MARK TWAIN IN THE SAN FRANCISCO DRAMATIC CHRONICLE
1865
BRIBERY! CORRUPTION!
How much fruit, peanuts and salvation did Fitz Smythe get for that first rate notice of the apple-peddler and the old street-preaching Crisis man? You are becoming considerably too brash, Fitz Smythe. You will have to be crowded down a little. You must stop using the columns of a great commercial paper to puff all the old bummers in town.
[published in Early Tales & Sketches, Volume 2, 1864-1865,
University of California Press, 1981, p. 507.]
