April 17–24 Sunday – Sam’s item in the Enterprise Local Column was “Missionaries Wanted.” This humorous drubbing of two locals in a fictional scene was typical of Sam’s barbs for those he wanted to deflate. Such reports won him the title of “wild and unpredictable humorist.”
Yesterday morning [John] Gashwiler and Charley Funck, citizens of Virginia City and of the Territory of Nevada, and officers of the great Virginia and Gold Hill Water Company, came rushing into our office in a state of excitement bordering on lunacy… [Note: John W. Gashwiler (1831-1883) “Old Gash”]
What followed was the pair demanding that an article in another newspaper be read, the article being only verses from the book of John in the Bible. When men get so far gone that they do not know the Sermon on the Mount from a bid for a water franchise, it is time for them to begin reform and stop taking chances on the hereafter [ET&S 1: 424-5].