 This is Section 4 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. Section 4. Territorial Enterprise, February 1863. Territorial Enterprise mid-February 1863. The Spanish. We slide down into the Spanish mine yesterday to look after the rich strike which was made there lately. This, in the time before elevators, when, as in the salt mines in Austria, one slides down a polished wooden bannister on a waxed leather apron to reduce the heat. It is a great ride down, but a long hike back up. Editor. We found things going on at about their usual gate, and the general appearance of the mine in no respect differing from what it was before the recent flood. A few inches of water still remain in the lower gallery, but it interferes with nobody, and can be easily bailed out whenever it may be deemed necessary. Every department of the Spanish mine is now in first-class working order, owing to the able management of the general superintendent, Mr. J. P. Corrigan. The slight damage done by the inundation having been thoroughly repaired. In the matter of bracing and timbering the mine, an improvement upon the old plan has lately been added, which makes a large saving in the bill of expenses. This improvement consists in building the stations wider and higher and filling up a wall of them here and there with refuse rock. Expenses are not only lightened thus, but such walls never wrought, are never in danger of caving, need never be removed, and are altogether the strongest supports that a mine can have. Intelligent people can understand now that about a hundred dollars a day may be saved in this way, without even taking into consideration the costly job of re-timbering every two or three years, which is rendered unnecessary by it, and by way of driving the proposition into heads like the unreliables, which is filled with oysters instead of brains, we will say that by building these walls you are saved the time and labour of lowering heavy timbers three hundred feet into the earth and hoisting up refuse rock the same distance, for you can leave the one in the woods and pile the other into boxed-up stations as fast as you can dig it out. However, it is time to speak of the rich strike now. This charming spot is two hundred and forty feet below the surface of the earth. It extends across the entire width of the ledge, from twenty-five to thirty feet, and has been excavated some twenty feet on the length of the lead and to the depth of twenty-one feet. How much deeper it reaches, no man knoweth. The face of the walls is of a dark blue colour sparkling with pyrites or sulphorets or something, and beautifully marbled, with little crooked streaks of lightning as white as loaf sugar. This mass of richness pays from eight to twelve hundred dollars a ton, just as it is taken from the ledge, without sorting. Twenty thousand dollars worth of it was hoisted out of the mine last Saturday. About two hundred and fifty tons have been taken out altogether. The hoisting apparatus is about perfect. When put to its best speed it can bail out somewhere in the neighbourhood of one hundred and fifty tons of rock in daylight. The rich ore we have been talking about is sacked up as soon as it reaches the surface of the territory and shipped off to the company's mill, the Silver State, at Empire City. The Silver State is a forty-stamp arrangement, with a thundering chimney to it, which any one has noticed who has travelled from here to Carson. Mr. Dorsey is the superintendent, and Mr. Janan, assayer. Territorial Enterprise, February 5, 1863. Letter from Carson. I received the following atrocious document in the morning I arrived here. It is from that abandoned profligate, the unreliable, and I think it speaks for itself. Carson City Thursday morning. To the unreliable, sir. Observing the driver of the Virginia stage hunting after you this morning in order to collect his fare, I infer you are in town. In the paper which you represent, I noticed an article which I took to be in a fusion of your muddled brain, stating that I had cabbaged a number of valuable articles from you the night I took you out of the streets in Washoe City and permitted you to occupy my bed. I take this opportunity to inform you that I will compensate you at the rate of twenty dollars per head for every one of those valuables that I received from you, providing you will relieve me of their presence. This offer can either be accepted or rejected on your part, but, providing you don't see proper to accept it, you had better procure enough lumber to make a box four by eight and have it made as early as possible. Judge Dixon will arrange the preliminaries if you don't cede. An early reply is expected by reliable. Not satisfied with wounding my feelings by making the most extraordinary references and allusions in the above note, he even sent me a challenge to fight in the same envelope with it, hoping to work upon my fears and drive me from the country by intimidation. But I was not to be frightened. I shall remain in the territory. I guessed his object at once, and determined to accept his challenge, choose weapons and things, and scare him instead of being scared myself. I wrote a stern reply to him, and offered him mortal combat with bootjacks at a hundred yards. The effect was more agreeable than I could have hoped for. His hair turned black in a single night, from excess of fear. Then he went into a fit of melancholy, and while it lasted, he did nothing but sigh and sob and snuffle and slobber, and blow his nose on his coat-tail, and say, he wished he was in the quiet tomb. Finally he said he would commit suicide. He would say farewell to the cold, cold world, with its cares and troubles, and go and sleep with his father's in perdition. Then rose up this young man, and threw his demi-john out of the window, and took a glass of pure water, and drained it to the very, very dregs. And then he fell on the floor in spasms. Dr. Jadir was called in, and as soon as he found that the cuss was poisoned, he rushed down to the magnolia saloon, and got the antidote, and poured it down him. As he was drawing his last breath, he scented the brandy, and lingered yet a while upon the earth, to take a drink with the boys. But for this he would have been no more, and possibly a good deal less, in another moment. So he survived, but he has been in a mighty precarious condition ever since. I have been up to see how he was getting along two or three times a day. He is very low. He lies there in silence, and hour after hour he appears to be absorbed in tracing out the figures in the wallpaper. He is not changed in the least, though. His face looks just as natural as anything could be. There is no more expression in it than a turnip. But he is a very sick man. I was up there a while ago, and I could see that his friends had begun to entertain hopes that he would not get over it. As soon as I saw that, all my enmity vanished. I even felt like doing the poor, unreliable, kindness, and showing him, too, how my feelings towards him had changed. So I went and bought him a beautiful coffin, and carried it up and set it down on his bed, and told him to climb in when his time was up. Well, sir, you never saw a man so affected by a little act of kindness as he was by that. He let off a sort of war-woop, and went to kicking things around like a crazy man, and he foamed at the mouth, and went out of one fit and into another, faster than I could take them down in my notebook. I have got thirteen down, though, and I know he must have had two or three before I could find my pencil. I actually believe he would have had a thousand if that old fool who nurses him hadn't thrown the coffin out of the window, and threatened to serve me in the same way if I didn't leave. I left, of course, under the circumstances, and I learned that, although the patient was getting better a moment before this circumstance, he got a good deal worse immediately afterward. They say he lies in a sort of stupor now, and if they cannot rally him, he is gone in, as it were. They may take their own course now, though, and use their own judgment. I shall not go near them again, although I think I could rally him with another coffin. I did not return to Virginia yesterday on account of the wedding. The parties were Hon. James H. Sturdevant, one of the first Paiutes of Nevada, and Miss Emma Currie, daughter of Hon. A. Currie, who also claims that his is a Paiute family of high Antiquity. Currie conducted the wedding arrangements himself, and invited none but Paiutes. This interfered with me a good deal. However, as I had heard it reported that a marriage was threatened, I felt at my duty to go down there and find out the facts in the case. They said I might stay, as it was me. The permission was unnecessary, though. I calculated to do that anyhow. I promised not to say anything about the wedding, and I regard that promise as sacred. My word is as good as my bond. At three o'clock in the afternoon all the Paiutes went upstairs to the old hall of representatives in Currie's house, preceded by the bride and groom, and the bride's maids and groom's men, Miss Joe Perkins and Miss Netty Currie, and Hon. John H. Mills and William M. Gillespie, and followed by myself and the fiddlers. The fiddles were tuned up, three quadril sets were formed on the floor. Father Bennett advanced and touched off the high contracting parties with the Hymenil torch, married them, you know, and at the word of command from Currie, the fiddle-bows were set in motion, and the plain quadrils turned loose. Thereupon some of the most responsible dancing ensued that you ever saw in your life. The dance that Tam Schanter witnessed was slow in comparison to it. They kept it up for six hours, and then they carried out the exhausted musicians on a shutter, and went down to supper. I know they had a fine supper and plenty of it, but I do not know how much else. They drank so much champagne around me that I got confused and lost the hang of things as it were. Mills and Musser and Sturdovent and Currie got to making speeches, and I got to looking at the bride and bridesmaids. They looked uncommonly handsome, and finally I fell into a sort of trance. When I recovered from it the brave musicians were all right again and the dance was ready to commence. They went to slinging plain quadrils around as lively as ever, and never rested again until nearly midnight, when the dancers all broke down and the party broke up. It was all mighty pleasant and jolly and sociable, and I wished to thunder I was married myself. I took a large slab of the bridal cake home with me to dream on, and dreamt that I was still a single man and likely to remain so if I live and nothing happens, which has given me a greater confidence in dreams than I ever felt before. I cordially wished the newly married couple all kinds of happiness and posterity, though. Richardson's case was continued to the next term of the District Court last Thursday, and the prisoner admitted to bail in the sum of ten thousand dollars, seven thousand dollars on the charge of murder, the killing