February 15 Thursday – Sam’s San Francisco Letter of this date ran later in February in the Enterprise. Sections: “Funny,” “Montana,” “Literary,” “Personal,” and “Specie and Currency.” Only the first article text is available:

FUNNY

Chief Burke’s Star Chamber Board of Police Commissioners is the funniest institution extant, and the way he conducts it is the funniest theatrical exhibition in San Francisco. Now to see the Chief fly around and snatch up accuser and accused before the commission when any policeman is charged with misconduct in the public prints, you would imagine that fearful Commission was really going to raise the very devil. But it is all humbug, display, fuss and feathers. The Chief brings his policeman out as sinless as an angel, unless the testimony be heavy enough and strong enough, almost, to hang an ordinary culprit, in which case a penalty of four or five days’ suspension is awarded. …
Why, the other day, in one of the Commission trials, where a newspaper editor was summoned as a prosecutor, they detailed a substitute for the real delinquint, and tried him! There may be more joke than anything else about that statement, but I heard it told, anyhow. And then it is plausible—it is just characteristic of Star Chamber antics [Taper 218-20].