I think the reason why Editor York is not a "Stinger" is because he has not had much to do with the Punics. If he knew from practical demonstrations what those bees were, he would probably become a stinger, too. This is not intended as a joke on somebody's bees.
Rambler was hurt at last. For a time he was confined to the hospital, where I send all those who have been hit with my darts. He announced his injury in the Bee Journal for Dec. 7, 1893, page 730, and he thought the wound inflicted by me must have been produced by a ramrod out of my gun. If he had been hurt as badly as he admitted he was, I am surprised. When my sting penetrated his thick hide he must have seen stars, consequently, at the same time, he had no trouble in magnifying a sting into the proportions of a ramrod. I would say in a fatherly way: My dear Rambler, keep your nose from rambling around in the loose way that you have been letting it stray about, and there will be little danger of its running up against the sting of The Stinger.
Rambler says he smiled a "smole" when his nose came in contact with my "stinger." Stings seem to have the same effect upon him that laughing-gas has upon a patient in a dentist's chair. Rambler, beware, for have you not heard that "laughing often comes to crying?" The next time we may hear from you, you may be sitting in a corner crying, because the sting got into your nose a little below the tip, and it is hurting you in a way that a sting never troubled you before.
The mission of The Stinger is to reform the bee-keeping world. (Did I hear you say that that is impossible, dear reader?) There is no man in the world that needs reforming more than the Rambler, and so his threats to expose me if I do not cease troubling him, fall upon me as uselessly as if he had never uttered them. For shame, on you, Rambler! to intimate that you will silence my pen. You might as well try to melt the snow on the tops of the high mountains away back of where you live, with that genial smile of yours, as to keep The Stinger from performing his mission. Rambler, beware of the day when I shall meet you in battle array.
Some one has sent me a copy of the December number of the California Cultivator and Poultry Keeper. It is a nice publication, but I do not see how it manages to live under such a load of a name. As it has a well edited apiary department, I imagine that the publisher will some day add Bee-Keeper to the already long title.