of Kahn Mason, and three thousand dollars on the charge of highway robbery. Three new mining companies filed their certificates of incorporation in the county clerks and territorial secretaries' offices last Saturday. Their ledges are located in the new Brown and Murphy District in Lyon County. The names, etc., of the new companies, are as follows. Jenny V. Thompson, G. and S. M. Company, capital stock two hundred and twenty thousand dollars, in two thousand two hundred shares of one hundred dollars each. Byron G. and S. M. Company, same number of shares, etc. Lyon G. and S. Company, capital stock two hundred and thirty thousand dollars, in two thousand three hundred shares of one hundred dollars each. The following gentlemen are trustees of all three companies. C. L. Newton, J. D. Thompson, J. Ball, G. C. Haswell, and William Millican. The principal offices of the companies are in Carson City. Mark Twain. Territorial Enterprise, February 8, 1863. Letter from Carson. Carson Thursday Morning. Editors' Enterprise. The community were taken by surprise last night by the marriage of Dr. J. H. Wayman and Mrs. M. A. Ormsby. Strategy did it. John K. Trumbo lured the people to a party at his house and corralled them, and in the meantime, acting Governor Clemens, proceeded to the bride's dwelling, and consolidated the happy couple under the name and style of Mr. and Mrs. Wayman, with a life-charter, perpetual succession, unlimited marital privileges, principal place of business at H— Blast those gold and silver mining-incorporations! I have compiled a long list of them from the Territorial Secretary's books this morning, and their infernal technicalities keep slipping from my pen, when I ought to be writing graceful, poetical things. After the marriage, the high contracting parties and the witnesses there assembled adjourned to Mr. Trumbo's house. The ways of the unreliable are past finding out. His instincts always prompt him to go where he is not wanted, particularly if anything of an unusual nature is on foot. Therefore, he was present and saw those wedding ceremonies through the parlor windows. He climbed up behind Dr. Wayman's coach and rode up to Trumbo's. This shows that his faculties were not affected by his recent illness. When the bride and groom entered the parlor he went in with them, bowing and scraping and smiling in his imbecile way, and attempting to pass himself off for the principal groom'sman. I never saw such an awkward, ungainly, lout in my life. He had on a pair of Jack Wilkes pantaloons and a swallow-tailed coat belonging to Lettle, Sherma-horn's boy, and they fitted him as neatly as an elephant's hide would fit a poodle-dog. I would be ashamed to appear in any parlor in such a costume. It never enters his head to be ashamed of anything, though. It would have killed me with mortification to parade around there as he did, and have people stepping on my coattail every moment. As soon as the guests found out who he was they kept out of his way as well as they could. But there were so many gentlemen and ladies present that he was never at a loss for somebody to pester with his disgusting familiarity. He worried them from the parlor to the sitting-room, and from thence to the dancing-hall, and then proceeded upstairs to see if he could find any more people to stampede. He found Fred Turner, and stayed with him until he was informed that he could have nothing more to eat or drink in that part of the house. He went back to the dancing-hall then, but he carried away a cod-fish under one arm and Mr. Curry's plug hat full of sauerkraut under the other. He posted himself right where he could be most in the way, and fell to eating as comfortably as if he were boarding with Trumbo by the week. They bothered him some, though, because every time the order came to all promenade the dancers would sweep past him and knock his cod-fish out of his hands and spill his sauerkraut. He was the most loathsome sight I ever saw. He turned everybody's stomach but his own. It makes no difference to him, either, what he eats when hungry. I believe he would have eaten a corpse last night if he had had one. Finally Curry came and took his hat away from him and tore one of his coat-tails off and threatened to thresh him with it, and that checked his appetite for a moment. Instead of sneaking out of the house then, as anybody would have done who had any self-respect, he shoved his cod-fish into the pocket of his solitary coat-tail, leaving at least eight inches of it sticking out, and crowded himself into a double quadril. He had it all to himself pretty soon, because the order, gentlemen to the right, came, and he passed from one lady to another around the room, and wilted each and every one of them with the horrible fragrance of his breath. Even Trumbo himself fainted. Then, the unreliable, with a placid expression of satisfaction upon his countenance, marched forth and swept the parlours like a pestilence. When the guests had been persecuted as long as they could stand, though, they got him to drink some kerosene oil which neutralized the sauerkraut and cod-fish, and restored his breath to about its usual state, or even improved it, perhaps, for it generally smells like a hospital. The unreliable interfered with Colonel Musser when he was singing the Peanuts song. He bothered William Patterson Esquire when that baritone was singing, ever of thee I'm fondly dreaming. He interrupted Epstein when he was playing on the piano. He followed the bride and bridegroom from place to place, like an evil spirit, and he managed to keep himself and his coat-tail eternally in the way. I did hope that he would stay away from the supper table, but I hoped against an impossibility. He was the first one there, and had choice of seats also, because he told Mr. Trumbo he was a groomsman, and not only that, but he made him believe also that Dr. Weyman was his uncle. Then he sailed into the ice-cream and champagne, and cakes and things, at his usual starvation gate, and he would infallibly have created a famine if Trumbo had not been particularly well fortified with provisions. There is one circumstance connected with the unreliable's career last night which it pains me to mention, but I feel that it is my duty to do it. I shall cut the melancholy fact as short as possible, however. One teen's silver spoons, a new testament, and a grid-iron, were missed after supper. They were found upon the unreliable's person when he was in the act of going out at the back door. Singing and dancing commenced at seven o'clock in the evening, and were kept up with unabated fury until half past one in the morning, when the jolly company put on each other's hats and bonnets and wandered home, mighty well satisfied with Trumbo's corn-shucking, as he called it. Well, you were particularly bitter about the extracession yesterday morning, and with very small cause, too, it seems to me. You rush in desperately and call out all the fire-engines in the universe, and lo! there is nothing but a chunk of harmless fox-fire to squirt at after all. You slash away right and left at the lawyers, just as if they were not human like other people, subject to the same accidents of fortune and circumstances, moved by the same springs of action, and honest or dishonest according to the nature which God Almighty endowed them with. Stuff! You talk like a wooden man. A man's profession has but little to do with his moral character. If we had as many preachers as lawyers, you would find it mixed as to which occupation could muster the most rascals. Then you pitch into the legislators and say that, with two or three exceptions, they are men who fail to complete their programs of rascality, etc. Humbug! They never commenced with any such program. I reported their proceedings. I was behind the scenes, and I know. I talk sweepingly, perhaps. So do you, in that wild sentence. There might have been two or three first-class rascals in the legislature. I have that number in my eye at the present moment. But the balance were fully as honest as you, and considerably more so than me. I could prove this by simply reminding you of their names. Run over the list and see if there are not some very respectable names on it. I have acknowledged that there were several scoundrels in the legislature, but such a number, in as large a body as the last assembly, could carry no measure, you know, and the men I am thinking of couldn't even influence one. The Lord originally intended them to do transportation duty in a jackass train, I think. And then how you talk about the pecuniary wants of our legislators. Their hungry wallets yearn for a second assault on the greenbacks and franchises of the territory. That is humbug also. Take the house, for instance. I can name you fifteen members of that body whose pecuniary condition is very comfortable, who stand in no more pressing need of territorial greenbacks than you do of another leg. And I can name you half a dozen others who are not suffering for food and raiment, and whom Providence will be able to take care of, I think, without bringing an extra session of the Nevada legislature to pass. You talk like a wooden man, I tell you. Why, there are not enough territorial greenbacks in the secretary's office and the territorial treasury put together to start a wholesale peanut-stand with. And why should thirty-nine legislators want to neglect their business to go to Carson and gobble up and divide such a pittance? Bosh! Somebody made a blunder. Somebody did a piece of rascality. It was not the legislators. Yet only they can set the matter right. And if they want to go back to the capital and do it, it is rather a credit to them than a dishonor. I cannot see anything very criminal in this conduct of theirs. You are too brash, you know. That is what is the matter with you. You say you heard a report that the acting governor had decided to call an extra session. Well, what if you did? Don't you suppose that being here at the seat of government I would naturally know a good deal more about it than anybody's reports? Reports lie. I do not. Why didn't you ask me for information? I always have an abundance of the article on hand. I will give you some now. The acting governor has not decided to call an extra session. He is not seriously thinking of such a thing at present. He is not expecting to think of it next week. He is not in favour of the measure, and does not wish to move in the matter unless a majority of the counties expressly desire it. Now, you have said a great many things in your article which you ought not to have said. You have done injustice to all the parties whom you have mentioned. You have hollered wolf, when there was nothing present but the mildest sort of a lamb. And the properest course for you to pursue will be to screw down your throttle valve and dry up. I have a strong inclination to continue this subject a while longer, but I promise to go down in town and get drunk with Currie and Trumbo and Tom Bedford and Gillespie before I leave for Virginia. My promises are sacred. I have also to receive a petition from