December 22 Sunday – Sam’s MARK TWAIN’S LETTERS FROM WASHINGTON, NUMBER I, dated Dec. 4, ran in the Virginia City Enterprise:

Scurrilous Weather. I have been here a matter of ten days, but I do not know much about the place yet. There is too much weather. There is too much of it, and yet that is not the principal trouble. It is the quality rather than the quantity of it that I complain of; and more than against its quantity and its quality combined am I embittered against its character. It is tricky, it is changeable, it is to the last degree unreliable. It has catered for a political atmosphere so long that it has come at last to be thoroughly imbued with the political nature. As politics go, so goes the weather. It trims to suit every phase of sentiment, and is always ready. To-day it is a Democrat, to-morrow a Radical, the next day neither one thing nor the other. If a Johnson man goes over to the other side, it rains; if a Radical deserts to the Administration, it snows; if New York goes Democratic, it blows—naturally enough; if Grant expresses an opinion between two whiffs of smoke, it spits a little sleet uneasily; if all is quiet on the Potomac of politics, one sees only the soft haze of Indian summer from the Capitol windows; if the President is quiet, the sun comes out; if he touches the tender gold market, it turns up cold and freezes out the speculators; if he hints at foreign troubles, it hails; if he threatens Congress, it thunders; if treason and impeachment are broached, lo, there is an earthquake!

Other sections of the letter: “The Capitol and Congress,” “Mining College Proposed,” “Effects of the President’s Message,” and “Personal” [MTP].

Sam’s “Holy Land Excursion. Letter from Mark Twain Number Thirty-one” dated Sept. at “Banias” ran in the Alta California [McKeithan 198-204].