Mr. Bloke's Item

Our esteemed friend, Mr. John William Bloke, of Virginia City,
walked into the office where we are sub-editor at a late hour last
night, with an expression of profound and heartfelt suffering upon
his countenance, and, sighing heavily, laid the following item
reverently upon the desk, and walked slowly out again. He paused a
moment at the door, and seemed struggling to command his feelings
sufficiently to enable him to speak, and then, nodding his head
towards his manuscript, ejaculated in a broken voice, "Friend of
mine--oh! how sad!" and burst into tears. We were so moved at his
distress that we did not think to call him back and endeavor to
comfort him until he was gone, and it was too late. The paper had
already gone to press, but knowing that our friend would consider
the publication of this item important, and cherishing the hope
that to print it would afford a melancholy satisfaction to his
sorrowing heart, we stopped the press at once and inserted it in
our columns:

DISTRESSING ACCIDENT.--Last evening, about six o'clock, as Mr.
William Schuyler, an old and respectable citizen of South Park,
was leaving his residence to go down-town, as has been his usual
custom for many years with the exception only of a short interval
in the spring of 1850, during which he was confined to his bed by
injuries received in attempting to stop a runaway horse by
thoughtlessly placing himself directly in its wake and throwing
up his hands and shouting, which, if he had done so even a single
moment sooner, must inevitably have frightened the animal still
more instead of checking its speed, although disastrous enough to
himself as it was, and rendered more melancholy and distressing
by reason of the presence of his wife's mother, who was there and
saw the sad occurrence, notwithstanding it is at least likely,
though not necessarily so, that she should be reconnoitring in
another direction when incidents occur, not being vivacious and
on the lookout, as a general thing, but even the reverse, as her
own mother is said to have stated, who is no more, but died in
the full hope of a glorious resurrection, upward of three years
ago, aged eighty-six, being a Christian woman and without guile,
as it were, or property, in consequence of the fire of 1849,
which destroyed every single thing she had in the world. But such
is life. Let us all take warning by this solemn occu