And little his dreams are troubled over the public’s love or hate.
“So a rhyme to the old tramp-printer—to the hopes he has cherished and wept,
To the loves and the old home-voices that still in his heart are kept;
A rhyme to the old tramp-printer, whose garments are shiny and thin,
And who takes a bunk in the basement when the pressman lets him in.”
Mr. Mapes gravitated to Philadelphia to write for Colonel McClure’s Times. His are the appetizing paragraphs that burnish the editorial page by their subtile essence. He is a familiar figure at party conventions, which his intimate knowledge of state-politics enables him to gauge accurately. He abhors trickery and chicanery, deals his hardest blows in exposing corrupt methods, believes taxpayers and voters have rights contractors and bosses are bound to respect and is a stickler for honest government. Williams also strayed to the Quaker City as paragrapher for the Press, making a phenomenal hit. James G. Blaine complimented Charles Emory Smith upon these tart, peppery nuggets, saying: “I invariably read the Press paragraphs before looking at any other paper.” This pleasant tribute added ten dollars a week to Sam’s salary, yet he tired of Philadelphia years ago and glided back to his old home in “the Messer Diocese.” He is now connected with the New York Mail and Express, whose readers can hardly find words to express their satisfaction with the spice he injects into Elliot Shepherd’s trusty expositor of Republicanism.
His pointed squibs and his cranium bare
Are as much alike as steps in a stair—
One grows no moss and the other no hair.
R. W. Criswell holds an honorable place among the men who have made oil-region newspapers known abroad and influential at home. He was born in Clarion county and educated in Cincinnati. His sketches, signed “Chris,” introduced him to the public through the medium of the Oil-City Derrick, the East Brady Independent and the Fairview Independent, Colonel Samuel Young’s twin offspring. Retiring from Young’s employ at Fairview, he was next heard of as traveling correspondent of the Cincinnati Enquirer. His editorship of the Derrick in 1877 clinched his fame as a Simon-pure humorist, thirty-six inches to the yard and one-hundred cents to the dollar. The Shakespearian[Shakespearian] parodies and Lickshingle stories, lustrous as the Kohinoor, waltzed the merry round of the American press and were published in two taking books—“The New Shakespeare” and “Grandfather Lickshingle.” After his departure from the Petroleum World Criswell renewed his relations with the Enquirer as managing-editor. He was John R. McLean’s trusty lieutenant and held the great western daily on the topmost rung of the ladder. The New-York Graphic, the pathfinder of illustrated dailies, needed him and he accepted its flattering offer. The Cincinnati Sun was about to shine on the just and the unjust and he returned to Porkopolis. Colonel John Cockrell coaxed him back to Manhattanville to reconstruct the funny-streak of the overflowing New-York World.