, his highest gift. It is this. He always tells the truth with such windy, wordy, blundering awkwardness that nobody ever believes it, and so his truths usually pass for his most splendid falsehoods. I could not help acknowledging to myself that this was so. A man with such a talent as that is bound to achieve high distinction and do great service in our ranks, and for this talent of his more than for his wonderful abilities and distorting facts, I do hereby confer upon him the sublime order of the knights of the liars of St. Pepper, and present him with a symbol pertaining to the same. This grim, twisted, sharply projecting sunburned mustache, whose fashion and pattern are only permitted to be used by those noble knights whose nature it is to war against truth wherever they find it, and to go a long, long way out of their road to prospect for chances to lie. I am the only man the world ever produced who was so wonderful a romancer that he could neither get a show in heaven nor hell, and fit smith will be the second one. It will be jolly. It is lonesome now, but when smith comes we too will loaf around on the outside of damnation and swap lies and be perfectly happy. Good day, old petrified facts! Good day!" And Tom Pepper, the most splendid liar the world ever gave birth to, was gone. That was my dream. And don't you know that for as much as six hours afterwards I truly believed it was nothing but a dream. But just before three o'clock today I thought my hair would turn white with amazement when I saw Amigo Fit Smith issue from that alley near the Alta office riding the very horse Ananias gave him, and that horse eating a file of the Gold Hill News, and wearing the same grey pantaloons Mrs. Saphira Ananias gave him, and the grey coat that Baron Munchausen gave him, and with his pensive nose overhanging those two skewers, that absurd sunburn mustache I mean, which Tom Pepper gave him. So it was reality. It was no dream after all. This lets me out with Fit Smith, you know. I cannot associate with that kind of stock. I don't want the worst characters in hell to be running after me with friendly messages and little testimonials of admiration for Smith, and blowing about his talents and bragging on him, and belching their villainous fire and brimstone all through the atmosphere and making my place smell worse than a menagerie. I have too much regard for my good name and my personal comfort, and so this lets me out with Fit Smith. MINISTRIAL CHANGE The Reverend Richard F. Putnam, late rector of the Episcopal Church at Grass Valley, has assumed the pastorate of the Church of the Advent in this city. CALL This gentleman, who was long connected with the editorial department of the Territorial Enterprise, and was laterally employed on the Sacramento Union, was one of the best men I ever knew. He was a man who could not whistle hard tunes, could not whistle easy ones, so as to make a person wish to keep it up long at a time. Some of the printers used to come to listen when he begun, but the more cultured usually went out. But he could swear and make up telegraph news with any man. He was a man who could go down into a beer cellar in the shank of the evening, and curse and swear, and play commercials seven up with good average luck, and without chicanery till dewey mourn, and drink beer all the while, all the while. He was a man who was handy with his pen, and would write you a crusher on any subject under the sun, no matter whether he knew anything about it or not. And he would be growling at somebody or other all through. And if everybody went away and left him, he would sit there and curse and swear at his lamp till it burned blue. And he cursed that boy that cleaned that lamp till the Constitution of the same was permanently impaired. He was a man who would wade through snow up to his neck to serve his friend, and would convey him home when drunk, and peel him and put him to bed if it was a mile and a half. He was a man who was neck and crop and neck and heels for his friends, and blood, hair, and the ground tore up to his enemies. Take him how you would. He was an ornament to his species. And there is no man that is more sorry than I am to see him forsake the pleasant fields he was want to tread and confine himself to a limited beat on the gospel, to a beat in a town which is small and where he cannot have full swing according to his dimensions, if I may so speak in connection with matters pertaining to the scriptural line of business. P.S. But I find that this Putnam mentioned in the item above is not the Putnam I have been speaking of. I was talking of C. A. V. Putnam, and I perceive that the above person is Richard F. Well, I am glad, and it is all the better as it is. I attended the séance last night, after the house was crowded with ladies and gentlemen, Mrs. Foy stepped out upon the stage and said it was usual to elect a committee of two gentlemen to sit up there and see that everything was conducted with perfect honesty and fairness. She said she wished the audience to name gentlemen whose integrity, whose conscientiousness, in a word whose high moral character in every respect, was notorious in the community. The majority of the audience arose with one impulse and called my name. This handsome compliment was as grateful as it was graceful and I felt the tears spring to my eyes. I trust I shall never do anything to forfeit the generous confidence San Francisco has thus shown in me. This touching compliment is nonetheless grateful to me when I reflect that it took me two days to get it up. I put up that hand myself. I got all my friends to promise to go there and vote for me to be on that committee, and having reported a good deal in legislatures, I knew how to do it right. I had a two-thirds vote secured. I wanted enough to elect me over the medium's veto, you know. I was elected, and I was glad of it. I thought I would feel a good deal better satisfied if I could have a chance to examine into this mystery myself, without being obliged to take somebody else's word for its fairness, and I did not go on that stand to find fault or make fun of the affair, a thing which would not speak well for my modesty when I reflect that so many men so much older and wiser than I am see nothing in spiritualism to scoff at, but firmly believe