the citizens of Carson with several thousand names on it, requesting me to extend my visit here a few years longer. It affords me great pleasure to state that several hundred sheets of this petition are covered with the autographs of intelligent and beautiful ladies. Territorial Enterprise, February 19, 1863. Ye Sentimental Law Student. Editors Enterprise. I found the following letter, or Valentine, or whatever it is, lying on the summit where it had been dropped unintentionally, I think. It was written on a sheet of legal cap, and each line was duly commenced within the red mark which traversed the sheet from top to bottom. Solon appeared to have had some trouble getting his effusion started to suit him. He had begun it. No all men buy these presents—and scratched it out again. He had substituted. Now at this day comes the plaintive by his attorney—and scratched that out also. He had tried other sentences of like character and gone on obliterating them until through much sorrow and tribulation. He achieved the dedication which stands at the head of his letter, and to his entire satisfaction I do cheerfully hope. But what a villain a man must be to blend together the beautiful language of love and the infernal phraseology of the law in one and the same sentence. I know but one of God's creatures who would be guilty of such depravity as this, I refer to the unreliable. I believe the unreliable to be the very lawyer's cub who sat upon this solitary peak, all soaked in beer and sentiment, and concocted the insipid literary hash I am talking about. The handwriting closely resembles his semi-Chinese tarantula tracts. Sugarloaf Peak, February 14, 1863 To the loveliness to whom these presents shall come, greeting. This is a lovely day, my own Mary. Its unencumbered sunshine reminds me of your happy face, and in the imagination the same doth now appear before me. Such sights and scenes as this ever remind me, the party of the second part, of you, my Mary, the peerless party of the first part. The view from the lonely and segregated mountain peak of this portion of what is called and known as creation, with all and singular the hereditiments and appurtenances thereunto appertaining and belonging, is inexpressively grand and inspiring. And I gaze, and gaze, while my soul is filled with holy delight, and my heart expands to receive thy spirit presence as aforesaid. Above me is the glory of the sun. Around him float the messenger clouds, ready alike to bless the earth with gentle rain, or visit it with lightning and thunder and destruction. Far below the said sun and the messenger clouds aforesaid, lying prone upon the earth in the verge of the distant horizon, like the burnished shield of a giant, mine eyes behold a lake, which is described and set forth in maps as the Sink of Carson. Nearer, in the great plain, I see the desert spread abroad like the mantle of a colossus, glowing by turns with the warm light of the sun, herein before mentioned, or darkly shaded by the messenger clouds aforesaid. Flowing at right angles with said desert, and adjacent there too, I see the silver and sinuous thread of the river, commonly called Carson, which winds its tortuous course through the softly tinted valley, and disappears amid the gorges of the bleak and snowy mountains. A simile of man, leaving the pleasant valley of peace and virtue to wander among the dark defiles of sin, beyond the jurisdiction of the kindly beaming sun aforesaid. And about said sun, and the said clouds, and around the said mountains, and over the plain and the river aforesaid, there floats a purple glory, a yellow mist, as airy and beautiful as the bridal veil of a princess, about to be wedded according to the rites and ceremonies pertaining to and established by the laws or edicts of the kingdom or principality wherein she doth reside, and whereof she hath been, and doth continue to be, a lawful sovereign or subject. Ah, my Mary, it is sublime. It is lovely. I have declared and made known, and by these presence do declare and make known unto you, that the view from Sugarloaf Peak, as herein before described and set forth, is the loveliest picture with which the hand of the Creator has adorned the earth, according to the best of my knowledge and belief, so help me God. Given under my hand, and in the spirit presence of the bright being whose love has restored the light of hope to a soul once groping in the darkness of despair, on the day and year first above written, signed, Solon Lycurgus, law student and notary public in and for the said county of story and territory of Nevada, to Miss Mary Lynx, Virginia, and may the laws have her in their holy keeping. Mark Twain. Territorial Enterprise, February 19, 1863. Some text of this article has not been recovered. Local Column. La Plata O'er Company. The company was organized under a deed of trust, and has been steadily at work with scarce any intermission since the 1st of May, 1861, under the general superintendents of the President, Colonel W. H. Howard. The claim is believed to comprise some of the finest ledges in the Virginia and Gold Hill range, and from present appearances it looks as if the company were about to commence realizing the reward of their long and well bestowed labor, as in addition to the ledges already noticed, the top of a fine ledge has already been uncovered on the west side of the claim, where the chimney rearranging with the butler's peak and Mount Davidson ledges crops out. The China Trial. We were there yesterday, not because we were obliged to go, but just because we wanted to. The more we see of this aggravated trial, the more profound does our admiration for it become. It has more phases than the moon has in a chapter of the Almanac. It commenced as an assassination. The assassinated man neglected to die, and they turned it into a salt and battery. After this, the victim did die, whereupon his murderers were arrested and tried yesterday for perjury. They convicted one Chinaman, but when they found out it was the wrong one, they let him go. And why they should have been so almighty particular is beyond our comprehension. Then in the afternoon the officers went down and arrested Chinatown again for the same old offense, and put it in jail. But what shape the charge will take this time no man can foresee. The chances are that it will be about a standoff between arson and robbing the mail. Captain White hopes to get the murderers of the Chinaman hung one of these days, and so do we for that matter, but we do not expect anything of the kind. You see, these Chinaman are all alike, and they cannot identify each other. They mean well enough, and they really show a disinterested anxiety to get some of their friends and relatives hung, but the same misfortune overtakes them every time. They make mistakes and get the wrong man with unvarying accuracy. With a zeal in behalf of justice which cannot be too highly praised, the whole Chinese population have accused each other of this murder, each in his regular turn, but fate is against them. They cannot tell each other apart. There is only one way to manage this thing with strict equity. Hang the gentle Chinaman promiscuously until justice is satisfied. THE CONCERT We shall always guard against insinuating that the citizens of Virginia are not filled with a fondness for music after what we saw at Mr. Griswold's concert last night. The house was filled from dome to cellar. We speak figuratively since there was neither dome nor cellar to the house, with people who entirely appreciated the performance and testified pleasure by frequent and hearty applause. The concert was a notable credit to the talent of Virginia, and we think we speak the public desire when we ask for another like it. Mr. James Gilmore, a very youthful looking poet, recited a martial poem whereof himself was the author. It was received with great applause. We only heard five of the songs set. Territorial Enterprise, February 17th through 22nd, 1863 Silver Bars, How a Sade We propose to speak of some silver bars which we have been looking at, and to talk science a little also in this article, if we find that what we learned in the latter line yesterday has not escaped our memory. The bars we allude to were at the banking-house of Paxton Thornburg, and were five in number. They were the concentrated results of portions of two eight-day runs of the Hoosier State Mill on Potosi Rock. The first of the bricks bore the following inscription, which is poetry stripped of flowers and flummery, and reduced to plain common sense. Number 857 Potosi Gold and Silver Mining Company, Theol and Company, assayers. 688.48 oz Gold 020 Fine Silver 962 Fine Gold $572.13 Silver $1,229.47 Bars number 836 and number 858 bore about the same inscription, save that their values differed, of course, the one being worth $1,800 and the other a fraction under $1,300. The two largest bars were still in the workshop, and had not yet been assayed. One of them weighed nearly a hundred pounds, and one was worth about $3,000, and the other, which contained over 900 oz, was worth in the neighbourhood of $2,000. The weight of the whole five bars may be set down in round numbers at 300 pounds, and their value at, say, 10,000 pounds. Those are about the correct figures. We are very well pleased with the Hoosier State Mill and the Potosi mine. We think of buying them. From the contemplation of this result of two weeks mill and mining labour we walked through the assaying rooms in the rear of the banking house with Mr. Thel, and examined the scientific operations there with a critical eye. We absorbed much obtuse learning, and we proposed to give to the ignorant the benefit of it. After the amalgam has been retorted at the mill it is brought here and broken up and put into a crucible, along with a little borax, of the capacity of an ordinary plug hat. This vessel is composed of some kind of pottery which stands heat like a salamander. The crucible is placed in a brick furnace, in the midst of a charcoal fire as hot as the one which the three scriptural Hebrew children were assayed in. When the mass becomes melted, it is well stirred in order to get the metals thoroughly mixed, after which it is poured into an iron brick mould. Such of the base metals, as were not burned up, remain in the crucible in the form of a sing. The next operation is the assaying of the brick. A small chip is cut from each end of it and weighed. Each of these is enveloped in lead and placed in a little shallow cup made of bone ashes called a cupel, and put in a small stoneware oven enclosed in a sort of parlor-stove furnace where it is cooked like a lost sinner. The lead becomes oxidized and is entirely absorbed by the pores of the cupel. Any other base metals that may still linger in the precious stew meet the same fate or go up the chimney. The gold and silver come from the cupel in the shape of a little button and in a state of perfect purity. This is weighed once more and what it has lost by the cooking process determines the amount of base metal that was in it and shows exactly what proportion of