Mark Twain A Biography Part 183

THE COMMUNICATION

R.R. Steamer Trombone, VICKSBURG, May 8, 1859.

The river from New Orleans up to Natchez is higher than it has been since the n.i.g.g.e.rs were executed (which was in the fall of 1813) and my opinion is that if the rise continues at this rate the water will be on the roof of the St. Charles Hotel before the middle of January. The point at Cairo, which has not even been moistened by the river since 1813, is now entirely under water.

However, Mr. Editor, the inhabitants of the Mississippi Valley should not act precipitately and sell their plantations at a sacrifice on account of this prophecy of mine, for I shall proceed to convince them of a great fact in regard to this matter, viz.: that the tendency of the Mississippi is to rise less and less high every year (with an occasional variation of the rule), that such has been the case for many centuries, and eventually that it will cease to rise at all. Therefore, I would hint to the planters, as we say in an innocent little parlor game commonly called "draw," that if they can only "stand the rise" this time they may enjoy the comfortable a.s.surance that the old river's banks will never hold a "full" again during their natural lives.

In the summer of 1763 I came down the river on the old first Jubilee.

She was new then, however; a singular sort of a single-engine boat, with a Chinese captain and a Choctaw crew, forecastle on her stern, wheels in the center, and the jackstaff "nowhere," for I steered her with a window-shutter, and when we wanted to land we sent a line ash.o.r.e and "rounded her to" with a yoke of oxen.

Well, sir, we wooded off the top of the big bluff above Selmathe only dry land visible--and waited there three weeks, swapping knives and playing "seven up" with the Indians, waiting for the river to fall.

Finally, it fell about a hundred feet, and we went on. One day we rounded to, and I got in a horse-trough, which my partner borrowed from the Indians up there at Selma while they were at prayers, and went down to sound around No. 8, and while I was gone my partner got aground on the hills at Hickman. After three days' labor we finally succeeded in sparring her off with a capstan bar, and went on to Memphis. By the time we got there the river had subsided to such an extent that we were able to land where the Gayoso House now stands. We finished loading at Memphis, and loaded part of the stone for the present St. Louis Court House (which was then in process of erection), to be taken up on our return trip.

You can form some conception, by these memoranda, of how high the water was in 1763. In 1775 it did not rise so high by thirty feet; in 1790 it missed the original mark at least sixty-five feet; in 1797, one hundred and fifty feet; and in 1806, nearly two hundred and fifty feet. These were "high-water" years. The "high waters" since then have been so insignificant that I have scarcely taken the trouble to notice them.

Thus, you will perceive that the planters need not feel uneasy. The river may make an occasional spasmodic effort at a flood, but the time is approaching when it will cease to rise altogether.

In conclusion, sir, I will condescend to hint at the foundation of these arguments: When me and De Soto discovered the Mississippi I could stand at Bolivar Landing (several miles above "Roaring Waters Bar") and pitch a biscuit to the main sh.o.r.e on the other side, and in low water we waded across at Donaldsonville. The gradual widening and deepening of the river is the whole secret of the matter.

Yours, etc.

SERGEANT FATHOM.

APPENDIX C.

I. MARK TWAIN'S EMPIRE CITY HOAX (See Chapter xli) THE LATEST SENSATION.

A Victim to Jeremy Diddling Trustees--He Cuts his Throat from Ear to Ear, Scalps his Wife, and Dashes Out the Brains of Six Helpless Children!

From Abram Curry, who arrived here yesterday afternoon from Carson, we learn the following particulars concerning a b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.sacre which was committed in Ormsby County night before last. It seems that during the past six months a man named P. Hopkins, or Philip Hopkins, has been residing with his family in the old log-house just at the edge of the great pine forest which lies between Empire City and Dutch Nick's. The family consisted of nine children--five girls and four boys--the oldest of the group, Mary, being nineteen years old, and the youngest, Tommy, about a year and a half. Twice in the past two months Mrs. Hopkins, while visiting Carson, expressed fears concerning the sanity of her husband, remarking that of late he had been subject to fits of violence, and that during the prevalence of one of these he had threatened to take her life. It was Mrs. Hopkins's misfortune to be given to exaggeration, however, and but little attention was given to what she said.

About 10 o'clock on Monday evening Hopkins dashed into Carson on horseback, with his throat cut from ear to ear, and bearing in his hand a reeking scalp, from which the warm, smoking blood was still dripping, and fell in a dying condition in front of the Magnolia saloon. Hopkins expired, in the course of five minutes, without speaking. The long, red hair of the scalp he bore marked it as that of Mrs. Hopkins. A number of citizens, headed by Sheriff Gasherie, mounted at once and rode down to Hopkins's house, where a ghastly scene met their eyes. The scalpless corpse of Mrs. Hopkins lay across the threshold, with her head split open and her right hand almost severed from the wrist. Near her lay the ax with which the murderous deed had been committed. In one of the bedrooms six of the children were found, one in bed and the others scattered about the floor. They were all dead. Their brains had evidently been dashed out with a club, and every mark about them seemed to have been made with a blunt instrument. The children must have struggled hard for their lives, as articles of clothing and broken furniture were strewn about the room in the utmost confusion. Julia and Emma, aged respectively fourteen and seventeen, were found in the kitchen, bruised and insensible, but it is thought their recovery is possible. The eldest girl, Mary, must have sought refuge, in her terror, in the garret, as her body was found there frightfully mutilated, and the knife with which her wounds had been inflicted still sticking in her side. The two girls Julia and Emma, who had recovered sufficiently to be able to talk yesterday morning, declare that their father knocked them down with a billet of wood and stamped on them. They think they were the first attacked. They further state that Hopkins had shown evidence of derangement all day, but had exhibited no violence. He flew into a pa.s.sion and attempted to murder them because they advised him to go to bed and compose his mind.

