is cause. While some
             complied, it said that Twain ridiculed those who refused, such as through
             The San Francisco Daily Examiner (March 9, 1885) described the novel
             as "â€being without a motive, a moral, or a plot. The only reason to be, as
             probably that the author thought he could make some money by publishing a
             of some kind, and here it is--such as it is." The newspaper saw the work as
             a "pot-boiler in its baldest form" in giving an account of life in the
             Southwest. While it credited the novel for its impressive passages and
             occasional touches of "grotesque pathos", which grabbed the interest of
             readers of the time, the newspaper found that it did not differ very much
             from Twain's other Pacific Coast sketches. It indicted the work as utterly
             lacking in truth and for being unlike anything in the earth, noting how
             Twain earlier worked as reporter on the Territorial Enterprise newspaper of
             Virginia City in Nevada, where he was quite noted for factual-ness. The
             newspaper identified Twain's flawed report on the massacre of an entire
             family of the Van Sickles that both "horrified" and "annoyed" the reading
             public. It recalled that Twain said it was just a joke on his part and that
             those who were inconvenienced should not get upset. Yet when it was his
             in a Comstock party of his former intimates, Twain got very mad.
             Nonetheless, this newspaper praised Twain's creative engravings and the
             The Boston Evening Transcript (March 17, 1885) carried this news
             a member of the Committee as short of judging the novel as immoral and
             humorous only in "a coarse way, " even the very much of a trash. The other
             members found it similarly rough, coarse and without elegance in dealing
             with experiences, as a whole "un-elevating" and more suited to "slum" and
             The New York Herald (March 18, 1885) resounded and endorsed the
             rejection made by the Concord Committee, which denounced Twain'...