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the bluster and the bluff of subsidized news
papers.
Let him appeal to the People, trust the Peo
ple, educate the People—AND HE WILL
WIN.
Me and the 'Printer.
In a mournful editorial, week before last, I
spoke, between sobs, of the way the printer had
been doing me. You will remember how your
sympathies broke loose and came tearing across
the field to get to me, with offerings of com
fort and consolation.
The printer had made me allude to General
Israel Putnam as “Old Pot” when, as I. declare
to high heaven, 1 didn’t go to do it. “Old Put,”
was what I meant to say, and what I actually
did say.
1 caw-prove by two reliable witnesses that
when I opened the June Magazine and saw that
1 had been made to allude to Gen. Putnam
as “Old Pot, 1 immediately said things which
would suffer by repetition.
As a relief to the editorial soul, I wrote “Ty
pographical Errors.” You may have read that
melancholy piece. If you did, you remember
that I instanced the case in which, Gen. Pillow
having been referred to as “a battle-scared vet
eran,” the shocked editor re-issued his orders
for “battle-scarred veteran,” only to find, to
his horror, next morning, that the typer made
him call Gen. Pillow “a bottle-scarred veteran.”
Judge of my stupefaction when I opened the
Jeffersonian and read my editorial. Instead ot
“bottle-scarred veteran,” the printer had it
"bottle-scared veteran”—a very different prop
osition, indeed, and something inconceivable
as a term descriptive of any brigadier-general
whomsoever.
Realizing that, in this particular bout be
tween me and the printer, I was hopeless
ly hors du combat, and otherwise bruised and
battered beyond the resources of ordinary balm
and balsam, 1 threw up the sponge, the pen,
the ink-bottle, the blotter, the paper-weight,
and everything else within reach.
But it seems that Nemesis has it in for me.
Fancy my feelings when I saw that the printer,
by a typographical error, had given to my com
plimentary write-up of Harvie Jordan's Vienna
trip a tone which' might seem unfriendly, to
those who are unaware of my admiration for
that great man.
Speaking of the air of hotel-clerk case and
condescension with which Harvie had met the
advances of the Emperor of Austria, I describ
ed the former as having been as “cool as a dew
begemmed cucumber”—a bucolic and poetical
simile which I thought beautifully appropriate
to the great inter-national agricultural char
acter who had learned all about farming while
acting as clerk to the Kimball House, Atlanta,
Georgia.
When I read the editorial in the paper, I
found that the printer had got me down again
and was pouring sand in my cars—for he had
made me describe Harvie Jordan as “a <k\v
begummed cucumber” 1
1 never said it. What I did say was compli
mentary, appropriate, elegantly appreciative—
a neatly turned phrase which made me think
of John Temple Graves and wish I could do it
oftener.
“Dew-begemmed” is just fine; it distinctly
belongs to the class of words that arc to be
found in the armory, laboratory, vocabulary,
lexicon, and so forth, of all true “word paint
ers.”
As to “dew-begummed”—it is mere anony
mous hog wash.
No—the printer has got me into trouble and,
1 fear, made me another foe. The article, as
it left my desk, was calculated to make Harvie
Jordan feel good. His first impulse, upon read
ing what I actually did say about his Vienna
trip, \ . ould have been to let me have some of
that stock in “The Greater Cotton Journal” at
par, thus extending to me the privileges of the
ground floor. But all that is a mere drcam.
WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN.
now. Ihe fat is in the fire. To be alluded to
in the Jeffersonian as “a dew-begummed cu
cumber" is a casus belli, recognized by Vattcl,
Grotius, Bynkershoeck, Puffendorf, Knockem
down, Dragemout, JI itemergin, and every oth
er authority with which I am familiar.
Consequently, I will not be at all surprised
if I receive a cartel from Harvie Jordan and a
hostile note from his friend the Emperor Jo
seph. You will realize, of course, that the Em
peror is involved, as well as Harvie, and that
an affront to the one, in this connection, is an
offence to the other. Realizing this, you will
appreciate the gravity of the crisis which is
bearing down upon me—a crisis due altogether
to tlie entangling alliance into which 1 have
been inveigled by the printer.
If you are a friend of mine and ready to take
my part in case I am attacked by Harvie and
the Emperor, please keep your car cupped, so
as to hear my cry of distress when I “holler
for help.”
P. S. Spinner and grower are still together.
The union of the two, brought about by Har
vie, shows no signs of coming unglued. Spin
ners and growers have become so confiding
and fraternal that they just pass cotton bales
about for fun and brotherly love. Nobody
thinks of higgling, haggling and huckstering
over the price. In fact, they sell and buy the
cotton first and then talk about the price after
wards.
Paul Dixon’s Vacation.
In the current issue of his paper, The Mis
souri World, Paul Dixon announces that he
must take a few weeks off for rest and recrea
tion, lest he should be unable to continue to
work. For eighteen years he has been in the
harness, and during that long period of labor
his vacation has been but two weeks —and
these were eleven years ago.
