our bended marrow bones, we ask their
forgiveness, promising that in future we will give them no cause for
anything but the best of feeling toward us. To "Young Wilson" and
The Unreliable (as we have wickedly termed them), we feel that no
apology we can make begins to atone for the many insults we have
given them. Toward these gentlemen we have been as mean as a man
could be--and we have always prided ourselves on this base quality.
We feel that we are the least of all humanity, as it were. We will
now go in sack-cloth and ashes for the next forty days.

This in his own paper over his own signature was a body blow; but it had
the effect of curing his cold. He was back in the office forthwith, and
in the next morning's issue denounced his betrayer.

We are to blame for giving The Unreliable an opportunity to
misrepresent us, and therefore refrain from repining to any great
extent at the result. We simply claim the right to deny the truth
of every statement made by him in yesterday's paper, to annul all
apologies he coined as coming from us, and to hold him up to public
commiseration as a reptile endowed with no more intellect, no more
cultivation, no more Christian principle than animates and adorns
the sportive jackass-rabbit of the Sierras. We have done.

These were the things that enlivened Comstock journalism. Once in a
boxing bout Mark Twain got a blow on the nose which caused it to swell
to an unusual size and shape. He went out of town for a few days, during
which De Quille published an extravagant account of his misfortune,
describing the nose and dwelling on the absurdity of Mark Twain's ever
supposing himself to be a boxer.

De Quille scored heavily with this item but his own doom was written.
Soon afterward he was out riding and was thrown from his horse and
bruised considerably.

This was Mark's opportunity. He gave an account of Dan's disaster; then,
commenting, he said:

The idea of a plebeian like Dan supposing he could ever ride a
horse! He! why, even the cats and the chickens laughed when they
saw him go by. Of course, he would be thrown off. Of course, any
well-bred horse wouldn't let a common, underbred person like Dan
stay on his back! When they gathered him up he was just a bag of
scraps, but they put him together, and you'll find him at his old
place in the Enterprise office next week, still laboring un