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MR.BLIIKE'S ITEM.
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
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 reconnoitering in another direction when incidents occur, not being vivacious and on the
look out, 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, upwards 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 pick-pocket. 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 whatever 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
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.
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