Your note astonishes me.  The man you describe is a notorious thief.  Get the compositors all together, and make a rush at him.  Don’t try to keep him, but hustle him out of town, and I’ll be down as soon as I can get a button sewn on my collar.

P.S.—­Give it him good!—­don’t mention my address and he can’t complain to me how you treat him.  Bust his bugle!

J.  Munniglut, Proprietor, to Peter Pitchin, Editor.

“STINGER” OFFICE, Friday, 2 P.M.

Business has detained me from the office until now, and what do I find?  Not a soul about the place, no copy, not a stickful of live matter on the galleys!  There can be no paper this week.  What you have all done with yourselves I am sure I don’t know; one would suppose there had been smallpox about the place.  You will please come down and explain this Hegira at once—­at once, if you please!

P.S.—­That troublesome Muskler—­you may remember he dropped in on Monday to inquire about something or other—­has taken a sort of shop exactly opposite here, and seems, at this distance, to be doing something to a shotgun.  I presume he is a gunsmith.  So we are precious well rid of him.

Peter Pitchin, Editor to J. Munniglut, Proprietor.

PIER NO. 3, Friday Evening.

Just a line or two to say I am suddenly called away to bury my sick mother.  When that is off my mind I’ll write you what I know about the Hegira, the Flight into Egypt, the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, and whatever else you would like to learn.  There is nothing mean about me! I don’t think there has been any wilful desertion.  You may engage an editor for, say, fifty years, with the privilege of keeping him regularly, if, at the end of that time, I should break my neck hastening back.

P.S.—­I hope that poor fellow Muskier will make a fair profit in the gunsmithing line.  Jump him for an ad!

CORRUPTING THE PRESS

When Joel Bird was up for Governor of Missouri, Sam Henly was editing the Berrywood Bugle; and no sooner was the nomination made by the State Convention than he came out hot against the party.  He was an able writer, was Sam, and the lies he invented about our candidate were shocking!  That, however, we endured very well, but presently Sam turned squarely about and began telling the truth. This was a little too much; the County Committee held a hasty meeting, and decided that it must be stopped; so I, Henry Barber, was sent for to make arrangements to that end.  I knew something of Sam:  had purchased him several times, and I estimated his present value at about one thousand dollars.  This seemed to the committee a reasonable figure, and on my mentioning it to Sam he said “he thought that about the fair thing; it should never be said that the Bugle was a hard paper to deal with.”  There was, however, some delay in raising the money; the candidates