August 1 Saturday – The Virginia City Bulletin ran a short article, “Gymnasium” 

“Mark Twain wants a gym in this city. Wouldn’t a bath house afford him as healthy exercise?”

To which Sam answered in the Enterprise soon after:

“Well, my boy, before that gym is completed, we will put you through some evolutions that will make you think a bath house is a very healthy institution. That is if you don’t ‘dry up’ ” [The Twainian, Nov.-Dec. 1948 p.4].

Clement T. Rice, the “Unreliable,” filling in for a sick Mark Twain, took this opportunity to run “APOLOGETIC” in the Enterprise, represented as being from Sam:

It is said an “open confession is good for the soul.” We have been on the stool of repentance for a long time, but have not before had the moral courage to acknowledge our manifold sins and wickedness. We confess to this weakness. We have commenced this article under the head of “Apologetic”—we mean it, if we ever meant anything in our life. To Mayor Arick, Hon. Wm. M. Stewart, Marshal Perry, Hon. J.B. Winters, Mr. Olin, and Samuel Witherel, besides a host of others whom we have ridiculed from behind the shelter of our reportorial position, we say to these gentlemen, we acknowledge our faults and in all weakness and simplicity—upon our bended marrow-bones—we ask their forgiveness, promising that in the future we will give them no cause for anything but the best of feeling toward us. To “Young Wilson,” and the “Unreliable,” (as we feel that no apology we can make begins to atone for the many insults we have given them)….We will now go in sackcloth and ashes for the next forty days. What more can we do? [Mack 233-4].

The Sonora Silver Mining Co. issued five shares of stock to “S. Clements” on this date. The company was incorporated on July 13, 1863, only two weeks prior [Meltzer 59].