Assuredly there is room for special training toward the making of an editor. Too often the newspaper subaltern obtaining promotion through aptitudes peculiarly his own, has failed to acquire even the most rudimentary knowledge of his art. He has been too busy seeking “scoops” and doing “stunts” to concern himself about perspectives, principles, causes and effects, probable impressions and consequences, or even to master the technical details which make such a difference in the preparation of matter intended for publication and popular perusal. The School of Journalism may not be always able to give him the needful instruction. But it can set him in the right direction and better prepare him to think and act for himself.
Chapter the Twenty-Eighth
Bullies and Braggarts—Some Kentucky Illustrations—The Old Galt House—The Throckmortons—A Famous Sugeon—“Old Hell’s Delight”
I
I do not believe that the bully and braggart is more in evidence in Kentucky and Texas than in other Commonwealths of the Union, except that each is by the space writers made the favorite arena of his exploits and adopted as the scene of the comic stories told at his expense. The son-of-a-gun from Bitter Creek, like the “elegant gentleman” from the Dark and Bloody Ground, represents a certain type to be found more or less developed in each and every State of the Union. He is not always a coward. Driven, as it were, to the wall, he will often make good.
He is as a rule in quest of adventures. He enters the village from the countryside and approaches the mêlée. “Is it a free fight?” says he. Assured that it is, “Count me in,” says he. Ten minutes later, “Is it still a free fight?” he says, and, again assured in the affirmative, says he, “Count me out.”
Once the greatest of bullies provoked old Aaron Pennington, “the strongest man in the world,” who struck out from the shoulder and landed his victim in the middle of the street. Here he lay in a helpless heap until they carted him off to the hospital, where for a day or two he flickered between life and death. “Foh God,” said Pennington, “I barely teched him.”
This same bully threatened that when a certain mountain man came to town he would “finish him.” The mountain man came. He was enveloped in an old-fashioned cloak, presumably concealing his armament, and walked about ostentatiously in the proximity of his boastful foeman, who remained as passive as a lamb. When, having failed to provoke a fight, he had taken himself off, an onlooker said: “Bill, I thought you were going to do him up?”
“But,” says Bill, “did you see him?”
“Yes, I saw him. What of that?”