31 October–2 November 1865
This comically petulant explosion of temper is preserved in the Yale Scrapbook, where it is found in a clipping from an unidentified newspaper. The clipping begins: “ ‘Mark Twain,’ in a late San Francisco letter to the Virginia Enterprise, gets off the following production of a sour temper.” The sketch makes use of a passenger list for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's Colorado, which sailed for Panama on 30 October 1865 with six hundred passengers. Clemens probably wrote the letter containing this item on October 29, the day the passenger list was published in most of the San Francisco papers.1 If so, it must have appeared in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise two or three days later.
Among the passengers who departed with the Colorado were General William S. Rosecrans and Senator John Conness. But the name on which Clemens dwells at greatest length did not appear there. His “J. Schmeltzer” is probably a deliberate misreading of “J. Schweitzer,” a name which does appear on the list. It seems unlikely, at any rate, that the Enterprise or the unidentified newspaper reprinting the Enterprise had mistaken the name, for Clemens returned to the subject briefly in “More California Notables Gone,” which he published in the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle on November 1. Ribbing his newspaper foe Fitz Smythe (Albert S. Evans) for making much of the passenger list, he said in part: “And, above all, why did he let J. Schmeltzer go away without a parting dose of adulation? Oh, unhappy Schmeltzer, you didn't make your ‘pile,’ perhaps!”2
I feel savage this morning. And as usual, when one wants to growl, it is almost impossible to find things to growl about with any degree of satisfaction. I cannot find anything in the steamer departures to get mad at. Only, I wonder who “J. Schmeltzer” is?—and what does he have such an atrocious name for?—and what business has he got in the States?—who is there in the States who cares whether Schmeltzer comes or not? The conduct of this unknown Schmeltzer is exasperating to the last degree.
And off goes General RosecransⒺexplanatory note, without ever doing anything to give a paper a chance to abuse him. He has behaved himself, and kept quiet, and avoided scandalous meddling with the Oakland SeminariesⒺexplanatory note, and paid his board in the most aggravating manner. Let him go.
And Conness is gone. Oh, d—n ConnessⒺexplanatory note!
The first printing in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, probably between 31 October and 2 November 1865, is not extant. The sketch survives in the only known contemporary reprinting of the Enterprise, a clipping from an unidentified newspaper in the Yale Scrapbook (p. 34A), which is copy-text. Clemens struck through the clipping in pencil, probably in January or February 1867, indicating that he did not intend to reprint it in JF1. There are no textual notes or emendations.