in it as a religion. Mr. Whiteing was chosen as the other committee man, and we sat down at a little table on the stage with the medium, and proceeded to business. We wrote the names of various departed persons. Mr. W. wrote a good many, but I found that I did not know many dead people. However, I put in the names of two or three whom I had known well, and then filled out the list with names of citizens of San Francisco who had been distinguished in life, so that most persons in the audience could tell whether facts stated by such spirits concerning themselves were correct or not. I will remark here that not a solitary spirit summoned by me paid the least attention to the invitation. I never got a word out of any of them. One of Mr. Whiteing's spirits came up and stated some things about itself which were correct, then some five hundred closely folded slips of paper containing names were dumped in a pile on the table, and a lady began to lay them aside one by one. Suddenly a wrap was heard. I took the folded paper, the spirit, so-called, seized the lady's hand and wrote J. M. Cook backwards and upside down on a sheet of paper. I opened the slip I held, and as Captain Cuddle would say, J. M. Cook was the de-entical name in it. A gentleman in the audience said he sent up the name. He asked a question or so, and then the spirit wrote, would like to communicate with you alone. The privacy of this ghost was respected, and he was permitted to go to thunder again, unmolested. William Nelson reported himself from the other world, and in answer to questions asked by a former friend of his in the audience said he was aged twenty-four when he died. Died by violence, died in a battle, was a soldier, had fought both in the infantry and cavalry, fell at Chikamoga, had been a Catholic on earth, was not one now. Then in answer to a pelting volley of questions, the shadowy warrior wrote, I don't want to answer any more about it. Exit, Nelson. About this time it was suggested that a couple of Germans be added to the committee, and it was done. Mr. Wallenstein, an elderly man, came forward, and also Mr. Olandorf, a spry young fellow, cocked and primed for a sensation. They wrote some names. Even young Olandorf said something which sounded like, East Ein Geist Hirns, bursts of laughter from the audience, three wraps, signifying that there was a Geist Hirns. Wallenstein, more laughter, three wraps. Einzigstolen, diem softalor Lichter, herafter Frau Leinerbach, Faldorol. Oh, this is too rough, you know. I can't keep up the run of this sort of thing. Incredible as it may seem. The spirit cheerfully answered yes to that astonishing proposition. Young Olandorf sprang to his feet in a state of consuming excitement. He exclaimed, Ladies and gentlemen, I write the name for a man what lifts. Spirit-rapping, dels me, he ties in Yahr 1812. But he used as live and healthy as— The medium. Down, sir, Mr. O, but the spirit cheat! Daddy's no such spirit! All this time applause and laughter by turns from the audience. Medium, take your seat, sir, and I will explain this matter." And she explained it. And in that explanation she let off a blast which was so terrific that I half expected to see young Olandorf shoot up through the roof. She said he had come up there with a fraud and deceit and cheating in his heart. And a kindred spirit had come from the land of shadows to commune with him. She was terribly bitter. She said in substance, though not in words, that perdition was full of just such fellows as Olandorf, and they were ready on the slightest pretext to rush in and assume anybody's name and rap and write and lie and swindle with a perfect looseness whenever they could rope in a living affinity like poor Olandorf to communicate with. Great applause and laughter. Olandorf stood his ground with good pluck, and was going to open his batteries again when a storm of cries arose all over the house. Get down! Go on! Speak on! We'll hear you! Climb down from that platform. Stay where you are! Vamos! Stick to your post! Say your say! The medium rose up and said if Olandorf remained she would not. She recognized no one's right to come there and insult her by practicing a deception upon her and attempting to bring ridicule upon so solemn a thing as her religious belief. The audience then became quiet, and the subjugated Olandorf retired from the platform. The other German raised a spirit, questioned it at some length in his own language, and said the answers were correct. The medium claims to be entirely unacquainted with the German language. The spirit seized the medium's hand and wrote G. L. Smith very distinctly. She hunted through the mass of papers, and finally the spirit wrapped. She handed me the folded paper she had just picked up. It had T. J. Smith in it. You never can depend on these Smiths. You call for one, and the whole tribe will come clattering out of hell to answer you. Upon further inquiry it was discovered that both these Smiths were present. We chose T. J. A gentleman in the audience said that was his Smith, so he questioned him, and Smith said he died by violence. He had been a teacher, not a schoolteacher, but, after some hesitation, a teacher of religion, and was a sort of a cross between a universalist and a unitarian. Has got straightened out and changed his opinion since he left here. Said he was perfectly happy. Mr. George Purnell, having been added to the committee, proceeded in connection with myself, Mrs. Foy, and a number of persons in the audience, to question this talkative and frolicsome old person. Among spirits, I judge, he is the gayest of the gay. He said he had no tangible body, a bullet could pass through him and never make a hole, rain could pass through him as though vapor, and not discommode him in the least. Wherefore, I suppose, he don't know enough to come in when it rains, or don't care enough. His heaven and hell are simply mental conditions. Spirits in the former have happy and contented minds, and those in the latter are torn by remorse of conscience. Says as far as he is concerned he is all right, he is happy. Would not say whether he was a very good or a very bad man on earth, the shrewd old waterproof non-edity. I asked the questions that I might average my own chances for his luck in the other world, but he saw