22–23 December 1865
This sketch is taken from Clemens' “San Francisco Letter” to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. It was written on 20 December 1865 and probably published two or three days later. A complete clipping of the letter is preserved in the Yale Scrapbook.
Clemens here returned to the subject, and the form, he had used two weeks earlier in “A Rich Epigram” (no. 142). On December 18 W. J. Macdougall sued Thomas Maguire for $5,000 compensation for injuries sustained on December 5.1 Maguire retaliated with a countersuit charging libel. The verdict was not returned until September the following year: Macdougall was awarded $310, while Maguire was given $300.2 Although Clemens advised Macdougall to “pitch in and whale Maguire” instead of suing him, he was not unsympathetic with the pianist's injuries. In an earlier section of the letter, not reprinted here, he said that Macdougall was “banged to a pulp by Tom Maguire,” and yet was “modest enough to demand only five thousand dollars by way of damages.”3
The talk occasioned by Maguire's unseemly castigation of Macdougall, while the latter was engaged in conversation with a lady, was dying out, happily for both parties, but Mr. Macdougall has set it going again by bringing that suit of his for $5,000 for the assault and battery. If he can get the money, I suppose that is at least the most profitable method of settling the matter. But then, will he? Maybe so, and maybe not. But if he feels badly—feels hurt—feels disgraced at being chastised, will $5,000 entirely soothe him and put an end to the comments and criticisms of the public? It is questionable. If he would pitch in and whale Maguire, though, it would afford him real, genuine satisfaction, and would also furnish me with a great deal more pleasing material for a paragraph than I can get out of theⒶemendation regular routine of events that transpire in San Francisco—which is a matter of still greater importance. If the plaintiff in this suit of damages were to intimate that he would like to have a word from me on this subject, I would immediately sit down and pour out my soul to him in verse. I would tune up my muse and sing to him the following pretty
nursery rhyme.
Come, now, Macdougall!Say—
Can lucre pay
For thy dismembered coat—
Thy strangulated throat—
Thy busted bugle?
[begin page 404] Speak thou! poor W. J.!
And say—
I pray—
If gold can soothe your woes,
Or mend your tattered clothes,
Or heal your battered nose,
Oh bunged-up lump of clay!
No!—arise!
Be wise!
Macdougall, d—n your eyes!
Don't legal quips devise
To mend your reputation,
And efface the degradation
Of a blow that's struck in ire!
But 'ware of execration,
Unless you take your station
In a strategic location,
In mood of desperation,
And “lam” like all creation
This infernal Tom Maguire!
The first printing appeared in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, probably on 22 or 23 December 1865. The only known copy of this printing, in a clipping in the Yale Scrapbook (p. 47), is copy-text. Clemens struck through the entire clipping, probably in January or February 1867. There are no textual notes.