I have always enjoyed the Mark Twain Forum for the lively exchanges and
the passion that folks show for all things Mark Twain, but the best part
is the way the forum turns into a quick seminar on a topic.

My shoot-from-the-hip generalization about the SF DRAMATIC CHRONICLE's
bantering style of presenting local items as well as my speculation
about the probability of Clemens being stoned vs drunk yielded a
thoughtful admonition from Bob Hirst and lots of contextual info from
Barb Schmidt and Jim Zwick.

So...I take it all back.  Well,... most of it.

Certainly the contextual info about published references over a long
time period, which increases the odds of probable availability, make me
much more ready to believe that Sam Clemens, living a Bohemian
life-style in San Francisco, would not have had difficulty finding the
drug if he wished to sample hashish. Certainly Bob Hirst is correct to
say that the CHRONICLE'S crew like to attack the stuffed-shirt crowd
represented by Albert Evans.  Mark Twain had his own long-running series
of comic slams against "Stiggers," and the CALIFORNIAN was still making
fun of Evans even after Clemens had sailed for New York at the end of
1866.

But...there are times when bantering within the ranks happens. I am
thinking of the joke when Clemens was about to give his first "lecture"
on the Sandwich Islands in October of 1866.  Supposedly Mark Twain was
so nervous that he tried to leave town, and was only prevented with the
aid of a policemen and several bottles of "Mrs. Winslow's soothing
syrup."  Maybe that is not a typical example in its obvious comic level.
I only ran across it recently reading the CHRONICLE files--while
looking for something else.  So I wasn't trying to calculate a style for
the paper in a systematic way.

However, the piece about Clemens and Johns being stoned does not have
any of the obviously broad comic touches that the item about the lecture
does, which, when I went back and looked at it again, makes me agree
with Bob Hirst that one ought to read it as a report rather than a comic
dig.

My thanks to all for the collegial schooling.