Sketches New and Old

  MY BLOODY MASSACRE

  The other burlesque I have referred to was my fine satire upon thefinancial expedients of "cooking dividends," a thing which becameshamefully frequent on the Pacific coast for a while. Once more, in myself-complacent simplicity I felt that the time had arrived for me torise up and be a reformer. I put this reformatory satire in the shapeof a fearful "Massacre at Empire City." The San Francisco papers weremaking a great outcry about the iniquity of the Daney Silver-MiningCompany, whose directors had declared a "cooked" or false dividend, forthe purpose of increasing the value of their stock, so that they couldsell out at a comfortable figure, and then scramble from under thetumbling concern. And while abusing the Daney, those papers did notforget to urge the public to get rid of all their silver stocks andinvest in sound and safe San Francisco stocks, such as the Spring ValleyWater Company, etc. But right at this unfortunate juncture, behold theSpring Valley cooked a dividend too! And so, under the insidious mask ofan invented "bloody massacre," I stole upon the public unawares with myscathing satire upon the dividend-cooking system. In about half a columnof imaginary human carnage I told how a citizen had murdered his wifeand nine children, and then committed suicide. And I said slyly, at thebottom, that the sudden madness of which this melancholy massacre was theresult had been brought about by his having allowed himself to bepersuaded by the California papers to sell his sound and lucrative Nevadasilver stocks, and buy into Spring Valley just in time to get cookedalong with that company's fancy dividend, and sink every cent he had inthe world.

  Ah, it was a deep, deep satire, and most ingeniously contrived. But Imade the horrible details so carefully and conscientiously interestingthat the public devoured them greedily, and wholly overlooked thefollowing distinctly stated facts, to wit: The murderer was perfectlywell known to every creature in the land as a bachelor, and consequentlyhe could not murder his wife and nine children; he murdered them "in hissplendid dressed-stone mansion just in the edge of the great pine forestbetween Empire City and Dutch Nick's," when even the very pickled oystersthat 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 pineforest between Empire City and Dutch Nick's," there wasn't a solitarytree within fifteen miles of either place; and, finally, it was patentand notorious that Empire City and Dutch Nick's were one and the sameplace, and contained only six houses anyhow, and consequently there couldbe no forest between them; and on top of all these absurdities I statedthat this diabolical murderer, after inflicting a wound upon himself thatthe reader ought to have seen would kill an elephant in the twinkling ofan eye, jumped on his horse and rode four miles, waving his wife'sreeking scalp in the air, and thus performing entered Carson City withtremendous eclat, and dropped dead in front of the chief saloon, the envyand admiration of all beholders.

  Well, in all my life I never saw anything like the sensation that littlesatire created. It was the talk of the town, it was the talk of theterritory. Most of the citizens dropped gently into it at breakfast, andthey never finished their meal. There was something about those minutelyfaithful details that was a sufficing substitute for food. Few peoplethat were able to read took food that morning. Dan and I (Dan was myreportorial associate) took our seats on either side of our customarytable in the "Eagle Restaurant," and, as I unfolded the shred they usedto call a napkin in that establishment, I saw at the next table twostalwart innocents with that sort of vegetable dandruff sprinkled abouttheir clothing which was the sign and evidence that they were in from theTruckee with a load of hay. The one facing me had the morning paperfolded to a long, narrow strip, and I knew, without any telling, thatthat strip represented the column that contained my pleasant financialsatire. From the way he was excitedly mumbling, I saw that the heedlessson of a hay-mow was skipping with all his might, in order to get to thebloody details as quickly as possible; and so he was missing theguide-boards I had set up to warn him that the whole thing was a fraud.Presently his eyes spread wide open, just as his jaws swung asunder totake in a potato approaching it on a fork; the potato halted, the facelit up redly, and the whole man was on fire with excitement. Then hebroke into a disjointed checking off of the particulars--his potatocooling in mid-air meantime, and his mouth making a reach for itoccasionally, but always bringing up suddenly against a new and stillmore direful performance of my hero. At last he looked his stunned andrigid comrade impressively in the face, and said, with an expression ofconcentrated awe:

  "Jim, he b'iled his baby, and he took the old 'oman's skelp. Cuss'd if Iwant any breakfast!"

  And he laid his lingering potato reverently down, and he and his frienddeparted from the restaurant empty but satisfied.

  He NEVER GOT DOWN to where the satire part of it began. Nobody ever did.They found the thrilling particulars sufficient. To drop in with a poorlittle moral at the fag-end of such a gorgeous massacre was likefollowing the expiring sun with a candle and hope to attract the world'sattention to it.

  The idea that anybody could ever take my massacre for a genuineoccurrence never once suggested itself to me, hedged about as it was byall those telltale absurdities and impossibilities concerning the "greatpine forest," the "dressed-stone mansion," etc. But I found out then,and never have forgotten since, that we never read the dull explanatorysurroundings of marvelously exciting things when we have no occasion tosuppose that some irresponsible scribbler is trying to defraud us; weskip all that, and hasten to revel in the blood-curdling particulars andbe happy.