Is it any wonder that Paul should need rest?
Does anybody grudge him a vacation?
None but those who have, themselves, been
through the mill can know what the toil is of
conducting a paper which combats the govern
mental abuses of the day. To be misunderstood
by those whom you seek to benefit, to be hated
and persecuted by those whose injustice and
oppression you attack, to be misrepresented
and vilified, to be neglected or betrayed, to
bear the cross while your principles are unpop
ular and to be left without recognition or re
ward when those principles have been made
triumphant—such is the common lot of pioneer
reformers.
What freed today remembers Lun
dy and Lovejoy, Clarkson and Wilberforce?
Not one. But they all remember and adore
Abraham Lincoln, who was never an original
Abolutionist; who owed his change of heart
upon that subject to his law-partner, Hern
don ; and who never took a step in favor of the
negro that be was not driven to take by the
stronger men of the Abolition movement.
So, today, we see the pioneers who paved
the wav for Bryan and Roosevelt neglected.
Bryan is marketing a harvest for which he nei
ther prepared the soil, nor sowed the seed. He
is simply the beneficiary of the toils and the
sacrifices of the pioneers. The very propa
ganda which outlawed and impoverished ear
lier and bidder men. has made Bryan popular
and rich. To his fame and profit have been
appropriated the final outcome of the labor
and '.‘he heroism of the pioneer reformers, from
the davs of Peter Cooper down—men who
took their lives in their hands, and risked all
they had on earth, to preach their message to
mankind.
Honor, forever, to those brave men? They
were hooted and insulted; they were pelted
with mud and stones; they were rotten-egged
when they rose to speak in public; they were
howled down, silenced by brute force and
blind hatred; the\ were ostracised, and their
children made to feel the cruelty of the war
fare being waged against their fathers. Yet
they never faltered. Weaklings, time-servers,
place-hunters deserted us when the storm
came upon us, but the Old Guard was true to
the last. Overpowered, beaten for the time,
it sullenly retired, firing a volley, from time
to time, as the ranks grew thinner, and the
night fell.
No true-hearted Populist ever went back on
his creed! None of the Old Guard was ever
ashamed of his Cause, afraid of its enemies,
or doubtful of its final victory.
We KNEW that we were right! We knew
we stood just where Jefferson, were he alive,
would have taken his stand. We knew that the
gospel which we proclaimed was absolutely
essential to the salvation of this Republic.
So we marched on, fought on —and when we
could no longer march or fight, we rested on
our arms waiting for a happier day when we
could again go forth, to battle for the good
cause.
And of all that band of noble, fearless, un
selfish men, who was a truer man than Paul
Dixon?
He cannot be named. Others were more
conspicuous, but none more useful, more de
voted. Others may have made more of the
noise called Fame, but none more steadily,
more gallantly, more patiently, more loyally
did his duty.
\ acation ! —Take it, Paul, for you have earn
ed it. And with you as you go, take the “God
bless you” of the thousands of the Old Guard,
who have known you so long and well, and
who love you with all their hearts.
Here Noir ! ! !
Hast thou ever done a tiling to extend the
circulation and the usefulness of Watson’s
Weekly?
If not, why not? How can'st thou have the
heart to stand idle all the day, thou sluggard,
when our subscription books are open and our
expense-account stingeth like an adder, and
biteth like a hungry horse in the green corn?
How canst thou begrude thy neighbor the
feast to which thou sittest thyself down, once
a week, upon the arrival of the Jeffersonian?
Think how inhospitable it is of thee to want
it all to thyself. Think how greatly thou
wouldst add to thine own pleasure by summon
ing a goodly company of congenial spirits and
whetted appetites to the banquet. Hast thou
thought upon these things?
Hast thou rung the dinner-bell? Hast thou
made thy immediate neighborhood resound
with the tintinnabulation of the merry clapper
—arresting the steps of the passers by and
showing them which way to come?
If rot. why not? Pray, bethink thee of these
matters, before the night cometh wherein all
honest people, having dined, go to bed and
snore themselves into somnolent oblivion. Pass
the victuals around. Don’t keep on trying to
monopolize a good thing. Tell the neighbors
all about it and bid them to the feast.
Otherwise, judicious persons will adjudge
thee selfish, and thou wilt assuredly suffer.
So will wc.
"Battle Ship Georgia and Miss Louise
Dußose.
When the Govenment decided to give the
name of our state. Georgia, to one of its most
magnificent war-vessels. Miss Katie Louise
Dußose. of Athens. Ga., conceived the idea of
raising a fund by voluntary contribution, for
the purchase of a Silver Service for the use of
the new ship.
'Those who have undertaken things of that
kind, know their difficulty. So very many de
mands are made, almost daily, upon the pock
ets of the generous demands charitable, re
ligious. social, political, mixed, miscellan s
promiscuous, ami missionary- that an
quest for contributions to a brand new
sition meets with just about the san
(Continued on page Nine.)
PAGE NINE