University of Virginia Library

RILEY—NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENT.

ONE of the best men in Washington
— or elsewhere — is
Riley, correspondent of one
of the great San Francisco dailies.

Riley is full of humor, and has
an unfailing vein of irony, which
makes his conversation to the last
degree entertaining (as long as the
remarks are about somebody else).
But, notwithstanding the possession
of these qualities, which should enable
a man to write a happy and an
appetizing letter, Riley's newspaper
letters often display a more than earthly solemnity, and likewise an unimaginative
devotion to petrified facts, which surprise and distress all men who

know him in his unofficial character. He explains this curious thing by saying that
his employers sent him to Washington to write facts, not fancy, and that several
times he has come near losing his situation by inserting humorous remarks which,
not being looked for at headquarters, and consequently not understood, were
thought to be dark and bloody speeches intended to convey signals and warnings
to murderous secret societies, or something of that kind, and so were scratched out
with a shiver and a prayer and cast into the stove. Riley says that sometimes he is
so afflicted with a yearning to write a sparkling and absorbingly readable letter
that he simply cannot resist it, and so he goes to his den and revels in the delight
of untramelled scribbling; and then, with suffering such as only a mother can know,
he destroys the pretty children of his fancy and reduces his letter to the required
dismal accuracy. Having seen Riley do this very thing more than once, I know
whereof I speak. Often I have laughed with him over a happy passage, and grieved
to see him plough his pen through it. He would say, “I had to write that or die;
and I've got to scratch it out or starve. They wouldn't stand it, you know.”

I think Riley is about the most entertaining company I ever saw. We lodged
together in many places in Washington during the winter of '67-8, moving comfortably
from place to place, and attracting attention by paying our board—a course
which cannot fail to make a person conspicuous in Washington. Riley would tell
all about his trip to California in the early days, by way of the Isthmus and the
San Juan river; and about his baking bread in San Francisco to gain a living, and
setting up ten-pins, and practising law, and opening oysters, and delivering lectures,
and teaching French, and tending bar, and reporting for the newspapers, and
keeping dancing-schools, and interpreting Chinese in the courts—which latter was
lucrative, and Riley was doing handsomely and laying up a little money when
people began to find fault because his translations were too “free,” a thing for
which Riley considered he ought not to be held responsible, since he did not know
a word of the Chinese tongue, and only adopted interpreting as means of gaining
an honest livelihood. Through the machinations of enemies he was removed
from the position of official interpreter, and a man put in his place who was familiar
with the Chinese language, but did not know any English. And Riley used to tell
about publishing a newspaper up in what is Alaska now, but was only an iceberg

then, with a population composed of bears, walruses, Indians, and other animals;
and how the iceberg got adrift at last, and left all his paying subscribers behind,
and as soon as the commonwealth floated out of the jurisdiction of Russia the
people rose and threw off their allegiance and ran up the English flag, calculating
to hook on and become an English colony as they drifted along down the British
Possessions; but a land breeze and a crooked current carried them by, and they
ran up the Stars and Stripes and steered for California, missed the connection
again and swore allegiance to Mexico, but it wasn't any use; the anchors came
home every time, and away they went with the north-east trades drifting off
side-ways toward the Sandwich Islands, whereupon they ran up the Cannibal flag
and had a grand human barbecue in honor of it, in which it was noticed that the
better a man liked a friend the better he enjoyed him; and as soon as they got fairly
within the tropics the weather got so fearfully hot that the iceberg began to melt,
and it got so sloppy under foot that it was almost impossible for ladies to get about
at all; and at last, just as they came in sight of the islands, the melancholy remnant
of the once majestic iceberg canted first to one side and then to the other, and
then plunged under for ever, carrying the national archives along with it—and not
only the archives and the populace, but some eligible town lots which had increased
in value as fast as they diminished in size in the tropics, and which Riley could
have sold at thirty cents a pound and made himself rich if he could have kept the
province afloat ten hours longer and got her into port.

Riley is very methodical, untiringly accommodating, never forgets anything that
is to be attended to, is a good son, a staunch friend, and a permanent reliable
enemy. He will put himself to any amount of trouble to oblige a body, and therefore
always has his hands full of things to be done for the helpless and the shiftless.
And he knows how to do nearly everything, too. He is a man whose native benevolence
is a well-spring that never goes dry. He stands always ready to help
whoever needs help, as far as he is able—and not simply with his money, for that
is a cheap and common charity, but with hand and brain, and fatigue of limb and
sacrifice of time. This sort of men is rare.

Riley has a ready wit, a quickness and aptness at selecting and applying quotations,
and a countenance that is as solemn and as blank as the back side of a

tombstone when he is delivering a particularly exasperating joke. One night a
negro woman was burned to death in a house next door to us, and Riley said that
our landlady would be oppressively emotional at breakfast, because she generally
made use of such opportunities as offered, being of a morbidly sentimental turn,
and so we should find it best to let her talk along and say nothing back—it was the
only way to keep her tears out of the gravy. Riley said there never was a funeral
in the neighborhood but that the gravy was watery for a week.

And, sure enough, at breakfast the landlady was down in the very sloughs of woe
—entirely broken-hearted. Everything she looked at reminded her of that poor
old negro woman, and so the buckwheat cakes made her sob, the coffee forced a
groan, and when the beefsteak came on she fetched a wail that made our hair rise.
Then she got to talking about deceased, and kept up a steady drizzle till both of
us were soaked through and through. Presently she took a fresh breath and said,
with a world of sobs—

“Ah, to think of it, only to think of it!—the poor old faithful creature. For she
was so faithful. Would you believe it, she had been a servant in that self-same
house and that self-same family for twenty-seven years come Christmas, and never
a cross word and never a lick! And, oh, to think she should meet such a death at
last!—a-sitting over the red-hot stove at three o'clock in the morning and went to
sleep and fell on it and was actually roasted! Not just frizzled up a bit, but
literally roasted to a crisp! Poor faithful creature, how she was cooked! I am but
a poor woman, but even if I have to scrimp to do it, I will put up a tombstone over
that lone sufferer's grave—and Mr. Riley if you would have the goodness to think
up a little epitaph to put on it which would sort of describe the awful way in which
she met her”—

“Put it, `Well done, good and faithful servant,”' said Riley, and never smiled.