MARK TWAIN IN THE SAN FRANCISCO DRAMATIC CHRONICLE
1865
THE GOBLIN AGAIN!
A Mr. Johnson inveigled a Mr. Nichols into a dark room the other night, knocked him in the head with a club in the most mysterious manner, and then decamped and has not since been heard of. Go after him, Fitz Smythe! He is your dreadful goblin, sure. Don't you notice the "strange similarity" between this affair and the robbing of the What Cheer House, and the braining of Meyers' clerk, and the robbing of the Mayor's secretary, and the mutilation of officer Rose, and the chiseling of the lone woman, and the murder of the unknown family up a dark alley? Scat! Sick him, Fitz Smythe!
[published in Early Tales & Sketches, Volume 2, 1864-1865,
University of California Press, 1981, p. 503.]
