perse, and confound their obstacle; even if
it's only a corporal's guard of one private!

This _specialite_ in newspapers has occasionally been ridiculed, though
not very well. Dickens's _Eatonsville Gazette_ and _Independent_ are
perhaps the best caricatures; and they are a very good embodiment of a
particular class of partisan provincial papers; but they are utterly
inadequate to characterize the exaggeration that runs riot through the
whole tribe of periodicals--and _amok_ through the serried ranks of
Anglo-Saxon words. See the _New York Rostrum_; daily, weekly, and
semi-weekly. It is rampant! It suspects an abuse, and it ramps against
it. It seizes an idea, and it ramps toward its development. All who are
not with it are against it, and all who are against it are either fools
or knaves. The _Rostrum_ never chronicles railroad accidents. Oh, no! It
only tells its readers of dastardly and cowardly outrages, committed by
blood-thirsty fiends in the shape of presidents and directors against
virtuous and estimable passengers, whole hecatombs of whom are
assassinated to gratify the hideous appetite for carnage of the
officials aforesaid; every one of whom, from the president to the
water-boys, ought to suffer the extremest penalty of the law. It doesn't
say that they ought to be hung. No! capital punishment was the most
benighted characteristic of barbarism. It is a horrid atrocity to bring
it down to the present day. Nobody ought to be subjected to it but the
slimy reptiles who advocate its continuance.

Not only does the _Rostrum_ behave like a wild bull of Bashan when it is
fairly under way, but it is a perfect rocket at starting. It makes haste
to commit itself. It is continually entering into bonds to break the
peace. Its principle is not unlike that of the Irishman in a row:
'Wherever you see a head, hit it.' It deals around little doses of
shillelah, just by way of experiment; and if the unlucky head does not
happen to be that of an enemy, make it one; so it's all right again. It
carries whole baskets of chips on its shoulders, knock one off who will.

Forgive me, good _Rostrum_! I honestly believe thee to be the best paper
in this world; and my morning breakfast and car ride would be as fasting
and a pilgrimage, without thee! It takes all my philosophy and more than
all my piety (besides the lying abed late, and the coffee, which we only
have once a week) to dispense with thee on Sunday. No paper is so
untrammel