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in Montana in my life.
[After this, this journal customarily spoke of me as, "Twain, the Montana
Thief."]
I got to picking up papers apprehensively--much as one would lift a
desired blanket which he had some idea might have a rattlesnake under it.
One day this met my eye:
THE LIE NAILED.--By the sworn affidavits of Michael O'Flanagan,
Esq., of the Five Points, and Mr. Snub Rafferty and Mr. Catty
Mulligan, of Water Street, it is established that Mr. Mark Twain's
vile statement that the lamented grandfather of our noble
standard-bearer, Blank J. Blank, was hanged for highway robbery, is
a brutal and gratuitous LIE, without a shadow of foundation in fact.
It is disheartening to virtuous men to see such shameful means
resorted to to achieve political success as the attacking of the
dead in their graves, and defiling their honored names with slander.
When we think of the anguish this miserable falsehood must cause the
innocent relatives and friends of the deceased, we are almost driven
to incite an outraged and insulted public to summary and unlawful
vengeance upon the traducer. But no! let us leave him to the agony
of a lacerated conscience (though if passion should get the better
of the public, and in its blind fury they should do the traducer
bodily injury, it is but too obvious that no jury could convict and
390
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