urns.

"It is pleasant to note that the city of Blathersville is
endeavoring to contract with some New York gentlemen to pave its
wellnigh impassable streets with the Nicholson pavement. The
_Daily Hurrah_ urges the measure with ability, and seems
confident of ultimate success."

I passed my manuscript over to the chief editor for acceptance,
alteration, or destruction. He glanced at it and his face clouded.
He ran his eye down the pages, and his countenance grew portentous.
It was easy to see that something was wrong. Presently he sprang up
and said:

"Thunder and lightning! Do you suppose I am going to speak of
those cattle that way? Do you suppose my subscribers are going to
stand such gruel as that? Give me the pen!"

I never saw a pen scrape and scratch its way so viciously, or
plough through another man's verbs and adjectives so relentlessly.
While he was in the midst of his work, somebody shot at him through
the open window, and marred the symmetry of my ear.

"Ah," said he, "that is that scoundrel Smith, of the _Moral
Volcano_--he was due yesterday." And he snatched a navy revolver
from his belt and fired. Smith dropped, shot in the thigh. The shot
spoiled Smith's aim, who was just taking a second chance, and he
crippled a stranger. It was me. Merely a finger shot off.

Then the chief editor went on with his erasures and
interlineations. Just as he finished them a hand-grenade came down
the stove-pipe, and the explosion shivered the stove into a
thousand fragments. However, it did no further 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 _t