letter, Riley’s newspaper letters often display a more than earthly
solemnity, and likewise an unimaginative devotion to petrified facts,
which surprise and distress all men who know him in his unofficial
character. He explains this curious thing by saying that his employers
sent him to Washington to write facts, not fancy, and that several times
he has come near losing his situation by inserting humorous remarks
which, not being looked for at headquarters, and consequently not
understood, were thought to be dark and bloody speeches intended to
convey signals and warnings to murderous secret societies, or something
of that kind, and so were scratched out with a shiver and a prayer and
cast into the stove. Riley says that sometimes he is so afflicted with
a yearning to write a sparkling and absorbingly readable letter that he
simply cannot resist it, and so he goes to his den and revels in the
delight of untrammeled scribbling; and then, with suffering such as only
a mother can know, he destroys the pretty children of his fancy and
reduces his letter to the required dismal accuracy. Having seen Riley do
this very thing more than once, I know whereof I speak. Often I have
laughed with him over a happy passage, and grieved to see him plow his
pen through it. He would say, “I had to write that or die; and I’ve got
to scratch it out or starve. They wouldn’t stand it, you know.”
I think Riley is about the most entertaining company I ever saw. We
lodged together in many places in Washington during the winter of ’67-8,
moving comfortably from place to place, and attracting attention by
paying our board–a course which cannot fail to make a person conspicuous
in Washington. Riley would tell all about his trip to California in the
early days, by way of the Isthmus and the San Juan River; and about his
baking bread in San Francisco to gain a living, and setting up tenpins,
and practising law, and opening oysters, and delivering lectures, and
teaching French, and tending bar, and reporting for the newspapers, and
keeping dancing-schools, and interpreting Chinese in the courts–which
latter was lucrative, and Riley was doing handsomely and laying up a
little money when people began to find fault because his translations
were too “free,” a thing for which Riley considered he ought not to be
held responsible, since he did not know a word of the Chinese tongue, and
only adopted interpreting as a means of gaining an honest livelihood.
Through the machinations of enemies he was removed from the position of
official interpreter, and a man put in his place who was familiar with
the Chinese language, but did not know any English. And Riley used to
tell about publishing a newspaper up in what is Alaska now, but was only
an iceberg then, with a population composed of bears, walruses, Indians,
and other animals; and how the iceberg got adrift at last, and left all
his paying subscribers behind, and as soon as the commonwealth floated
out of the jurisdiction of Russia the people rose and threw off their
allegiance and ran up the English flag, calculating to hook on and become
an English colony as they drifted along down the British Possessions; but
a land breeze and a crooked current carried them by, and they ran up the
Stars and Stripes and steered for California, missed the connection again
and swore allegiance to Mexico, but it wasn’t any use; the anchors came
home every time, and away they went with the northeast trades drifting
off sideways toward the Sandwich Islands, whereupon they ran up the
Cannibal flag and had a grand human barbecue in honor of it, in which it
was noticed that the better a man liked a friend the better he enjoyed
him; and as soon as they got fairly within the tropics the weather got so
fearfully hot that the iceberg began to melt, and it got so sloppy under
foot that it was almost impossible for ladies to get about at all; and at
last, just as they came in sight of the islands, the melancholy remnant
of the once majestic iceberg canted first to one side and then to the