MARK TWAIN HOAX.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10416, 21 March 1912, Page 2

MARK TWAIN HOAX.

In his early journalistic days when he was a reporter on the Territorial Enterprise,"' Virginia City, Nevada, Mark Twain perpetrated several hoaxes which aro still vividly remembered. A billet was made him on the "Enterprise," because signs of much promise had been detected in occasional letters of his which had reached Joe Goodman, the editor. Mark Twain walked 130 miles from Aurora to Virginia City to take up his duty. "It was tho afternoon of a hot. dusty August day when a worn, travel-stain-ed pilgrim" drifted laggingly into tho office of tho ' Territorial Enterprise,' then in its new building on C Street, and, loosening a heavy roll of blankets irom his shoulrlers, dropped wearily into a chair. He wore a rusty slouch hat, no coat, a faded blue flannel shirt-, and a navy revolver. His troupers were hanging on his boot-tops. A tangle of reddish-brown hair fell on his shoulders, and a mass of tawny beard, dingy with alkali dust, dropped half-way to his waist-." . Tt was when his writing had begun to attract notico on the ''Enterprise' that he adopted the press name of Mark Twain, which eventually almost extinguished his real name, ' Samuel Clemens." . „ Mr Albert Bigelow Paine tells about tlio journalistic hoaxes in " Harper s Magazine" for February. One of tho mast successful was the "Empire City Massacre." This literary bomb was to punish the San Francisco "Bulletin for its persistent attacks on "\\ ashoe interests. The " Bulletin"' was to be made especially ridiculous. That papei. writes Mr Paine, had been particularly disagreeable concerning the " dmdendcooking" svstem of certain of the Cornstock mines, at the same time calling invidious attention to safer investments-' in various California stocks. Samuel Clemen;;, with " half a t-runk-ful" of Comstoek shares, had cultivated a distaste for California things in general. To his great satisfaction, ono of tho leading California corporations, the Spring Valley Water Company, " cooked." a dividend of its own about this time, resulting in disaster to a number of guileless investors who were on the wrong side of the subsequent crash. Tins afforded an inviting opportunity for reprisal. With Goodman; s consent, he planned for the California pnpers, and the " Bulletin" in particular, a punishment- which he Uetermnied to make sufficiently severe. Thero was a point on the "arson River, four miles from Carson City, known as "Dutch Nick's" and also as "Empire Citv," the two being identical. There was no forest thero of any sort; nothing tut sngc-hrißh. In the onlv cabin there, lived a bachelor, with 110 household. Everybody in Virginia Citv and Carson, of course, knew theso things. Mark ilVain prepared a most lurid and graphic account of how one Philip Hopkins, living "just at the edge of tho great pine forest which lies between Empire City and Dutch Nick's," had suddenlv gone insane and murderously assaulted his entire family, consisting of his wife and their nine children, ranging in nges from ono to nineteen years. The wife had been slain outright, also seven of tho children; the other two might recover. The murder had been committed in tho most brutal arid ghastly fashion, after which Hopkins had scalped his wife, leaped on a horse, cut his own throat from ear to car, and ridden four miles into Carson City, dropping dead at last 111 front of tho Magnolia .Saloon, the redhaired scalp of bis wife still clutched in his gnrv hand. The article further stated that the cause of Mr Hopkins's insanity was pecuniary loss, ho having withdrawn his savings from safe Comstock investments, and through the advice of a relative, one of tho editors of tho San Francisco "Bulletin." invested them in tho Spring Valloy Water Company. This absurd tale, with startling headlines, appeared in the "Territorial Enterprise,'' in its issuo of October 28, 18G3. .

Tt was not expected, that anyone in Virginia City or Carson City would for a mop'.pnt take any stock in the wild in volition, yet so graphic was it that nine cut of ten on first reading never stopped to consider the entire responsibility of tlio locality and circumstance. Even when these things wore pointed out many readers at first refused to confess themselves sold. As for tho "Bulletin" and other Califotnian papers, they were taken in completely, and were furious. Many of them wrote and demanded tho immediate discharge of tho author, announcing that they would never_ copy another line from tho "Enterprise," or exchange with it, or have further relations with a paper that had Mark Twain on its staff. Citizens were mad, too, and cut oft' their subscriptions. Tll a month papers and people had forgotten their humiliation and laughed. The Dutch Nick .Massacre aavo to its perpetrator and to the ''Territorial Enterprise" an added vogue.