ross on the battlements of Jerusalem. I--"

"One moment, please. Have you given these items to any other journal?
Can I--"

"Silence. I was in the Pinta's shrouds with Columbus when America burst
upon his vision. I saw Charles I beheaded. I was in London when the
Gunpowder Plot was discovered. I was present at the trial of Warren
Hastings. I was on American soil when the battle of Lexington was fought
when the declaration was promulgated--when Cornwallis surrendered--When
Washington died. I entered Paris with Napoleon after Elba. I was
present when you mounted your guns and manned your fleets for the war
of 1812--when the South fired upon Sumter--when Richmond fell--when the
President's life was taken. In all the ages I have helped to celebrate
the triumphs of genius, the achievements of arms, the havoc of storm,
fire, pestilence, famine."

"Your career has been a stirring one. Might I ask how you came to
locate in these dull Kansas woods, when you have been so accustomed to
excitement during what I might term so protracted a period, not to put
too fine a point on it?"

"Listen. Once I was the honoured servitor of the noble and illustrious"
(here he heaved a sigh, and passed his hairy hand across his eyes) "but
in these degenerate days I am become the slave of quack doctors and
newspapers. I am driven from pillar to post and hurried up and down,
sometimes with stencil-plate and paste-brush to defile the fences with
cabalistic legends, and sometimes in grotesque and extravagant character
at the behest of some driving journal. I attended to that Ocean Bank
robbery some weeks ago, when I was hardly rested from finishing up the
pow-wow about the completion of the Pacific Railroad; immediately I was
spirited off to do an atrocious, murder for the benefit of the New York
papers; next to attend the wedding of a patriarchal millionaire; next
to raise a hurrah about the great boat race; and then, just when I had
begun to hope that my old bones would have a rest, I am bundled off to
this howling wilderness to strip, and jibber, and be ugly and hairy,
and pull down fences and waylay sheep, and waltz around with a club, and
play 'Wild Man' generally--and all to gratify the whim of a bedlam of
crazy newspaper scribblers? From one end of the continent to the other,
I am described as a gorilla, with a sort of human seeming about me--and
all to gratify this quill-driving scum of the earth!"

"Poor old carpet bagger!"

"I have be