and study geometry at breakfast, and peddle my own poetry, and do
everything just as Franklin did, in the solemn hope that I would be a
Franklin some day. And here I am.
MR. BLOKE’S ITEM –[Written about 1865.]
Our esteemed friend, Mr. John William Bloke, of Virginia City, walked
into the office where we are sub-editor at a late hour last night, with
an expression of profound and heartfelt suffering upon his countenance,
and, sighing heavily, laid the following item reverently upon the desk,
and walked slowly out again. He paused a moment at the door, and seemed
struggling to command his feelings sufficiently to enable him to speak,
and then, nodding his head toward his manuscript, ejaculated in a broken
voice, “Friend of mine–oh! how sad!” and burst into tears. We were so
moved at his distress that we did not think to call him back and endeavor
to comfort him until he was gone, and it was too late. The paper had
already gone to press, but knowing that our friend would consider the
publication of this item important, and cherishing the hope that to print
it would afford a melancholy satisfaction to his sorrowing heart, we
stopped, the press at once and inserted it in our columns:
DISTRESSING ACCIDENT.–Last evening, about six o’clock, as Mr.
William Schuyler, an old and respectable citizen of South Park, was
leaving his residence to go down-town, as has been his usual custom
for many years with the exception only of a short interval in the
spring of 1850, during which he was confined to his bed by injuries
received in attempting to stop a runaway horse by thoughtlessly
placing himself directly in its wake and throwing up his hands and
shouting, which if he had done so even a single moment sooner, must
inevitably have frightened the animal still more instead of checking
its speed, although disastrous enough to himself as it was, and
rendered more melancholy and distressing by reason of the presence
of his wife’s mother, who was there and saw the sad occurrence
notwithstanding it is at least likely, though not necessarily so,
that she should be reconnoitering in another direction when
incidents occur, not being vivacious and on the lookout, as a
general thing, but even the reverse, as her own mother is said to
have stated, who is no more, but died in the full hope of a glorious
resurrection, upwards of three years ago; aged eighty-six, being a
Christian woman and without guile, as it were, or property, in
consequence of the fire of 1849, which destroyed every single thing
she had in the world. But such is life. Let us all take warning by
this solemn occurrence, and let us endeavor so to conduct ourselves
that when we come to die we can do it. Let us place our hands upon
our heart, and say with earnestness and sincerity that from this day
forth we will beware of the intoxicating bowl.–‘First Edition of
the Californian.’
The head editor has been in here raising the mischief, and tearing his
hair and kicking the furniture about, and abusing me like a pickpocket.
He says that every time he leaves me in charge of the paper for half an
hour I get imposed upon by the first infant or the first idiot that comes
along. And he says that that distressing item of Mr. Bloke’s is nothing
but a lot of distressing bash, and has no point to it, and no sense in
it, and no information in it, and that there was no sort of necessity for
stopping the press to publish it.
Now all this comes of being good-hearted. If I had been as
unaccommodating and unsympathetic as some people, I would have told
Mr. Bloke that I wouldn’t receive his communication at such a late hour;
but no, his snuffling distress touched my heart, and I jumped at the
chance of doing something to modify his misery. I never read his item to
see whether there was anything wrong about it, but hastily wrote the few
lines which preceded it, and sent it to the printers. And what has my
kindness done for me? It has done nothing but bring down upon me a storm