MARK TWAIN IN THE SAN FRANCISCO DRAMATIC CHRONICLE
1865
[EDITOR'S NOTE: This item has not been previously republished elsewhere. It is included in this collection because of its potential to be the work of Clemens and is deserving of further research and consideration. The editor of "Outcroppings" referred to in this item was Bret Harte.]
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TO THE RESCUE
The Sunday Mercury rushes to the rescue of the sage brush poets. The highly "literary" editor of the Mercury belongs to the provincial rather than to the metropolitan school of literati. In fact, the Mercury man would, we imagine, feel much more at home in sage brush land than in a civilized metropolis. The "reviewer" of the Mercury reveals the grade and quality of his genius by calling the editor of "Outcroppings" "a pitiful ass," and shows very clearly the standard of his critical appreciation by speaking of Joe Goodman as "a poet of more than ordinary genius -- if not the very ablest on the Pacific slope!" The Lord look down! Manifestly the calfish critic of the Mercury is quite out of his sphere "in town." Sage brush land is just the theater where his talents would be appreciated. He had better emigrate forthwith, and devote his talents to the task of furnishing appropriate literary pabulum to Diggers and Pi-Utes, who might be induced to regard all clever and decent writing as "purp-stuff."
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[transcribed from microfilm]