it the bar contains. The lost weight was base metal, you understand, and was burned up or absorbed by the cupel. The scales used in this service are of such extremely delicate construction that they have to be shut up in a glass case, since a breath of air is sufficient to throw them off their balance. So sensitive are they indeed, that they are even affected by the particles of dust which find their way through the joinings of the case and settle on them. They will figure the weight of a piece of metal down to the thousandth part of a grain with stunning accuracy. You might weigh a mosquito here and then pull one of his legs off and weigh him again and the scales would detect the difference. The smallest weight used, the one which represents the thousandth part of a grain, is composed of aluminum, which is the metallic base of common clay and is the lightest metal known to science. It looks like an imperceptible atom clipped from the invisible corner of a piece of paper whittled down to an impossible degree of sharpness as it were, and they handle it with pincers like a hairpin. But with an excuse for this interesting digression, we will return to the silver button again. After the weighing, melting, and re-weighing of it has shown the amount of base metal contained in the brick, the next thing to be done is to separate the silver and gold in it in order to find out the exact proportions of these in the bar. The button is placed in a mattress filled with nitric acid, an elongated glass bottle or tube shaped something like a bell clapper, which is half-buried in a box of hot sand, they called it a sand bath, on top of the little cupel furnace where all the silver is boiled out of said button and held in solution, when in this condition it is chemically termed nitrate of silver. This process leaves a small pinch of gold dust in the bottom of the mattress, which is perfectly pure. Its weight will show the proportion of pure gold in the bar, of course. The silver in solution is then precipitated with muriatic acid, or something of that kind, we are not able to swear that this was the drug mentioned to us, although we feel very certain that it was, and restored to metal again. Its weight, by the mosquito scales, will show the proportion of silver contained in the brick, you know. Now, just here, our memory is altogether at fault. We cannot recollect what in the world it is they do with the dry cups. We ask the good many questions about them, asking questions as our regular business, but we have forgotten the answers. It is all owing to lager, beer. We are inclined to think, though, that after the silver has been precipitated they cook it a while in those little chalky-looking dry cups in order to turn it from fine silver dust to a solid button again for the sake of convenient handling. But we cannot begin to recollect anything about it. We said they made a separate assay of the chips cut from each end of a bar. Now, if these chips do not agree, if they make different statements as to the proportions of the various metals contained in the bar, it is pretty good proof that the mixing was not thorough, and the brick has to be melted over again. This occurrence is rare, however. This is all the science we know. What we do not know is reserved for private conversation, and will be liberally inflicted upon anybody who will come here to the office and submit to it. After the bar has been assayed, it is stamped as described in the beginning of this dissertation, and then it is ready for the mint. Science is a very pleasant subject to dilate upon, and we consider that we are as able to dilate upon it as any man that walks. But if we have been guilty of carelessness in any part of this article, so that our method of assaying as set forth herein may chance to differ from Mr. Thales, we would advise that gentleman to stick to his own plan nevertheless, and not go to following ours. His is as good as any known to science. If we have struck anything new in our method, however, we shall be happy to hear of it, so that we can take steps to secure to ourselves the benefits accruing therefrom. Territorial Enterprise February 25, 1863. Local Column. The Unreliable. This poor, miserable outcast crowded himself into the fairman's ball, night before last, and glared upon the happy scene with his evil eye for a few minutes. He had his coat buttoned up to his chin, which is the way he always does when he has no shirt on. As soon as the managers found out he was there, they put him out, of course. They had better have allowed him to stay, though, for he walked straight across the street with all his vicious soul aroused, and climbed in at the back window of the supper room, and gobbled up the last crumb of the repast provided for the guests before he was discovered. This accounts for the scarcity of provisions that the firemen supper that night. Then he went home and wrote a particular description of our ball costume, with his usual meanness, as if such information could be of any consequence to the public. He never vouchsafed a single compliment to our dress, either, after all the care and taste we had bestowed upon it. We despise that man. Many Citizens In another column of this paper will be found a card signed by many citizens of Carson, stating that the county commissioners of Ormsby County have removed the sheriff from office and appointed someone else in his stead. They also ask whether the commissioners really possessed the power to remove the sheriff or the governor of the territory or the president of the United States at pleasure. This is all well enough, except that in the face of our well-known ability in the treatment of ponderous questions of unwritten law, these citizens have addressed their inquiries to the chief editor of this paper, a man who knows no more about legal questions than he does about religion, and so saturated with self-conceit, is he, that he has even attempted, in his feeble way, to answer the propositions set forth in that note. We ignore his reply entirely, and notwithstanding the disrespect which has been shown us, we shall sink private peak for the good of our fellow men, and proceed to set their minds at rest on this question of power. We declare that the county commissioners do possess the power to remove the officers mentioned in that note at pleasure. The Organic Act says so in so many words. We invite special attention to the first clause of Section 2 of that document, where this language is used if we recollect rightly. The executive power and authority in and over said territory of Nevada shall be vested in a governor and other officers, who shall hold their offices for four years, and until their successors shall be appointed and qualified unless sooner removed by the county commissioners. That is explicit enough we take it. Other officers means any or all other officers, of course, else such dignitaries as it was intended to refer to would have been specifically mentioned. Consequently the President of the United States and the Governor and Sheriff being officers come within the provisions of the law, and may be shoved out of the way by the commissioners as quietly as they would abate a nuisance. We might enlarge upon this subject until Solomon himself couldn't understand it, but we have settled the question, and we despise to go on scattering pearls before swine who have not asked us for them. In thus proving by the Organic Act and beyond the shadow of a doubt that the county commissioners are invested with power to remove the Sheriff or the Governor or the President, whenever they see fit to do so, we have been actuated solely by a love of the Godlike principles of right and justice, and a desire to show the public what an unmitigated ass the chief editor of this paper is. Having succeeded to our entire satisfaction, we transfer our pen to matters of local interest, although we could prove, if we wanted to, that the county commissioners not only possess the power to depose the officers above referred to, but to hang them also if they feel like it. When people want a legal opinion in detail, they must address their communications to us individually and not to irresponsible smatterers, like the chief editor. The Fireman's Ball About seventy couples assembled at Topliff's Theatre night before last upon the occasion of the annual ball of Virginia Engine Company No. 1. The hall was ablaze, from one end to the other, with flags, mirrors, pictures, etc., and when the crowd of dancers had got into violent motion and thoroughly fuddled with plain quadrils, the looking-glasses multiplied them into a distracted and countless throng. Verily the effect was charming to the last degree. The decoration of the theatre occupied several days, and was done under the management of a committee composed of missers Brokow, Robinson, Champney, Clarissie, Garvey, and Sands, and they certainly acquitted themselves with marked ability. The floor was covered with heavy canvas, and we rather liked the arrangement, but the wind got under it and made it fill and sag like a circus tent, in so much that it impeded the Varsovian practice and caused the ladies to complain occasionally. Benham's People's Band made excellent music, however they always do that. We have not one particle of fault to find with the ball. The managers kept perfect order in decorum, and did everything in their power to make it pass pleasantly to all the guests. They succeeded. But of all the failures we have been called upon to Chronicle, the supper was the grandest. It was bitterly denounced by nearly everybody who sat down to it—officers, firemen, men, women, and children. Now, the supposition is that somebody will come out in a card and deny this, and attribute base motives to us. But we are not to be caught asleep, or even napping this time. We have got all our proofs at hand, and shall explode at anybody who tries to show that we cannot tell the truth without being actuated by unworthy motives. Chief Engineer Peasley and Officer Birdsall said that the supper contract was for a table supplied with everything the market could afford, and in such profusion that the last who came might fare as well as the first. The contractor to receive a stipulated sum for each supper furnished. And they also say that no part or portion of that contract was entirely fulfilled. The entertainment broke up about four o'clock in the morning, and the guests returned to their homes well satisfied with the ball itself, but not with the supper. Smallpox. From Carson we learn, officially, that Dr. Monkton has been sent down to Pine Nut Springs to look after some cases of smallpox, reported as existing among the Washoe Indians there. It is said that three men and a Mahala are inflicted with it. The doctor intends vaccinating their attendants and warning the other Indians to keep away. Captain Joe says one of the Indians caught the disease from a shirt given him by a white man. We do not believe any man would do such a thing as that maliciously, but at the same time any man is censurable, who is so careless as to leave infected