MARK TWAIN IN THE SAN FRANCISCO DRAMATIC CHRONICLE
1865
TOO TERSE
Fitz Smythe had another fine runaway-horse item yesterday, but he only made nine lines of it. Come now, elaborate it and make it funny like you did that other one. Don't you know that your entertaining runaway horse literature is getting to be looked for eagerly in the Alta every morning? Give us a one-horse poem, can't you? Don't be mean, Fitz Smythe -- don't be mean.
[published in Early Tales & Sketches, Volume 2, 1864-1865,
University of California Press, 1981, p. 505.]
