damage, except that a vagrant piece knocked a couple of my teeth out.
“That stove is utterly ruined,” said the chief editor.
I said I believed it was.
“Well, no matter – don’t want it this kind of weather. I know the man that did it. I’ll get him. Now, here is the way this stuff ought to be written.”
I took the manuscript. It was scarred with erasures and interlineations till its mother wouldn’t have known it if it had had one. It now read as follows:
“Spirit of the Tennessee press
“The inveterate liars of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake are evidently endeavoring to palm off upon a noble and chivalrous people another of their vile and brutal falsehoods with regard to that most glorious conception of the nineteenth century, the Ballyhack railroad. The idea that Buzzardville was to be left off at one side originated in their own fulsome brains – or rather in the settlings which they regard as brains. They had better swallow this lie if they want to save their abandoned reptile carcasses the cowhiding they so richly deserve.
“That ass, Blossom, of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battle-Cry of Freedom, is down here again sponging at the Van Buren.
“We observe that the besotted blackguard of the Mud Springs Morning Howl is giving out, with his usual propensity for lying, that Van Werter is not elected. The heaven-born mission of journalism is to disseminate truth: to eradicate error; to educate, refine, and elevate the tone of public morals and manners, and make all men more gentle, more virtuous, more charitable, and in all ways better, and holier, and happier; and yet this black-hearted scoundrel degrades his great office persistently to the dissemination of falsehood, calumny, vituperation, and vulgarity.
“Blathersville wants a Nicholson pavement – it wants a jail and a poor-house more. The idea of a pavement in a one-horse town composed of two gin-mills, a blacksmith-shop, and that mustard-plaster of a newspaper, the Daily Hurrah! The crawling insect, Buckner, who edits the Hurrah, is braying about this business with his customary imbecility, and imagining that he is talking sense.”
“Now that is the way to write – peppery and to the point. Mush-and-milk journalism gives me the fan-tods.”
About this time a brick came through the window with a splintering crash, and gave me a considerable of a jolt in the back. I moved out of range – I began to feel in the way.
The chief said: “That was the Colonel, likely. I’ve been expecting him for two days. He will be up now right away.”
He was correct. The Colonel appeared in the door a moment afterwards with a dragoon revolver in his hand.
He said: “Sir, have I the honor of addressing the poltroon who edits this mangy sheet?”
“You have. Be seated, sir. Be careful of the chair, one of its legs is gone. I believe I have the honor of addressing the putrid liar, Colonel Blatherskite Tecumseh?”
“Right, sir. I have a little account to settle with you. If you are at leisure we will begin.”
“I have an article on the ’Encouraging Progress of Moral and Intellectual Development in America’ to finish, but there is no hurry. Begin.”
Both pistols rang out their fierce clamor at the same instant. The chief lost a lock of his hair, and the Colonel’s bullet ended its career in the fleshy part of my thigh. The Colonel’s left shoulder was clipped a little. They fired again. Both missed their men this time, but I got my share, a shot in the arm. At the third fire both gentlemen were wounded slightly, and I had a knuckle chipped. I then said I believed I would go out and take a walk, as this was a private matter, and I had a delicacy about participating in it further. But both gentlemen begged me to keep my seat, and assured me that I was not in the way.
They then talked about the elections and the crops while they reloaded, and I fell to tying up my wounds. But presently they opened fire again with animation, and every shot took effect – but it is proper to remark that five out of the six fell to my share. The sixth one mortally wounded the Colonel, who remarked, with fine humor, that he would have to say good-morning now, as he had business up-town. He then inquired the way to the undertaker’s and left.
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