clothing lying about where these poor devils can get ahold of it. The commonest prudence ought to suggest the destruction of such dangerous articles. Schoolhouse. An addition is being built to the public schoolhouse and will be completed and put in order for occupation as soon as possible. Mr. Melville's school has increased to such an extent that the old premises were found insufficient to accommodate all the pupils. As soon as the new building is completed the school will be divided into three departments, advanced, intermediate, and infant, and one of these will occupy it. Trial to-day. Sam Ingalls, who attempted the life of peas the other day with a bowie-knife, will be up before Judge Atwill to-day on a charge of drawing a deadly weapon. A case of this kind should never be allowed to pass without a severe rebuke, and if the evidence finds the prisoner guilty he will probably catch it to-day. If it does not, why—no one wants him rebuke, of course. District Court. The testimony for both sides in the case of the burning Moscow v. Madison Company was completed yesterday, and the lawyers will begin to throw hot shot at each other this morning, which is our military way of saying that the arguments of counsel herein will be commenced to-day. A great deal of interest is manifested in this suit, and the lobbies will be crowded during its trial. Suicide. We learn, by a note received last night per Langton's Express, that a German named John Meyer, a wood dealer in Downeyville, committed suicide there on the night of the 19th instant by blowing his brains out with a pistol. The cause is supposed to have been insanity. Telegraphic. A message for S. S. Harmon remains uncalled for at the Telegraph Office. Territorial Enterprise, February 26, 1863. Last portion of Mach obituary of the unreliable. First portion of original text, not recovered. Repertorial. He became a newspaper reporter and crushed truth to earth, and kept her there. He bought and sold his own notes, and never paid his board. He pretended great friendship for Gillespie, in order to get to sleep with him. Then he took advantage of his bed-fellow, and robbed him of his glass eye and his false teeth. Of course he sold the articles, and Gillespie was obliged to issue more county script than the law allowed, in order to get them back again. The unreliable broke into my trunk at Washoe City, and took jewelry and fine clothes and things worth thousands and thousands of dollars. He was present, without invitation, at every party and ball and wedding which transpired in Carson during thirteen years. But the last act of his life was the crowning meanness of it. I refer to the abuse of me in the Virginia Union of last Saturday, and also to a list of Langton's staged passengers sent to the same paper by him, wherein my name appears between those of Sam Chung and Sam Lee. This is his treatment of me, his benefactor. That malicious joke was his dying atrocity. During thirteen years he played himself for a white man. He fitly closed his vile career by trying to play me for a Chinaman. He is dead and buried now, though. Let him rest. Let him rot. Let his vices be forgotten. But let his virtues be remembered. It will not infringe much upon any man's time. Mark Twain. P.S., by private letters from Carson, since the above was in type, I am pained to learn that the unreliable, true to his unnatural instincts, came to life again in the midst of his funeral sermon, and remains so to this moment. He was always unreliable in life. He could not even be depended upon in death. The shrouded corpse shoved the coffin lid to one side, rose to a sitting posture, cocked his eye at the minister, and smilingly said, Oh, let up, Dominique! This is played out, you know. Lone me two bits. The frightened congregation rushed from the house, and the unreliable followed them with his coffin on his shoulder. He sold it for two dollars and a half, and got drunk at a bit-house on the proceeds. He is still drunk. Territorial Enterprise, between February 17th and 26th, 1863. Local Column. Apologetic. We are always happy to apologize to a man when we do him an injury. We have wounded William Smiley's feelings, and we will heal them up again or bust. We said in yesterday's police record that Bill, excuse the familiarity, William, was drunk. We lied. It is our opinion that Sam Weatherhill did, too, for he gave us the statement. We have gleaned the facts in the case, though, from William himself, and at his request we hastened to apologize. His offense was mildness itself. He only had a pitched battle with another man and resisted an officer. That was all. Come up, William, and take a drink. End of Section 4. This is Section 5 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. Section 5. Territorial Enterprise, March 4, 1863. City Marshall Perry. John Van Buren Perry, recently re-elected City Marshall of Virginia City, was born a long time ago in County Kerry, Ireland, of poor but honest parents, who were descendants, beyond question, of a house of high antiquity. The founder of it was distinguished for his eloquence. He was the property of one ballam, and received honorable mention in the Bible. John Van Buren Perry removed to the United States in 1792, after having achieved a high gastronomical reputation by creating the first famine in his native land, and established himself at Kinder Hook, New Jersey, as a teacher of vocal and instrumental music. His eldest son, Martin Van Buren, was educated there, and was afterwards elected President of the United States. His grandson of the same name is now a prominent New York politician, and is known in the East as Prince John. He keeps up a constant and affectionate correspondence with his worthy grandfather, who sells him feet in some of his richest wildcat claims from time to time. While residing at Kinder Hook, Jack Perry was appointed Commodore of the United States Navy, and he forthwith proceeded to Lake Erie and fought the mighty Marine conflict which blazes upon the pages of history as Perry's victory. In consequence of this exploit he narrowly escaped the presidency. Several years ago Commodore Perry was appointed Commissioner Extraordinary to the Imperial Court of Japan, with unlimited power to treat. It is hardly worthwhile to mention that he never exercised that power. He never treated anybody in that country, although he patiently submitted to a vast amount of that sort of thing, when the opportunity was afforded him at the expense of the Japanese officials. He returned from his mission full of honors and foreign whiskey, and was welcomed home again by the plaudits of a grateful nation. After the war was ended, Mr. Perry removed to Providence, Rhode Island, where he produced a complete revolution in medical science by inventing the celebrated Pain Killer, which bears his name. He manufactured this liniment by the shipload, and spread it far and wide over the suffering world. Not a bottle left his establishment without his beneficent portrait upon label, whereby in time his features became as well known unto burned and mutilated children as Jack the Giant Killers. When Pain had ceased throughout the universe Mr. Perry fell to writing for a livelihood, and for years and years he poured out his soul in pleasing and effeminate poetry. His very first effort, commencing, How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour, etc., gained him a splendid literary reputation, and from that time forward no Sunday School Library was complete without a full edition of his plaintive and sentimental Perry Gorax. After great research and profound study of his subject, he produced that wonderful gem which is known in every land as, The Young Mother's Apostrophe to Her Infant, beginning, This inspired poem had a tremendous run, and carried Perry's fame into every nursery in the civilized world. But he was not destined to wear his laurels undisturbed. England, with monstrous perfidy, at once claimed the apostrophe for her favourite son Martin Farquhar Tupper, and sent up a howl of vindictive abuse from her polluted press against our beloved Perry. With one accord the American people rose up in his defence, and a devastating war was only averted by a public denial of the paternity of the poem by the great proverbial over his own signature. This noble act of Mr. Tupper gained him a high place in the affection of this people, and his sweet platitudes have been read here with an ever-augmented spirit of tolerance since that day. The conduct of England toward Mr. Perry told upon his constitution to such an extent that at one time it was feared the gentle bard would fade and flicker out altogether, wherefore the solicitude of influential officials was aroused in his behalf, and through their generosity he was provided with an asylum in Sing Sing prison, a quiet retreat in the state of New York. Here he wrote his last great poem, beginning, Let dogs delight to bark and bite, for God hath made them so. Your little hands were never made to tear out each other's eyes with, and then proceeded to learn the shoemaker's trade in his new home under the distinguished masters employed by the Commonwealth. Ever since Mr. Perry arrived at man's estate his prodigious feet have been a subject of complaint and annoyance to those communities which have known the honour of his presence. In 1835, during a great leather famine, many people were obliged to wear wooden shoes, and Mr. Perry, for the sake of economy, transferred his boot-making patronage from the tanyard, which had before enjoyed his custom, to an undertaker's establishment, that is to say, he wore coffins. At that time he was a member of Congress from New Jersey and occupied a seat in front of the speaker's throne. He had the uncouth habit of propping his feet upon his desk, during prayer by the chaplain, and thus completely hiding that officer from every eye save that of omnipotence alone. So long as the honourable Mr. Perry wore orthodox leather boots, the clergymen submitted to this inflection and prayed behind them in singular solitude under mild protest. But when he arose one morning to offer up his regular petition and beheld the cheerful apparition of Jack Perry's coffins confronting him, the jolly old bum went under the table like a sick porpoise, as Mr. P feelingly remarks, and never shot off his mouth in that shanty again. Mr. Perry's first appearance on the Pacific Coast was upon the boards of the San Francisco theatres in the character of Old Pete in Dion Boussacald's Octarune. So excellent was his delineation of that celebrated character that Perry's Pete was for a long time regarded as the climax of histrionic perfection. Since John Van Buren Perry has resided in Nevada Territory, he has employed his talents in acting as city marshal of Virginia, and, in abusing me because I am an orphan and a long way from home, and can therefore be persecuted with impunity. He was re-elected day before yesterday, and his first official act was an attempt to get me drunk on champagne furnished to the board of Alderman by other successful candidates, so that he might achieve