Mark Twain was fond of manufacturing items of the horrible style,
but on one occasion he overdid this business, and the disease
worked its own cure. He wrote an account of a terrible murder,
supposed to have occurred at "Dutch Nick's," a station on the
Carson River, where Empire City now stands. He made a man cut his
wife's throat and those of his nine children, after which
diabolical deed the murderer mounted his horse, cut his own throat
from ear to ear, rode to Carson City (a distance of three and a
half miles) and fell dead in front of Peter Hopkins' saloon.

All the California papers copied the item, and several made
editorial comment upon it as being the most shocking occurrence of
the kind ever known on the Pacific Coast. Of course rival Virginia
City papers at once denounced the item as a "cruel and idiotic
hoax." They showed how the publication of such "shocking and
reckless falsehoods" disgraced and injured the State, and they made
it as "sultry" as possible for the 'Enterprise' and its "fool
reporter."

When the California papers saw all this and found they had been
sold, there was a howl from Siskiyou to San Diego. Some papers
demanded the immediate discharge of the author of the item by the
'Enterprise' proprietors. They said they would never quote another
line from that paper while the reporter who wrote the shocking item
remained on its force. All this worried Mark as I had never before
seen him worried. Said he: "I am being burned alive on both sides
of the mountains." We roomed together, and one night, when the
persecution was hottest, he was so distressed that he could not
sleep. He tossed, tumbled, and groaned aloud. So I set to work to
comfort him. "Mark," said I, "never mind this bit of a gale, it