The lie nailed.—­By the sworn affidavits of Michael O’Flanagan, Esq., of the Five Points, and Mr. Snub Rafferty and Mr. Catty Mulligan, of Water Street, it is established that Mr. Mark Twain’s vile statement that the lamented grandfather of our noble standard-bearer, Blank J. Blank, was hanged for highway robbery, is a brutal and gratuitous lie, without a shadow of foundation in fact.  It is disheartening to virtuous men to see such shameful means resorted to to achieve political success as the attacking of the dead in their graves, and defiling their honored names with slander.  When we think of the anguish this miserable falsehood must cause the innocent relatives and friends of the deceased, we are almost driven to incite an outraged and insulted public to summary and unlawful vengeance upon the traducer.  But no! let us leave him to the agony of a lacerated conscience (though if passion should get the better of the public, and in its blind fury they should do the traducer bodily injury, it is but too obvious that no jury could convict and no court punish the perpetrators of the deed).

The ingenious closing sentence had the effect of moving me out of bed with despatch that night, and out at the back door also, while the “outraged and insulted public” surged in the front way, breaking furniture and windows in their righteous indignation as they came, and taking off such property as they could carry when they went.  And yet I can lay my hand upon the Book and say that I never slandered Mr. Blank’s grandfather.  More:  I had never even heard of him or mentioned him up to that day and date.

[I will state, in passing, that the journal above quoted from always referred to me afterward as “Twain, the Body-Snatcher.”]

The next newspaper article that attracted my attention was the following: 

A Sweet candidate.—­Mr. Mark Twain, who was to make such a blighting speech at the mass-meeting of the Independents last night, didn’t come to time!  A telegram from his physician stated that he had been knocked down by a runaway team, and his leg broken in two places—­sufferer lying in great agony, and so forth, and so forth, and a lot more bosh of the same sort.  And the Independents tried hard to swallow the wretched subterfuge, and pretend that they did not know what was the real reason of the absence of the abandoned creature whom they denominate their standard-bearer.  A certain man was seen to reel into Mr. Twain’s hotel last night in a state of beastly intoxication.  It is the imperative duty of the Independents to prove that this besotted brute was not Mark Twain himself.  We have them at last!  This is a case that admits of no shirking.  The voice of the people demands in thunder tones, “Who was that man?”

It was incredible, absolutely incredible, for a moment, that it was really my name that was coupled with this disgraceful suspicion.  Three long years had passed over my head since I had tasted ale, beer, wine or liquor or any kind.