the honor and glory of getting me in the station house for once in his life. Although he failed in his object, he followed me down Seastreet and handcuffed me in front of Tom Peasley's, but officers Birdsall and Larkin and Brokaw rebelled against this unwarranted assumption of authority, and released me, whereupon I was about to punish Jack Perry severely, when he offered me six bits to hand him down to posterity through the medium of this biography, and I closed the contract. But, after all, I never expect to get the money. Territorial Enterprise March 7, 1863 Champagne with the Board of Brokers By a sort of instinct we happened in at Allmax just at the moment that the corks were about to pop, and discovering that we had intruded we were retreating when Daggett, the soulless, insisted upon our getting with the Board of Brokers, and we very naturally did so. The President had already been toasted, the Vice President had likewise been complimented in the same manner. Mr. Mitchell had delivered an address through his unsolicited mouthpiece, Mr. Daggett, whom he likened unto Balam's ass, and very aptly too. And the press had been toasted, and he had attempted to respond and got overcome by something, feelings perhaps, when that everlasting omnipresent irrepressible unreliable crowded himself into the festive apartment, where he shed a gloom upon the Board of Brokers, and emptied their glasses, while they made speeches. The imperturbable impudence of that iceberg surpassed anything we ever saw. By a concerted movement the young man was partially put down at length, however, and the Board launched out into speech-making again, but finally somebody put up five feet of Texas, which changed hands at eight dollars a foot, and from that they branched off into a wholesale bartering of wildcat, for their natures were aroused by the very smell of blood, of course, and we adjourned to make this report. The Board will begin its regular meetings Monday next. Territorial Enterprise between March 1st and 12th, 1863. Local Column. Calico Skirmish. Five Spanish women of unquestionable character were arraigned before Judge Atwill yesterday, some as principles and some as accessories to a feminine fight of a bloodthirsty description in A Street. It was proved that one of them drew a navy revolver and a bowie knife and attempted to use them upon another of the party, but, being prevented, she fired three shots through the floor for the purpose of easing her mind, no doubt. She was bound over to keep the peace, and the whole party dismissed. Territorial Enterprise between February 24th and March 31st, 1863. Portion of Letter from Carson City. A Sunday in Carson. I arrived in this noisy and bustling town of Carson at noon today, per Langtons Express. We made pretty good time from Virginia, and might have made much better, but for Horace Smith Esquire, who rode on the box seat and kept the stage so much by the head she wouldn't steer. I went to church, of course. I always go to church when I—when I go to church, as it were. I got there just in time to hear the closing hymn, and also to hear the Reverend Mr. White give out a long meter doxology, which the choir tried to sing to a short meter tune. But there wasn't music enough to go around. Consequently the effect was rather singular than otherwise. They sang the most interesting parts of each line, though, and charged the balance to profit and loss. This rendered the general intent and meaning of the doxology considerably mixed as far as the congregation were concerned, but in as much as it was not addressed to them anyhow, I thought it made no particular difference. By an easy and pleasant transition I went from church to jail. It was only just downstairs, for they saved many turnally in the second story of the new courthouse, and damned them for life in the first. Sheriff Gashary has a handsome double-office fronting on the street, and its walls are gorgeously decorated with iron convict jewelry. In the rear are two rows of cells, built of bomb-proof masonry and furnished with strong iron doors and resistless locks and bolts. There was but one prisoner, Swayze, the murderer of Derrickson, and he was writing—I do not know what his subject was—but he appeared to be handling it in a way which gave him great satisfaction. Territorial Enterprise, March, April, 1863. Examination of Teachers A grand examination of candidates for positions as teachers in our public schools was had yesterday in one of the rooms of the public school in this city. Some twenty-eight candidates were present, twenty-three of whom were ladies and five gentlemen. We do the candidates but simple justice when we say that we have never seen more intelligent faces in a crowd of the size. The following gentlemen constituted the Board of Examiners, Dr. Geiger, Mr. J. W. Witcher, and John A. Collins. We observe that Messers Fousier, Adkinson, and Robinson of the Board of Trustees were also present yesterday. Printed questions are given to each of the candidates, the answers to which are written out and handed in with the signature of the applicant appended. These are all examined in private by the Board, and those who have best acquitted themselves are selected as teachers. In all we believe about twelve teachers are to be chosen. Upon each of the following subjects a great number of questions are to be answered. General questions, methods of teaching, object teaching, spelling, reading, writing, defining, arithmetic, grammar, geography, natural philosophy, history of the United States, physiology and hygiene, chemistry, algebra, geometry, natural history, astronomy. In all, eighteen subjects with about as many questions upon each. Yesterday they had got as far as the ninth subject, grammar, at the time of our visit, and we presume have got but little further. Today the examination will be resumed. If there is anything that terrifies us, it is an examination. We don't even like an examination in a police court. In vain we looked from face to face yesterday through the whole list of candidates for signs of fright or trepidation. All appeared perfectly at ease, though quite in earnest. We took a look at some of the questions and were made very miserable by barely glancing them over. We became much afraid that some member of the board would suddenly turn upon us and require us on pain of death or a long imprisonment to answer some of the questions. Under the head of object teaching we found some ten questions, some of them, like a wheel within a wheel containing ten questions in one. We barely glanced at the list, reading here and there a question when we felt great beads of perspiration starting out upon our brow, our massive intellect oozing out. Happening to read a question like this, name four of the faculties of children that our earliest developed, we had once became anxious to get out of the room. We expected each moment that one of the board would seize us by the collar and ask, why is it, or something of the kind, and we wanted to leave. Thought we would feel better in the open air. When the answers of all the candidates are opened and read, we will try to be on hand. We are anxious for information on those four faculties. We think the above a good deal like the conundrum about the young man who went to the Sandwich Islands, learned the language of the canakas, came home, got married, got drunk, went crazy, was sent to Stockton. Why is it? Then under the same head we noticed ten questions about mining for silver ores, and ten more about the reduction of silver ores. Why these twenty-three schoolmarms are expected to be posted on amalgamating processes is more than we can guess. As this is a mining country, we presume it is necessary for a lady to give satisfactory answers to such questions as the following before being entrusted with the education of our little washuites. What is your opinion of the one-ledged theory? Have you seen the Ofer Horse? Have you conscientious scruples as to Black Dyke? Are you committed to the sage-brush process? Give your opinion on vain matter, and state your reasons for thinking so, and tell wherein you differ with those who do not agree with you. CHAPTER VI. LOCAL COLUMN. A DISTINGUISHED VISITOR. From Clara Kopka arrived in Virginia a few days since, and is still soldiering in the city. To many of our citizens the name will be unfamiliar, yet such is by no means the case in the hospitals and upon the battlefields of the East, where she has devoted nearly twelve months to arduous labor, intending the sick and wounded soldiers. In this service she has endured all the hardships and privations of camp life without hope or desire of reward, and to the serious detriment of her health. She comes among us partly to satisfy a taste for travel, and partly to gather renewed vigor by a change of climate. She asked Mayor Arrick for a homestead supposing in the simplicity of her heart that the barren but beautiful landscape which surrounds Virginia was free to any who thought they could make use of it. Unfortunately this is not the case, but the Silver Terrace Company could give Madam the homestead she covets without inconveniencing themselves in the least, and we have an idea that they will consider it a pleasure to do so. Madam Kopka brings with her a bundle of letters from military officers, from brigade and subordinate surgeons in the army, from Secretary Stanton, and letters of recommendation to General Halleck, all of which speak of her in the highest terms of praise. We cannot spare room for these letters, but we publish two newspaper extracts which will answer every purpose perhaps. The first is from a long article written by an army surgeon in the New York Home Journal of September 13, and the other from the New York Tribune of July 5. The Lois Ann. This claim is situated in a ravine which runs up in a northwesterly direction out of American Flat, and is on the Ofer Grade, about two miles and a half from Gold Hill. The ledge did not crop out, but was uncovered by a small slide in the hillside and found by Mr. Lightford, the present superintendent, and located some four or five weeks ago. A well-timbered incline has since been sunk upon it to the depth of twenty-five feet, and work in it is still going on day and night, although a stream of water from the vein materially interferes with the operations of the men. In the bottom of the incline the ledge is about ten feet wide, has a casing of blue clay, and is well defined. A great quantity of quartz has been taken from it, which looks exactly like third or fourth class Ofer, but it won't pay to crush yet awhile, although choice specimens of it have assayed as high as ninety-two dollars to the ton. We visited the mine in company with Mr. H. C. Brown and Mr. Lightford, the superintendent, and we share their opinion that there is big pay-rock in it somewhere, and it is only necessary to sink a reasonable depth to find it. Such promising indications, as have been found in this claim, are not often discovered so near the surface. Three north extensions have been located on the lowest an, and shaft