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bearer, John T. Hoffman, was hanged for highway robbery, is a brutal
and gratuitous lie, without a 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 honored 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 better of the
public, and in its blind fury they should do the traducer bodily injury,
it is but too obvious that no jury could convict and no court punish
the perpetrators of the deed."
The ingenious closing sentence had the effect of moving me out
of bed with despatch that night, and out at the back-door also, while
the "outraged and insulted public" surged in the front way, breaking
furniture and windows in their righteous indignation as they came,
and taking off such property as they could carry when they went. And
1
yet I can lay my hand upon the Book and say that I never slandered
Governor Hoffman's grandfather. More, I had never even heard of
him or mentioned him up to that day and date.
[I will state, in passing, that the journal above quoted from al-
2
ways referred to me afterward as "Twain, the Body-Snatcher ."]
The next newspaper article that attracted my attention was the
following:
"A SWEET CANDIDATE.— Mr. Mark Twain, who was to
make such a blighting speech at the mass meeting of the Independents
last night, didn't come to time! A telegram from his physician stated
3
that he had been knocked down by a runaway team , and his leg
broken in two places — sufferer lying in great agony, and so forth,
and so forth, and a lot more bosh of the same sort. And the
Independents tried hard to swallow the wretched subterfuge, and
pretend that they did not know what was the real reason of the
absence of the abandoned creature whom they denominate their
standard-bearer.

1
the Book: the Bible
2
body-snatcher: ocквернитель могил
3
a runaway team: a team of horses over which control has been lost