prizes offered, we would certainly win the
first.

Last year, thinking he would scare his mother-in-law and
sister-in-law off from where they live, so he could get the place,
he shot two holes through their window, turned their mule out of
the stable, and tried to run it into the bean patch, besides
hanging up a bunch of switches at the drawbars. Then their fence
was set afire twice. This is said to be the work of his wife. Then,
after carrying home meat, flour, lard, and vegetables to eat for
her mother and sister, he whipped the latter because she refused to
give him two of the wagon wheels.

The city made a case against both for the whipping, and the wife,
although coming to town alone frequently during the day, brought
her baby and everything to the council room, plead guilty and was
fined one and costs. Billie didn't appear, but if he stays in this
country Marshal Wimpy will have him, when all these things will
come to light, both in the council chamber and grand jury room.

The scandal of newspaperdom in Georgia is, of course, Tom Watson, who
publishes the "Jeffersonian"--a misnamed paper if there ever was one--in
the town of Thomson. Many years ago, when Edward P. Thomas, now
assistant to the president of the United States Steel Corporation, was a
little boy in Atlanta, complaining about having his ears washed; when
Theodore D. Rousseau, secretary to Mayor Mitchel of New York, was having
his early education drilled into him at the Ivy Street school; when
Ralph Peters, now president of the Long Island Railroad, had left
Atlanta and become a division superintendent on the Panhandle Road; when
the parents of Ivy Ledbetter Lee were wondering to what college they
would send him when he grew to be a big boy; when Robert Adamson was a
page in the Georgia Legislature--as long ago as that, Tom Watson was
waving his red head and prominent Adam's apple as a member of the State
House of Representatives. In the mad and merry days of Bryanism he
became a Populist Member of Congress. He was nominated for
vice-president, to run on the Populist ticket with Bryan. Later he ran
for president on the ticket of some unheard-of party, organized in
protest against the "conservatism" of the Populists. Watson's paper
reminds one of Brann and his "Iconoclast." Reading it, I have never been
able to discover what Watson was _for_. All I could find out was what