25 February 1863
This sketch appeared in the local items column of the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise for 25 February 18631 and clearly belongs to Mark Twain's continuing comic feud with Clement T. Rice. The immediate occasion of the Unreliable's antics was the Firemen's Ball, held on February 23 at Topliffe's Theater on North C Street, Virginia City, as part of the annual fund raising for Virginia Engine Company No. 1. Clemens reported the ball straightforwardly in an adjacent column in the same paper. He said that the decoration of the hall and the dancers, who were “thoroughly fuddled with plain quadrilles,” were actually “charming to the last degree.”
We have not one particle of fault to find with the ball; the managers kept perfect order and decorum, and did everything in their power to make it pass pleasantly to all the guests. They succeeded. But of all the failures we have been called upon to chronicle, the supper was the grandest. It was bitterly denounced by nearly everybody who sat down to it—officers, firemen, men, women and children. Now, the supposition is, that somebody will come out in a card and deny this, and attribute base motives to us: but we are not to be caught asleep, or even napping, this time—we have got all our proofs at hand, and shall explode at anybody who tries to show that we cannot tell the truth without being actuated by unworthy motives. Chief Engineer Peas[le]y and officer Birdsall said that the supper contract was for a table supplied with everything the market could afford, and in such profusion that the last who came might fare as well as the first (the contractor to receive a stipulated sum for each supper furnished)—and they also say that no part or portion of that contract was entirely fulfilled. The entertainment broke up about four o'clock in the morning, and the guests returned to their homes well satisfied with the ball itself, but not with the supper.2
In “The Unreliable” Clemens undertook to give still further “proofs” for this accusation, but in a somewhat less strident fashion: the voracious and vindictive appetite of the Unreliable accounted for “the scarcity of provisions at the Firemen's supper.”
This poor miserable outcast crowded himself into the Firemen's Ball, night before last, and glared upon the happy scene with his evil eye for a few minutes. He had his coat buttoned up to his chin, which is the way he always does when he has no shirt on. As soon as the managers found out he was there, they put him out, of course. They had better have allowed him to stay, though, for he walked straight across the street, with all his vicious soul aroused, and climbed in at the back window of the supper room and gobbled up the last crumb of the repast provided for the guests, before he was discovered. This accounts for the scarcity of provisions at the Firemen's supper that night. Then he went home and wrote a particular description of our ball costume, with his usual meanness, as if such information could be of any consequence to the public. He never vouchsafed a single compliment to our dress, either, after all the care and taste we had bestowed upon it. We despise that man.
The first printing appeared in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise for 25 February 1863 (p. 3). Only one copy of this printing is extant. A PH of this unique clipping, in MTP, is copy-text, and is used with permission of the clipping's owner, Ruth Hermann (416 Zion St., Nevada City, California, 95959). There are no textual notes or emendations.