sunk, and the lead struck on the first and third, the character and appearance of the rock in both instances proving identical with that of the original, coarse, crystallized quartz of a porous nature, and of a dark blue color like Comstock rock. There are fourteen hundred feet in the discovery claim, and the property is owned principally by millmen of Gold Hill. One of the best indications about the lowest an is at present much the most troublesome, we refer to the stream of water which pours from the ledge. Work in the incline will have to be suspended on account of it, and a tunnel commenced from the ravine. This will be about a hundred and fifty feet long, and will tap the lead at a depth of seventy-five feet. A mill site has been taken up in the vicinity with the intention of turning the water to useful account in case the ledge proves as excellent as it is expected it will. Another good-looking ledge lies back of the lowest an, and parallel with it, which belongs to the same company. There is a claim of a thousand feet in the vicinity of these leads which is called the Zanesville, and the rock from it pays in gold from the very surface. Every pound of it is saved, and millmen who have tested it say it will yield about a hundred dollars to the ton. There is only a mere trace of silver in it. The ledge is only about two feet wide in the bottom of a shaft twelve feet deep, but is increasing in width slowly. Possibly the Zanesville may peter out and go to thunder, but there is no prospect of such a result at present. It is rich, but, as it is only a gold ledge and is so small, we have less confidence in it than in the lowest an. Island Mill The Island Mill, built on Carson River by Mr. Height of Gold Hill, is about completed now, and the machinery was set in motion yesterday to see if there was anything wrong about it. The result was satisfactory, and the Island Mill will go to work formally and forever next Tuesday. Gould and Currie They struck it marvelously rich in a new shaft in the Gould and Currie mine last Saturday night. We saw half a ton of native silver at the mouth of the tunnel on Tuesday with a particle of quartz in it here and there, which could be readily distinguished without the aid of a glass. That particular half ton will yield somewhere in the neighborhood of ten thousand dollars. We have long waited patiently for the Gould and Currie to flicker out, but we cannot discover much encouragement about this last flicker. However, it is of no consequence. It was a mere matter of curiosity anyhow. We only wanted to see if she would, you know. The Minstrels We were present at La Plata Hall about two minutes last night, and heard Sam Pride's Banjo make a very excellent speech in English to the audience. The house was crowded to suffocation. Territorial Enterprise, April 12, 1863. Partial Exit Advice to the Unreliable on Churchgoing In the first place, I must impress upon you that when you are addressing for church as a general thing you mix your perfumes too much. Your fragrance is sometimes oppressive. You saturate yourself with cologne and bergamot until you make a sort of Hamlet's ghost of yourself, and no man can decide with the first whiff whether you bring with you air from heaven or from hell. Now rectify this matter as soon as possible. Last Sunday you smelled like a secretary to a consolidated drug store and a barber shop, and you came and sat in the same pew with me. Now don't do that again. In the next place, when you design coming to church, don't lie in bed until half past ten o'clock and then come in looking all swelled and torpid like a donut. Do reflect upon it, and show some respect for your personal appearance here after. There is another matter also which I wish to remonstrate with you about. Generally, when the contribution box of the missionary department is passing around, you begin to look anxious and fumble in your vest pockets as if you felt a mighty desire to put all your worldly wealth into it. Yet when it reaches your pew, you are sure to be absorbed in your prayer book or gazing pensively out the window at far off mountains, or buried in meditation with your sinful head supported by the back of the pew before you. And after the box is gone again, you usually start suddenly and gaze after it with a yearning look mingled with an expression of bitter disappointment, fumbling your cash again meantime, as if you felt you had missed the one grand opportunity for which you had been longing all your life. Now, to do this when you have money in your pockets is mean. But I have seen you do a meaner thing. I referred to your conduct last Sunday when the contribution box arrived at our pew, and the angry blood rises to my cheek when I remember, with what gravity and sweet serenity of countenance, you put in fifty cents, and took out two dollars and a half—derritorial enterprise between April 16th and 18th, 1863. Horrible affair! For a day or two a rumour has been floating around that five Indians had been smothered to death in a tunnel back of Gold Hill, but no one seemed to regard it in any other light than as a sensation hoax gotten up for the edification of strangers sojourning within our gates. However, we asked a Gold Hill man about it yesterday, and he said there was no shadow of a jest in it, that it was a dark and terrible reality. He gave us the following story as being the version generally accepted in Gold Hill. That town was electrified on Sunday morning with the intelligence that a noted desperado had just murdered two Virginia policemen and had fled in the general direction of Gold Hill. Shortly afterward, someone arrived with the exciting news that a man had been seen to run and hide in a tunnel a mile or a mile and a half west of Gold Hill. Of course, it was Campbell—who else would do such a thing on that particular morning, of all others? So a party of citizens repaired to this spot, but each felt a natural delicacy about approaching an armed and desperate man in the dark, and especially in such confined quarters. Therefore they stopped up the mouth of the tunnel, calculating to hold on to their prisoner until someone could be found whose duty would oblige him to undertake the disagreeable task of bringing forth the captive. The next day a strong posse went up, rolled away the stones from the mouth of the supple-cur, went in, and found five dead Indians—three men, one squaw, and one child—who had gone in there to sleep, perhaps, and been smothered by the foul atmosphere after the tunnel had been closed up. We still hope the story may prove a fabrication, not withstanding the positive assurances we have received, that it is entirely true. The intention of the citizens was good, but the result was most unfortunate. To shut up a murderer in a tunnel was well enough, but to leave him there all night was calculated to impair his chances for a fair trial. The principle was good, but the application was unnecessarily hefty. We have given the above story for truth. We shall continue to regard it as such until it is disproven. Territorial Enterprise April 19th through 30th, 1863. Local Column. Electrical Mill Machinery. Mr. William L. Card of Silver City has invented a sort of infernal machine which is to turn quartz mills by electricity. It consists of wheels and things, and—however, we could not describe it without getting tangled. Mr. Card assures us that he can apply his invention to all the mills in Silver City and work the whole lot with one powerful grove battery. We believe, and if we had Galvanic sense enough to explain the arrangement properly, others would also. A patent has already been applied for. This is Section 7 of Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain. This Liebervox recording is in the public domain. Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain, Section 7, Territorial Enterprise May June 1863. Territorial Enterprise May 19th through 21st, 1863. Letter from Mark Twain. San Francisco May 16th, 1863. Editor's Enterprise. The unreliable, since he has been here, has conducted himself in such a reckless and unprincipled manner that he has brought the whole territory into disrepute and made its name a reproach and its visiting citizens objects of suspicion. He has been a perfect nightmare to the officers of the Occidental Hotel. They give him an excellent room, but if, in prowling about the house, he finds another that suits him better, he locates it. That is, his slang way of expressing it. Judging by his appearance, what manner a man he was, the hotel clerk at first gave him a room immediately under the shingles, but it was found impossible to keep him there. He said he could not stand it, because spinning round and round up that spiral staircase caused his beer to ferment and made him foam at the mouth like a soda fountain, wherefore he descended at the dead of night and jumped a room on the second floor, the very language he used in boasting of the exploit. He said they'd served an injunction on him there, and, says he, if Bill Stewart had been down here, Mark, I'd have sued to quiet title, and I'd have held that ground, don't you know it? And he sighed, and after ruminating a moment he added, in a tone of withering contempt. But these lawyers won't touch a case unless a man has some rights. They haven't any more strategy into them than a clam. But Bill Stewart, thunder! Now, you just take that oafersuit that's coming off in Virginia, for instance. Why? God bless you, Bill Stewart'll worry the witnesses and bully-rag the judge and buy up the jury and pay for them, and he'll prove things that never existed. Hell! What won't he prove? That's the idea. What won't he prove, you know? Why, Mark, I'll tell you what he done went. The unreliable was interrupted here by a messenger from the hotel office who handed him several sheets of legal cap, very neatly folded. He took them and motioned the young man to retire. Now, said he, confidentially, do you know what that is, sweetness? I said I thought it was a wash-bill, or a hotel-bill, or something of that kind. His countenance beamed with admiration. You struck it by the Lord. Yes, sir, that's just what it is. It's another of them assessments. They levied one on me last week, and I meant to go and see a lawyer about it. But the unreliable simmered down into a profound reverie. And I waited in silence to see what species of villainy his fertile brain would bring forth. At last he started up exultingly, with a devilish light in his eye. I've got them in the door, Mark. They've been trying all they knew how to freeze me out, but they can't win. This hotel ain't incorporated under the laws of the territory, and they can't collect. They are only a lot of blasted tenants in common. Oh, certainly! With bitter scorn. They'll get rich playing me for a Chinaman, you know. I forbear to describe how he reveled in the prospect of swindling the Occidental out of his hotel-bill. It is too much humiliation even to think of it. This young man insisted upon taking me to a concert last night, and I refused to go at first, because I am naturally suspicious