The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-10-17
In Mark Twain's Memoranda" we find the

RILEY-NEwsPAPER CORRESPONDENT.
| One of the best men in Washington-or
! elsewhere-is Riley, correspondent of the
| great San Francisco dsilies.
! Riley is full of humor, and has an unfailinp
! vein of irony which makes his conversation
to the last degree entertaining Gas long as the
remarks are about somebody else) But not
withstanding the possession of these qualities,
which should enable a man to write happy
and an appetizing letter, Riley's newspaper
letters often display more than earthly
solemnity, and likewise an unimaginative de-
votion to petriied facts, which surprise AMI
distress all men who know him in his uu-
official character. He explains this
curious thing by saving that his
employers sent him to Washington to
write facts, not fancy, and that several times
he has come near losing his situation by in
serting humorous remarks which, not being
looked for at headquarters aud consequently
not understood, were thought to be dark and
bloody speeches intended to convey signals
and warnings to murderous secret societies
or something of that kind, and so were
scratched out with shiver and prayer aud
cast into the stove. Riley says that some
times he is SO afflicted with a yearning to
write sparkling and absorbingly readable
letter that he simply cannot resist it, and
so he goes to his den aud revels in the
delight of untrammelled scribbling; and
then, with suffering such as only
mother can know, he destroys the pretty
childl en- of his fancy and reduces his letter to
the required dismal accuracy. Having seen
Riley do this very thing more than once, I
know whereof speak. Often have laughed
with him over happy passage and grieved
to see him plough his pen through it. He
would say, Il had to write that or die and
I've got to scratch it out or starve. They
wouldn't stand it, you know"
think Riley is about the most entertain
ing company 1 ever saw. We lodged to-
geher in many places in Washington dur
ing the winter of '67-'S, moving comforta-
bly, from place to place, and attracting atten-
tion by paying our board-a course which
cannot fail to make a person conspicuous in
Washington. Riley would tell all about his
trip to California in the early days, by way
of the Isthmus and the San Juan river; and
about his baking bread in San Francisco, to
gain living, and setting up ten-pins, and
practising law, and opening oysters, and de-
liverlng lectures, and teaching French, and
tending bar, and reporting for the news
papers, and keeping dancing school, and in
terpreting Chinese in the courts-which lat
ter was lucrative, and Riley was doing hand
somely and laying up little money when
people began to find fault because his trans
lations were too free" thing for which
Riley considered he ought not to be held re-
the Chinese tongue and only adopted inter
preting as a means of gaining an honest
livelihood. Through the Vaccinations of
enemies he was removed from the position
of official interpreter, and a man put in his
place who was familiar with the Chinese
language but did not know any English
And Riley used to tell about publishing a
newspaper up in what is Alaska now, but
was only an iceberg then, with population
composed of bears, walruses, Indians, and
other animals and how the iceberg got
adrift at last and left all his paying sub
scribers behind, and soon as the common
wealth foated out of the jurisdiction of Rus
sia, the people rose and threw off their ale-
glance and ran up the English flag, calcu-
lating to hook on and become an English
colony as they drifted along down the Bri-
tish possessions; but land breeze and
crooked current carried them by, and they
ran up the stars and stripes and steered for
California, missed the connection again, and
swore allegiance to Mexico, but it wasn't
any use; the anchors came home every time.
and away they went with the northeast
trades, drifting off sideways towards the
Sandwich Islands, ~ whereupon they ran up
the Cannibal flag and had grand human
barbacue in honor of it, in which it was no.
ticed that the better man liked friend the
better he enjoyed him; and as soon as they
got fairly within the tropics the weather got
so fearfully hot that the iceberg began to
melt, and it got so sloppy under foot that it
was almost impossible for ladies to get about
at all; and at last, just as they came in sight
of the islands, the melancholy remnant of the
once majestic iceberg canted first to one side
and then to the other, and then plunged under
forever, carrying the national archives along
with it-snd not only the archives and the
populace, but some eligible town lots which
had increased in value as fast as they dimi-
nished in size in the tropics, and which Rilev
could have sold at thirty cents a pound and
made himself rich if he could have kept the
province afoat ten hours longer and got her
into port.
And so forth and so on, with all the facts
of Riley's trip through Mexico a Journey
whose history his felicitous fancy can make
more interesting than any novel that ever was
written. What a shame it is to tie Riley
down to the dreary mason-work of laying up
solemn dead-walls of fact He does write a
plain, straightforward, and perfectly accurate
and reliable correspondence, but it seems to
me that would rather have one chatty para
graph of his fancy than a whole obituary of
his facts.
Riley is very methodical, untiringly accom-
modating, never forgets anything that is to
be attended to, is a good son, staunch
friend, and permanent, reliable enemy. He
VIII put himself to any amount of trouble to
obIge body, and therefore always has his
hands full OF things to be done for the help
less and the shiftless And he knows how to
do nearly everything, too. He is a man
whose native benevolence is a well-spring
that never goes dry. He stands always
ready to help whoever needs help, as far as
he is able-and not simply with his money,
for that is a cheap and common charity. but
with hand and brain, and fatigue of limb and
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