Or, if you prefer, in care of Col. Mann’s Smart Set.
Last March the blustering old scamp who rolls around beneath the name of Colonel W. D. Mann, wanted to remove the genuine “Watson’s Magazine” from 42nd Street over to the Smart Set den.
I declined to let him do it. At that time, DeFrance was still true to me, and he took the same view of the matter. So anxious was he not to get mired up in Town Topics mud that he telegraphed me to stand out against Col. Mann and not allow him to make the removal.
Tray, the faithful, wanted to keep out of bad company. Tray, the unfaithful, has now, of his own free will, got into the bad company which he then avoided.
Watch out, Tray.
***
The first article in the November number of the spurious “Watson’s” is entitled “Explanatory.” Most of it had already appeared in Colonel Mann’s Town Topics. The rest of it bears the earmark of DeFrance.
“Explanatory” was prepared by the present Editors of the New York “Watson’s Magazine”—Col. Mann and DeFrance. Well aware of the fact that the Public would not patronize a Reform magazine edited by such a creature as himself, Col. Mann has rushed into the newspapers with a declaration that he never saw or heard of “Explanatory” until after its appearance in the November “Watson’s.”
What a shameless falsehood!
Col. Mann and DeFrance fixed up that “Explanatory” mess, and Mr. Gordon Nye, the artist, was commissioned to take the “Proofs” to Col. Mann for correction.