December 25 Monday – Christmas – The following articles supposed to be by Twain, ran in the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle:
OUR NEW JUDGE
Alfred Rix, the newly elected Judge of the Police Court, is a very respectable lawyer, and a man sufficiently human in his feelings, kindly in his nature, and shrewd in his judgments of character to make an excellent magistrate. We are inclined to believe that Mr. Rix is “the right man in the right place,” and that the Board of Supervisors will have no reason to repent of their action in placing him upon the Bench. The reporters seemed to imagine the other day that Hale Rix was the judge elect. Hale Rix is quite another sort of man and we think it quite as well — perhaps a trifle better — that “Alfred” is chosen to hold the scales and wield the sword of the Goddess of Justice in the Police Court.
GETTING CONSERVATIVE
Our cultural love of justice compels us to give the d___l his due. It is a fact to which we cannot close our eyes, that the Flag is really making an honest effort to become a respectable paper. Ever since it “got the dispatches” it has been comparatively rational. Heaven grant that the phenomenon may not prove transient. But we have our misgivings.

ON THE SIDE OF THE LORD
We are delighted to see that the Country Paper has come out on the Lord’s side in the crusade commenced against the Christian religion by the Theologian of the Era. It an article entitled the “Epoch of Reason,” the bucolic institution actually talks much sound sense, and gives the Theologian a very neat thrust by reminding him that all his shallow rationalistic notions, which he propounds with the air of a man who has lit upon something original, were half a century ago promulgated by Tom Paine, with infinitely greater ability, and cogency than the Era’s amateur evinces.
FEELING FOR IT
Grandmother Alta shoves up her spectacles and twaddles urbanely about “Feeling for Mexico in the East.” It is to be supposed that the precious old nincompoop imagines that Mexico is an Eastern province — lying between Egypt and Arabia, possible — and that feeling for it in that direction is destined to result in its being found, and restored to its original “internal scrimmage” position. Really now, Granny, you ought to be put through a course of geographical sprouts.