70 CHOICE BITS FROM MARK TWAIN.
[After this, this journal customarily spoke of me
as " Twain, the Montana Thief."]
I got to picking up papers apprehensively—much
as one would lift a desired blanket which he had
some idea might have a rattlesnake under it. One
day this met my eye :—
" The Lie Nailed !—By the sworn afl5davits of
Michael O'Flanagan, Esq., of the Five Points, and
Mr. Kit Burns and Mr. John Allen, of Water Street,
it is established that Mr. Mark Twain's vile state¬
ment that the lamented grandfather of our noble
standard-bearer, John T. Hoffman, was hanged for
highway robbery, is a brutal and gratuitous lie,
without a single shadow of foundation in fact. It
is disheartening to virtuous men to see such
shameful means resorted to to achieve political
success as the attacking of the dead in their graves,
and defiling their honoured names with slander.
When we think of the anguish this miserable
falsehood must cause the innocent relatives and
friends of the deceased, we are almost driven to
incite an outraged and insulted public to summary
and unlawful vengeance upon the traducer. But
no: let us leave him to the agony of a lacerated
conscience (though if passion should get the bettei
of the pubKc and in its blind fury they should do
the traducer bodily injury, it is but too obvious
Permalink: http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rd54n
