Warm Springs, in the adjoining commonwealth of Missouri. This cuckoo
cry--raised though it is by dogs of political darkness--we shall not
stoop to controvert, for it is accidentally true; but next week we shall
show, as by the stroke of an enchanter's wand, that this great
statesman's detractors would probably not derive any benefits from a
residence in the same institution, their mental aberration being
rottenly incurable!"

I thought this rather strong and not quite to the point; but Masthead
said it was a fact that our candidate, who was very little known in
Claybank, had "served a term" in the Warm Springs asylum, and the issue
must be boldly met--that evasion and denial were but forms of
prostration beneath the iron wheels of Truth! As he said this he seemed
to inflate and expand so as almost to fill his clothes, and the fire of
his eye somehow burned into me an impression--since effaced--that a just
cause is not imperiled by a trifling concession to fact. So, leaving the
matter quite in my editor's hands I went away to keep some important
engagements, the paragraph having involved me in several duels with the
friends of Mr. Broskin. I thought it rather hard that I should have to
defend my new editor's policy against the supporters of my own
candidate, particularly as I was clearly in the right and they knew
nothing whatever about the matter in dispute, not one of them having
ever before so much as heard of the now famous Warm Springs asylum. But
I would not shirk even the humblest journalistic duty; I fought these
fellows and acquitted myself as became a man of letters and a
politician. The hurts I got were some time healing, and in the interval
every prominent member of my party who came to Claybank to speak to the
people regarded it as a simple duty to call first at my house, make a
tender inquiry as to the progress of my recovery and leave a challenge.
My physician forbade me to read a line of anything; the consequence was
that Masthead had it all his own way with the paper. In looking over the
old files now, I find that he devoted his entire talent and all the
space of the paper, including what had been the advertising columns, to
confessing that our candidate had been an inmate of a lunatic asylum,
and contemptuously asking the opposing party what they were going to do
about it.

All this time Mr. Broskin made no sign; but when the challenges became
intolerable I indignantly instructed Mr. Masthead to whip