By no means exaggerated is the description of a Western editor and his environment which was given some years ago by the authors of that amusing novel, "The Golden Butterfly." Prototypes of Gilead P. Beck could be found in abundance throughout the region west of the Mississippi. One of the most extraordinary characters and one of the most delightful was the late Alvin S. Peek—"Judge" Peek of Dakota—whose boast it was that he had "run" papers in nine different States and territories, had shot eleven men who disagreed with his opinions—three of them fatally—-and had never swallowed a word he had ever written, and who died universally respected in bed and at the ripe age—for Dakota—of fifty-one years.
But apart from any personal contact with the men who make the newspapers of the wild and woolly West it was once my experience to receive and peruse weekly many hundreds of their productions—"exchanges" they are called—and ranging from the Mother Lode Magnet of California and the Tombstone Epitaph of Tombstone, Arizona, to the Arkansas Howler and the Mustang (Colorado) Mail. Many a pleasant evening have I spent over them, and I still prize a scrap-book containing things to me as funny as I could find in any collection of wit and humour in the world. There is reason for this, because the backwoods and prairie Press of America is the nursery of American humour. It produced Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Petroleum V. Nasby, Joshua Billings, J. M. Bailey, Bob Burdette, Bill Nye, John Phœnix, and F. L. Stanton, to mention only a few of the humorists of international renown. I was well acquainted with Stanton at the time he was editing, printing, and publishing the famous Smithville News. Texas Siftings, the Arizona Kicker, and the Burlington Hawkeye have made the peculiarities and amenities of Western journalism familiar to English readers. Albeit, scattered through a dozen States and territories are thousands of small newspapers, eking out a precarious existence—full of native humour and sentiment—of which not even the resident of Chicago and St. Louis has so much as heard. How precarious that existence is may be judged from the following editorial appeal in the Gem, of Flagstaff, Arizona:—
Have you paid your subscription yet? Remember even an editor must live. If the hard times have struck your shebang, don't forget turnips, potatoes, and corn in the shock are most as welcome as hard cash at the Gem office. Also hard wood. Our latch-string is always out, or same (i.e., the turnips, etc.) can be delivered to our wife, who will give receipt in our absence.
One of the pleasing fictions preserved by the Western Press is, as we have seen, that of a plurality of editors. To these supposititious editors the most extraordinary titles and functions are bequeathed. On the front page of the Rising Star (Texas) X-ray no pretence of a numerous staff is made—Mr. Albert Tyson boldly announces himself as "horse, snake, lying, and fighting editor," while his motto is, "Do unto others as you would have them do to you, and do it fust!"
In mining districts or in the new territories, where a "tenderfoot" is made welcome in the "'eave 'arf-brick" fashion, the career of an editor is one of constant risk and turmoil. If he is young and inexperienced there are always lawless spirits ready to take a rise out of him, just for the pleasure and excitement of the thing.
Even in the civilized Southern States to the east of the Mississippi editing was not fifteen years ago a healthy pastime. On one occasion, when I was assisting a friend in Georgia, a citizen in a high state of excitement entered the "editorial sanctum"—they are very particular about the dignity of these epithets in America—and riddled the walls and my desk with bullets from a revolver.
Luckily, I happened not to be there, but in the composing-room, engaged in making-up the editorial page. My eye dwelt lovingly on a neat row of paragraphs, one beginning in this wise:—