Appearances are deceptive, and Bruin was less domesticated than Lola imagined. One day, pining perhaps for fresh diet, he grappled with his mistress and bit her hand. The incident attracted a laureate on the staff of the _California Chronicle_, who, in Silas Wegg fashion, "dropped into verse:" LOLA AND HER PET One day when the season was drizzly, And outside amusements were wet, Fair Lola paid court to her Grizzly And undertook petting her pet. But, ah, it was not the Bavarian Who softened so under her hand, No ermined King octogenarian, But Bruin, coarse cub of the land. So, all her caresses combatting He crushed her white slender hand first, Refusing his love to her patting, As she had refused hers to _Pat_! Oh, had her pet been him whose glory And title were won on the field, Less bloodless had ended this story, More easy her hand had been _Heald_! This doggerel was signed "F.S.", initials which masked the identity of Frank Soule, the editor of the _Chronicle_. V Never without her dog-whip, Lola took it with her to her cottage in Grass Valley. There she soon found a use for it. A journalist, in a column account of her career, was ungallant enough to finish by enquiring "if she were the devil incarnate?" As the simplest method of settling the problem, "Lola summoned the impertinent scribbler and gave him such a hiding that he had no doubts left at all." Shortly afterwards, there was trouble with another representative of the press. This was with one Henley Shipley, the editor of the _Marysville Herald_, who, notwithstanding that they were "regularly attended by the _elite_ of the camp," had described her "Wednesday soirees" as "disgraceful orgies, inimical to our fair repute." Thereupon, says a sympathiser, the aspersed hostess "took her whip to him, and handed out a number of stinging and well merited cuts." The opportunity being too good to miss, the editor of the _Sacramento Union_ set to work and rushed out a special edition, with a long description of the incident: This forenoon our town was plunged into a state of ludicrous excitement by the spectacle of Madame Lola Montez rushing through Mill Street, with a lady's delicate riding whip in one hand and a copy of the _Marysville Herald_ in the other, vowing vengeance on "that scoundrel of an editor," etc. She met him at the Golden Gate Saloon, a crowd, on the _qui vive_, following in her footsteps. Having struck at him with her whip, she then applied woman's best weapon--her tongue. Meanwhile, her antagonist kept most insultingly cool. All her endeavours being powerless, the "Divine Lola" appealed to the miners, but the only response was a burst of laughter. Mr. Shipley, the editor, then retired in triumph, having, by his calmness, completely worn down his fair enemy.