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
towards 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 reconnoitring 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, upward 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 bosh, 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 of abuse and ornamental blasphemy.
Now I will read that item myself, and see if there is any
foundation for all this fuss. And if there is, the author of it
shall hear from me.
* * * * *
I have read it, and I am bound to admit that it seems a little
mixed at a first glance. However, I will peruse it once more.
* * * * *
I have read it again, and it does really seem a good deal more
mixed than ever.
* * * * *
I have read it over five times, but if I can get at the meaning of
it, I wish I may get my just deserts. It won't bear analysis. There
are things about it which I cannot understand at all. It don't say
what ever became of William Schuyler. It just says enough about him
to get one interested in his career, and then drops him. Who is
William Schuyler, anyhow, and what part of South Park did he live in,
and if he started down-town at six o'clock, did he ever get there,
and if he did, did anything happen to him? Is _he_ the individual
that met with the "distressing accident"? Considering the elaborate
circumstantiality of detail observable in the item, it seems to me
that it ought to contain more information than it does. On the
contrary, it is obscure--and not only obscure, but utterly
incomprehensible. Was the breaking of Mr. Schuyler's leg, fifteen
years ago, the "distressing accident" that plunged Mr. Bloke into
unspeakable grief, and caused him to come up here at dead of night
and stop our press to acquaint the world with the circumstance? Or
did the "distressing accident" consist in the destruction of
Schuyler's mother-in-law's property in early times? Or did it consist
in the death of that person herself three years ago (albeit it does
not appear that she died by accident)? In a word, what _did_ that
"distressing accident" consist in? What did that drivelling ass of a
Schuyler stand _in the wake_ of a runaway horse for, with his
shouting and gesticulating, if he wanted to stop him? And how the
mischief could he get run over by a horse that had already passed
beyond him? And what are we to take "warning" by? And how is this
extraordinary chapter of incomprehensibilities going to be a "lesson"
to us? And, above all, what has the intoxicating "bowl" got to do
with it, anyhow? It is not stated that Schuyler drank, or that his
wife drank, or that his mother-in-law drank, or that the horse
drank--wherefore, then, the reference to the intoxicating bowl? It
does seem to me that if Mr. Bloke had let the intoxicating bowl alone
himself, he never would have got into so much trouble about this
exasperating imaginary accident. I have read this absurd item over
and over again, with all its insinuating plausibility, until my head
swims, but I can make neither head nor tail of it. There certainly
seems to have been an accident of some kind or other, but it is
impossible to determine what the nature of it was, or who was the
sufferer by it. I do not like to do it, but I feel compelled to
request that the next time anything happens to one of Mr. Bloke's
friends, he will append such explanatory notes to his account of it
as will enable me to find out what sort of an accident it was and whom
it happened to. I had rather all his friends should die than that I
should be driven to the verge of lunacy again in trying to cipher out
the meaning of another such production as the above.
[Illustration: "I HAVE READ THIS ABSURD ITEM OVER"]