<h2> <SPAN name="bloke" id="bloke"></SPAN>MR. BLOKE'S ITEM </h2>
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<h3> [written about 1865] </h3>
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<p>Our esteemed friend, Mr. John William Bloke, of Virginia City, walked into
the office where we are sub-editor at a late hour last night, with an
expression of profound and heartfelt suffering upon his countenance, and,
sighing heavily, laid the following item reverently upon the desk, and
walked slowly out again. He paused a moment at the door, and seemed
struggling to command his feelings sufficiently to enable him to speak,
and then, nodding his head toward his manuscript, ejaculated in a broken
voice, "Friend of mine—oh! how sad!" and burst into tears. We were
so moved at his distress that we did not think to call him back and
endeavor to comfort him until he was gone, and it was too late. The paper
had already gone to press, but knowing that our friend would consider the
publication of this item important, and cherishing the hope that to print
it would afford a melancholy satisfaction to his sorrowing heart, we
stopped the press at once and inserted it in our columns:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><br/> DISTRESSING ACCIDENT.—Last evening, about six o'clock, as
Mr. William Schuyler, an old and respectable citizen of South Park, was
leaving his residence to go down-town, as has been his usual custom for
many years with the exception only of a short interval in the spring of
1850, during which he was confined to his bed by injuries received in
attempting to stop a runaway horse by thoughtlessly placing himself
directly in its wake and throwing up his hands and shouting, which if he
had done so even a single moment sooner, must inevitably have frightened
the animal still more instead of checking its speed, although disastrous
enough to himself as it was, and rendered more melancholy and
distressing by reason of the presence of his wife's mother, who was
there and saw the sad occurrence notwithstanding it is at least likely,
though not necessarily so, that she should be reconnoitering in another
direction when incidents occur, not being vivacious and on the lookout,
as a general thing, but even the reverse, as her own mother is said to
have stated, who is no more, but died in the full hope of a glorious
resurrection, upwards of three years ago; aged eighty-six, being a
Christian woman and without guile, as it were, or property, in
consequence of the fire of 1849, which destroyed every single thing she
had in the world. But such is life. Let us all take warning by this
solemn occurrence, and let us endeavor so to conduct ourselves that when
we come to die we can do it. Let us place our hands upon our heart, and
say with earnestness and sincerity that from this day forth we will
beware of the intoxicating bowl.—'First Edition of the
Californian.'</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The head editor has been in here raising the mischief, and tearing his
hair and kicking the furniture about, and abusing me like a pickpocket. He
says that every time he leaves me in charge of the paper for half an hour
I get imposed upon by the first infant or the first idiot that comes
along. And he says that that distressing item of Mr. Bloke's is nothing
but a lot of distressing bosh, and has no point to it, and no sense in it,
and no information in it, and that there was no sort of necessity for
stopping the press to publish it.</p>
<p>Now all this comes of being good-hearted. If I had been as unaccommodating
and unsympathetic as some people, I would have told Mr. Bloke that I
wouldn't receive his communication at such a late hour; but no, his
snuffling distress touched my heart, and I jumped at the chance of doing
something to modify his misery. I never read his item to see whether there
was anything wrong about it, but hastily wrote the few lines which
preceded it, and sent it to the printers. And what has my kindness done
for me? It has done nothing but bring down upon me a storm of abuse and
ornamental blasphemy.</p>
<p>Now I will read that item myself, and see if there is any foundation for
all this fuss. And if there is, the author of it shall hear from me.</p>
<p>I have read it, and I am bound to admit that it seems a little mixed at a
first glance. However, I will peruse it once more.</p>
<p>I have read it again, and it does really seem a good deal more mixed than
ever.</p>
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<p>I have read it over five times, but if I can get at the meaning of it I
wish I may get my just deserts. It won't bear analysis. There are things
about it which I cannot understand at all. It don't say whatever became of
William Schuyler. It just says enough about him to get one interested in
his career, and then drops him. Who is William Schuyler, anyhow, and what
part of South Park did he live in, and if he started down-town at six
o'clock, did he ever get there, and if he did, did anything happen to him?
Is he the individual that met with the "distressing accident"? Considering
the elaborate circumstantiality of detail observable in the item, it seems
to me that it ought to contain more information than it does. On the
contrary, it is obscure—and not only obscure, but utterly
incomprehensible. Was the breaking of Mr. Schuyler's leg, fifteen years
ago, the "distressing accident" that plunged Mr. Bloke into unspeakable
grief, and caused him to come up here at dead of night and stop our press
to acquaint the world with the circumstance? Or did the "distressing
accident" consist in the destruction of Schuyler's mother-in-law's
property in early times? Or did it consist in the death of that person
herself three years ago (albeit it does not appear that she died by
accident)? In a word, what did that "distressing accident" consist in?
What did that driveling ass of a Schuyler stand in the wake of a runaway
horse for, with his shouting and gesticulating, if he wanted to stop him?
And how the mischief could he get run over by a horse that had already
passed beyond him? And what are we to take "warning" by? And how is this
extraordinary chapter of incomprehensibilities going to be a "lesson" to
us? And, above all, what has the intoxicating "bowl" got to do with it,
anyhow? It is not stated that Schuyler drank, or that his wife drank, or
that his mother-in-law drank, or that the horse drank—wherefore,
then, the reference to the intoxicating bowl? It does seem to me that if
Mr. Bloke had let the intoxicating bowl alone himself, he never would have
got into so much trouble about this exasperating imaginary accident. I
have read this absurd item over and over again, with all its insinuating
plausibility, until my head swims; but I can make neither head nor tail of
it. There certainly seems to have been an accident of some kind or other,
but it is impossible to determine what the nature of it was, or who was
the sufferer by it. I do not like to do it, but I feel compelled to
request that the next time anything happens to one of Mr. Bloke's friends,
he will append such explanatory notes to his account of it as will enable
me to find out what sort of an accident it was and whom it happened to. I
had rather all his friends should die than that I should be driven to the
verge of lunacy again in trying to cipher out the meaning of another such
production as the above.</p>
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