my drift. As he has an occupation there, puts in his time teaching and being taught. Says there are spheres, grades of perfection. He is making pretty good progress. Has been promoted a sphere or so since his matriculation. I said mentally, go slow old man, go slow, you have got all eternity before you. And he replied not. He don't know how many spheres there are, but I suppose there must be millions, as if a man goes galloping through them at the rate this old universalist is doing, he will get through an infinitude of them by the time he has been there as long as old Sassastras and those ancient mummies, and there is no estimating how high he will get in even the infancy of eternity. I am afraid the old man is scouring along rather too fast for the style of his surroundings and the length of time he has got on his hands. The spirits cannot feel heat or cold, which militates somewhat against all my notions of orthodox damnation, fire and brimstone. Says spirits commune with each other by thought, they have no language. Says the distinctions of the sex are preserved there, and so forth and so on. The old parson wrote and talked for an hour, and showed by his quick, shrewd, intelligent replies that he had not been sitting up nights in the other world for nothing. He had been prying into everything worth knowing, and finding out everything he possibly could, as he said himself, when he did not understand a thing, he hunted up a spirit who could explain it. Consequently he is pretty thoroughly posted, and for his accommodating conduct and its uniform courtesy to me I sincerely hope he will continue to progress at his present velocity until he lands on the very roof of the highest sphere of all, and thus achieves perfection. I have made a report of those proceedings which every person present will say is correct in every particular, but I do not know any more about the queer mystery than I did before. I could not even tell where the knocks were made, though they were not two feet from me. Sometimes they seem to be on the corner of the table, sometimes under the center of it, and sometimes they seem to proceed from the medium's knee joints. I could not locate them at all, though. They only had a general seeming of being in any one spot. Sometimes they even seem to be in the air. As to where that remarkable intelligence emanates from which directs those strangely accurate replies, that is beyond my reason. I cannot any more account for that than I could explain those wonderful miracles performed by Hindu jugglers. I cannot tell whether the power is supernatural in either case or not, and I never expect to know as long as I live. It is necessarily impossible to know, and it is mighty hard to fully believe what you don't know. But I am going to see it through now, if I do not go crazy. An eccentricity that seems singularly apt to follow the investigations of spiritualism. Earl Enterprise, February 1866. THE FASHIONS I once made up my mind to keep the ladies of the state of Nevada posted upon the fashions, but I found it hard to do. The fashions got so shaky that it was hard to tell what was good orthodox fashion and what heretical and vulgar. This shakiness still obtains in everything pertaining to a lady's dress except her bonnet and her shoes. Some wear waterfalls, some wear nets, some wear cataracts of curls, and a few go bald among the old maids, so no man can swear to any particular fashion in the matter of hair. The same uncertainty seems to prevail regarding hoops. Little high-flyer schoolgirls of bad associations and a good many women of full growth wear no hoops at all. And we suspect these as quickly and as naturally as we suspect a woman who keeps a poodle. Some who I know to be ladies wear the ordinary moderate-sized hoops, and some who I also know to be ladies wear the new hoop of the spread-eagle pattern, and some wear the latter who are not elegant and virtuous ladies, but that is a thing that may be said of any fashion whatever, of course. The new hoops with a spreading base look only tolerably well. They are not bell-shaped. The spread is much more abrupt than that. It is tent-shaped. I do not mean an army tent, but a circus tent, which comes down steep and small, half-way, and then shoots suddenly out horizontally and spreads abroad. To critically examine these hoops, to get the best effect, one should stand on the corner of Montgomery and look up a steep street like Clay or Washington. As the ladies loop their dresses up till they lie in folds and festoons on the spreading hoop, the effect presented by a furtive glance up a steep street is very charming. It reminds me of how I used to peep under circus tents when I was a boy, and see a lot of mysterious legs tripping about with no visible bodies attached to them, and what handsome, very colored gold-clasped garters they wear nowadays. But for the new spreading hoops I might have gone on thinking ladies still tied up their stockings with common strings and ribbons as they used to do when I was a boy, and they presumed upon my youth to indulge in little freedoms in the way of arranging their apparel, which they do not dare to venture upon in my presence now. But as I intimated before, one new fashion seems to be marked and universally accepted, it is in the matter of shoes. The ladies all wear thick-soled shoes, which lace up in front and reach halfway to the knee. The shoe itself is very neat and handsome up to the top of the instep, but I bear a bitter animosity to all the surplus leather between that point and the calf of the leg. The tight lacing of this legging above the ankle bone draws the leather close to the ankle and gives the heel an undue prominence or projection, makes it stick out behind and assume the shape called the J-Bird-Heel pattern. It does not look well. Then imagine this tall shoe on a woman with a large, round, fat foot, and a huge, stuffy, swollen-looking ankle. She looks like she had on an elbow of stovepipe. Any foot and ankle that are not the perfection of proportion and graceful contour look surprisingly ugly in these high-water shoes. The pretty and sensible fashion of looping up the dress gives one ample opportunity to critically examine and curse an ugly foot. I wish they would cut down these shoes a little in the matter of leggings.