of him. But he assured me that the Bella Union Melodian was such a chaste and high-toned establishment that he would not hesitate to take any lady there who would go with him. This remark banished my fears, of course, and we proceeded to the House of Amusement. We were the first arrivals there. He purchased two pit tickets for twenty-five cents apiece. I demurred at this kind of hospitality and reminded him that orchestra seats were only fifty cents and private boxes, two dollars and a half. He bent on me a look of compassion and muttered to himself that some people have no more sense than a boiled carrot, that some people's intellects were as dark as the inside of a cow. He walked into the pit and then climbed over into the orchestra seats as coolly as if he had chartered the theatre. I followed, of course. Then he said, Now, Mark, keep your eye skinned on that door-keeper and do as I do. I did as he did, and I am ashamed to say that he climbed a stanchion and took possession of a private box. In due course several gentlemen performers came on the stage and with them half a dozen lovely and blooming damsels, with the largest ankles you ever saw. In fact they were dressed like so many parasols as it were. Their songs and jokes and conundrums were received with rapturous applause. The unreliable said these things were all copyrighted. It is probably true. I never heard them anywhere else. He was well pleased with the performance, and every time one of the ladies sang, he testified his approbation by knocking some of her teeth out with a bouquet. The Bella Union, I am told, is supported entirely by Washoo patronage. There are forty-two single gentlemen here from Washoo, and twenty-six married ones. They were all at the concert last night except two, both unmarried. But if the unreliable had not told me it was a moral, high-toned establishment, I would not have observed it. Honourable William H. Davenport of Virginia and Miss Molly Spangler of Cincinnati, Ohio were married here on the tenth instant at the residence of Colonel John A. Collins. Among the invited guests were Judge Noise and Lady, Mrs. Beecher and France of Virginia, and Mr. Mark Twain. Among the uninvited I noticed only the unreliable. It will probably never be known what became of the spoons. The bridal party left yesterday for Sacramento, and may be expected in Virginia shortly. Old Fat Jolly B. C. Howard, a Lyon County commissioner, is here at the Russ House, where he will linger a while and then depart for his old home in Vermont to return again in the fall. Colonel Raymond of the Zephyr Flat Mill is in the city also, and taking up a good deal of room in Montgomery Street and the bank exchange. He has invested in some fast horses, and I shall probably take them over to Washoe shortly. There are multitudes of people from the territory here at the three principal hotels. Consequently, provisions are scarce. If you will send a few more citizens down, we can carry this election and fill all these city offices with Carson and Virginia men. There is not much doing in stocks just now, especially in the boards, but I suspect it is the case here, as it is in Virginia, that the boards do precious little of the business. Many private sales of Union, Gold Hill, and Yellow Jacket have transpired here during the past week at much higher prices than you quote those stocks at. Three hundred feet of Golden Gate changed hands at one hundred dollars per foot, and fifty feet at one hundred and ten dollars. But a telegram from Virginia yesterday, announcing they had struck it, and moderately rich, in the San Francisco, raised both stocks several figures, as also the Golden Eagle, first South extension of the Golden Gate, which had been offered the day before at thirty dollars a foot. Two hundred feet of Oriental were sold at private sale today at seven dollars a foot. Now, you hear no talk in Virginia but the extraordinary dullness of the San Francisco market. Humbug! It may be dull in the boards, but it is lively enough on the street. If you doubt it, say so, and I will move around a little and furnish you with all the statistics you want. I meant to say something glowing and poetical about the weather, but the unreliable has come in and driven away refined emotion from my breast. He says, Say it's bully you tallow-brained idiot, that's enough. Anybody can understand that. Don't write any of those infernal, sick platitudes about sweet flowers and joyous butterflies and worms and things for people to read before breakfast. You make a fool of yourself that way. Everybody gets disgusted with you. Stuff. Be a man or a mouse, can't you? I must go out now with this conceited ass. There is no other way to get rid of him. Mark Twain Territorial Enterprise June 21st through 24th, 1863. Letter from Mark Twain. All About Fashions. San Francisco, June 19th. Editors' Enterprise. I have just received, per Wells Fargo, the following sweet-scented little note written in a microscopic hand in the center of a delicate sheet of paper, like a wedding invitation, or a funeral notice, and I feel at my duty to answer it. Virginia, June 16th. Mr. Mark Twain, do tell us something about the fashions. I am dying to know what the ladies of San Francisco are wearing. Do now tell us all you know about it, won't you? Pray excuse brevity, for I am in such a hurry, betty. P.S., please burn this as soon as you have read it. Do tell us. And she is in such a hurry. Well, I never knew a girl in my life who could write three consecutive sentences without italicizing a word. They can't do it, you know. Now, if I had a wife, and she, however, I don't think I shall have one this week, and it is hardly worthwhile to borrow trouble. Betty, my love, you do me proud. In thus requesting me to fix up the fashions for you in an intelligent manner, you pay a compliment to my critical and observant eye, and my varied and extensive information, which a mind less perfectly balanced than mine could scarcely contemplate without excess of vanity. Will I tell you something about the fashions? I will, betty. You better bet, you bet, Betsy, my darling. I learn those expressions from the unreliable. Like all the phrases which fall from his lips, they are frightfully vulgar. But then they sound rather musical than otherwise. A happy circumstance has put it in my power to furnish you the fashions from headquarters, as it were, betty. I refer to the assemblage of fashion, elegance, and loveliness called together in the parlor of the Lick House last night, a party given by the proprietors, on the occasion of my paying up that little balance due on my board-bill. I will give a brief and lucid description of the dresses worn by several of the ladies of my acquaintance who were present. Mrs. B. was arrayed in a superb, speckled fulard, with the stripes running fore and aft, and with colettes and camels to match. Also a retonde of chantilly lace embroidered with blue and yellow dogs and birds and things, done in cruel, and edged with a solferino fringe four inches deep. Lovely! Mrs. B. is tall and graceful and beautiful, and the general effect of her costume was to render her appearance extremely lively. Miss J. W. wore a charming robe-pullinet of scarlet ruchelave, with yellow-fluted flounces of rich bombazine, fourteen inches wide, low neck and short sleeves. Also a figaro vest of bleached domestic. Selvage edge turned down with a backstitch and trimmed with festoons of blue chicory taffetas. Gay? I reckon not. Her head-dress was the sweetest thing you ever saw. A bunch of stately ostrich plumes, red and white, springing like fountains above each ear, with a crown between, consisting of a single fleur de soleil, fresh from the garden. Ah, me! Miss W. looked enchantingly pretty. However there was nothing unusual about that. I have seen her look so even in a milder costume. Mrs. J. B. W. wore a heavy, rat-colored brocade silk, studded with large silver stars, and trimmed with organdy. Balloon sleeves of Nanking Peak, gathered at the wrist, cut bias and hollowed out some at the elbow. Also a bernouse of black honniton lace scalloped and embroidered in violet colors, with a battle-piece representing the taking of Holland by the Dutch. Low neck and high-heeled shoes, gloves, palm-leaf fan, hoops. Her head-dress consisted of a simple maroon-colored suntag, with festoons of blue illusion depending from it. Upon her bosom reposed a gorgeous bouquet of real sage-brush, imported from Washu. Mrs. W. looked regally handsome. If every article of dress worn by her on this occasion had been multiplied seven times, I do not believe it would have improved her appearance any. Mrs. C. wore an elegant chevaux de la reine, with ruffles and furblows trimmed with bands of guipre round the bottom, and a mohair garibaldi shirt. Her unique head-dress was crowned with a graceful Pondetaire, limerick French, and she had had her hair done up in papers, green-backs. The effect was very rich, partly owing to the market value of the material, and partly to the general loveliness of the lady herself. Ms. A. H. wore a splendid lusia de l'ammermoor trimmed with green bays, also a cream-colored mantilla, shaped par-de-sue, with a deep gore in the neck and embellished with a wide greck of Tefeta's ribbon, and otherwise garnished with grouches and radishes and things. Her quaffur was a simple wreath of sardines on a string. She was lovely to a fault. Now, what do you think of that effort, Betty? I wish I knew her other name. For an unsanctified newspaper reporter, devoid of a milliner's education, doesn't it strike you that there are more brains and fewer oysters in my head than a casual acquaintance with me would lead one to suppose? Ah, well, what I don't know, Bet, is hardly worth the finding out, I can tell you. I could have described the dresses of all the ladies in that party, but I was afraid to meddle with those of strangers, because I might unwittingly get something wrong and give offence. You see, strangers never exercise any charity in matters of this kind. They always get mad at the least inaccuracies of description concerning their apparel, and make themselves disagreeable. But if you will just rig yourself up according to the models I have furnished you, Bet, you'll do, you know. You can weather the circus. You will naturally wish to be informed as to the most fashionable style of male attire, and I may as well give you an idea of my own personal appearance at the party. I wore one of Mr. Lawler's shirts, and Mr. Ridgeway's vest, and Dr. Wayman's coat, and Mr. Camp's hat, and Mr. Paxton's boots, and Jerry Long's white kids, and Judge Geltrist's cravat, and the unreliable's brass seal ring, and Mr. Tolroad McDonald's pantaloons, and if you have an idea that they are any way short in the legs, do you just climb into them once, sweetness? The balance of my outfit I gathered up indiscriminately from various individuals whose names I have forgotten, and have now no means of ascertaining, as I thoughtlessly erased the marks from the different garments this morning, but I looked salubrious be, if ever a man did.