James William Emery (“Lying Jim”) Townsend (1838-1900) learned the printing trade in his home stand of new Hampshire and began his journalism career on the San Francisco Golden Era in 1859, working alongside Joseph Goodman, Bret Harte, and Denis McCarthy. He worked as a printer on the Territorial Enterprise from the fall of 1862 until the winter of 1863-64, when he joined the staff of the Virginia City Union. For the next forty years he was connected with a variety of California and Nevada newspapers as a printer, reporter, editor, and proprietor. Townsend, perhaps the original of Harte’s “Truthful James,” became widely known on the Pacific Coast as a wit and a raconteur of Mรผnchausen-like adventures. Examples of his humorous journalism may be found in Lying on the Eastern Slope,