that the public devoured them greedily, and wholly overlooked the

following distinctly stated facts, to wit: The murderer was perfectly

well known to every creature in the land as a bachelor, and consequently

he could not murder his wife and nine children; he murdered them "in his

splendid dressed-stone mansion just in the edge of the great pine forest

between Empire City and Dutch Nick's," when even the very pickled oysters

that came on our tables knew that there was not a "dressed-stone mansion"

in all Nevada Territory; also that, so far from there being a "great pine

forest between Empire City and Dutch Nick's," there wasn't a solitary

tree within fifteen miles of either place; and, finally, it was patent

and notorious that Empire City and Dutch Nick's were one and the same

place, and contained only six houses anyhow, and consequently there could

be no forest between them; and on top of all these absurdities I stated

that this diabolical murderer, after inflicting a wound upon himself that

the reader ought to have seen would kill an elephant in the twinkling of

an eye, jumped on his horse and rode four miles, waving his wife's

reeking scalp in the air, and thus performing entered Carson City with

tremendous éclat, and dropped dead in front of the chief saloon, the envy

and admiration of all beholders.

Well, in all my life I never saw anything like the sensation that little

satire created. It was the talk of the town, it was the talk of the

territory. Most of the citizens dropped gently into it at breakfast, and

they never finished their meal. There was something about those minutely

faithful details that was a sufficing substitute for food. Few people

that were able to read took food that morning. Dan and I (Dan was my

306

Sketches New and Old