Bill Stewart and Judge Field issued from their corners and gazed upon the sanguinary reminiscences in silence during several minutes. At the end of that time, having failed to discover that either champion had got the best of the fight, they threw up their sponges simultaneously, and Gen. Wright proclaimed in a loud voice that the battle was "drawn." May my ears never again be rent asunder with a burst of sound similar to that which greeted this announcement, from the multitudes. Amen.
By order of Gen. Wright, baskets were procured, and Bill Stewart and Judge Field proceeded to gather up the fragments of their late principals, while I gathered up my notes and went after my infernal horse, who had slipped his blankets and was foraging among the neighboring children. I—
P. S.—Messrs. Editors, I have been the victim of an infamous hoax. I have been imposed upon by that ponderous miscreant, Mr. Frank Lawler, of the Lick House. I left my room a moment ago, and the first man I met on the stairs was Gov. Stanford, alive and well, and as free from mutilation as you or I. I was speechless. Before I reached the street, I actually met Gov. Low also, with his own head on his own shoulders, his limbs intact, his inner mechanism in its proper place, and his cheeks blooming with gorgeous robustitude. I was amazed. But a word of explanation from him convinced me that I had been swindled by Mr. Lawler with a detail account of a fight which had never occurred, and was never likely to occur; that I had believed him so implicitly as to sit down and write it out (as other reporters have done before me) in language calculated to deceive the public into the conviction that I was present at it myself, and to embellish it with a string of falsehoods intended to render that deception as plausible as possible. I ruminated upon my singular position for many minutes, arrived at no conclusion—that is to say, no satisfactory conclusion, except that Lawler was an accomplished knave and I was a consummate ass. I had suspected the first before, though, and been acquainted with the latter fact for nearly a quarter of a century.
In conclusion, permit me to apologize in the most abject manner to the present Governor of California, to Hon. Mr. Low, the Governor elect, to Judge Field and to Hon. Wm. M. Stewart, for the great wrong which my natural imbecility has impelled me to do them in penning and publishing the foregoing sanguinary absurdity. If it were to do over again, I don't really know that I would do it. It is not possible for me to say how I ever managed to believe that refined and educated gentlemen like these could stoop to engage in the loathsome and degrading pastime of prize-fighting. It was just Lawler's work, you understand—the lubberly, swelled up effigy of a nine-days drowned man! But I shall get even with him for this. The only excuse he offers is that he got the story from John B. Winters, and thought of course it must be just so—as if a future Congressman for the state of Washoe could by any possibility tell the truth! Do you know that if either of these miserable scoundrels were to cross my path while I am in this mood I would scalp him in a minute? That's me—that's my style.
A CONCORD LOVE-SONG
BY JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE
Shall we meet again, love,
In the distant When, love,
When the Now is Then, love,
And the Present Past?
Shall the mystic Yonder,
On which I ponder,
I sadly wonder,
With thee be cast?
Ah, the joyless fleeting
Of our primal meeting,
And the fateful greeting
Of the How and Why!
Ah, the Thingness flying
From the Hereness, sighing
For a love undying
That fain would die!
Ah, the Ifness sadd'ning,
The Whichness madd'ning,
And the But ungladd'ning,
That lie behind!
When the signless token
Of love is broken
In the speech unspoken
Of mind to mind!
But the mind perceiveth
When the spirit grieveth,
And the heart relieveth
Itself of woe;
And the doubt-mists lifted
From the eyes love-gifted
Are rent and rifted
In the warmer glow.
In the inner Me, love,
As I turn to thee, love,
I seem to see, love,
No Ego there.
But the Meness dead, love,
The Theeness fled, love,
And born instead, love,
An Usness rare!