“The —— and ——,” I replied; “but, indeed, any print that will use my stuff and pay at decent rates.”
“Wall, now! You’re like the flies, bumming around the sweetest lump of molasses, eh?”
I admitted that the case was somewhat similar, although I didn’t like the analogy.
“Ah!” exclaimed our American (whose name, by the way, was Hiram D. Cheasey, or something else equally humorous), “you ain’t got no paper over here to compare with the best New York papers: one of ’em ’specially.”
“Which one may that be?” I inquired of the stranger, who by now was beginning to exhibit symptoms of spread-eagleism.
“Sir,” he replied, “it is the organ through which America speaks to the hull civilized world.”
I suspect I must have been tempted of the devil, for I inquired, with apparent innocency—
“You mean the nasal organ, I presume?”
It was an unfortunate inquiry, for on account of it I never learned the name of the New York print which had so world-wide a voice: I wonder what is the title of that sheet, and what is its scale of remuneration?