Bring us:—
Twenty pounds of pork; or
Ten pounds of pork sausage; or
Two bushels of sound potatoes; or
Five bushels of sound turnips: or
Ten good chickens; or
One bushel of good onions.
For half the quantity, we will send the paper half the time."
And so the whole population of Hazel Green has the newspaper put within its reach.
The Thunderer and the Lightning are not the only papers that indulge in violent polemics, in which insulting personalities take the place of arguments.
During the whole time I was in America, Mr. Pulitzer, proprietor and manager of the World, and Mr. Dana, editor of the Sun, one of the most accomplished American journalists, were day after day calling each other such names as "robber, liar, mortgaged, dirty Jew." I see by papers that my New York friends kindly send me from time to time, that these gentlemen have not yet exhausted their Billingsgate vocabulary.
Do not draw hasty conclusions from this. I do not know Mr. Pulitzer personally, but I have the pleasure of knowing Colonel Cockerill, chief editor of the World, and Mr. Charles Dana, of the Sun. In private life they are perfect gentlemen, and men of great talent. In public life they are in the swim—they go with the tide. As a study of English, the polemic of the World and the Sun was most interesting.
The American press was divided into two camps: the partisans of Pulitzer and the partisans of Dana. Whenever the combatants were driven up for want of fresh epithets of the requisite strength, their supporters suggested some to them. Here are some congratulations, addressed to Mr. Dana, which I read in the St. Louis Globe:
"It was from beginning to end the Sun's stiletto against the World's meat-axe, and, as is always the case, the meat-axe came out second best. The literature of invective contains nothing finer than some of the Sun's attacks on the World, and the literature of the gutter contains nothing more feeble than the World's defence. The Sun dealt out prussic acid by the drop, and the World replied with rough-on-rats by the pound. The flatulent anger of Pulitzer was completely overwhelmed by the concentrated venom of Dana."