Curry says Hopkins was about forty-two years of age, and a native of western Pennsylvania; he was always affable and polite, and until very recently no one had ever heard of his ill-treating his family. He had been a heavy owner in the best mines of Virginia and Gold Hill, but when the San Francisco papers exposed our game of cooking dividends in order to bolster up our stocks he grew afraid and sold out, and invested an immense amount in the Spring Valley Water Company, of San Francisco. He was advised to do this by a relative of his, one of the editors of the San Francis...o...b..lletin, who had suffered pecuniarily by the dividend-cooking system as applied to the Daney Mining Company recently.

Hopkins had not long ceased to own in the various claims on the Comstock lead, however, when several dividends were cooked on his newly acquired property, their water totally dried up, and Spring Valley stock went down to nothing. It is presumed that this misfortune drove him mad, and resulted in his killing himself and the greater portion of his family.

The newspapers of San Francisco permitted this water company to go on borrowing money and cooking dividends, under cover of which the cunning financiers crept out of the tottering concern, leaving the crash to come upon poor and unsuspecting stockholders, without offering to expose the villainy at work. We hope the fearful ma.s.sacre detailed above may prove the saddest result of their silence.

II. NEWS-GATHERING WITH MARK TWAIN.

Alfred Doten's son gives the following account of a reporting trip made by his father and Mark Twain, when the two were on Comstock papers:

My father and Mark Twain were once detailed to go over to Como and write up some new mines that had been discovered over there. My father was on the Gold Hill News. He and Mark had not met before, but became promptly acquainted, and were soon calling each other by their first names.

They went to a little hotel at Carson, agreeing to do their work there together next morning. When morning came they set out, and suddenly on a corner Mark stopped and turned to my father, saying:

"By gracious, Alf! Isn't that a brewery?"

"It is, Mark. Let's go in."

They did so, and remained there all day, swapping yarns, sipping beer, and lunching, going back to the hotel that night.

The next morning precisely the same thing occurred. When they were on the same corner, Mark stopped as if he had never been there before, and sand:

"Good gracious, Alf! Isn't that a brewery?"

"It is, Mark. Let's go in."

So again they went in, and again stayed all day.

This happened again the next morning, and the next. Then my father became uneasy. A letter had come from Gold Hill, asking him where his report of the mines was. They agreed that next morning they would really begin the story; that they would climb to the top of a hill that overlooked the mines, and write it from there.

But the next morning, as before, Mark was surprised to discover the brewery, and once more they went in. A few moments later, however, a man who knew all about the mines--a mining engineer connected with them--came in. He was a G.o.dsend. My father set down a valuable, informing story, while Mark got a lot of entertaining mining yarns out of him.

Next day Virginia City and Gold Hill were gaining information from my father's article, and entertainment from Mark's story of the mines.

APPENDIX D

FROM MARK TWAIN'S FIRST LECTURE, DELIVERED OCTOBER 2, 1866.

(See Chapter liv) HAWAIIAN IMPORTANCE TO AMERICA.

After a full elucidation of the sugar industry of the Sandwich Islands, its profits and possibilities, he said:

I have dwelt upon this subject to show you that these islands have a genuine importance to America--an importance which is not generally appreciated by our citizens. They pay revenues into the United States Treasury now amounting to over a half a million a year.

I do not know what the sugar yield of the world is now, but ten years ago, according to the Patent Office reports, it was 800,000 hogsheads.

The Sandwich Islands, properly cultivated by go-ahead Americans, are capable of providing one-third as much themselves. With the Pacific Railroad built, the great China Mail Line of steamers touching at Honolulu--we could stock the islands with Americans and supply a third of the civilized world with sugar--and with the silkiest, longest-stapled cotton this side of the Sea Islands, and the very best quality of rice.... The property has got to fall to some heir, and why not the United States?

NATIVE Pa.s.sION FOR FUNERALS

They are very fond of funerals. Big funerals are their main weakness.

Fine grave clothes, fine funeral appointments, and a long procession are things they take a generous delight in. They are fond of their chief and their king; they reverence them with a genuine reverence and love them with a warm affection, and often look forward to the happiness they will experience in burying them. They will beg, borrow, or steal money enough, and flock from all the islands, to be present at a royal funeral on Oahu. Years ago a Kanaka and his wife were condemned to be hanged for murder. They received the sentence with manifest satisfaction because it gave an opening for a funeral, you know. All they care for is a funeral.

It makes but little difference to them whose it is; they would as soon attend their own funeral as anybody else's. This couple were people of consequence, and had landed estates. They sold every foot of ground they had and laid it out in fine clothes to be hung in. And the woman appeared on the scaffold in a white satin dress and slippers and fathoms of gaudy ribbon, and the man was arrayed in a gorgeous vest, blue claw-hammer coat and bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, and white kid gloves. As the noose was adjusted around his neck, he blew his nose with a grand theatrical flourish, so as to show his embroidered white handkerchief. I never, never knew of a couple who enjoyed hanging more than they did.

VIEW FROM HALEAKALA

It is a solemn pleasure to stand upon the summit of the extinct crater of Haleakala, ten thousand feet above the sea, and gaze down into its awful crater, 27 miles in circ.u.mference and ago feet deep, and to picture to yourself the seething world of fire that once swept up out of the tremendous abyss ages ago.

The prodigious funnel is dead and silent now, and even has bushes growing far down in its bottom, where the deep-sea line could hardly have reached in the old times, when the place was filled with liquid lava. These bushes look like parlor shrubs from the summit where you stand, and the file of visitors moving through them on their mules is diminished to a detachment of mice almost; and to them you, standing so high up against the sun, ten thousand feet above their heads, look no larger than a gra.s.shopper.