ted by a policy, the whole a part of a still greater machine
--politics. Once he saw some butchers set their dogs on an unoffending
Chinaman, a policeman looking on with amused interest. He wrote an
indignant article criticizing the city government and raking the police.
In Virginia City this would have been a welcome delight; in San Francisco
it did not appear.

At another time he found a policeman asleep on his beat. Going to a
near-by vegetable stall he borrowed a large cabbage-leaf, came back and
stood over the sleeper, gently fanning him. It would be wasted effort to
make an item of this incident; but he could publish it in his own
fashion. He stood there fanning the sleeping official until a large
crowd collected. When he thought it was large enough he went away. Next
day the joke was all over the city.

Only one of the several severe articles he wrote criticizing officials
and institutions seems to have appeared--an attack on an undertaker whose
establishment formed a branch of the coroner's office. The management of
this place one day refused information to a Call reporter, and the next
morning its proprietor was terrified by a scathing denunciation of his
firm. It began, "Those body-snatchers" and continued through half a
column of such scorching strictures as only Mark Twain could devise. The
Call's policy of suppression evidently did not include criticisms of
deputy coroners.

Such liberty, however, was too rare for Mark Twain, and he lost interest.
He confessed afterward that he became indifferent and lazy, and that
George E. Barnes, one of the publishers of the Call, at last allowed him
an assistant. He selected from the counting-room a big, hulking youth by
the name of McGlooral, with the acquired prefix of "Smiggy." Clemens had
taken a fancy to Smiggy McGlooral--on account of his name and size
perhaps--and Smiggy, devoted to his patron, worked like a slave gathering
news nights--daytimes, too, if necessary--all of which was demoralizing
to a man who had small appetite for his place anyway. It was only a
question of time when Smiggy alone would be sufficient for the job.

There were other and pleasanter things in San Francisco. The personal
and literary associations were worth while. At his right hand in the
Call office sat Frank Soule--a gentle spirit--a graceful versifier who
believed himself a poet. Mark Twain deferred to Frank Soule in those
days. He thought his verses exquisite in their workmanship