31 December 1865
“Convicts” is the last known sketch that Clemens published in 1865. It was part of a “San Francisco Letter” written on December 28 and published three days later in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. It survives in a unique clipping from the Enterprise reproduced in photofacsimile by Richard E. Lingenfelter.1
On December 10 a group of five Comstock reporters sat for their collective portrait (reproduced below) at Sutterly Brothers in Virginia City, and then celebrated the occasion by making the rounds of the saloons and ordering a lavish dinner at the International Hotel. The men were William Wright (Dan De Quille), William M. Gillespie, and Alfred Doten of the Enterprise, Robert E. Lowery of the Virginia City Union, and Charles A. Parker of the Gold Hill News—all of them Clemens' friends from Nevada days. Copies of the photograph were distributed to various western newspapers, and one reached Clemens on December 27. His response is reminiscent of his earlier good-natured ribbing of Clement T. Rice (the “Unreliable”) and Dan De Quille.
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Some one (I do not know who,) left me a card photograph, yesterday, which I do not know just what to do with. It has the names of Dan De Quille, W. M. Gillespie, Alf. Doten, Robert Lowery and Charles A. Parker on it, and appears to be a pictured group of notorious convicts, or something of that kind. I only judge by the countenances, for I am not acquainted with these people, and do not usually associate with such characters. This is the worst lot of human faces I have ever seen. That of the murderer Doten, (murderer, isn't he?) is sufficient to chill the strongest heart. The cool self-possession of the burglar Parker marks the man capable of performing deeds of daring confiscation at dead of night, unmoved by surrounding perils. The face of the Thug, De Quille, with its expression of pitiless malignity, is a study. Those of the light-fingered gentry, Lowery and Gillespie, show that ineffable repose and self-complacency so deftly assumed by such characters after having nipped an overcoat or a pair of brass candlesticks and are aware that officers have suspected and are watching them. I am very glad to have this picture to keep in my room, as a hermit keeps a skull, to remind me what I may some day become myself. I have permitted the Chief of Police to take a copy of it, for obvious reasons.
The first printing appeared in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise for 31 December 1865. The only known copy of this printing, preserved in photofacsimile by Richard E. Lingenfelter in The Newspapers of Nevada: A History and Bibliography (San Francisco: John Howell Books, 1964), following p. 4, is copy-text. There are no textual notes or emendations.