John agreed to do his prettiest.
“In the town below us,” continued the constituent, “thar is a fellar of the inimy who's dead bitter agin us and our town, so you must gin him scissors! Rile him up, and sot his liver workin', 'cause the skunk is injurin' our location. Advartis' our doins' in gineral, sich as we got to sell, and throw yourself wide on the literary fixins and poetry, for the galls—and, Mister Earl, ef you ony do this genteely, and with spirit, the whole town will take the paper! Don't forgit to gin the town below particular saltpetre.”
John gave them to understand that if his subscribers wished it, he would not only cut up the editor, but throw the lower town into a series of fits which would cause its utter dissolution. All being duly settled, our hero retired to his room to dream of future greatness. Already did he behold sheets filled with editorial tact and talent—already was his name inscribed upon the roll with illustrious editorial contemporaries—Ritchie, Pleasants, Blair, Gales, Chandler, Prentice and Neal, those great names of the tripod tribe already numbered him on their list, and he fancied “his name grown great in mouths of wisest censure,” while his pockets were correspondingly corpulent with the reward for such ability. Poor fellow, could he have drawn aside the curtain, and beheld the days of toil, the struggles to procure ink and paper, the labor of writing editorials, and the labor of setting them up, working them off at press, pasting up the mail, and the lack of reward which repaid this drudgery, he would have kicked ambition out of his company, and clutched his little hoard like a vice.
The town of B———— and the town below, had been rivals ever since they were first laid out upon a map—the growth of one had always been the envy of the other, and an improvement in one was sure to be imitated by the other. The lower town had been most successful in the publication of a newspaper, for the reason that they paid something to support it, while the town of B———- suffered for the neglect they manifested towards the press. The editor below not only abused the religion, politics, merchandise, and intelligence of B————, but the beauty of the women, and the smartness of the babies; he had even gone so far as to say that B———- women and babies could be known by their heads. This was an outrage most unpardonable, and John rose in estimation as their defender against such vandal accusations.
Behold John seated scratching out his first editorial! Ah, ye weavers of cheap literature, who have watched with aching curiosity the appearance of your first production—ye writers of small poetry for daily journals, who have listened so eagerly for praise—ye penny editors who have successfully tickled the popular ear—ye ruling deities of mammoth weeklies, what are all your feelings, concentrated into one great throb, in comparison to the mighty throes of talent waking from her sleep in the mind of John Earl. It would have shocked the lower town like the heaving of a volcano, had they but known the shower of expletives our hero was tracing on the sheet before him. Goths and Vandals, corruption and spoilsmen, traitors and apostates, vile incendiaries and polluting vipers, poisonous demagogues, and a host more, bitter as sin, were showered like hail from his pen, when giving “perticular goss” to the lower town editor and his abettors.
With the appearance of the first number our hero's consequence began to rise, the respectable citizens took him cordially by the hand, and their daughters smiled upon him, while the poorer inhabitants wondered at his “larnin'.”
“A most excellent first number,” said the lanky member, “a good quantity of hot shot—just the thing—sew the lower town up—you've got prodigious talents—immense!”
John bowed to the pleasing flattery.
“Well, hoss,” said the storekeeper constituent and subscriber, “You've slashed the hide off'er that fellar in the lower town, touched his raw, and rumpled his feathers—that's the way to give him jessy. I raily believe you'll git yourself inter the legislatur' afore long, ef you keep on.”
Our hero listened to these first breathings of fame with a swelling bosom—there was a chance of his becoming somebody, at last, and labor became a pleasure when it produced such a yield. At a public meeting called in the town he was elected secretary, and ventured on the occasion to make a speech, which was loudly applauded, and in the next number of the Eagle appeared a glowing description of the proceedings, with a synopsis of his own speech. This awoke some jealousy in the mind of the lanky member, who thought John wished to supplant him. As time progressed the Eagle increased its subscription to two hundred, its editor grew popular, in debt, and received nothing from his subscribers—indeed, he soon discovered that pay made up no part of their patronage, and he began to grow tired of laboring for glory alone. All this time the war was waging hotter and thicker between the towns and their editors. At length he of the lower town inserted in his “Patriotic Herald and Telegraph” the following: