I met a man the other day, who, two years ago, was running a small paper at Larrabie's Slough. He was then in his meridian as a journalist, and his paper was frequently quoted by such widely-read publications as the Knight of Labor at Work, a humorous semi-monthly journal. He boldly assailed the silver dollar, and with his trenchant pen he wrote such burning words of denunciation that the printer had to set them on ice before he could use the copy.
Last week I met him on a Milwaukee & St. Paul train. He was very thin in flesh, and the fire of defiance was no longer in his eye. I asked him how he came on with the paper at Larrabie's Slough. He said it was no more.
“It started out,” said he, “in a fearless way, but it was not sustained.”
He then paused in a low tone of voice, gulped, and proceeded:
“Folks told me when I began that I ought to attack almost everything. Make the paper non-partisan, but aggressive, that was their idea. Sail into everything, and the paper would soon be a power in the land. So I aggressed.
“Friends came in very kindly and told me what to attack. They would neglect their own business in order to tell me of corruption in somebody else. I went on that way for some time in a defiant mood, attacking anything that happened to suggest itself.
“Finally I thought I would attack the silver dollar. I did so. I thought that friends would come to me and praise me for my manly words, and that I could afford to lose the friendship of the dollar provided I could win friends.
“In six months I took an unexpired annual pass over our Larrabie Slough Narrow-Gauge, or Orphan Road, and with nothing else but the clothes I wore, I told the plaintiff how to jerk the old Washington press and went away. The dear old Washington press that had more than once squatted my burning words into the pure white page. The dear old towel on which I had wiped my soiled hands for years, until it had almost become a part of myself, the dark blue Gordon press with its large fly wheel and intermittent chattel mortgage, a press, to which I had contributed the first joint of my front finger; the editor's chair; the samples of large business cards printed in green with an inflamed red border, which showed that we could do colored work at Larrabie's Slough just as well as they could in the large cities; the files of our paper; the large wilted potato that Mr. Alonzo G. Pinkham of Erin Corners kindly laid on our table-all, all had to go.
“I fled out into the great, hollow, mocking world of people who had requested me to aggress. They were people who had called my attention to various things which I ought to attack. I had attacked those things. I had also attacked the Larrabie Slough Narrow-Gauge Railroad, but the manager did not see the attack, and so my pass was good.
“What could I do?