Hawaii Holomua, Volume I, Number 52, 17 November 1893 — Mark Twain as a Reporter. [ARTICLE]

Mark Twain as a Reporter.

While Mark was a reporter on the Enterprise in the raining regiou of Neva*l.i. he was fon»l of manufacturing items of the horrible stvle. bat on one oceasion he over<lūl tbis bns-,ness. aml the <lisease worked its own cure. He wrote an account of a terrible munler, snpposed to have occnrred at ‘*Dutch Nick's,” a station on the Car?on Kiver. This storj among other reminiscences of Twain, is told bv a writer in California, as follows: He made a man cut his wife s throat and those of his nine children. after whieh diabolical deed the murderer mounted bis horse, cot his own throat from ear to ear, ro<le to Carson City (a distance of three and a half miles) and fell dead in front of • Pete Hopkins' saloon. All the * Califoruia papers copied the

item. and soven»I inade e».litoriaI comment upon it as being the most shooking occurence of the kind ever known on the Pacific Coast. Of course. rival Virgitia Citv papers at cnce denoonced the itera as a “emel and idiotic boax.” They sbowed how the publicatiou of sucb “shocking and recklesd falsehoOvl> disgracvvl aml injuml the and they nuule il as “sultr\ ” nspos>ible for tbe Enterprise «nd its “fool reporter.” Whea the CaIifornia j>:t{\ei-> s*w a!l thisand fouiuI they luul been sold, there w.ss a howl froMi Siskiycn to S.m Diogo. Some {>a p> rs denmnded tbe immeiliaie disoharge of the anthor of tbe item by the Enterprise v>roprietors. They said they wouM uever qnote nnother line from that paper while the reporter who wrote the shocking item remainod on its force. All this worried Mark as I had never before seen him worried. Said he: “ I am being burued alive ou both sides of the mountains. ’ 0 roomed together, and ono night when the persecutīon was hottest, he so distressed that he eoukl not sleep. He tossed, tumbled, and groaned aloml. So I set to work tocomfort him. “Mark.” said 1, “ never roind this bit of n gale, it will soon b!ow itself out. This item of vours will be remembcred and talked abont wken all yonr otber work is forgotten. The murder at Dutch Nick’s wiil be qnoted years from now as the biggest sell of the.se times. ’ As it proved, ho was not discharged, and in lessthan a raonth people everywbero were langbing and joking about tbo raurder at Duteb Nick’s. Wben Mark wrote tbe item he reud it over to me, and I asked hiin how he was going to wind it up so as to make it plain tbat it was a raere invention. “Ob, it is wouml np now,’’ was tbe reply. “lt is all plain enough. I have said tbat tbe family lived in a little cabin at the edge of the great pino forest near Dntch Niek s. when overybody knows tbere’s not a { iue troe within ten mileH of N5ck’s. Tben I make the man ride nearly four miles after be bas cut his tbroat from ear to ear, when >uiy fool must see that be wouhl fall dead in a momeni.” But the people wero all ao shocked at first with the' who1e s a t e throat-cut-ting that tbey did not stop to think of tbese points. Mark’s whole object in writing the stoiy was to mako the murderer go to Pete Hopkin’» saloon and fall dead in front of it—Pete having in some way otfended him. I eouhl nēver quite see how this was to hun Pete Hopkins. Mark probably meant to insiuuate tbat the inurderer had been rendorcd insane by the kind of liquor sold over the Hopkins’ bar, or that ho was one of Pete’s bosom friends. To-day not one man in a hundred in Nevada ean remember anything written by Mark Twain while he was connected with the Enterprise. escept this one item in regard to the shocking marder at Dutch Nick’s; all else is forgotten, even by his oldest and inost intiinate friends. —(CurmU LHeraturt.)