Higgins was a simple creature, who used to haul rock; and on the day Judge Bagley fell down the court-house steps and broke his neck, Higgins was commissioned to carry the body in his wagon to the house of Mrs. Bagley and break the news to her as gently as possible. When he arrived, he shouted until Mrs. Bagley came to the door, and then tactfully inquired if the Widder Bagley lived there! When she indignantly replied in the negative, he gently humoured her whim; and inquired next if Judge Bagley lived there. When she replied that he did, Higgins offered to bet that he didn't; and delicately inquired if the Judge were in. On being assured that he was not in at present, Higgins triumphantly exclaimed that he expected as much. Because he had the old Judge curled up out there in the wagon; and when Mrs. Bagley saw him, she would doubtless admit that about all that could comfort the Judge now would be an inquest! Mark Twain was so fond of this bloody and ghastly humour that, on one occasion, he utterly overreached himself and suffered serious consequences. In the words of his fellow-journalist, Dan De Quille: Mark Twain was fond of manufacturing items of the horrible style, but on one occasion he overdid this business, and the disease worked its own cure. He wrote an account of a terrible murder, supposed to have occurred at “Dutch Nick's,” a station on the Carson River, where Empire City now stands. He made a man cut his wife's throat and those of his nine children, after which diabolical deed the murderer mounted his horse, cut his own throat from ear to ear, rode to Carson City (a distance of three and a half miles) and fell dead in front of Peter Hopkins' saloon. All the California papers copied the item, and several made editorial comment upon it as being the most shocking occurrence of the kind ever known on the Pacific Coast. Of course rival Virginia City papers at once denounced the item as a “cruel and idiotic hoax.” They showed how the publication of such “shocking and reckless falsehoods” disgraced and injured the State, and they made it as “sultry” as possible for the 'Enterprise' and its “fool reporter.”