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SAN FRANCISCO LETTER - dated December 20, 1865
The New Swimming Bath
The new swimming bath in South Park is attracting large crowds of curious visitors, who are anxious to test its virtues, but as yet it is not quite ready to be thrown open to the public. The great bath-house is finished, however, and this morning they are ornamenting its ample front with an immense painting, representing men swimming in all manner of impossible attitudes. It is as full of gorgeous coloring as a Presbyterian picture of hell, and is as good as a panorama to look at. It promises to be a very popular institution. The North Beach and South Park cars pass directly in front of it.
[Buckingham - text not available]
[Mining Corporations - text not available]
[Major Farren - text not available]
Sam Brannan - complete text not available. However this item may be the one partially quoted in the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle on December 27, 1865, p. 2:
In his last letter to the Enterprise he says it is ridiculous "for two members of a department which is never used as a synonym for immaculate purity and sweetness to estimate the damage they have suffered in the eyes of an admiring people at $20,000." This dig is appropos of the suit recently brought by two policemen against "My Lord Brannan," (as "Mark," with facetious intent, designates the Friend of Mexico,) for false imprisonment, each laying his damages at $10,000.
The "Eccentrics"
The eccentric Fourteenth Regulars is the gayest crowd of lads that any war ever did produce, I suppose. It is funny to read the accounts of their doings in the papers every day. They are so supremely indifferent to consequences-- or public opinion-- or law, or gospel, the police, the devil, or anything else! Each happy Fourteener sallies forth in a gang by himself, like Baxter's hog, and in the course of an hour he has captured a horse, or waylaid a stage coach, or carried off a showcase, or devastated a dwelling, or snatched a policeman, or got a hundred and fifty people corraled in a narrow court, where he guards the sole exit, and entertains himself by charging on them with his bowie-knife from time to time, and laughing in his hoarse, stormy way when they stampede. Oh, they are gay!
I am really sorry to see that Col. Drumn is about to tone down the exuberance of the Fourteeners, and I am satisfied that my grief is shared by every reporter in town, for three months ago the press oozed columns of the most insipid and resultless run-away beer-wagon items; whereas lately it has scintillated with the most thrilling and readable exploits and adventures of the Fourteeners. Col. Drumn recommends to the Commander of the Department the limiting of passes to the issuance of not more than two at a time-- and Chief Burke, I have no doubt, will take care that the whole police force turns out, armed to the teeth, to look after these two. The Fourteeners have been accustomed to carnage and battle in the Eastern wars so long, that they don't mind a small squad of police at all-- look upon such as only a trouble some interruption to their amusements, but not a positive obstruction.
MacDougall vs. Maguire [including "Nursery Rhyme"]
[Uncle Joe Trench - text not available]
["The New Swimming Baths" reprinted in Mark Twain: San Francisco Correspondent, (Book Club of California, 1957), p. 50; The "Eccentrics" reprinted in Mark Twain: San Francisco Correspondent, (Book Club of California, 1957), p. 80-1. "Sam Brannan" partially quoted in the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle on December 27, 1865, p. 2:]
