Who criticise the Indian
campaigns? Gentlemen who do not know a war-whoop from a wigwam, and who
never have had to run a footrace with a tomahawk, or pluck arrows out of
the several members of their families to build the evening camp-fire
with. Who write the temperance appeals, and clamour about the flowing
bowl? Folks who will never draw another sober breath till they do it in
the grave. Who edit the agricultural papers, you--yam? Men, as a general
thing, who fail in the poetry line, yellow-coloured novel line,
sensation-drama line, city-editor line, and finally fall back on
agriculture as a temporary reprieve from the poorhouse. _You_ try to
tell _me_ anything about the newspaper business! Sir, I have been
through it from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows
the bigger noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands. Heaven
knows if I had but been ignorant instead of cultivated, and impudent
instead of diffident, I could have made a name for myself in this cold,
selfish world. I take my leave, sir. Since I have been treated as you
have treated me, I am perfectly willing to go. But I have done my duty.
I have fulfilled my contract as far as I was permitted to do it.... I
said I could run your circulation up to twenty thousand copies, and if I
had had two more weeks I'd have done it.
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