that the cause of Mr. Hopkins's insanity was
pecuniary loss, he having withdrawn his savings from safe Comstock
investments and, through the advice of a relative, one of the editors
of the San Francisco Bulletin, invested them in the Spring Valley Water
Company. This absurd tale with startling head-lines appeared in the
Enterprise, in its issue of October 28, 1863.

It was not expected that any one in Virginia City or Carson City would
for a moment take any stock in the wild invention, yet so graphic was
it that nine out of ten on first reading never stopped to consider the
entire impossibility of the locality and circumstance. Even when
these things were pointed out many readers at first refused to confess
themselves sold. As for the Bulletin and other California papers, they
were taken-in completely, and were furious. Many of them wrote and
demanded the immediate discharge of its author, announcing that they
would never copy another line from the 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 off their subscriptions. The joker was
in despair.

"Oh, Joe," he said, "I have ruined your business, and the only
reparation I can make is to resign. You can never recover from this blow
while I am on the paper."

"Nonsense," replied Goodman. "We can furnish the people with news, but
we can't supply them with sense. Only time can do that. The flurry will
pass. You just go ahead. We'll win out in the long run."

But the offender was in torture; he could not sleep. "Dan, Dan," he
said, "I am being burned alive on both sides of the mountains."

"Mark," said Dan. "It will all blow over. This item of yours will be
remembered and talked about when the rest of your Enterprise work is
forgotten."

Both Goodman and De Quille were right. In a month papers and people had
forgotten their humiliation and laughed. "The Dutch Nick Massacre" gave
to its perpetrator and to the Enterprise an added vogue. --[For full
text of the "Dutch Nick" hoax see Appendix C, at the end of last volume:
also, for an anecdote concerning a reporting excursion made by Alf.
Doten and Mark Twain.]--

XLII REPORTORIAL DAYS.

Reference has already been made to the fashion among Virginia City
papers of permitting reporters to use the editorial columns for ridicule
of one another. This custom was especially in vogue during the period
when Dan de Quille and Mark Twai