§ 130. The Old Thing
18 November 1865
This sketch was originally part of Clemens' letter to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise published on 18 November 1865. The Enterprise printing does not survive, but the text is preserved in the Californian of November 25, which introduced it as follows: “ ‘Mark Twain,’ in summing up the facts and theories of the What Cheer House robbery, says (correspondence Virginia Enterprise, Nov. 18th:).”
Robert B. Woodward's What Cheer House on Sacramento Street was a restaurant and hotel with homey attractions like an excellent library and a large fireplace. On the night of November 13 the hotel safe was robbed of about $25,000—most of it belonging to guests—by an unknown intruder who struck the night watchman. Three months later, on 17 February 1866, William Welch was indicted for the crime, but ultimately acquitted. In the meantime, verdicts for the recovery of many thousands of dollars were given against Woodward for not having kept his guests' money safe. And for many of the intervening weeks the city's reporters, with Albert Evans in the vanguard, agitated both the mysterious crime and its attendant lawsuits in their columns. Evans was particularly fertile in suggesting dark and melodramatic theories about the identity of the culprit, and he began his theorizing on November 14 with an article that said in part: “The similarity of the details of this robbery to those of that which came so near proving fatal to young Meyers, in the Commercial street pawnbroker's shop, over a year since, will strike our readers at once.”1 It was this article that prompted “The Old Thing,” which [begin page 333] Clemens probably wrote on November 14 or 15. All of the crimes that Clemens alludes to here had occurred in 1864, while he was reporting on the Morning Call, and although he somewhat exaggerated Evans' propensity for theorizing, his charges are for the most part true.2
As usual, the Alta reporter fastens the mysterious What Cheer robbery on the same horrible person who knocked young MeyersⒶemendation Ⓔexplanatory note in the head with a slung-shot a year ago and robbed his father's pawnbroker shop of some brass jewelry and crippled revolvers, in broad daylight; and he laid that exploit on the horrible wretch who robbed the Mayor's Clerk, who half-murdered detective officer Rose in a lonely spot below Santa ClaraⒺexplanatory note; and he proved that this same monster killed the lone woman in a secluded house up a dark alley with a carpenter's chisel, months before; and he demonstrated by inspired argument that the same villain who chiselled the woman tomahawked a couple of defenceless women in the most mysterious manner up another dark alleyⒺexplanatory note a few months before that. Now, the perpetratorⒶemendation of these veiled crimes has never been discovered, yet this wicked reporter has taken the whole batch and piled them coolly and relentlessly upon the shoulders of one imaginary scoundrelⒺexplanatory note with a comfortable, “Here, these are yours,”Ⓐemendation and with an air that says plainly that no denial, and no argument in the case, will be entertained. And every time anything happens that is unlawful and dreadful, and has a spice of mystery about it, this reporter, without waiting to see if maybe somebody else didn't do it, goes off at once and jams it on top of the old pile, as much as to say, “Here—here's some more of your work.”Ⓐemendation Now this isn't right, you know. It is all well enough for Mr. Smythe to divert suspicion from himself—nobody objects to [begin page 335] that—but it is not right for him to lay every solitary thing on this mysterious stranger, whoever he is—it is not right, you know. He ought to give the poor devil a show. The idea of accusing “The Mysterious”Ⓐemendation of the What Cheer burglary, considering who was the last boarder to bed and the first one up!
SmytheⒶemendation is endeavoring to get on the detective police force. I think it will be wronging the community to give this man such a position as that—now you know that yourself, don't you? He would settle down on some particular fellow, and every time there was a rape committed, or a steamship stolen, or an oyster cellar rifled, or a church burned down, or a family massacred, or a black-and-tan pup stolen, he would march off with portentous mienⒶemendation and snatch that fellow and say, “Here, you are at it again, you know,”Ⓐemendation and snake him off to the Station House.Ⓐemendation
The first printing in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise for 18 November 1865 is not extant. The sketch survives in the only known contemporary reprinting of the Enterprise, the Californian 3 (25 November 1865): 12, which is copy-text. Copies: Bancroft; PH from Yale. There are no textual notes.